At its outset, feminism had a laudable goal: equal rights for women in the realms of educational and occupational opportunity, including higher education, working outside of the home, owning property, and voting. But its core concerns have shifted more recently to promote a false premise—that as a society, we have not reached gender equality until men and women are identical.
MYTH #3 THERE ARE MORE THAN TWO GENDERS
There are two: female and male. There is zero scientific evidence to suggest that any other genders exist.
humans are a sexually dimorphic species, with two types of gametes: eggs and sperm. Intermediate gametes don’t exist. Since biological sex and gender are both defined by these parameters, gender is, by definition, like sex—either male or female; binary and not a spectrum.
At its core, intersectionality has some validity in describing how discrimination in society differentially affects women, nonwhite people, and other minority groups. Mainstream feminism, however, has encouraged an entirely new, malignant application, with groups who would otherwise be considered to have privilege clamoring for minority status so that their opinions are given more weight.
We can acknowledge that some people are gender-nonconforming or gender-diverse, and encourage them to be who they are, without rewriting science to facilitate this acceptance.
the word “transgender” has expanded to encompass anyone who feels, in any way, different from what would be expected of them, based on their birth sex.
feminine gay men and masculine lesbians, by virtue of being gender-nonconforming, are not trans or nonbinary; they are gender-nonconforming men and women.
The term “transgender,” by definition, means that a person identifies more as the opposite sex than their birth sex, which still operates within a framework of gender being binary. As mentioned earlier, the word is being redefined, as part of this obliteration of the binary, to include identifying as a third gender.
Girls who are even slightly masculine, or who prefer to wear men’s clothes because they are more comfortable, now believe this makes them something other than a girl.
But no one is saying to them, if you feel you don’t fit in, it’s okay to be a different kind of woman or a different kind of man.
There is a big difference between being accepting of gender nonconformity, as I think we all should be, and enshrining into law the acceptance of labels and identities that have no evidence for their existence and are purely subjective.
MYTH #4 SEXUAL ORIENTATION AND GENDER IDENTITY ARE UNRELATED
Indeed, gender identity is not the same thing as sexuality, but the two are linked, and just to add further confusion to the discussion, sexual orientation is biological, but the way it expresses itself in relation to gender is influenced by social factors.
mothers who had gay sons—particularly those with gay sons with older brothers—had higher levels of antibodies against NLGN4Y (a protein involved in brain development in males) than did mothers who had heterosexual sons or no male offspring. This led to differences in the way the baby’s brain is masculinized in the womb.
If sexual orientation is fluid, flexible, and choosable, then so is gender identity. This works against the argument that adults should be supported in transitioning. It also counters the belief that those who have transitioned are no different from the sex they identify as.
childhood gender nonconformity (CGN) is one of the strongest predictors of being gay in adulthood. Gay adults have higher rates of recollecting CGN when asked about their childhood.7 Basically, gay women recall being masculine girls, and gay
Greater exposure to prenatal testosterone is associated with male-typical interests and behaviors and sexual attraction to women, regardless of whether the individual is male or female.
It’s important to clarify, this is not to say that all transgender people are really just confused gay people. Research has shown that transitioning can indeed be beneficial for some people, helping them to live much happier and healthier lives.
Some have questioned the utility of transitioning from the perspective that clinicians should work at healing the mind instead of the body. I often hear the comparison of gender dysphoria to anorexia—and transitioning to liposuction—the implication being that you wouldn’t indulge someone whose beliefs about their weight were not reflective of physical reality. Instead, someone suffering from an eating disorder would be encouraged to undergo therapy in order to change their beliefs about their body.
A study from the American Journal of Psychiatry showed that 61 percent of patients presenting with gender dysphoria have another psychiatric disorder.
A cross-dresser is a straight man who wears women’s clothes, underwear, and makeup because he finds it sexually arousing. These individuals were once called “transvestites,” but cross-dresser is considered a more respectful term.
A drag queen, on the other hand, is a gay man who dresses up in women’s clothing to emulate extreme forms of femininity.
The other subtype, known as the autogynephilic subtype, consisted of individuals who didn’t experience any feelings of discomfort around being male until reaching puberty. Most were male-typical and masculine throughout their childhoods—in some cases, playing competitive sports and taking up computer-related hobbies20 with their male peers.
The fact that, for some people, transitioning has relevance to sexual arousal is not a justification for judging anyone who feels this way. This is also not to say that their experience of gender dysphoria is any less real or serious than the gay subtype.
The fact that we can’t talk about the role of sexual orientation in the context of transitioning is doing an enormous disservice to people struggling with gender dysphoria. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the debate on childhood transitioning.
Across all eleven long-term studies ever done on gender dysphoric children, between 60 and 90 percent desist by puberty.
This is because gender identity is flexible in prepubescent children and grows more stable with development and age.
I understand the desire to hide this information. Acknowledging that some transgender people change their minds could be misused to support claims that trans people don’t really exist, that what they feel isn’t real, or that efforts to support transitioning should be halted across the board for everyone.
But really, aren’t all children consistent, persistent, and insistent when they want something badly? Kids say all kinds of things, and yet, adults don’t take them seriously about any of it unless it relates to their gender. We don’t allow children to get tattoos or piercings, to drive, vote, drink, or buy cigarettes, because they lack the emotional maturity to make life-altering decisions.
In some cases, a child experiencing gender dysphoria won’t even undergo a full assessment, never mind one that is thorough, before being given access to medical treatment.
Describing the process, Bell said she was prescribed puberty blockers after three one-hour appointments and experienced little resistance.6
Good clinicians would arguably be in favor of approaching transition carefully and only after other possible avenues have been ruled out.
The number of people who identify as transgender in the United States has doubled from three in 1,000 to six in 1,000 in the last ten years.
Colleagues have told me stories of educators gleefully announcing when a child in their class has come out as trans, because they know that supporting that child in their new gender role will gain them attention and praise from their superiors. This is no more apparent than in the flooding of news reports applauding parents for parading their transitioned children, including some who are preschool-aged, in front of a public audience, and politicians who are more than willing to pander and prostrate themselves in order to attract the vote of sympathetic Democrats.
Transitioning is being sold as a normal part of growing pains and healthy psychological development. Parents and patients are told it is easily reversible, should someone change their mind—transitioning is the right solution for everyone, no matter how old they are, how long they’ve been feeling this way, or any other issues they are dealing with in their life.
The true problem, however, is not that gender dysphoria was considered a mental disorder, but that mental disorders are stigmatized. Reclassifying the condition fails to adequately address the source of this stigmatization.
Transgender activists have gained much political ground through use of the narrative that being trans is similar to being gay—a person is born this way, it cannot be changed, and to question this is harmful to a trans person’s well-being. The ironic thing is that many of these children are indeed gay, and as we’ll see, by being persuaded to transition, they are actually undergoing a new form of conversion therapy.
The third approach, called the “therapeutic” approach or the “developmental model,” allows a child to explore their gender while being open to the possibility that they may grow comfortable in their birth sex. A clinician will seek to understand factors relevant to the child’s development, including trauma or other psychopathology, and what else is going on in the child’s life that may be leading them to feel this way.
This final approach, which is backed by the scientific literature as the most appropriate course of therapy for these children, has instead been denounced by experts, medical organizations, and academic researchers as transphobic, “conversion therapy,” and abusive.
Some might argue that these side effects are a small price to pay for a child’s well-being. But by blocking puberty, a child is preventing the process that would have likely led to the resolution of their gender dysphoria.
Parents who wouldn’t otherwise allow their kids to make basic decisions about what they’re having for dinner or what time they’re going to bed will support a child’s wish to undergo potentially irreversible medical interventions.
The hypocrisy of transgender activism is palpable. The same people who will argue (as we should) against involuntary intersex surgeries, based on the understanding that young children do not possess the mental capacity to consent to invasive surgeries, will argue that an eight-year-old has the emotional maturity to begin the medical process of identifying as the opposite sex. Physicians won’t even allow adult women to make a decision about tying their tubes or having a hysterectomy until they are in their thirties.
I’m constantly amazed at the number of gay men who will publicly defend childhood transitioning when the movement is in fact leading to the extermination of gay children.
As would be predicted by the desistence statistic—which, let’s not forget, is based on more than four decades of research—the vast majority of children who voice the desire to be the opposite sex will eventually change their minds, growing up to be gay and comfortable in the body they were given.
Regarding the social contagion factor, there was an association between suddenly coming out as transgender and having a friend (or multiple friends) who also identified as trans. For about 40 percent of these adolescents, more than half of their friend groups had also come out as transgender. This is more than seventy times the prevalence of transgender adults in the general population.
The study showed some of the potential social benefits of coming out as trans, including increased popularity among peers when they were previously ostracized, and greater protection by teachers from bullying, because teachers were more concerned about anti-trans bullying than bullying that targeted gay students.
I have had parents tell me that, upon calling a gender clinic to simply gather information, the receptionist would tell them, without ever having met their daughter, that the child must begin hormonal blockers immediately.
For those who are troubled at the thought of having a son who is girly, transitioning offers a promising solution—by allowing a feminine boy to transition, he now presents as a feminine girl. A little boy who enjoys playing with makeup and dolls with his female friends will bring about much less attention and criticism if he, himself, is a girl.
What is most disturbing is that these parents will be praised as open-minded, examples of what true love and acceptance looks like, “on the right side of history,” when in actuality, some are homophobic28 and endorsing a repackaged, socially acceptable form of conversion therapy.
In Newcastle, England, a city that has a population of about 300,000 people, hundreds of young women have come forward, saying they regret transitioning.33 Fitting the profile of girls with ROGD, most report being lesbian and on the autism spectrum.
Testosterone leaves a woman’s voice forever altered and gives her permanent facial hair, even after she has stopped taking it.
Medical professionals are following direction from activist organizations. They are under the impression that if they don’t offer access to hormones, no matter how young or to what extent psychiatric comorbidity is evident, an individual will commit suicide.
If medical professionals were able to do their jobs properly and rule out other possible explanations for a person’s gender dysphoria, the vast majority of detransitioners probably wouldn’t have transitioned in the first place.
It isn’t uncommon for a detransitioned person to lose all of their social support upon disclosing that they are detransitioning, and then be blocked on social media by their friends. They will be accused of having internalized transphobia and be told not to detransition, a common theme among the detransitioners I spoke with.
I foresee many class action lawsuits in the future as more and more young people detransition and ask themselves how the adults around them agreed to it.
Transgender ideology has allowed young women the option to opt out of womanhood and having a female body. And when you are young and don’t feel like you fit in, why wouldn’t you? Society instructs women to be like men in every facet of their lives, but for women who are naturally masculine, they are told there is something wrong with them.
TERF stands for “trans-exclusionary radical feminist,” but its application has extended beyond its original definition to mean anyone who says, “Wait a minute—” to transgender credo, particularly in the context of pointing out how transgender women are different from women who are not transgender.
What should be the requirement in order for a transgender individual to be allowed in women’s spaces? Undergoing a social transition? Legally changing their sex? Is it transphobic that a requirement be met?
I don’t believe transgender women should be reduced to their biology or be referred to as male. At the same time, it isn’t accurate to say that transgender women are biologically women, as some trans activists claim. Neglecting these differences is unhelpful, especially for trans women, considering that they are predisposed to particular health conditions based on these biological differences that natal women are not. In order to offer the best care possible, medical professionals need to obtain an accurate patient history.
Another example of why these differences need to be acknowledged is prostate cancer. Besides skin cancer, prostate cancer is the most common cancer in American men; one in nine will be diagnosed in their lifetime.2 Transgender women, even after transitioning, face a higher risk of prostate cancer than women.
Similarly, it should be perfectly acceptable to say that some men have a uterus, so long as it doesn’t preclude an honest discussion as to why (that is, he was born female).
More specifically, if someone identifies as a same-gender attracted gay man, it means he’s attracted to everyone who identifies as a man, regardless of whether they were born male.
the expression of our sexual preferences is culturally influenced, but our preferences are, beneath it all, biological.
In truth, gender-neutral spaces are more dangerous for women and girls because they pose an opportunity for sexual offenders to gain access to victims. Recent statistics show that almost 90 percent of complaints about sexual assault, voyeurism, and harassment in United Kingdom swimming pools happen in unisex changing rooms.5
We have some folks like Joe Biden saying that sex is based on how you identify, not what prison says.
Although it can seem unsympathetic to require someone to undergo a physical or legal change in order to “prove” they really are who they say they are, policies across the board need to be based in more than self-identification.
The best solution would be opening prisons or units dedicated to transgender inmates, as was recently done in London.8 There will still exist a pecking order regarding risk of being assaulted, but that is, to some extent, unavoidable, even among nontransgender populations in prison. In addition, mental health professionals should be supported in doing thorough and accurate assessments to determine whether an inmate is truly gender dysphoric or malingering, in addition to assessing for other mental health issues, like antisociality and, perhaps most important for those convicted of sexual offenses, their risk of reoffending.
a new study from Sweden’s Karolinska Institute found that suppressing testosterone in trans women does not reduce muscle strength, even after a year.
Identifying as female doesn’t negate the advantages an individual has gained from undergoing male puberty, including those related to greater height, upper body strength, wrist size, hand size, muscle mass, lung capacity, and bone density. Males are, on average, stronger, faster, and larger than females.
Those supporting the classification of transgender women as female athletes are essentially asking all of us to ignore this information in the name of granting acceptance. You would need to be clueless about biology or ideologically possessed to not see why this is unfair.
the tennis match between Karsten Braasch, a former professional tennis player who was born male and played in the men’s league, and Venus and Serena Williams at the 1998 Australian Open. The Williams sisters had announced they could beat any male player ranked in the Top 200. Braasch, who ranked 203rd at the time, took on the challenge and beat them both without difficulty.
The act of sex comes with a greater cost to women, due to the possibility of becoming pregnant and having to take on related responsibilities—giving birth, breastfeeding, raising the child, and ensuring his or her survival. By comparison, for men, sex requires an investment of several minutes. (About five or six minutes on average, according to recent studies.) As a result, the female sexual system evolved to account for this discrepancy, because women who made good mating choices were the ones who succeeded at passing on their genes.
Sexual selection, one of Darwin’s critical revelations, maintains its relevance, stating that the mate preferences of one sex will determine the characteristics that are passed on in the other sex. For example, our female ancestors preferred male partners who could offer physical protection to them and their young, which is why greater height is generally seen as an attractive trait in men.
Since women are the arbiters of sex, from an evolutionary standpoint it would benefit men to be drawn toward pursuing sex with multiple partners.
Contrary to what “woke” advertising and media tell us, beauty standards aren’t socially constructed, arbitrary, or due to living in a “heteronormative society.” Men tend to prefer partners who are young and beautiful—possessing symmetry, smooth, clear skin, and shiny hair—because youth and attractiveness are physical cues that a woman is healthy and will have greater reproductive success.
There is no reason why a woman can’t be intelligent and critically minded while also caring about the way she looks. If anything, it’s misogynistic to assume that a woman can’t be both. Interestingly, it’s often women who police each other’s appearances.
Despite feminism’s incessant prodding that women indulge in no-strings-attached sex, men consistently report greater enjoyment of it, while women experience more negative reactions. After having casual sex, women are more likely to self-report depression, regret, and feeling “used.”
It may be the twenty-first century, but a man should still be required to make the first move. Initiating contact or romantic interest is a small act demonstrating he is willing to invest in her. As a woman, you do not want your boyfriend to treat you like one of the guys, even if that sounds commendable in the name of gender equality, because doing so requires him to put in much less effort.
Requiring men to, at minimum, initiate interest will help to weed out those who are just going to waste your time. It also means that he values
I’ve had male friends tell me progressive women sometimes get angry at their acts of chivalry. In return, my friends have stopped putting in those efforts when on dates with other women. I’d say, if a woman gets mad at you for something that was well intentioned, take it as a sign that this is probably not someone you want to be with.
Feminism tells women that good and decent men should behave like women, so feminist women in turn prefer dating men “like them,” when these men are acting duplicitously and repeating by rote what they think women want to hear.
Incels are an online subculture of men who are frustrated at their inability to obtain sex and genuine affection from a romantic partner.
The gender-neutral parenting approach (which includes giving children gender-neutral names, toys, and clothing) has expanded in recent years to spawn an increase in the number of parents raising gender-neutral “theybies.”
The rationale for this trend is the mistaken belief that gender-typical traits and interests are taught to children from the moment they are born, and unless children are raised in a culture void of gender, they will be boxed into fixed categories, reaching only a fraction of their potential.
You can raise a child without saying “this is for boys,” and “this is for girls,” or conversely, treating them as though they are amorphous, genderless beings. Instead of calling it gender-neutral parenting, why not just call it being open-minded?
The idea that masculinity and femininity are learned is one of those myths that just won’t go away. Gender is not forced upon children by way of parental messaging, teachers, culture, or the media.
A child will naturally gravitate toward whatever they’re interested in due to predetermined biological influences, regardless of whether they are gender-conforming or nonconforming.
If a child is gender-nonconforming, this is interpreted as biological and something that shouldn’t be dissuaded or tampered with. But if a child is gender-conforming, this is seen as the result of social influence and something that parents should actively try to change.
Does a child have the cognitive capacity to identify as a third gender? Much like what I’ve said about so-called transgender kids, the answer is no.
For instance, men wore ruffles in the 1700s and boys in the Victorian era wore dresses. Blue was once considered to be a feminine color and pink was considered to be masculine.4 This doesn’t disprove that gender is biological, only that the expression of gender changes depending on what is considered male- and female-typical.
This is because greater exposure to testosterone in utero is associated with male-typical interests, and as we saw in Chapter 2, something called the “extreme male brain.” The extreme male brain tends to correlate with higher efficiency in systematizing and in some cases, a diagnosis on the autism spectrum. Brains that are exposed to lower levels of testosterone, conversely, are more efficient at empathizing. (This is not to say, however, that people on the autism spectrum have deficits in empathy. People with autism may have difficulty being attuned to others’ emotions, but they are capable of feeling and responding to them.6)
This difference between children regarding preferences for people versus things is detectable within the first two days of life.7 Baby girls preferred looking at their caregivers’ faces and baby boys preferred looking at mechanical mobiles. Babies as young as nine months old have shown gender differences in the toys they choose. Again, girls preferred playing with dolls and boys gravitated toward trucks and cars. This was before they’re able to even recognize gender as a concept, something that generally happens at around eighteen months to two years old.
A physician named John Money surgically reassigned Reimer as female after he lost his penis at a young age in a botched circumcision. Money believed that Reimer could be successfully socialized and raised to live his life as a girl. Upon reaching adolescence, however, Reimer felt something was amiss, and returned to living as a male. At the age of thirty-eight, he tragically took his own life due to these early childhood experiences and a number of difficult life circumstances he was weathering at the time.11 Reimer’s case demonstrated that gender is innate; whether we feel female or male is not learned.
For parents who are concerned about inadvertently limiting a child’s potential, the bottom line is offering choices without being dogmatic in either direction. I’d suggest exposing kids to a variety of activities and ways of expressing themselves that are gender-typical and atypical, without making any assumptions about their inherent interest or ability. Let boys—and girls—wear pink ball gowns or short haircuts and play with whatever toys they want.
If you try to force kids to play with opposite-sex toys when they prefer toys typical to their sex, they will be bored, or alternatively, will get creative. I’ve had parents tell me their boys, upon being given dolls, will swing them around mercilessly by the hair as though they are a weapon. Girls will arrange toy trucks into a family and tuck them into bed.
We see few women in male-dominated fields like construction, manufacturing, and coal-mining, but no one is pushing for gender parity in them. In areas where women are dominating, such as college enrollment, there fails to be a similar level of concern around increasing the number of men.
Activism has no place in scientific research. There is no such thing as “feminist science,” “queer science,” liberal or conservative science, or what have you. If you’re doing the scientific method properly, it really doesn’t matter what your politics are.
There is a 36:1 ratio of liberals to conservatives in academia,2 an astounding gap that has serious implications for the knowledge being produced in the academy.
For those who say that hateful ideas shouldn’t be entertained and that debating someone you disagree with legitimizes their position, muzzling the debate doesn’t make them go away. Controversial research, in itself, doesn’t pose a threat. Instead of attacking and punishing researchers, we should be combating those who misuse research findings to uphold their prejudicial views.