“Tiamat has endured discrimination, abuse, and sexual violence—a lifetime of injustice committed against her at the hands of men. So, over time, she stopped identifying with our species…. Tiamat doesn’t seem like a human. She seems like a dragon, a mythical entity that has, through a series of ritualistic procedures, managed to escape the confines of the human body.”

Our view of human beings matters. Many of the culture wars being fought today are the result of two very different understandings of what it means to be human. Were we created by God, or did we evolve? Is human nature fixed or malleable? Is there a purpose for our bodies that we need to conform ourselves to, or are we free to form ourselves according to our own purposes? Do we have intrinsic value, or do we earn our value by possessing particular characteristics (race, size, ability, etc.)? These questions are relevant to abortion, physician-assisted suicide, homosexuality, marriage, and transgenderism—today’s most divisive topics. They’re divisive precisely because our culture is deeply divided on a much more basic question: What is a human being?

Worldviews don’t exist as mere abstractions. They shape and direct real people’s lives, creating real-world consequences. I came across this article and short documentary about a man who underwent $70,000 worth of surgeries—castration, horns implanted, ears and some teeth removed, nose altered, tongue forked—to transform himself into the “Dragon Lady,” Eva Tiamat Medusa, and I thought the passage below was the clearest expression of self-autonomy and self-creation (as opposed to submitting to a Creator) that I’ve seen in a while.

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