Gender vs. Sex

With the exception of Donald Trump, I cannot remember any single subject taking over the news cycle as much as the brouhaha regarding gender and transsexualism. I am still trying to find a way to understand and navigate through the complicated issues and seemingly unlimited names for so many genders. Since I identify as “normal”, the whole thing is very confusing. But, like Donald Trump, it looks like this is never going to go away. Just when you think you’ve heard the most insane, ludicrous thing possible, it gets more bizarre. There seems to be no end to the non-stop parade of ugly men who have decided they are now women and want to wear dresses, and the rest of us are supposed to celebrate this like it’s the Fourth of July.

We have been told that gender is not real, but rather a social construct. What does that mean? First, it means that a group of people didn’t like the definition of something, so they came up with a way to define their particular issue in a way that portrays anyone who doesn’t agree as intolerant and bigoted. It’s the way we do it nowadays.

An easy-to-understand example of a social construct is property lines or national and state boundaries; imaginary lines on a map with no basis in reality.   We simply invented them.   But, as we have seen in the Ukraine, the boundaries imagined by Ukraine are not the same as those in Putin’s mind. In other words, a social construct is nothing but a collective, shared belief based on human interaction.  Our laws are social constructs.    The traditional roles of men and women are likewise social constructs, until recently, based largely upon hundreds of thousands of years of biology.

With that in mind, one can see that while gender ROLES might be a social construct; gender is not.

We are told that sex is “biological” while gender is a “social construct”, so a person’s gender can be different from a person’s sex, because sex is independent of gender. Society dictates what is masculine and feminine, and can change the definition at any time, so now many people say that everyone is free to identify their gender in any way they like.   The problem is that sex and gender are inextricably tied together and one cannot simply disregard sex as inconsequential. 

If gender is created by society, how can it also be an internal sense of self?   Gender identity cannot be simultaneously self-chosen AND the product of socialization.   If self-identification dictates that the person is feminine or masculine, then it cannot be a social construct and the proponents of such are wrong.   If most of society looks at a person and sees a male, how can a person’s self-identity as a woman trump that?  If self identity is more important that society’s “construct”, then clearly gender is not a social construct.    If gender identity is something invisible that comes from within a person, then society has no input.   How, therefore, can anyone verify a person’s claim to a given gender, and must we then accept any claim made by any individual exclusively on the basis of self-identification?   If so, Gender cannot be verified?  We seem to have entered a time in which a person can simply claim to be something they are visibly and biologically, not.   

Gender cannot be simultaneously independent of sex and also defined by sex.  If gender identity allows someone to identify as male or female, or some kind of alternative, those definitions are absolutely based by sex, so the two are indissolubly intertwined.    Sex and gender cannot be separated.  

The difference between gender and sex doesn't mean that one replaces the other, and to say it does is defies biology and common sense. 

Our sex is one of the biological markers which defines each of us.  To identify as a particular gender does not eradicate one’s sex.   Gender does not replace biological sex, and if one seeks to identify as a different gender, it does not change their sex.   The sex of a person cannot be changed; only the appearance of sex can be changed. 

So the next time someone tells you they identify as male, or female, or non-binary or any one of the dozens or hundreds of genders recently invented, it really doesn’t matter.   When all else is said and done, their biological sex is the one constant and the only true thing in the discussion.   

Everything else is an illusion. . . . or a fraud.