The terms ‘gender identity’ and ‘gender
roles’ were created by Kiwi sexologist John Money to describe an externally
imposed sex identity, but it changed its meaning to an internally-selected sex
identity. According to Money, babies are gender neutral at birth, and
ultimately, environment determines whether a person is a man or a woman. However, the Reimer twins debacle is evidence
of the falsity of this concept, but it was adopted by Suzanne Kessler and Wendy
McKenna in 1978’s Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach and taken
further in Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble, where she stated, “gender
itself becomes a free-floating artifice, with the consequence that man and
masculine might just as easily signify a female body as a male one, and woman
and feminine a male body as easily as a female one.” Keen-Minshull, not religious herself, thinks
“gender is a probably secular notion of a soul”, which I think is a very
perceptive comment.
To quote Michael Biggs in Queer Theory…and
Prisons, “Deconstructing the conventional meaning of woman (qua adult human
female) requires constructing novel identities — ‘woman’ (qua someone who
declares themself to be one, dramaturgical performativity) and ‘transgender’—ultimately
derived from illocutionary performance (that is, a verbal assertion). These
identities are now rigorously enforced by the formal machinery of law, and in
elite social circles, by the informal compulsion of norms.” End quote. As Alex Byrne said in his paper Are
women adult human females?, “One would expect English to have a word that
picks out the category adult human female, and ‘woman’ is the only candidate.” Byrne.
With the Trans
Issue, the superficial hypothesis
here is that the word ‘woman’ no longer defines an ‘adult human female’, and
that this has consequences. I have delineated nine factors, where for the
purposes of definition, the word ‘women’ is used to represent humans with two X
chromosomes –
1)
What are
the consequences for the loss of the definition of ‘woman’ as a biological
category, an ‘adult human female’, one born with the capacity to bear
offspring? A whole new vocabulary,
indeed language, has been invented to cater for less than half a percent of the
population and their activists, in a reckless attempt to avoid man, woman, boy,
or girl. Pregnant person, person
who produces sperm, person who produces eggs, etc. The misogyny of the men’s rights movement has forced
this change of meaning – the erasure of women as a biological category –
leaving men unscathed. Shall this, too, pass? Surely, it would be better to keep the extremely
accurate (>99.9%) definition of woman as an adult human female defined by
the XX chromosome, and create another name for anyone not so well defined who
nonetheless wishes to be regarded as female?
2)
Whether
or not women should have rights to exclusive use of their own space away from
self-evident males who seek unfettered access. This includes prisons, which Michael Biggs in
the latest Journal of Controversial Ideas examines in excellent and readable
detail about the complex legal and procedural changes required, and the
management of often violent trans-women, often sex offenders, without
mentioning what must be a hideous expense.
3)
Whether
or not women are entitled to exclusive rights to competitive sports without
having to compete with faster and stronger male-borns who identify as women,
but who deprive female-borns to represent their country.
4)
Whether
those who support women’s rights over trans-women’s rights in these matters should
have the freedom to express their views. Sussex University’s Dr Kathleen Stock, for
example, or NZ Humanist’s poor judgment and flagrantly false accusations relating
to Keen-Minshull’s visit. Also in consideration should be the thug’s
veto, the intense violence expressed with revolutionary zeal against such
people.
5)
Whether
children have the right and understanding to determine their gender contrary to
their sex.
6)
Whether
the medical establishment has the right to over-ride parental authority to
supply juveniles with drugs and surgery which can permanently change sexual
characteristics and the nominal right to have children.
7)
What has
the trans-rights issue done to women’s rights where biological males can, by
mere statement, adopt those rights as their own? There is a shift in power discourse away from
biological women towards trans-women, some with criminal intent, so what are
the consequences?
8)
Whether
or not it is appropriate for ‘drag queens’ to read stories to young children,
and whether parents should have a choice of their attendance. (Drag queens are not simply men in women’s
clothes; they are identified with the demi-monde and dress in an extremely
exaggerated manner, one not used by women under any circumstances. Biggs’ phrase ‘dramaturgical performativity’ describes
this well. This may in part be because
women’s clothes and styles don’t suit men’s physiques.)
9)
Gender
identity was once personal and private and appears now to be more than just
publicly declarative. An application for
a government job included a question on sexuality and gender, with no opt out
and no other identity question. Should statements of personal pronouns,
wanted by under 1% of the population, be legally required and observed, as they
are in Canada?
Delving
deeper, I have a hypothesis
I call the peace dividend, given the 78-year absence of war and
increased prosperity in the West. This appears to result in the deliberate
socially-engineered feminisation of society of which the desexualisation of
children’s identity is part. The
consequences of this have yet to be fully realised, but already it is radically
affecting adolescent female identity as can be seen with de-transitioning and
sterility. In 2018 Time magazine quoted
a report saying there were 700,000 trans people in the United States, but that
same report for 2022 said this had risen to 1.6m (0.2% to 0.5%). Academics and professionals engaged in this
pursuit do not have evidence to support desexualisation, but have to resort to
ideology. This is made abundantly clear
in Matt Walsh’s What is a Woman; in TV1’s Sunday episode Theybies
of 23 April on children raised without discussion of their sex; and a 2018 VUW
lecture series Gender and Religion. Academic and professionals best described as
‘woke’ were concerned with individuals’ feelings as expressed and were
unable to enter into rational discussion.
In What is a Woman they were unable to define ‘woman’. In Gender and Religion similar experts
flatly denied evidence before their eyes.
One consequence of the Peace Dividend is a reduction in fecundity, and a
consequence of this appears to be antagonism to sex stereotyping instantiated
in this discussion. In contrast, a paper
from Vic titled Individuals’ number of children is associated with
benevolent sexism, concluded that
having a greater number of children was associated with stronger endorsement of
benevolent sexism, that is, traditional gender roles.
Deeper
still, one has to ask what
has brought this radical change about, and the only rational argument is
ideology, the polity which identifies the problem which thwarts Utopia, provides
the solution, and applies it by any and all means possible, which includes control of antithetical speech and
thought. In this case, Social
Theory provides a model of the social world, and theory can also become a model
for remaking it. Supporters of trans people are being treated
as useful idiots, tearing apart feminism and creating a narrative which
distorts reality and deceives in order to convince the public of its
inescapable veracity. It comes from the
far Left’s blank slate approach to social engineering and Lysenkoism, the deliberate
distortion of scientific facts or theories for purposes that are deemed
politically, religiously or socially desirable.
This is cultural Marxism, which has the same ends as Marxism but with
different means, ending in the forcible overthrow of all existing social
conditions and the collapse of social democratic capitalism. Disguised as progressive politics.
