Shrier is a graduate of Columbia College who went on to earn a bachelor of philosophy degree from the University of Oxford and a JD from Yale Law School. Her book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughterswas named a “best book” by The Economist and The Times of London. [2020, 2021]
The reviewer in the Times of London says:
“Irreversible Damage….has caused a storm. Abigail Shrier, a Wall Street Journal writer, does something simple yet devastating: she rigorously lays out the facts.”
There is an eight-year-old girl who likes to play in streams and look under rocks for squirmy critters. She not only knows how to throw a ball but enjoys doing it. She loves math and logic, and has no interest in dolls or dresses. She will grow up to be a woman. Because that’s what girls do.
There is another eight-year-old girl who likes to give tea parties for her stuffed animals. She likes to dance all the dances, often with other girls who like to do the same thing. She loves to read, and has no interest in trucks or trails. She will also grow up to be a woman. Because, again, that’s what girls do.
One of these girls may want to be an astronaut. The other, a chef. Or a mother. Or a lawyer. An actress. A racecar driver. Are all of these desires equally likely among girls? They are not. Girls are likely to want some things more than others. But guess what: the girls who aren’t girly are still girls. You can tell, in part, by the fact that they grow up to be women. Because that’s what girls do.
Sex isn’t assigned at birth. Sex is observed at birth.
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The determination of what sex a baby is is usually based on an easy observation at birth, but this isn’t always the case. Intersex people exist, as do people with yet more subtle ambiguities in their phenotypes. The conclusion being imposed on us, far less by trans people than by Trans Rights Activists (TRAs), is that any exceptions to normal function, any fuzziness at categorical borders, proves that we’ve got it all wrong, and that reality is a social construct. It’s not, though. While laws are indeed social constructs, and lawmakers can clearly be captured by ideology, ideological capture does not change the underlying reality. Sex is observed at birth, by looking at primary sex characteristics, or sex can be observed before birth, by looking at primary sex characteristics in utero, or by looking at a karyotype.
All of that is less fundamental than this, however:
Females are individuals who do or did or will or would, but for developmental or genetic anomalies, produce eggs. Eggs are large, sessile gametes. Gametes are sex cells. In plants and animals, and most other sexually reproducing organisms, there are two sexes: female and male. Like “adult,” the term female applies across many species. Female is used to distinguish such people from males, who produce small, mobile gametes (e.g. sperm, pollen).
I’m a Classic Christian and think Gender Ideology is anti-creational to the core. This blog is about “God’s Good Creation.” That’s why I’m writing about Gender Ideology. And “speaking up” as I’m confident Jesus would.
"Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning 'made them male and female.'" [Matt 19:4]
If you would like more detail on how my Christian worldview informs my understanding of Sex and today’s Gender Ideology please read the following posts.
Philosopher Kathleen Stock has something of a writers block. She simply can’t write “one more straight-faced sentence about the ludicrous, off-the-charts batshittery of mainstream LGBT organisations.” (Remember, Stock is a Gender Critical Feminist, who is also a Lesbian.)
So she decided to update “The Little Mermaid” fantasy.
Once upon a time, at a hospital where Birthing-Persons give birth to children of indeterminate sex, a trans child is being born.
This is a special child. Unbeknownst to all, something called a gender identity lies within the newborn as it innocently sleeps. A bit like the seed in Jack’s pocket yet to grow into a beanstalk, this gender identity has yet to germinate and unfold. But one day it will.
Soon thereafter, the sex-assigning fairies arrive at the hospital, and sort the newborns into two groups: half into boy-babies, and half into girl-babies. Our hero is assigned “boy” by the sex-assigning fairies. Nobody objects, for they know no different. The gender identity needs time to germinate. It is not ready yet.
[the rest of the fantasystory]
