Marxist ideology has made a distinction between biological sex and gender. Biological sex, male and female, is fixed. It can’t be changed. Of course, one can apply surgical interventions, like removing penis and testicles, but in terms of biological sex that amounts to mutilation. A person of the male sex without a penis, is a man without a penis. A deficient man.
On the othe hand, gender is fluid – so Marxist transgenderists tell us. From one moment to the other, a person can fancy himself male or female – or any other of the multiple genders the ideologues have dreamed up. Gender is a social construct – totally unstable and totally anarchic. The new discourse about gender overrides the discourse of sex and sex differences that has prevailed since time out of mind.
That attitude to sex from time out of mind saw biology and social behaviour inextricably linked. When revered novelist Jane Austen has her characters talk about the ‘female sex’ they are talking about character and social behaviour that is inherently female – not about penises and vaginas. There is a beautiful passage at the end of Persuasion where the central character Anne Eliot talks about the different ways men and women grieve over loss.
But social differences are, as I say, a construct according to the Marxist transgenderists, a construct formed by bourgeois capitalist society. Such an assertion is just an assertion – and not even a plausible one considering the observable differences between men and women regarding physical, affective and psychological make-up.
The Marxist will offer an explanation (not a proof in the proper sense) that draws on the materialist dialectic, a wobbly largely incomprehensible theory even to many self-avowed Marxist. You see, the Marxist cannot appeal to the empirical evidence because inductive and deductive logic are illegitimate bourgeois forms of reasoning the dialectic rules out of court.
The sober non-Marxist will not eschew the normal forms of reasoning and in the case of the social behaviour of men and women will argue inductively, that is, draw on the empirical evidence of the centuries. Since time out of mind the totality of differences between men and women have remained regular. Just as we know the sun will rise in the east tomorrow because it has ever been observed to rise in the east, so will men and women exhibit the same essential differences they have always exhibited.
Transgenderism is a cruel hoax perpetrated on psychologically confused children and adults by ideologues. It is bad enough that adults are indulged in this cruel fantasy. It is criminal that children without appeal are forced onto a mutilating conveyor belt of chemical and surgical applications.
There is more, however, to the story than these faults of reasoning. The problem of unintended consequences has reared its inconvenient head. Two articles have appeared that discuss some serious consequences. Bill Muehlenberg has posted a piece of his website, ‘Trans Sanity is Destroying Women (and Everything else). Janet Albrecht has an article in the Australian, ‘First cut is the deepest but reversal also traumatic for trans community.’ Both are recommended.