Transgender activists often chastise others about the difference between sex and gender. Whereas biological sex is determined by the SRY gene on the Y chromosome, we’re admonished that gender identity is a person’s inner sense of where they feel they belong on a gender spectrum.
According to this formulation, gender is a feeling or an idea that a person might have. In contrast to biological sex then, a person can change their gender from day-to-day or even from hour-to-hour. It is this proposed distinction between sex and gender that allows transgender activists to argue that people can be gender-fluid.
In fact, many transgender activists go much further than merely making a distinction between sex as an immutable part of our biology, versus gender as a fluid and changeable feeling. Mammals are in fact hard-wired to very quickly recognise and distinguish the biological sex of other individuals. In humans this distinction can be made based on the size and shape of shoulders, hands and hips. Indeed, even when only presented with a face, we have evolved the ability to very accurately distinguish the sex of people that we encounter. Nevertheless, many transgender activists will insist that it is more important to recognise the internal inclinations that other people have within their own mind about their gender. In fact, we’re often told that if we don’t privilege the fluid and non-binary ideas about gender that any person may select for themselves on any given day, then we’re guilty of bigotry or have something else wrong with us.
This is fine, as far as it goes. In fact, it’s quite banal. Western liberal democracies do not tend to have laws against men wearing nail polish and dresses, let alone seek to inspect and police their internal feelings. Whereas this has been unremarkable for many decades, problems have arisen more recently as transgender activists have insisted on biological males gaining access to women’s sports, women’s changing rooms, women’s prisons, etc. Those are arrangements where immutable biological sex is the important factor, and a person’s internal feelings about their gender are not relevant at all. However, instead of accepting that women are entitled to the safety, dignity and fairness of female-only sports categories, female-only changing rooms and female-only prisons; the same people that insist on gender fluidity also insist that we must privilege gender as being just as innate and immutable as sex.
Of course, this is entirely incoherent. If a person is born with a trait that is innate and immutable, then that trait is neither fluid nor changeable. Suggesting that gender is something you’re “born with” in this way, is synonymous with stating that gender-fluid people don’t exist. If I understand the arguments of the gender loons properly, am I now supposed to complain that making such statements is part of a gender-fluid genocide, or an attempt to “eliminate” all gender-fluid people?
Helpfully, the same transgender activists that insist there is something wrong with people who don’t always privilege a fluid gender identity over biological sex, also tell us why they want to pretend that a person’s internal ideas and feelings about gender are immutable traits that they are born with. It’s because they know how objectionable it is to discriminate against people based on actual immutable characteristics like sex and race. They want to portray those who recognise the need for female-only spaces as being equivalent to racists. For example, high profile transgender activists have described lesbians who prefer not to sleep with trans-identified males as “sexual racists”. This proposed grouping together of those who recognise the difference between the biologic sexes, with those who discriminate based on race, has become quite a common trope among transgender activists.
It’s not difficult to see how profoundly stupid this is. In fact, this is a good example of Stock’s Law, which stipulates that the best explanation for such inane ideas is that many transgender activists are “just quite thick”. Most people would be deeply embarrassed if it had to be explained to them why prohibiting males from female combat sport categories, is not equivalent to prohibiting black people from drinking at some water fountains. Nevertheless, as Dr Kathleen Stock has described, some people are just “really quite stupid”:
If a male is found guilty of rape and then suffers from rapid-onset post-conviction gender dysphoria, there are in fact very good reasons not to lock that offender in a cell with a woman just because they announce that in future they wish to be known as say “Marcy” or “Karen”. This is simple common sense and not remotely bigoted. Against that, perhaps it is too much to ask that transgender activists might understand this. After all, if someone is loudly proclaiming that gender is both fluid and changing, while also insisting that it is innate and immutable, then perhaps it’s already possible to draw some conclusions about the ceiling for their capability to understand simple concepts.