Back in April, I posted (here) about the physical transformation former Olympic athlete Bruce Jenner was undergoing in order to stake his claim to be a woman. At the time of that post, I intended never again to bring up this subject. However, when I heard the announcement today that ESPN will honor Jenner on July 15 by giving him the Arthur Ashe Courage Award, I found myself unable to hold back.

Allow me to cover a few things right from the get-go. Bruce Jenner is not now – nor will he ever be – a woman! He may have had his body surgically mutilated and redesigned in order to have the physical appearance of a woman … but that doesn’t make him a woman. He may take hormones to soften his features and raise his voice … but that doesn’t make him a woman. He may wear feminine garments and own a houseful of girlie-girl items … but that doesn’t make him a woman either! No matter what he chooses to believe, no matter what he tells himself to abet his delusion, he will always … always … ALWAYS be a man.

And now, as a means to applaud the pathological rearrangement of his life, ESPN is giving him an award for Courage? This disgusts me! Does anyone actually recall what the definition of COURAGE is? I tend to think ESPN doesn’t have a clue! (Or perhaps they’ve just become so entrenched in this era’s PC nonsense that they can’t help themselves?) In either case, I’ve included below a definition of Courage from dictionary.com.

But even better than the above definition, Wikipedia nails it with this superb definition:  Courage is the choice and willingness to confront agony, pain, danger, uncertainty or intimidation. Indeed, courage is that character quality epitomized by firemen who rush into a burning building as other people are rushing out. The firefighters aren’t fearless; they have simply made a choice to confront danger. That’s courage.

Let’s think for a minute about the third listing in dictionary,com’s definition, the idiom. Having the courage of one’s convictions. Some might argue Bruce Jenner models that idiom. He is arguably acting in accordance with his beliefs, regardless of criticism. There’s a problem though. His belief (that he’s become a woman) is wrong. Yes, I said that. His belief is wrong. Jenner could believe he’s a caterpillar … but it wouldn’t make it true.

For many years, clinicians qualified to address psychological disorders assisted individuals who suffered from delusions and dissociative disorders! Instead of working through the underlying root issues of Jenner’s personality challenges, experts have now indulged his fantasies! How sick is that?

Still, let’s get back to Courage. Real courage for Bruce Jenner would have been to confront the agony and pain, the uncertainty of his life. Real courage would have been to acknowledge he had issues but then to be gutsy enough to work through those issues. Real courage would have been to recognize all of us – every man, woman and child on the planet – have problems, yes, even earth-shattering problems, and we work through them the best we can.

I pity Bruce Jenner. He’s going to learn the person he sees everyday in the mirror hasn’t changed. He can continue to delude himself, but it’s the truth. He is the 21st century manifestation of Narcissus, having fallen in love with the now distorted image in the mirror. I suspect Jenner’s end will be as tragic as that of Narcissus.