Redefining sex? No thanks.

Redefining sex? No thanks!

I’m critical of a gender ideology that contends people may self identify as the opposite gender. The main promotion of this impossible position is made by people who self identify as part of the transgender community. Not only do they say it is possible, they claim they are living it and that they deserve the access and protections afforded to a gender and sexual orientation of their choosing rather than the one that reflects their sex. If this didn’t have negative repercussions, then I may have considered this fantasy all well and good. Unfortunately, it does negatively affect others and the truth matters. A person cannot change their sex and they therefore can’t change their gender. My position is that they are expanding the social construct of their own gender, and that is fine, but I stand against their campaign to claim the opposite gender.

While I reject their gender claims, it’s prudent to consider trans instead as part of a sexual culture, and they should be treated with respect for their free speech, free assembly and human rights. If they were born a member of the protected sex then they get those protections, if they are actually LGB, they shouldn’t be discriminated for their sexual orientation. Many people calling themselves transgender vehemently disagree with this assessment. They feel that a “transwoman lesbian” should get automatic access to the protected spaces of women and be considered LGB, even though they are in reality a straight male. It’s unfortunate that taking the position of supporting them as a sexual culture while rejecting their demands to be recognized in every sense of the word as the opposite gender, when they are not, is seen by them as being against them.

Disagreeing with them and their allies on their fundamental reimagining of sex and gender is considered a contentious act by them that must be aggressively confronted. This seems to be part of a strategy of gaining these radical changes. At the institutional level, this gender ideology has been gaining traction within the elite circles. Elites who see these changes as important to a boutique element of their social circles with little worry of negative consequences. Once the elites are convinced, the populous must simply be subdued with a sort of acclimation of acceptance. This acclimation of acceptance is done through the use of extreme bullying tactics aimed to vilify and silence opponents as well as pushing only positive stories. This coming election cycle it has been elevated to the red and blue circus as a wedge issue. This, in an odd way, symbolizes how vast the elite acceptance has become of this new ideology. Ultimately, blowback doesn’t matter to the elite on an issue like this, their social circles will do what they want, no rich trans person will be harmed by the debate.

That may sound cynical to some, but I’m not cynical, it’s matter of fact. What is mind blowing to me is that listening to radical feminists has come to be considered right wing. This is another example that shows how useless the terms right and left have become. I consider the trans movement born as an elitist patriarchal movement that ultimately moves towards eliminating the acceptance of LGB, erasing the protections of women and pushing the ideology of transhumanism. I’m certain most trans identifying people don’t see it that way, they’re just being them, but they’re not necessarily driving this train. The billionaire class pursues actively such transhumanist delusions as part of their dreams of immortality, the ending of death itself, the separation from all physical constraints that they believe they will soon find themselves. I’m not alleging a massive conspiracy. I’m indicating what’s shared together in meta philosophical elements while pointing towards farther off horizons. People who love the real world should be concerned at how these wanton desires affects our material well being.

What is trans?

I’ve been asking myself and others two earnest questions. What is trans? How are trans oppressed? For such basic questions, most trans activists don’t seem to be able to give a satisfactory answer. As in an answer that holds up under scrutiny. The best scrutiny coming from radical feminists or TERFs, Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists. Being labeled TERF is regarded by many as a Scarlet Letter. There are many scary people who claim a TERF may be fairly and justly targeted for hate, attacks and even violence. Hypocrisy is lost.

TERFs have been really good at challenging the logic of trans identity, but they aren’t purveyors of violence against trans. Their trans exclusionary position isn’t them being hateful bigots, it’s them having found problems with including transwomen in their feminist and LGB positions. They challenge the logic of this new gender ideology that trans promote. A TERF might argue that instead of appealing to elite acceptance, followed by the bullying and brainwashing of the populace to agree, new policies and redefinitions should be debated openly. Especially when it directly cuts into the protections afforded women, LGB and children. Which is more substantial of a concern then the complaint that a self identifying transgender person can’t fulfill completely their fantasy in the real world.

Man and woman isn’t an old fashioned concept that needs throwing out. These are the gender terms correlating to definitive biological sex. Gender also delineates sex based rules by age with boys and girls as opposed to men and women or mister and madam. The social constructs of each gender is what is in regular need of updating for every culture and community for every generation as the duties, technologies and environment changes. This social construct is overwhelmingly not a written rulebook, aside from important legal protections (like Title IX) provided women and demands that relate to men (like registering for the draft). This social construct also falls below the species level understanding of all humans and the rights that all humans have. The social construct of men and women changes by community, culture, location, wealth, employment and family.

My sister is an anthropologist and she puts it like this, “Currently, anthropologists consider gender a social construct that helps communities divvy out duties. These social expectations are often assigned at birth based on a baby’s sex, but as circumstances and personality come into play, individual people can assert a choice/change in their assigned gender roles, generally during the liminal years surrounding puberty or after major life events. Some societies have created 3rd/4th/5th defined gender roles, though majority of studied modern societies simply have loosely defined extra-gender people who choose labels (common example is ‘shaman’).”

What this means is that for 100,000 years hunter gatherers probably had gender social constructs that changed very little, having found efficiency and equality between the sexes in balanced roles. The past 10,000 years, with the advent of agriculture, those roles changed. The past 250 years, with the advent of the industrial revolution, those roles changed again. With the last 100 years of higher technology, the roles again needed updating. The last 30 years with the advent of computers, the gender roles have inevitably been affected once more. The last decade, with the advent of social media and video game avatars, the gender roles need updating once again.

Updating social constructs of gender happens regularly, with legal changes lagging behind. It can be hyper local, where a woman or man in a community can start performing a necessary duty that hasn’t been generally ascribed to their gender, but an acceptance is made. Acceptance rather than exception. It can be groundbreaking against the patriarchy’s hierarchal understanding of gender or it could be accepted fairly easily. Every generation, in every stage of life, gender roles are constantly adjusted. In the US today, especially with young people, the gender social constructs are facing the need for big changes.

Perhaps because of the enormity of the changes in gender roles, the fantasy of an individual changing their gender rather than the changing of each gender’s social constructs, is growing. The whole of US society has been taught to value a narrow materialistic understanding of individualism, while constantly rejecting the constraints and responsibilities of social organization. Civil society has therefore become dysfunctional. Rather than civilly engaging in the process of change, many have found that seemingly impossible. Broken communities have lead to less complex cultures less able to provide for people’s needs. This ends up with many who leave in the pursuit of better pastures.

With a nation taught in measuring success in economic terms, the devastation to communities of workers moving constantly to new pastures goes less noticed. Many find themselves therefore in communities of strangers and the gender social constructs are pushed from being local familiar acceptance to demands for universal acceptance by laws and courts. As time passes this creates more individualized alienation from the places people live. Today, people are replacing their eventual integration into local communities with these narrow online versions. Calling these online constructs “communities” and the people in them “friends” gives this a credit they don’t deserve. Not to fully discredit online community imitations, but often they are better described as echo chambers, that keep us alienated and poorly socialized. They simply don’t fulfill enough functions to replace real human cultural and civil societal communities. As my uncle once told me, “people today are a mile wide and an inch deep.”

In talking about this another friend said, “This whole concept of identity as something you can create for yourself is very neo-liberal. It reminds me of the old trope of a “self made man.” Identify however you like, even make up a new identity for yourself and call it your gender, but the rest of the world will still see you as a man or a woman. The real left cares about how the world actually works.”

Another friend responded, “This is almost on the right path. Indeed the left should only care about how the world actually works, and the first step in doing that is recognizing the inherent failure of all identity. Creating millions of genders is certainly a (neo)liberal conception, but don’t get it twisted into thinking that means “man,” or “woman,” is any more substantial than “femme poly-gnomade.” You can critique the liberal tendencies to create infinite individual identities without getting caught up in right wing reactionary declarations which are just as meaningless.”

If the “real left” cares about how the world actually works, please count me in it. Although the concepts of left and right are more ripe to be cleansed of binary thinking than gender. At their core, left/right refers to the French Revolution. The supporters of the King stood on his right and all the supporters of the revolution were on his left. Left and right were the descriptors of where these complex folks literally stood and I’m sure that the people in that room would be shocked to learn that these directions came to define politics for some for over 200 years. Plus, unlike gender, there are no biological considerations to persevere such a binary.

While I cannot deviate from the facts of binary gender, I do support the adjectives an individual chooses to be in front of the gender. I’m not sure about “poly-gnomade” but a “femme poly man” is a delightful modern sexual cultural categorization if that’s their choice. A crossdressing femme poly top gay man? What’s wrong with that? That not good enough? We can add more adjectives. How about a perm crossdressing full lifestyle immersive femme lesbian imitate heterosexual man? Seems more accurate than transwoman lesbian or, if we accept this person’s gender self identification, just plain old lesbian. Obviously an actual lesbian has a really big problem with that.

I prefer to use pronouns that correspond to sex.

I can clearly understand how a lesbian might take a strong issue with a “perm crossdressing full lifestyle immersive femme lesbian imitate heterosexual man” telling the world that they’re simply a woman who is a lesbian. I don’t support gender self identification for that reason and others. I feel like a person can add all the adjectives they want to describe themselves but their gender is what it is. It’s absolutely fine for me to immediately notice the gender of another human and to automatically refer to them as the corresponding pronouns. All humans are built to automatically detect such things, so why am I asked to deny my basic humanity for this fiction?

I went along with it for a while. Coerced into acceptance, knowing that calling someone other than what they say they prefer was walking into a lecture and demonization. Openly disagreeing is not tolerated and debate is not allowed. Debate is considered by the trans activists as a form of denying someone’s humanity, as violence, erasure and has even been called genocidal. Of course this is absolutely false, the only thing hurt by such a debate is their arguments. Despite this, the expressively emotive condemnation displayed is rarely questioned. This is a form of coercive pressure, because who wants to be seen as genocidal?

A lesbian woman might consider that if there is obvious use of coercive pressure in demanding the use of a transwoman’s preferred pronouns, in what other ways are the trans community accepting of coercion? There are many stories coming from lesbians saying they are feeling coercive pressure to have sex with transwomen lesbians. I see the trans community putting that pressure on lesbians, because if they don’t they can be very harshly attacked. In that situation she would be seen as rejecting him from her gender, which could be seen as her defending the fact that she isn’t attracted to male bodies, or it could be seen as her being hateful and otherizing.

Coercion is generally seen as unacceptable outside of use by law and order because it uses force and threats. Social pressure, on the other hand, is different than coercion. In social pressure someone gains from joining in but they don’t face any threats other than the fear of missing out. I won’t use pronouns because it’s coercive and accepting coercion in this may lead to encouraging coercion towards the situation I described above. Rejecting pronouns for this reason, or any other reason, aside from outright disgust, is not being a bigot.

In fact it seems incredibly strange that not calling a male “she” could be seen as offensive. I am a straight male. If I call a transwoman lesbian a straight man, I’m calling them into my own gender and orientation. I am indicating that I accept that person as being part of my understanding of the social construct of being a man. It’s important to me that being a man can mean being femme, wearing a dress or being gay. I don’t want the definition of being a “real man” to basically mean toxic masculinity and macho uncouth aggressiveness. I want transwomen in my gender’s social construct. Is that me being a right wing transphobic bigot? Some of us grew up in a world where some men were called “pussies” or “faggot” or “little girls” when they showed emotions or weakness or even when they stood up against such bullying as well. What a world that now, a man is supposed to call another man a woman or else they’re being a bigot!

Ultimately, when it comes to the question of “What is trans?” I’ve come up with the following. A trans person is a self identifying trans person. It’s a circuitous logic, detached from any definition and entirely subjective, “I think I’m trans, therefore I am trans.” However, what I have also concluded is what trans is not, and never will be. In spite of any feelings one holds, any disorders of sex development they may or, likely, do not have, regardless of hormones and operations, a trans person is never the opposite gender of their natural sex. The best I’ve come up with is that trans is an enticingly all encompassing fiction for an otherwise complex and multifaceted grouping of cross dressers. The fiction can never be accepted as real because it’s fiction. A man cannot be a woman. However the group of complex multifaceted crossdressers are people just like the rest of us, they can be accepted.

How then are trans oppressed?

To the extent that they’re denied free speech, free assembly or their human rights, that’s wrong. If they face violence based on their decision to dress and behave in ways they perceive to be mannerisms of the opposite sex, that’s wrong. The laws that are already on the books for everyone, should be enforced in protection for trans. I support their equal protection under the law. However, a white transwoman lesbian should not be considered an oppressed category any more than a white straight male. Such a person should not get the protections won by women, because they’re a man. This person shouldn’t get protections for sexual orientation either, because they’re straight. However, a transman who likes women is a female lesbian. They get these added protections. If they’re black and Muslim they shouldn’t be discriminated for race or religion either.

I’m not supportive of considering a self identified transwoman lesbian an oppressed class. This is a kind of poison pill to the whole framework. Trying to define trans as equal measure with sexual orientation or gender, even if they are not a woman or actually LGB, is the crux of what is wrong. Trans, in my argument, is best considered a sexual culture. A sexual culture can be wide ranging or narrowly focused. A sexual culture can be a mix of people who have some protections of gender and sexual orientation. A sexual culture can be central to someone’s identity. However, a sexual culture is only found in the adult domain of men and women, not boys and girls. Also a sexual culture is in general treated as a private matter, not in the public eye and there may be some threshold to advertising.

Here are some potential examples of sexual cultures. A group of swingers; folks who are into BDSM (bondage, discipline, dominance, submission, and sadism); people who are poly; Christian monogamist missionary types; ecstatic spiritual karma sutra practitioners; asexuals and celibates. These sexual cultures aren’t seen as oppressed, although some are more common and others have faced stigma. They are also not uniform, they have diversity. Some follow strict rules of conduct and they self regulate in terms of their internal cultural rules. They have human rights, free speech and free assembly that should not be ignored. They also have to obey the law. A BDSM Dungeon Master’s Sex Slave is a consenting adult in a fantasy roleplay, just like a Christian fundamentalist’s wife isn’t really his property. These are firm rules that apply.

I accept trans as a sexual culture and they should be treated equally with any other in terms of respecting their rights. They have to follow the laws like all other sexual cultures. To some degree sexual cultures are accommodated for at times or in other cases have specific regulations made against them. In England for example, they have this thing called dogging. Apparently people meet up in parking lots and have sex while other people may watch. The parks and parking lots where this happens were having some trouble at times with crime, like people being robbed while they were vulnerable. Now these places have been declared discretely as “public sex environments” and the police may patrol. The police aren’t there to stop this interactive sexual culture, they are only there to prevent robbery and real crimes. It has seemed to work out well.

Trans as a sexual culture means that they can engage in the fullness of their fantasies but the general public isn’t made to be a part in it. And this has always been an issue with sexual cultures, that some want to be less discreet. There are people who specifically get turned on by breaking these rules, like people who choose to have sex in public, nudists, public masturbators, flashers and then there are the remote controlled vibrators people use. It’s not necessarily the biggest deal, but people do get arrested for these things, and sometimes it can be scary. There are some semi public settings, like certain bars or venues where it is known that adults of certain sexual cultures congregate for fun. There are days of celebration and festivals where sexual cultures may take a more public display, like Mardi Gras or Halloween. When it comes to a place like a grocery store, or the public library, or around children, all sexual cultures should generally not be on display. The fantasies rules and roles don’t apply out of the zone of the fantasy.

Sexual cultures have limitations.

Why push “drag story hour” where drag queens are reading to children? I’d argue it’s because the trans community doesn’t see themselves constrained like all sexual cultures are. They believe their own fantasy, and in their own fantasy they can’t be expected to be anything but the lead role. It seems that trans don’t just view themselves as any gender and sexual orientation, they instead are the penultimate gender and sexual orientation combined. They are the unicorns who may visit a sexual culture but are themselves above such constraints. (Obviously we can’t paint all of any one sexual culture with a broad brushstroke, there are plenty this doesn’t apply to.)

Back in the real world meanwhile, every drag show I’ve ever seen would clearly be considered as adult entertainment, basically a form of cabaret. These categories of adult entertainment are generally allowable in many places with certain age related and other reasonable constraints. “Drag story hour” isn’t adult entertainment though, it’s the intentional marketing of a sexual culture to children. This is how they describe it on their own website:

“It’s just what it sounds like! Storytellers using the art of drag to read books to kids in libraries, schools, and bookstores. DSH captures the imagination and play of the gender fluidity of childhood and gives kids glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models. In spaces like this, kids are able to see people who defy rigid gender restrictions and imagine a world where everyone can be their authentic selves!”

It sounds nice on first read, but this is an indoctrination campaign, the book reading is secondary. Children believe what adults tell them. They are made to believe in Santa, the tooth fairy and God because some adult told them to. Now they have an unabashedly queer glamorous role model telling them that they are gender fluid children and they can defy gender restrictions and be their authentic selves. Well science disagrees that the children are gender fluid. Boys can’t be girls and girls can’t be boys.

Aside from that and other real world constraints, a girl can do just about anything and a boy as well. Which means a drag queen can also do anything they want, as a man, within real world constraints. Even read books to kids if that’s what they want to be doing. I’m guessing if a library told them to leave the adult cabaret outfit at home, stick to age appropriate books and just call it story hour, they won’t be as interested in reading to the children. At that point it wouldn’t be about them anymore, and that would be terrible.

I do think there is a distinction to be made concerning cross dressing verses drag. While plenty of places may enforce dress codes for men and women, I’d be willing to entertain the argument that if a woman can wear certain clothes in a location, then a male crossdresser probably should be able to wear it as well. This isn’t the issue at hand. The issue is about indoctrinating children into false ideas about sex change being real.

Children, by definition, don’t know what it means to be a man or woman.

I work for public schools as a bus driver and I care about all the kids. The middle and high school kids are being indoctrinated in the false belief that someone can change their sex. I’ve heard 12 year old girls (plural) talk about being gender non binary, then move towards trans, changing their name to a boys name and pronouns to he/him. Their friends have been taught to accept it, there is an online community that encourages it and the authority figure adults all support it. Anyone who doesn’t immediately accept the name change and pronouns is considered bad people, this is a position also supported by authority figures. As a school employee we are forced to use the child’s self identified gender, their new names and their new pronouns, parents be damned.

There are at least four kids that ride my regular middle and high school routes, out of about 30 people, claiming themselves as trans. Many more, at least 4-8, claim one of the constantly growing gender and sexual orientation terms. This a is current observation, not a statistical survey, but this seems high. Amore authoritative CDC survey from 2021, found that 22.5% of youth identified as other than heterosexual. In 2017, that same CDC survey totaled 9.5% as not heterosexual. What changed between 2017 and 2021? What changed between 2021 and today?

I don’t discuss these issues with the students, it wouldn’t be my role to do so, and they’re all great. There is nothing unusual about children figuring out all these issues, but authoritative adults shouldn’t be affirming dangerous and harmful views. When I was young having lots of thoughts about sexuality, attraction, gender roles, my self, wondering what’s wrong with me, why am I so awkward around girls, etc., was normal and it was sometimes rather hormonally extreme. Every new experience was new and hard to process.

If I had adults telling me as a teenager, that I could also be a woman and change my sex, I’d not be helped by that lie. All my insecurities about my masculinity would probably be really difficult. This is quite a bit different than sexual attraction, which, honestly, in and of itself is confusing as a teenager. Teenage boys get boners for no reason, all sorts of absurdities makes them horny, I can speak to that from my personal experience as having been a teenage boy. I couldn’t say authoritatively for teenage girls, but I imagine their hormones are surging in all sorts of ways as well. That said, a teenager may discover during that time, that their attraction is towards the same sex. What they cannot know is that they are male bodied but actually a woman on the inside. That’s impossible, but, if it were possible, it’s also impossible to tell.

I’m attracted to women. How do I know? I see a woman and I’m attracted to her. I am a man. How do I know? I have a penis. That’s it. I don’t feel like a man, I am one. I assume men feel like me but I don’t know how it feels to be a man. I don’t even know how other men feel. I just feel the way I feel and I am a man. There are wide varieties of men and women, in their physicality, thoughts, strengths and personality. The idea that a 12 year old girl could know what it feels like to be man, when myself at 42 couldn’t describe it, is nonsense. All these children are doing is picking up on stereotypes and the people they admire or resonate with, if they’re of the opposite sex, they feel they too must be of the opposite sex. I think that a little boy who wants to be like his mom and emulates her, or a little girl who admires her dad and emulates him, is normal. To say otherwise, to tell a child that must mean they are the wrong gender, is reinforcing gender stereotypes and harming children’s development.

“Eradicating transgenderism” in a way that leaves crossdressers, LGB and women safe.

Recently, at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Daily Wire host Michael Knowles called for the eradication of “transgenderism.” I heard about it because headlines seemed to make it sound as if it were a call for genocide, which it wasn’t, although he intentionally used the word eradicate to be provocative. Many have talked about his comments already, I’ll include this youtube from Rising which covers it fairly, but his words show that a backlash is happening. Without voices of reason moderating the discussion, it’s fair for LGB and women (as well as crossdressers who don’t agree with the gender self identity activism) to worry that the backlash against transgender will hurt them.

Saying men can’t be women, but men can dress like them, with respect for decency in public. Saying that men can’t be a lesbian, except in the fantasy of their sexual culture, which should be separated from children. These statements are not bigoted. It’s a statement of biological reality and also of acceptance, with rules applicable to all. The crossdressers who call themselves trans, some of whom also modify their bodies, have all the rights they deserve as humans and citizens already. They do not deserve to be considered the opposite sex, especially not men to women, and they only deserve protections on sexual orientation if they are indeed LGB.

Men in dresses do not deserve to be able to freely assume the use of women’s rooms, women’s sports, women’s locker rooms, women’s awards, women’s only anything. This is not a line that should be crossed generally by a male because women’s protections are there for a reason. This isn’t a bigoted position, this is the same rules for me. That said, I would be willing to make sure that men’s spaces are considered the comfortable all gender spaces. If the trans sexual culture wants to run a campaign to make men’s room safer for transwomen, I would hang posters in men’s rooms for this cause.

When it comes to children, the concept that someone can change their sex should not be taught, because it is impossible. There should be no “gender affirming care,” because children should know that they are the gender they are and there is no transitioning, there is no fluidity. Trans should not be allowed in schools, unless they are picking up their kids or they are an employee. However, LGB should be acknowledged and supported as a normal subject in sex education and teaching boys and girls that they can be anything they want, because there isn’t anything that is kept from them by virtue of their gender, are important civics lessons in schools. As we should also teach children to not bully people for being different, to respect other cultures and respect people’s individual liberty.

A sexual culture needs not follow science. Trans can live their fantasies unhindered in their private sexual culture. Their cross dressing, barring lewd behaviors we all must not do in certain reasonable areas, is free speech, free expression. They can keep their beliefs just like a religious group can believe that the universe started 4,000 years ago. They don’t get to teach their beliefs in public schools.

Children should not be given these medications.

In general, I don’t personally support medical transition at any age. I don’t think the medicines and the surgeries are medically necessary and I think they are injurious. Children absolutely should not be allowed these drugs for the purposes of gender transition, which is impossible. They all have side effects that are unsafe but their actual desired effects are also unsafe. It’s absolutely horrible that people claim these are safe when they clearly are not. Not only are they unsafe when someone is young, they are also unsafe when a person is older as well. The medications hurt bodies and the surgeries take healthy organs and make them unhealthy for cosmetic reasons.

If an adult wants to take an experimental medication for non medically necessary purposes, then I think they should be allowed with reasonable restrictions based in safety. If an adult wants to get non medically necessary cosmetic surgery then that is their choice. I don’t want taxes to subsidize it and I don’t want my insurance rate to go up because of these expensive non-medically necessary drugs and cosmetic surgeries. I also think that they should be age restricted to the age of 25, because that’s an age when a person’s brain is fully developed. The profit motive of the drug industry and the purveyors of these surgeries should also be removed. This aligns completely with my position in support of the legalization of drugs. That all recreational drugs should be legal with restrictions that are geared to eliminate most dangers, take away the profit motive, encourage therapeutic aspects and bring them into social, spiritual and culturally inclusive paradigms.

The trans sexual culture, encouraged and funded by the profiteers off these drugs and surgeries, would like these medications and cosmetic surgeries to have no age restriction or restriction of any kind. It reflects their fantasy that they were always the opposite gender than they were born. The reality is they never became the opposite gender and always are their original gender. The drugs perhaps gave them some secondary sexual characteristics and the cosmetic surgeries altered their appearance towards their fantasies of themselves as the opposite sex, but it is not a sex change. These cosmetic surgeries should not be allowed to advertise themselves as achieving sex changes in the same way that getting horn implants and split tongues should not be advertised as to make someone an actual demon. These drugs and surgeries are bad for people’s health.

Getting a surgery in the hope of looking like a person’s fantasy of themselves as the opposite sex, may improve their happiness, but it’s no different then the happiness someone may get from a cosmetic surgery to change their appearance towards a beauty standard they perceive of their own sex, like a nose job. In fairness, all elective cosmetic surgeries, that are not medically necessary for a host of reasons, should be restricted till the age of 25 and should probably have their advertising restricted. As a society we should encourage people to see their beauty in themselves as they are, the age they are, the way they are. Our obsession with maintaining our youthful appearances shows a lack of maturity. We should support people in maintaining their health and see the benefits, strengths, duties and responsibilities of their age as men and women.

Conclusions

My positions come from a full acceptance of there being a binary sex and that their corresponding genders are what they are. It’s as apparent as the law of gravity. I am often repetitive in this article and yet I didn’t go much into why sex is a binary. What seems to occur is that many people feel pressured, in the inundation of arguments against a sexual binary, to just cave in to the idea that there must be a tiny sliver of truth. That in the rarest of cases a sexual binary doesn’t hold true for humans, such as the example of what is called intersex or the tales of the hermaphrodite. This is false, intersex is not a sex, it is a disorder of sex development. The goal of cracking open people to accepting that the sexual binary is false in the rarest of cases, pushes logically towards the accepting of everything. Which is the fraud of it all. The challenge remains to those who think otherwise to prove that gender is not a binary, not for me to defend this eons old position.

To the degree that gender is a social construct, they should be considered overwhelmingly overlapping with one another, equal under law and respective of cultural, religious and social groupings. That means that a woman or a man, under law, can take on the roles, duties and appearances that may be found to be the majority purview of the opposite gender. According to the gender constructs of their social, cultural and religious groupings they may tend towards specific duties but shouldn’t be limited to them. I haven’t explored Yin and Yang as it historically relates to male and female, but I appreciate the symbol in it’s balance and that the sides seem to flow and share a part in the other.

The core considerations of gender fluidity, gender nonconforming and trans can be understood better without those fictional constructs. Those fictional constructs are in themselves a reaction to, but also supporting of, hierarchal and stereotypical constructs of gender. How would they be necessary in a world where gender has basically no delineated roles outside of giving birth? Where there isn’t a gender hierarchy? Where gendered stereotypes are fought against? By creating these fictional gender change notions, the fight against a gender hierarchy, gender stereotypes and gendered roles becomes much reduced. We are seeing this happening in youth, where the stereotypes of women and men are much more accepted and young girls especially are hurt.

It is much more empowering to be part of supporting the position of sex based legal rights. Framed around protection of women and children while supporting the work of reproduction and child rearing. That gender should not be viewed as a hierarchy. That gender roles are rather understood as a tendency not an obligation. That a woman and a man can engage in a life in the way they want in the gender they are. To engage as a woman in a typically male role empowers all women and broadens the role models of young girls. To engage as a man in a typically female role empowers all men and broadens the role models of young boys. This fights sexism, patriarchy and stereotypes.

That a person’s sexual orientation, their attraction, whether it be to the opposite sex, their own sex or both, is knowable only by an individuals feelings. This is obviously true, we can see this in our selves where our attractions lie. It’s notable that someone who is heterosexual in all cases, doesn’t necessarily find all people of the opposite sex attractive. The same is true of people who are same sex attracted. We can know what our sexual orientation is by our feelings. We cannot know what our gender is by our feelings because there is no feeling of a gender that anyone can know. Accepting that people may be attracted to the same sex or both sexes as natural should be taught and the law should protect those people from discrimination.

Finally, sexual cultures are the category that trans best fit. All sexual cultures, even the larger tendencies, like the sexual culture of Christian monogamy, are subjected to rules. These rules basically are about age restrictions, protections of individual rights, public indecency, commodification, safety and advertising. In the privacy of one’s own home consenting adults should face no restrictions. I am against any rules that prohibit consenting adults to be able to love whom they want to love in the way that they want to love them. Trans, viewed as a sexual community, makes sense. I hope we can find common ground on this before we all end up losing in ways we haven’t fully comprehended.