- Joined
- Jul 19, 2019
Arrgh, this article comes so close but falls short of the mark. This paragraph comes closest to winning:
But it never touches on the biggest problem with self-identification, which is that it's ultimately self-defeating. If the only distinguishing characteristic of a woman is identifying as one, then genders themselves are reduced to meaningless labels, like being fans of one sports team or another. But if genders are just labels, then why should any of us feel obligated to respect your goddamn pronouns? To say nothing of letting troon pervs shower with women, or letting big hulking goons dominate women's athletics. And just like that, we're back to segregating by biological sex, and all the gains TRAs have won over the past few decades are wiped out. Congratulations. And most of us were largely willing to humor old-school transsexuals until the movement got taken over by anime-crazed autogyno freaks.
If we want to embrace the concept of malleable genders, we cannot do so at the expense of sex. Instead, we must have a public discussion about the types of situations in which gender matters and the types of situations in which sex matters. For example, gender matters in the arena of social expression, when we are speaking of a person’s social identity in relation to others. Sex matters in situations when the anatomy and biology of the person make a difference. This happens in situations involving Brazilian waxing, athletic competitions, and – for many people -- locker rooms and bathrooms. It should be possible for people of good to find ways to resolve such issues – but doing so would require some acknowledgement that gender and sex matter in different ways in different social situations.
But it never touches on the biggest problem with self-identification, which is that it's ultimately self-defeating. If the only distinguishing characteristic of a woman is identifying as one, then genders themselves are reduced to meaningless labels, like being fans of one sports team or another. But if genders are just labels, then why should any of us feel obligated to respect your goddamn pronouns? To say nothing of letting troon pervs shower with women, or letting big hulking goons dominate women's athletics. And just like that, we're back to segregating by biological sex, and all the gains TRAs have won over the past few decades are wiped out. Congratulations. And most of us were largely willing to humor old-school transsexuals until the movement got taken over by anime-crazed autogyno freaks.