Every Time I Think The Left Has Jumped The Shark, They Go One Further

We’re thirty-five conversations deep on The Commentary, yet even though it says right on the intro page that the conversations here will be about race, politics and culture, they’ve been almost exclusively about race so far. So let’s switch gears.

In my article Lost In Transition, I argued that one of the reasons we’re having such a hard time talking about trans issues, is that the language we use to talk about them is woefully imprecise and poorly understood. What’s the difference between sex and gender? What exactly do we mean when we say female or male? How do these terms differ from man and woman or masculine and feminine?

The way we think about these words is evolving at a startling rate. And Michael (who you might remember from this conversation about racism in America), thinks that evolution is happening a little too quickly:

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Michael:

We’re slowly discovering the value in untethering gendered concepts like masculinity and femininity from the biological constraints of male and female.

We are? What exactly are they? I think perhaps you’re assuming facts not in evidence here, counselor.

I enjoy reading you because you’re provocative but do a good job presenting both sides of an argument. You clearly are pro-transgender but your rundowns of the real differences between “trans” people and their biological counterparts and the real-world examples of female losses vs “trans female” competitors are excellent and demonstrate why having “trans” athletes competing based on the gender they say they are instead of the gender that they actually are is completely ridiculous. The fact that so many people either can’t grasp that or refuse to, and that this is becoming mainstreamed, is shocking and frightening.

But that’s what the left is about: Breaking down society. They don’t frame it that way but that is why the pushback is so hard all the time, because it turns out a lot of people perceive it that way.

You can’t get any more atomic as far as societal building blocks than gender and the left has been hammering on that block for decades, and has had unprecedented success recently. When you say that men can sleep with men, women with women, then push that further to say men can marry men and women marry women, you already are blurring what it means to be male or female. You also have started to blur the definition of “family” because now you’re monkeying with the definition of “mother” and “father.” Marriage and Family are two more critical societal building blocks.

Never content, the left continues to push the ball further, now we’re into the very definitions of “male” and “female” and suggesting they’re the same. To your point, they are not remotely the same. A kindergartener understands this. My dog understands this. Somehow adult humans are now questioning it.

Every time I think the left has jumped the shark, they go one further.

“Trans” people should use the public bathroom of their biological gender because that’s how it works. It doesn’t deserve an explanation. Biological sex is immutable. My wife or daughter should be able to go into a public bathroom without having to see a male walk in to relieve himself, regardless of whether the male is a pervert or not, or is feminine or not. Honestly, this is not difficult stuff.

The place we’re in and the trajectory we’re heading in is dangerous territory. You are tinkering with the most fundamental building blocks of life and society at a level and a speed never before seen in human history. People like me stand four-square against all this, and get piles of hatred heaped onto us for not getting onboard. That is unfortunate and unpleasant, but what’s right is right.

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A key battleground in a variety of culture wars is language. Over the past few years we’ve found ourselves debating the meaning of the word “racism” (and who can be guilty of it). Words like “violence” and “trauma” have been overused to the point of meaninglessness. And now, Michael finds himself on shaky ground when using the word “gender”.

There was a time when one could safely use the words “sex” and “gender” interchangeably. But those days are pretty much behind us. As societal notions of what it means to be a “real” woman or man are dragged into the 21st Century, it’s increasingly important to separate the biological realities of sex from the societal expectations of gender.

As you can tell, Michael hasn’t updated his views even to include same-sex marriage yet, so it’s not surprising he’s struggling to accommodate this more subtle distinction.

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Steve QJ:

We are? What exactly are they? I think perhaps you’re assuming facts not in evidence here, counselor.

"We" refers to society at large. As I mention, one only has to look around to see how attitudes to gender roles are changing. I think that's a good thing. Men can wear pink and women can change tyres and nobody is going to die as a result.

I'm not sure who the "they" you're referring to is. There wasn't a "they" in the quote you highlighted. I guess you mean who is it that didn't accept these changes? In which case, I'm referring to society historically.

But I have to disagree with a lot of the rest of this. Breaking down society is not what "the left" is about. It's what a fringe of postmodernitst fruit-loops are about, and they're dragging a bunch of other people with them by persuading them that dismantling basic biological and scientific concepts is kindness.

I'm also a little saddened to see that my article failed to make its point (it's not just you, a few other people who responded did the same thing). I'm not remotely suggesting that male and female are the same (I actually spend a fair amount of time pointing out how they're different), I'm saying that sex and gender are different things.

There is no such thing as "biological gender". Gender is, as the kids ike to say, a social construct. It's primarily a set of arbitrary expectations about who you should be and what you should do based on your biological sex.

Sex (male/female), is not a construct, it's a solid biological fact. But the fact that so many of us confuse or conflate these two leads to a lot of misunderstandings.

So again, bathrooms seem in many of our minds to be segregated by sex, but they're not. They're segregated by gender. If you see somebody who looks masculine in the men's bathroom, you don't question it. You don't ask to see their genitals at the door. But if you saw somebody who looked feminine, you'd at the very least be surprised.

Take a look at this person:

James Parker Sheffield @JayShef

@PatMcCroryNC It's now the law for me to share a restroom with your wife. #HB2 #trans #NorthCarolina #shameonNC

This is a biological female. Do you think they should use the women's bathrooms or the men's? If you met them on the street, would you call them "he" or "she", sir or madam?As medical technology improves, the answer to these questions will only become more obvious.

The trajectory we're heading in is one that challenges some of the assumptions it's been safe to make until now. People felt the same way when women got the right to vote and when segregation was abolished and, yes, when gay marriage was legalised (I’d love to know why you think gay marriage harmed anything in any way). It might feel dangerous to you, but that’s the way change always is. Stand against it all you want, but you can’t stop it.

What you *can* do, is make sure that the solutions we build to address the needs of all involved are sensible and fair. But to do that we need to be clear about how we talk about these things.

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I’ve noted this a few times in private conversations, but “the trans debate” is largely a technological issue. 100 years ago, it wasn’t possible to change somebody’s appearance convincingly enough that they’d appear to be a member of the opposite sex. Today, doctors can do a very convincing job in many cases. A hundred years from now, I strongly suspect it’ll be impossible to tell without some kind of DNA sequencing.

The image of a man in a wig sneaking into female bathrooms is not only inaccurate, the alternative suggested by people like Michael is worse. Forcing the person pictured above to use the female bathrooms because that aligns with their biological sex, means the male perverts out there wouldn’t even need to go to the trouble of putting on a wig. Only mandatory genital checks would do.

This issue goes far beyond simple appearance of course. There are genuine concerns about safety, and fairness in sport, for example. But the way we think about these issues is going to have to change as medical technology does. Whichever side of the debate we’re on.

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Michael:

Steve the argument you’re making is that all change is equally good, which is silly. Any particular change may or may not be good. The changes you’re raising as examples here are changes that were completely compatible with the Judeo-Christian ideals that founded our (my?) country: Women and blacks are children of God, just like everyone else, and have equal rights. They always did, the laws just needed to catch up.

In 2021 we’ve gone way past that, and very quickly too. Changing the definition of Marriage, which again is the precursor to Family and thus a cornerstone of society, to not be constrained to one man and one woman is a massive change in every conceivable way, and not in a direction that brings us in closer alignment with God or natural law. The whole transgender thing is just more of the same: Normalizing an even more fringe behavior or, in this case, an actual mental disorder, to the point where the rest of society is supposed to act like “sex” (to use your term) is not a real thing, and not a thing that should matter to anyone for any reason. I mean that’s insanity.

My main point was that where we are is already bad, and the direction we are heading in is unknown. That should scare the hell out of everyone.

Thanks, Steve, for your thoughtful response, as always.

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“The changes you’re raising as examples here are changes that were completely compatible with the Judeo-Christian ideals that founded our (my?) country: Women and blacks are children of God, just like everyone else, and have equal rights. They always did, the laws just needed to catch up.”

If you remember Michael from our previous conversation, you’ll remember that his grasp of history was shaky to say the least. There’s more evidence of that problem here.

Christian leaders have been at the vanguard of every movement to deny rights to black people, women members of the LGBTQ community, you name it, since time immemorial. Women’s rights, desegregation, gay marriage, abolition, in each case, religion was used as justification to oppose these things that most of us now see as fundamentally good.

Now in fairness, some religious leaders stood on the right side of history in these cases. Many abolitionists, for example, cited their faith as their justification for opposing slavery. But it’s fair to say that the picture is far more complex than Michael wants to make out.

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Steve QJ:

Steve the argument you’re making is that all change is equally good, which is silly.

No, my argument is that neither you nor I are in a position to decide how "good" and "bad" should be defined. Your claim that the changes I listed are compatible with Judeo-Christian values is especially interesting.

Many church leaders were vociferously against desegregation, abolition, women's rights and gay marriage (I'm sure I don't need to provide you with a link for this), and used precisely the opposite argument to support their feelings. They absolutely didn't see black people and women as "children of God", certainly not to the same extent that white men were.

Again, you seem to be misunderstanding the distinction between sex and gender. Sex isn't "my term", it's the scientific term for the categories of male and female. It applies to almost all life forms, even most plants, not just humans. It simply describes whether your body is set up to produce sperm or eggs. You're right, there is some effort to pretend these categories don't exist and that's exactly why I wrote the article. Sex is absolutely real and meaningful. But gender (the ways males and females are expected to behave) is mostly a matter of social trends that there's no particular reason to adhere to.

As a simple example, Scottish men often wear kilts (which look broadly identical to skirts) and it's considered "manly". But if you wore a skirt down the street, people would point and laugh. There's no good justification for this difference. Not religious, not biological, not legal. Our views on these things are shaped by absorbing the prevailing views of society, not religious conviction.

But forget about sexuality for a minute, think about how technology has changed the world in the past 100 years. Space flight, nuclear weapons, cloning, AI. The Amish decided long ago that this was an affront to God's will and hit the pause button. But technological progress didn't stop. Even they've had to embrace some aspects to function. Who is right about God's will? Them or us? Who should decide when that change should stop?

So while I agree that the direction we're heading in is unknown, I'd argue that that's always the case. That's scarier for some than others, but it's not in any of our power to prevent. All we can do is try to steward the changes as wisely as possible.

Always a pleasure chatting with you Michael.

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Many of us (though clearly not Michael, which I actually appreciate) are uncomfortable admitting that some lifestyles are alien to us. I have no idea what it’s like to feel I was born in the wrong body, or to be attracted to somebody of the same sex, or to think wearing socks with sandals is socially acceptable.

But the point is, I don’t have to know what these things feel like. I just need to recognise other people’s right to live in a way that makes them happy.

Where trans rights get complicated is that occasionally, there are times when trans women’s rights conflict with female rights (the argument that disagreement is all about transphobia is easily countered by pointing out that 99% of these discussions are about trans women in female spaces, not trans men in male spaces).

Figuring out how to handle those conflicts will take empathy and a willingness to compromise. But it will also take precision. If we don’t agree on what the words we use mean, we make already difficult conversations pretty much impossible. We don’t all have to live the same kind of lives, but we do have to live together. Which means we’re going to have to make sure we’re speaking the same language.