What if Advocating for Sex Reassignment and Abolishing Biological Sex Is Exactly What Patriarchy Wants?

Be careful what we align with. Dig deeper. How do we best respect the wisdom of nature, children's play, and our own evolving learning?

When I was young, around 7 or 8, I pretended to be a girl when playing out in the woods, because I had read a book in the Wizard of Oz series (by Frank L. Baum). In that book, The Marvelous Land of Oz, a young girl (Ozma) who was to rule Oz as a princess had to be turned into a young boy (Tip) to hide her from the Wizard and bad witches. She was changed BACK to become a beautiful girl, and rightfully rule when the time was right. "Trans-positive" interpretations of this get it EXACTLY WRONG. The girl was transitioned to a boy to hide her from the ravages of an evil society (which hated beautiful feminine rulership), and then BACK (i.e. "detransitioning") in order to restore the proper order.

I still think about where I might be now, if my gender playfulness got to the ear of a well-meaning but misguided hyper-PC parent. I might have well been recommended for hormone blockers and gender reassignment. Looking back, I simply wanted to experience what it would FEEL LIKE to be a girl with power and prettiness not BE a girl in real life. That is the great benefit of fantasy. It can bring experience, safely removed from physical reality, that informs both learning and enjoyment. Like most kids, I simply added to my understanding and empathy of what it might be like to be the other sex, a kind of psychological and emotional experimental transitioning back and forth, without permanently and physically “transitioning” to the other sex.

There was no carry-over of some hidden, harbored desire to be or dress as the opposite sex. Today, I am a basic guy, but perhaps one that is more sensitive to female experience because of my forays into imaginative androgyny as a kid. I think that’s healthy, and I think it makes for a better adjusted, more sensitive partner in later life.

It is this truly transitional innocent play that has been decimated by a trans activism that seems to have no respect for the endlessly mutable forms of imagination and experience that children can acquire for themselves if they are just given the space. Subjugation of this play in favor of medicalization is a prototypical patriarchal move.

Here is the patriarchal contradiction at the heart of the transgender movement vis-a-vis radical feminism (and these feminists certainly have the experience to know patriarchy when they see it):

The transgender movement rejects the automatic sorting of males and females into the categories of man and woman, but does not necessarily reject gender roles. Some in the transgender movement embrace patriarchal gender roles typically attached to the cultural categories of masculinity and femininity.

While not all people who identify as transgender have sex-reassignment surgery or use hormones or other treatments to modify their bodies, the transgender movement as a whole accepts and/or embraces these practices.

Most radical feminists, who seek to eliminate patriarchy and patriarchal gender ideology, disagree with this transgender approach. Most radical feminists believe liberation is achieved through a political project that transcends patriarchal gender, rather than accepting those gender roles and merely seeking to allow people to move between the categories. Radical feminist politics focuses on challenging the patriarchal gender ideology that restricts the freedom of most individuals, especially women and others who lack power, to explore the fullest range of human experiences.

Nothing in a radical feminist analysis minimizes the social and/or psychological struggles of—nor provides support for violence against—people who identify as transgender or people who do not conform to patriarchal gender norms but do not identify as transgender. Radical feminism is not the cause of those struggles or the source of that violence but rather advocates for an egalitarian society with maximal freedom without violence. (My emphases)

The author of this passage, Robert Jensen, concludes that the radical feminists actually have it right— free EVERYONE from restrictive imposed gender norms but supporting the creative birthright to form one’s own identity as one sees fit, rather than “fitting” people BACK into patriarchal gender norms by changing their bodies to match PRE-CONCEIVED, patriarchal notions of what it means to be a girl or boy, man or woman.

Transgenderism is a liberal, individualist, medicalized response to the problem of patriarchy’s rigid, repressive, and reactionary gender norms. Radical feminism is a radical, structural, politicized response. On the surface, transgenderism may seem to be a more revolutionary approach, but radical feminism offers a deeper critique of the domination/subordination dynamic at the heart of patriarchy and a more promising path to liberation.

I was reading Rudolph Rigger’s excellent, nuanced, and balanced essay on the current transgender wars. (The above comic is also reproduced from Rigger’s article.) His essay was a breath of fair-minded sanity in a gale of hysteria. It prompted me to comment, and then the comment turned into an essay, so I share it with you (edited for clarity):

Brilliantly analyzed and compassionately argued… By expressing empathy for (feminist) Judith Butler's intent (to destroy patriarchally imposed gender roles), but then demonstrating how such a move "inverted" itself (to erase sex, and hence, feminism)… (Rudolph Rigger) make(s) the intelligent and persuasive conclusion that those who appear to have started the stampede to abolish gender stereotypes have been taken over by those who now want to abolish sex and gender altogether [or alternately reaffirm them in a different body]. These two orientations are VERY different things— abolishing counterproductive social restrictions around what biology OUGHT TO MEAN vs. abolishing the distinction and definition of what biological sex IS, and then conflating this with gender norms, and therefore destroying any ground upon which to differentially honor those who have been [historically] discriminated against on the basis of sex.

I have noted this in an earlier essay:

J.K. Rowling Is Uncomfortably Right

Respect, protection, and support of people who feel they are quite literally the opposite sex (and have put serious time and work into exploring "transitioning") IS a valid form of advocacy. Indoctrinating, especially gay teens or those with insecurities about their identities, and then railroading them into puberty blockers and sex-reassignment surgery is the EXACT OPPOSITE. It is the imposition of “patriarchy” [men over women] and “heteronormativity" [heterosexual over homosexual] in camouflaged form.

By abolishing the whole notion of sex, now anti-sex discrimination legislation like Title IX becomes meaningless. Any dude can now feel completely entitled to move right into the women's world and plunder for himself what gains and reparations have been established for females. What is to stop any “woman-identified (former?) man for claiming not only women’s sports records but scholarships as well? [And isn’t interesting that nearly all the highlighted trans activists I have seen in the news just happen to be biologically-born white males? Hmmm. Funny that.]

There are absurd real-life examples like the "trans-women" who set "women's" track records in Connecticut, simply on the basis of identifying as women, and the "trans-woman" who impregnated two biological women in a "women's" prison, and the trans activist insistence that lesbians should not discriminate against "women" with penises. Each example is a re-inscription of patriarchal imperative and control and REGRESSIVE to the extreme, but somehow passed off incredibly as “progressive”. Alternatively, there are exceptions. I know of at least one biological man who wanted to become a trans-woman to escape the violence of patriarchal culture imposed upon him in childhood and the pressures exerted on biological men generally to uphold that violence.

As indicated in the books Irreversible Damage and What Is a Woman? as well as a whole slate of recent newspaper articles, many "trans" teens are actually either people temporarily confused about their gender roles and identity (and just need time to iron it out for themselves over time) OR actually GAY teens and young adults who cannot admit same-sex attraction, who are now being funneled into being a heterosexual "opposite" partner through "transitioning" so they can fit into antiquated "heteronormative" standards. (Stick that one in the PC craw and chew on it for awhile!)

This gut-wrenching irony is tragic, because this it is happening on the bodies of not just adults but CHILDREN. [“Oregon in 2015 passed a law allowing minors ages 15 and up to obtain taxpayer-funded puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sex change surgeries without parental consent.”] So now we can now throw official promotion of possible child abuse into the mix. And yes it is "irreversible" in many important ways. You cannot simply repatriate a childhood ruined by psychological manipulation and medical abuse no matter how well intended.

Any serious professional who has any experience with kids (I have been in education for more than three decades) knows that identity is biologically, psychologically, and necessarily PLASTIC when human beings are young, but older adults with their own motives (including profit motives) are IMPOSING a static solution to something that is not even a problem, but a very normal tumultuous caterpillar-to-butterfly period in the lives of especially emotionally-sensitive adolescent girls.

This is part of our larger social disease of trying to eliminate any human struggle or confusion by imposing a scientific, medical, social diagnosis and "assignment" from the top down and REMOVING the very challenge that allows us TO AUTHENTICALLY FIND OUT WHO WE ARE. Once again patriarchal culture is trying to subjugate Mother Nature, and violently at that-- on the bodies of children and against the beautiful reality of biological sex distinction.

We have seen this same misbegotten reasoning and approaches to whole host of technologically-driven avoidance/artificial intervention strategies. Hyper-hygienic environments and anti-bacterial soap, far from protecting children actually WEAKEN their immune system and train microbes to be stronger. Providing certain medical interventions interventions like the widely-touted mRNA "vaccines" to remove disease transmission, symptoms, and death risk can actually backfire and do the opposite as well, making people MORE susceptible to re-infection, injury, or death over time (something called "negative efficacy").

While a good many of these interventions are recoverable (i.e. most people will renormalize in time after taking a misdirected vaccine, for instance), some, like gender reassignment surgery are only incompletely reversible at best. In fact, around consequential areas like suicide rates, sex reassignment might actually be making things worse, according to this article by Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, which reviewed the scientific studies on the topic. What did that silly Hippocratic Oath say: “First do no harm”?

The arrogance, the arrogance.

Let's stop thinking childishly in "adult" bodies and minds. Maybe we adults should "transition" to the more innocent and realistic play of childhood and stop imposing our own literally man-made designs over truly fluid, creative, natural identity-formation processes. Why exactly are we trying to divert or block a change in growth that appears to be unstoppable. Is it because we are uncomfortable with things that seem beyond our control, and so we seek to master and dominate them by any means necessary?

Let us cease our war with nature and work with her. Let us acknowledge the perennial and beautiful qualities of biological sex itself. This war that conflates gender and sex is ultimately a war not only against nature herself but the human nature that derives from her— of learning, change, and experience. Let us not undermine the diverse conditions of our own formation. Let us not forsake the wisdom of play and the puzzle of meaningfully explored and earned identity. Let us not violate others by promoting one-size-fits-all ineffective and dangerous technological interventions.

It is time we stop intervening in a natural process and protect, respect, and support children's own struggle, triumph, and SELF-CREATED identity. It is time we support masculine-acting girls as girls, and feminine-acting boys as boys, rather than condemning them or stuffing them into another body. This will work itself out. It does NOT need our imposition, but our understanding and humility. It needs our honoring, faith, love, and play— just like life itself.