On the Basis of Gender Identity
We can’t include “gender identity” without excluding women. And women deserve to be included.
Last Friday, the Biden administration said out with sex, in with gender identity. Sex is outmoded, passé, antiquated—sexist, even. Instead, we must uphold a concept of “gender” as somehow both “assigned at birth” and innately held, a spectrum and a social construct, untethered from presentation yet utterly dependent on hormones and surgery. To say that any man who proclaims himself a woman is not one is, in fact, discriminatory. It’s every man’s right to be a woman, and vice versa.
In sweeping changes made to Title IX, Biden expanded the definition of sex to include “gender identity” — effectively nullifying the former in favor of the latter. In one fell swoop, this undid decades of progress for women and girls and extinguished the very rights Title IX was intended to protect. “Trans rights” and women’s rights cannot coexist. Sex cannot coexist with the nebulous, ill-defined concept of “gender”. Something’s got to give. And this past weekend, it did.
Of all the trans related issues, allowing men in women’s sports has proven the most unpopular. Nearly 70% of Americans say that trans-identified men should not be allowed to compete against women. Most people, if they’re being honest with themselves, can see that allowing men in women’s sports is not only unfair, but unsafe. A man does not become a woman simply by declaring it so. Unfortunately for him, bodies compete in sports, not identities.
Regulations on testosterone levels change little if anything. Lowering testosterone and taking exogenous estrogen has no effect on bone density, wing span, height, hand size, grip strength, the length of one’s stride, lung capacity, heart size, or larger, male skeleton. Users of estrogen often complain that it doesn’t even alter one’s voice. How could it then be expected to reverse any other changes made by male puberty?
Even if a boy circumvents male puberty, he remains male. Women are not merely castrated boys, nor are they failed men, defective men, or men with their genitals turned “outside in,” as Aristotle described. Men who invert their own genitals today have achieved nothing closer to understanding femaleness than Aristotle did. People are free to think whatever they like about themselves — but they remain as they are.
What is Sex?
In deciding on these regulations, the Department of Education deemed sex “unnecessary” to define. I miss when that was true. Since it no longer is, here’s my definition:
“Either of the two major forms of individuals that occur in many species and that are distinguished respectively as female or male on the basis of their reproductive organs and structures.”
To get this definition, I revised Merriam Webster’s version. Here’s the unedited version:
“Either of the two major forms of individuals that occur in many species and that are distinguished respectively as female or male especially on the basis of their reproductive organs and structures. [emphasis added]”
You can create your own accurate, non-ideological versions of woke definitions by making similar edits. Remember that most of our major institutions have been captured by gender ideology, exemplified by the usage guide underneath Merriam Webster’s definition of sex titled: Are gender and sex the same?
They are, in case you were wondering. Gender is simply a watered down way to say sex. I’ve heard it theorized that the word gender was devised so as not to have to print “sex” on forms, have it said around children who may repeat it, etc. It’s the unfortunate consequence of “sex” in English being synonymous and interchangeable with “sexual intercourse”.
Sex is binary, immutable, and unchanging. It does not exist on a spectrum. Nor is it a social construct. It existed prior to humanity, and will continue to exist long after.
What is Gender Identity?
A concept that first crept up in the 1950s, “gender identity” is a modern contrivance that seems to mean everything and nothing at once depending on whatever is most politically expedient for the user. The Human Rights Campaign defines it thusly:
“One's innermost concept of self as male, female, a blend of both or neither – how individuals perceive themselves and what they call themselves. One's gender identity can be the same or different from their sex assigned at birth.”
There’s so much wrong with this definition I don’t even know where to start. One can have an innermost concept of a lot of things, but that has no bearing on material reality whatsoever. Why do we allow one’s concept of “gender” to alter life and law, but not any other innermost concept, like race or age?
And how do you define innermost? Is it deeply and sincerely held, or merely a paraphilia that’s taken over one’s life? And how can we tell the difference?
Most importantly, why should one’s self-perception dictate how others treat him? The religious are free to believe whatever we wish about our own souls — and the souls of others — but our religious rights end where another person's fundamental rights begin.
In short, gender identity is a meaningless, nebulous category with zero utility and not something that should ever be enshrined into law. It was also dreamed up by and popularized by a gaggle of sexologists with questionable ethics, one of which was an alleged child molester.
Male and female, on the other hand, are rigid and unchanging, and can be defined in the following terms:
Male
Ordered toward the making of small gametes (sperm).
Female
Ordered toward the making of large gametes (eggs).
There is no third gamete, no third sex, no third category. There is simply male and female. All “intersex” individuals, or people with Disorders of Sexual Development (DSDs) are either male or female. And a man is a man is a man is a man.
Sex vs Gender Identity
When sex and “gender identity” are pitted against one another, sex loses every time. Despite its primacy and grounding in material reality, sex cannot win against gender identity in a fight. If we allow “gender identity” to determine categorization, women will get the short end of the stick every time. This is true for sports, both team and individual, where men continue to crush their female opponents, and in bathrooms, locker rooms, domestic abuse shelters, and prisons, where men are peeping on, exposing themselves to, and even violating women.
Allowing men to compete will mean the end of women’s sports. Little by little, women will be forced out of the categories and teams originally created for them and once protected by Title IX. We’re already seeing it now. In response to the problem of which team the trans-identified men should compete on, many suggest a third option — a trans-specific or open category. If the changes to Title IX are not reversed, this proposed solution will become the de facto law of the land. America will have men’s teams and trans teams. Women’s sports will cease to exist.
It is my own personal, radical opinion that women and girls deserve better than this. Women deserve their own spaces, teams, and leagues, specifically preserved for them — not ones subject to the gender identity equivalent of squatting. In 1972, American lawmakers had a similar radical opinion: that women are people deserving of free and equal opportunity. Let us not slide backward in time.
Thanks for reading!