If gender is a “social construct”, then why is “gender identity” being pushed as if was a static ideal?
On the one hand, they claim that the real self is something other than the physical body, in a new form of Gnostic dualism, yet at the same time they embrace a materialist philosophy in which only the material world exists. They say that gender is purely a social construct, while asserting that a person can be “trapped” in the wrong gender. […] If gender is a social construct, how can gender identity be innate and immutable? How can one’s identity with respect to a social construct be determined by biology in the womb? How can one’s identity be unchangeable (immutable) with respect to an ever-changing social construct? And if gender identity is innate, how can it be “fluid”?
—Ryan T. Anderson, Transgender Ideology Is Riddled With Contradictions. Here Are the Big Ones.
Your body’s physical sex is immutable, regardless if we define it by “chromosomes, hormones, internal reproductive organs, external genitalia, or secondary sex characteristics”. We have separate sports leagues for men and women because men, or “assigned male at birth”, usually grow up bigger, have more muscle, have bigger lungs, and other physiological advantages that would it unfair for women—er, people “assigned female at birth”—to compete against them.
However, current feminist theory explains that “gender” and “gender roles” vary from culture to culture, and have changed over time. Whereas women were once confined to the home and usually just homemakers and mothers to the children they bore, women now have full-time careers. Whereas men were once the sole breadwinners, now often co-parent and have active roles in their children’s upbringing. Women in some past and current cultures, if they pass a culture’s test for manhood, are allowed for themselves to take on wives, work and attend usually men’s-only spheres, and even allowed luxuries like drinking and smoking.
So, if “gender” is a fluid concept that varies from culture to culture and varies over time, why do transgenders insist that “gender identity” is somehow permanent?
Don’t even bother trying to bring up cultures that have established “third genders”; you’re just misappropriating another’s culture to advance your own agenda, as you disregard many cultural and spiritual values that go along with being one of them. Members of modern-day “third genders” already don’t care for transgangers totally not understanding what it means to be a member of these groups. As well, transsexuals in these other countries disagree with the US concept of “self authenticity”, and say that the whole point is to pass and live as members of the opposite sex, rather than all the political bullshit we keep throwing around in our country.
Before industrialization and the rise of modern medicine, I could understand why some people did this—usually a butch woman or very effeminate gay man would try to “pass” as a member of the opposite sex, so the couple could “pass” as “heteronormative”. A butch woman would “pass” for a man to work to provide an income for her and her wife, usually with factory or farm work, where strength and doing the work mattered more than what someone looked like; while the effeminate gay man would “pass” as the “wife”, often as a homemaker who couldn’t bear children.
When modern medicine allowed for cosmetic surgery, this helped further “passing”, but again for the sake of “heteronormativity”. For the few people who insisted they were members of the opposite sex, years of psychotherapy and just “passing”—without the use of cross-hormone therapy—was needed before the doctor would even do anything chemical or surgical with them, as well as they had to be “gay” (ie “trans women” still had to be attracted to men, and “trans men” still had to be attracted to other women).
Now basically it’s watered down to, that if you show gender diversity, you are “trans”. Rather than help fight against stereotypes, transgenders are using outdated gender stereotypes to say people are “trans” because we don’t fit into these stereotypes.
On the one hand, transgender activists want the authority of science as they make metaphysical claims, saying that science reveals gender identity to be innate and unchanging. On the other hand, they deny that biology is destiny, insisting that people are free to be who they want to be.
Which is it? Is our gender identity biologically determined and immutable, or self-created and changeable? If the former, how do we account for people whose gender identity changes over time? Do these people have the wrong sense of gender at some time or other?
And then you have even more radicalized individuals who call themselves “demi-girl”, “demi-boy”, and at its most extreme, “gender-fluid”. They are people who “partly identify as” one thing while as another, or people whose “gender identity” is “fluid”. How does that work, exactly? You’re a guy when in class and on the streets, but when it’s game time now you “feel like a woman”? Or you’re a woman sometimes, so you can attend women’s spaces, but at other times a “man” because you think men have it “easier” or “get away with more”, whatever that means?
And then trying to use “intersex” to justify that “gender is a spectrum” is all appropriation. Intersex folk still are usually born male or female, just with something psychologically different—and most of them still grow up living as the men or women they were “assigned at birth”. Saying transgenderism is a “form” or “version” of intersex, because you use the “woman’s brain in a man’s body” bullshit, shows you just trying to redefine the argument to push your ideology onto others.
Gender identity can sound a lot like religious identity, which is determined by beliefs. But those beliefs don’t determine reality. Someone who identifies as a Christian believes that Jesus is the Christ. Someone who identifies as a Muslim believes that Muhammad is the final prophet. But Jesus either is or is not the Christ, and Muhammad either is or is not the final prophet, regardless of what anyone happens to believe.
Just because you “believe” or “identify” as something other than the sex assigned to you at birth, why should other people have to play along? Just like the author comparing gender identity to religious beliefs, just because you “identify” or “believe” something, doesn’t mean you have the right to shove it down others’ throats.
Go ahead and wear a dress for all I care—but that doesn’t make you a woman. Playing in the dirt and hating dresses does make a girl a “boy”. Some guys just like dressing up, and some girls just don’t see why they need to wear clothes that make it hard for them to move around. If you got the money (not the insurance) to undergo plastic surgery because you can afford to change something, go ahead—but that doesn’t mean your cosmetic surgery makes you a man or woman. It’s called gender diversity after all, because our behavior, self-expression, and wardrobe preferences just differ from what we consider what most people wear or do. That does not mean we’re “trans” or “identify” as something else.
I have long called myself “butch” not because it was an “identity”, but it is a label used among lesbians for a very specific role or way of expression within our community.
Transgenderism is just a delusion usually caused by trauma, extreme body dysmorphia, internalized homophobia, and other psychiatric issues—not because of something “natural”. It is not “conversion therapy” to submit the “trans” candidate, who wants hormones and surgery, to undergo several years of psychiatric evaluation before letting them obtain anything medical or surgical. Allowing people to be gender diverse, to allow them to love whomever without hate would definitely help ease up on people. The same “live-and-let-live” philosophy could also help do away with toxic masculinity, hyperfemininity, trans radicalism.
Feminism was meant to be about live-and-let-live, not shoving your ideology down others throats.
