Toronto Blue Jays outfielder Kevin Pillar has been suspended for two games for shouting an "anti-gay slur" at Atlanta Braves pitcher Jason Motte during an angry outburst.  In other words, he used a word – which apparently is now officially and for all progressive time "the f-word," equivalent to "the n-word" – to attack the masculinity of another player, on the implicit grounds that being an "f" is less masculine than being a non-"f."

That is to say, he has been suspended because he shouted a word that men and boys have long used in heated arguments to demean the manliness of a rival – one that, like all such words in this age of enlightened hypersensitivity, must remain unspoken, even in news reports of stories hinging upon its very use.  And to top it off, Pillar has been fed a Major League Baseball-approved apology to the universe for having used language disturbing to LGBTQ hearts everywhere (or rather, to their liberal guilt-monger defenders everywhere).

Let us be clear about this.  Pillar was suspended not for actually questioning an opposing player's sexuality – which might have been called slander once, but which political correctness has redefined as flattery – but merely for flinging at him a common, low-minded epithet indicating "unmanliness."

Oh, dear – we can't have professional he-men challenging one another's manliness, now, can we?  For that would imply that manliness is some kind of special virtue of men, and unmanliness some kind of deficiency.  And where would that leave the hallowed and long-suffering LGBTQ community, which, somewhere among its unwieldy initials, includes biological men who are decidedly unmanly?

Wait!  We can't say that, either – that Gs, Bs, Ts, or Qs are unmanly – for that would suggest that there is a specific set of characteristics that may be designated as manly, to the exclusion of their opposites.  But then wouldn't that mean that a person who is biologically a man, but who lacks those manly characteristics, is somehow a less complete man than one who possesses those characteristics?  Mustn't we, in the name of progress and inclusion, admit that any and all characteristics are manly that are displayed by any biological man – including, presumably, those men "transitioning" into womanhood who haven't crossed the halfway point in their transition yet?

Furthermore, since many of the characteristics of this new, progressively defined "manliness" would actually be characteristics hitherto understood as unmanly, which is to say womanly, mustn't we accept that any woman who possesses any of said characteristics may also (if she so wishes) be accurately described as manly?  In which case, doesn't this make everyone, in principle, manly?

But herein lies the problem.  "Manly" is an adjective that implies a definition of "man," and a definition must not be inherently contradictory.  Therefore, since all characteristics hitherto identified as unmanly or womanly are now to be included in the definition of manliness, it follows that any characteristic fundamentally inconsistent with this new definition should be excluded from the definition, in the name of conceptual coherence.  But the characteristics of traditional manliness, which used to lead men to regard women and womanly types as unmanly, and hence to use rude epithets indicating womanliness to demean the manliness of other men, are clearly inconsistent with our new, inclusive notion of manliness.  It follows that these traditional characteristics are precisely the ones that must be excluded from the new concept of man.

Hence, and henceforth, "manly" must be understood to mean the complete collection of all human characteristics, predilections, and preferences, except those characteristics that used to be regarded as manly before the dictionary of human nature was rewritten by the wise Websters of the LGBTQ community, along with their neutered – er, I mean gender-neutral – friends in professional sports, academia, and the media.

Isn't progressive thought grand? Confusing at times, to be sure, but thank goodness the world has Major League Baseball to keep us all straight – oops, um, I mean compliant.