I was starting to think “the word ‘privilege’ is basically meaningless at this point” when I started to learn about how gender ideology is harming women. At that really lit up the scoreboard for me. Gender ideology hurts all women, yes, but it hurts some a hell of a lot more than others.
The #1 privilege, the one wokism doesn’t like to talk about much, is money. Money is not evenly distributed across racial groups, and so classism and racism can be hard to tease apart. But often as not, money is the determinator in the end.
The word “privilege” comes from Latin, prīvus (“private”) + lēg- (“law”). And that’s basically what privilege is: the ability to privatize public shortcomings. As gender ideology is encoded into national law, is becomes a huge problem for those at the mercy of public services, and less of a problem for those who can afford to privatize these things.
Putting male inmates in women’s prisons means that incarcerated women will get raped. Incarcerated women are disproportionately poor, and disproportionately Black, Latina, and Native. As a middle class white girl, I am extremely unlikely to be incarcerated.
Women at shelters are de-facto uniquely vulnerable demographics: homeless women, battered women, rape victims, etc. Even if I did end up homeless, I have my middle class parents to fall back on, so I don’t have to worry about ended up at a homeless shelter that also serves predatory males.
When we talk about gender identity curriculum being introduced to schools, we’re actually talking about public schools. Parents with the money can protect their kids from this by sending them to private school. Parents with less money cannot. Generational wealth means that — no matter how broke I am — I could probably convince my parents to fund their grandchildren’s’ private school education.
This is all privilege. And I’m grateful for it. These are genuinely scary risks, and I’m glad to have some level of protection from them. My heart breaks the women who do not have these privilege, but I don’t feel guilty for having them myself. It’s not that I shouldn’t have these privilege; it’s that they should have them too.
The ability to feel weird about privilege is — arguably — a privilege in and of itself. It belongs more in the realm of the theoretical. When shit actually hits the fan — when women’s rights are on the line, or when there’s a pandemic — there’s no room for that kind of hand-wringing. When privilege protects you from actual dangers, that’s something to be grateful for. And if a supposed privilege doesn’t protect you from actual dangers, it’s probably not a privilege at all.
In the mainstream trans movement, pronouns are a Big Damn Deal™. In reaction to this, many radfems also treat pronouns like a Big Damn Deal™.
The basic question goes, “Lesbians are female. He/him is for males. Why would a lesbian go by he/him then?” But honestly, that question seems like it’s feigning naïveté. Like… we all know why: a lesbian might want to go by he/him if she was playing at gender, but not so much that she’d convinced herself she wasn’t a lesbian.
If you’re going to say — as I do — that sex is what counters in sexuality, not gender presentation and whatnot, then you got to stick to that. Even when people are playing at gender presentation in ways that are kind of weird or cringy. I think it’s a topic which warrants less attention and hand-wringing that it receives.
Just a random picture that reminds me of Dominic
The one who changed my mind — bringing me around from “this is weird” to “this is still weird but it’s fine” — was a fictional character from Ada Palmer’s Terra Ignota series, Dominic Seneschal, who I can only describe as a crossdressing, 18th century historybounding, priest ninja. Dominic could also be considered a he/him lesbian.
Just putting all the cards on the table now, for sake of transparency: Dominic is hot and I have feelings about that, so I am not exactly impartial on this topic.
I should be clear: Just because Dominic does something, this alone is not evidence that it’s an acceptable pratice. Dominic does a lot of things that you should not do, such as kidnapping a celebrity as a gift for your girlfriend. You should not kidnap people. I cannot stress enough how much you should not kidnap people.
To me, one of the biggest plot holes of contemporary trans ideology is that if sex and gender are completely separate (as trans activists insisted they are) then why is gender dysphoria nearly always accompanied by sex dysphoria, and vice-versa? Why is discomfort with gendered social norms (which are man-made, and vary a great deal across culture and time period) so often accompanied by discomfort with the physical body (which is natural and innate)? These two things have little to do with each other, so why then is there such a strong correlation? With two unrelated things, I’d expect to see more pick-and-choose. Where are the people who want the social role of the opposing gender, maybe socially transition, but are fine with their bodies, and acknowledge their sex and sexual orientation?
Terra Ignota plays with gender in a lot of ways, but it does so outside of a contemporary trans framework. Within the epicene society of the 26th century, there is sex, and there is historical gendered garb and behavior, and are there are vestiges of masculine and feminine. But “identity” is blissfully absent. Carlyle is a male person with a motherly, caregiver personality. Dominic is a female person who takes on the trappings of 18th century men. There are no “identities”; these ways of being don’t have interpretations. The characters of Terra Ignota simply are. Being a feminine male person means Carlyle is a feminine male person. Being a masculine female person makes Dominic a masculine female person. The end.
In our world, with its contemporary trans framework, pronoun games are a hallmarks of trans identities. Even bring up the topic of pronouns often causes a sense of, “Oh no, not this again.” It’s difficult to conceive of pronouns as anything but a signifier of trans identity. That is the present symbolism, and for good reason: that is undeniably it’s most prevalent usage.
But in Terra Ignota, the context is different. For Dominic, “he” does not signify maleness or a trans identify. It signifies masculinity, and a social role. “He” is merely a trapping he takes on, the same as a waistcoat or tricorn hat. It’s part of crossdressing; it’s an accessory that goes with menswear; it completes the look.
Ultimately, gendered pronouns are gender, not sex. They are not in any way connected to the physical reality of bodies. They’re a social contrast that is used to mark sex, the same way gendered clothing is.
It’s important to point out that in Terra Ignota, pronouns are descriptive, not prescriptive. There are no pronoun pins, no asking for someone’s pronouns, no correcting people. Dominic is called “he” by general convention, not by stricture. If someone were to call Dominic “she,” I doubt he would bat an eye. This goes a long way to making this pronoun usage seem innocuous.
I think the reason some radfems treat pronouns like a Big Damn Deal™ — while at the same time freely indorsing crossdressing — is that clothing is both symbolic and functional. Sometimes menswear is practical in ways that womenswear is not. Thus, crossdressers may not want to “be like men” — they just want practical clothing for utilitarian reasons.
Yet it’s disingenuous to claim that crossdressing is only ever a pragmatic decision. We all know that’s not the whole story. Sometimes a girl just wants to take on some masculine trappings, and that’s ok. That doesn’t make her male — literally nothing ever could, and we know this. So why is “acting like a man” treated like such a big deal?
Realistically, gender is not going to be irradiated in our lifetime. So in the meantime, if you want to perform some gender, I think that’s basically ok. Have fun with it! Just like… don’t get weird and ideological about it please?
I spent years on the periphery of queer spaces. While the concept of “gender” was king, there were also no secret of the underlying fact that lots of people didn’t really get it. “What even is a gender?” nonbinary folks would joke.
A few months before I came in contact with the radical feminists or gender critical internet, I heard gender defined from a sociology perspective for the first time, rather than a queer theory perspective. Suddenly it all snapped into focus and made sense.
Gender is the social trappings of sex. It is the social role, rather than biology.
So… yes, gender roles and sex stereotypes. But not just the things that we usually think of as stereotypes, such as clothing or hobbies. Also things like gendered names and pronouns, which are not usually considered stereotypes.
There are genders other than men and women; some societies have included other roles. The hijra of India are a gender. The muxe of Oaxaca are a gender. In 50s lesbian bar culture, butch and femme were genders.
The big thing that queer theory tries to erase about “cultural genders” or “third genders” is this: they’re all sex-specific. If there is any cultural gender which is not, I have yet to hear about it. Asking a society to be unaware of or indifferent to people’s sex is unrealistic and impractical. No society would naturally create a system like that, because sex actually does matter. People are very good at recognizing the sex of others, and without modern drugs, surgeries, and selfie filters, conceding one’s sex was rarely even on the table.
In addition to being sex-specific, a major difference between these cultural genders (which arose in society naturally) and modern queer theory genders (which requires lobby groups to beat people over the head with it) is that the former all have social roles that go with them. They have a distinct way of dressing, customs, and relationship patterns. Hijra dress in womenswear, and have sex with men. Butches dress in menswear and have sex with femmes. This is in stark contrast to the “anything goes” concept of nonbinary that’s popular in the queer conglomerate.
Gender is societally constructed, so for a gender to exist, society must construct it. Stargender is not a real gender because society has not made it so. Which sex are they? Who do they partner with? How do they dress? What is their relationship to the rest of society?
It has been posited that worldwide, the societies that create third genders are usually very patriarchal ones with strict gender roles. These third genders exist as a sort of release valve, so that the existence of gender non-conforming people does not challenge or disrupt their strict gender roles for men and women. More egalitarian societies usually don’t have third genders. I myself an not a sociologist; I don’t have a broad knowledge of third genders across the world and the societies that create them, so I am not qualified to indorse this claim myself. But I do think it’s something worth mentioning.
It’s also worth considering that while every society is going to have some role for males and some role for females, they’re not consistent cross-culturally. The social trappings of womanhood are different for a Zulu woman than a Chinese woman, just as manhood was different in the 1700s than it is now. “Man” and “woman” look very different depending on the time and place.
(As far as I understand it, this is basically the same difference that is going on between butches and studs. They’re both lesbians who take on many of the social trappings of men. They’re both masculine, but “masculinity” is not monolith across cultures. Studs are Black and Latina, and their version of masculinity is more like that of Black and Latino men, and has an urban, hip-hop slant.)
The key thing that makes a gender a gender is that it’s sex-based. This is what distinguishes genders from styles, subcultures, and aesthetics. Goth is also a fairly well-defined, recognizable social role, but it’s not a gender because it’s not sex-specific. Likewise, I would sooner call nonbinary a subculture than a gender — although it’s a pretty amorphous subculture at that.
A gender without a sex is just an aesthetic. On tumblr, you’ll see queer kids making jokes like, “Ah, yes, the two genders: knight and pirate.” They’re seeped in gender theory, so they’re kidding as they say it. But I do think it’s interesting that they seem to be edging up on that knowledge, even though they don’t consciously realize it yet.
I propose that in law and public policy, transgenderism be considered analogous to religion.
In the philosophy of science, falsifiability or refutability is the capacity for a statement, theory or hypothesis to be contradicted by evidence. For example, the statement “All swans are white” is falsifiable because one can observe that black swans exist… As a key notion in the separation of science from non-science and pseudo-science, falsifiability has featured prominently in many scientific controversies and applications, even being used as legal precedent.
I believe that lead is poisonous, but if presented with strong evidence of people ingesting lead with no adverse effects, I would rethink that position. This belief is — at least theoretically — falsifiable.
If a person claims, “I am a woman,” this is not a falsifiable claim under transgenderism. There is no possible evidence which could be presented to trans rights advocates which they would accept as proof that this person is not a woman.
As a non-falsifiable belief, transgenderism does not fall into the realm of scientific or evidence-based beliefs. It has more in common with religion — which, likewise, cannot be proven or disproven by science.
In Law
Transgender practices — transition — would be protected as “religious practices.” Religion is a protected class, and so trans people would be protected from employment or housing discrimination. They ought be able to live their lives as they choose, without religious persecution.
But at the same time, separation of church and state. Trans people could not demand that their beliefs be legally binding, or treated as literal fact under the law.
In Schools
Public schools could teach about transgender individuals and history. They could even teach about gender ideology beliefs — we learned about the 5 pillars of Islam in middle school. But schools could not teach gender ideology as fact.
We wouldn’t object to that being taught as a belief that some people have. Some people believe that people have a gender identity. Why not teach them that? It is it is true that some people believe that. But for heaven’s sake, let’s not teach it as if it is some scientific fact!
Teach kids about things; don’t evangelize to them. To maintain that distinction, the teacher shouldn’t be relatively impartial. Don’t bring in a bishop to teach kids about Christianity, and don’t bring in a trans person to teach kids about gender.
In Discourse
Not believing in gender ideology ought not be considered transphobia any more than not believing the teaching of Islam is Islamophobia.
Transgenderism-as-religion might fall under the category of, “Religion has hurt more people than it’s helped,” but that doesn’t cancel out the people it has helped. I don’t believe anyone is literally innately cross-sex, but I do believe transition has improved some people’s lives. Likewise, I don’t believe in Shintoism, but I do believe that there are Shintos whose lives have been bettered by their Shinto beliefs and practices. A belief does not have to be literally true in order to provide structure and personal meaning to a person’s life.
Mo Essays 