Blue Ridge Style & Beyond
Here we are in this time & place. We need to retrace our steps, I think.
If anyone needs a Primer on the definition of “Man” & “Woman” please read my “What is Sex” post. Also see “Defining Woman” from a few days ago.
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Did you ever think we would get to the place in our culture where we thought it necessary to ask political and judicial leaders to define the word Woman?
It’s happening in the US. And in Great Britain. In the US the questions are being asked mostly by conservatives. In Great Britain, long time Labour supporters (self declared socialists) are asking the same question of their political leaders.
Here are two videos documenting the facts.
The Judge can’t answer the question for two reasons. The first reason she gives: ”I’m not a biologist.” The second reason is because she says this issue might come up before her in a supreme court case. As it might.
I give her a pass on the second reason. Unfortunately, this will likely come up before the Supreme Court at some point. That’s how irrational public policy has become in the 21st century.
But, her first reason (she had to know this question was going to be asked) indicated that she truly did not know the answer. Why?
Because she is not a biologist.
This is an example of what I call credentialism. Ya gotta be an expert before you can speak about anything. But surely if any question would seem to be within the general knowledge of ordinary Dick and Jane’s out there, the uncredentialed hoi polloi, as it were, surely the question about what is a ”man” or ”woman” would be one of them. Wouldn’t it?
I mean, does it take a lot of expertise, or scientific trial and error to figure this one out?
Regular, unprofessional, dare I say, common, folk have apparently known the difference between a man and a woman for some time now. The species continues to reproduce, does it not? Even among the most “unenlightened” among us. That would seem to be a good indicator of some knowledge of the difference between male and female among the uncredentialed. Yet, a woman who would seek to be one of the most powerful women on the planet can’t answer that question.
If two men have a sexual relationship. Or two women. This has never produced children. It can’t. Surely the uneducated have noticed. And acted accordingly. I mean, if they intend to have children and allow the species to continue. This would seem to be a basic human instinct.
Woman = adult human female.
Unfortunately, this basic human understanding evades British leaders as well.
The inestimable J.K. Rowling weighs in
This is what a woman who owns a dictionary and a backbone looks like. @joannaccherry pic.twitter.com/djBuD1QiBF
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) March 8, 2022
“What is a woman? Can you tell me what a woman is?” Walsh queried.
“No, I can’t,” Ethan admitted, “because it’s not for me to say. Womanhood looks different for everybody.”
Speaking to Addison, Walsh stated, “You stood up here and said, ‘Trans women are women.’ What is a woman?”
“Womanhood is … something that I cannot define,” Addison said.
“But you used the word,” Walsh pushed back. “So what did you mean when you said, ‘Trans women are women’?”
“I do not define what a woman is because I do not identity as a woman,” Addison responded. “Womanhood is something that is an umbrella term.”
“That describes what?” Walsh interjected.
“People who identify as a woman,” Addison said.
Walsh, again, pressed, “Identify as what?”
“A woman,” Addison said. “What is that?” Walsh pressed.
“To each their own,” Addison said, adding that “each person” is “going to have a different relationship with their own gender identity and define it differently. So, trans women are women.”
“You won’t even tell me what the word means though, so that’s the problem,” Walsh responded.
Speaking philosophically, you’ve just witnessed radical individualism on display. According to these advocates, individuals are entirely self-defining and autonomous. Their perceived ”reality” is purely subjective, with no unimaginative boundaries. Any genetic contribution made by someone’s male and female parents doesn’t matter. Neither does God’s contribution.
The radical individualist says: ”I can be whatever I want to be!”
No, actually, you cannot.
If you think you are a bird and can fly. You cannot.
If you imagine you are a penis-having, testicle-carrying, person-with-prostate, woman. You are not.
Come down off the ledge you’ve been encouraged to leap from. Plenty of people want to help you.
Speaking theologically, and as a Christian I must, there are two components to God’s created reality. Call them the invisible world and the visible world. Or to shrink it down to a more personal level, Mind/Soul & Body. The goal of any Therapist, Christian or otherwise, is reintegration of Mind & Body. Not a fictitious, perhaps technology assisted, separation of the two.
Please see my post “Collaborating with Madness” for more details.
That post quoted Paul McHugh, former Chair of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School and psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital:
I have witnessed a great deal of damage from sex-reassignment. The children transformed from their male constitution into female roles suffered prolonged distress and misery as they sensed their natural attitudes. Their parents usually lived with guilt over their decisions—second-guessing themselves and somewhat ashamed of the fabrication, both surgical and social, they had imposed on their sons. As for the adults who came to us claiming to have discovered their “true” sexual identity and to have heard about sex-change operations, we psychiatrists have been distracted from studying the causes and natures of their mental misdirections by preparing them for surgery and for a life in the other sex. We have wasted scientific and technical resources and damaged our professional credibility by collaborating with madness rather than trying to study, cure, and ultimately prevent it.
To see how far this kind of madness can go, read my post Species Fluidity? Transpups?
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As a Classic Christian I encourage everyone to “Embrace, Don’t Affirm.”
Individuals with a Gender Identity Disorder (Gender-Dysphoria) need Truth-filled Love. Please read this post for more details.
My favorite rich-gal author, JK Rowling, who refuses to go quietly, just tweeted about a proposed Scottish Gender Self-ID Bill. Rowling says it:
will harm the most vulnerable women in society
She is thinking mostly about “those seeking help after violence/rape and incarcerated women. Statistics show that imprisoned women are already far more likely to have been previously abused.”
She fears the consequences of a law that redefines what it means to be female.
If passed, the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill will make it much easier for Scots to choose their own legal sex, including reducing the minimum age to 16!
Up to now, Scots wishing to “change sex” first needed a medical diagnosis of gender-dysphoria. They also needed to live as a member of their chosen sex for at least two years.
But the new bill if passed will enshrine Self-ID into Scottish Law. And will allow 16 year olds to apply for a Gender Recognition Certificate based on their “inner sense of gender.”
Those concerned about protecting biological women and their single-sex spaces have been likened to racial segregationists in an Equality Impact Assessment attached to the Bill.
My response to that slur is to say: race is an immutable human characteristic.
Choosing an identity detached from every biological measuring stick, chromosomes, DNA, reproductive organs, gametes, etc….is most certainly not an immutable characteristic with which you are born. But something you confusedly choose. (See my rebuttal of the “assigned at birth” fiction here and here.)
And about the race thing.
If I, as a biological white guy, chose to identify as a black woman and then expected to be socially remunerated for my intersectional status as a black woman, would/should anyone take me seriously?
We all know the answer to that question, don’t we?
But playing the ”race card” has a certain cultural cache. Thankfully, today, most in the Western world don’t want to be considered racists. Or indeed are racists. So slinging that slur is an an uncharitable rhetorical trick designed to intimidate.
It won’t work here.
Sex is immutable too. You can’t change your sex. You will always be either male or female. No matter how you feel internally about the matter. As a Christian, I would add that God gave you your body, as mediated through your biological parents. It can’t be fundamentally changed. Only rebelled against.
I discuss the exceptionally rare instances of DSD’S (Disorders of Sexual Development) here, here, and here. These rare DSD’s are also unchangeable.
In a previous post I wrote the following reasons about why male and females are justifiably separated. a justification that does not apply when speaking of race. Men are on average stronger, bigger and faster than women. And they present a far greater physical threat because of those differences.
Public safe spaces for biological women, spaces that were constructed so that men and women could work and recreate together outside the home will be threatened if today’s radical disembody movement proceeds unhindered. Those safe spaces were constructed with full recognition of the specific biological differences, privacy concerns, AND most importantly differences in vulnerability between men & women. If the radical disembody movement wins the argument public spaces like sex-specific intimate facilities such as restrooms, locker rooms, etc., could be entered by a biological male identifying as a female on Tuesday morning, and then by Tuesday afternoon that same male could revert back to a male identity and access the nearest male restroom “in an emergency.”
Under this logic, saying you are a trans-woman (otherwise known as biological male) with the right to enter female spaces is a totally unfalsifiable assertion.
As most of us can imagine, women prisoners are particularly concerned about Self-ID. They should be.
When it comes to prisoners, I join philosopher Kathleen Stock who argues we should construct “third-spaces” for trans-women (biological males) who are fearing for their safety. The argument presented by Trans-Activists is that trans-women should be able to come into female spaces because they feel at risk from men (in prison, for example). But Stock sees a failure of imagination when it comes to the female perspective.
People today find it much easier to imagine the vulnerability of a trans-woman in a dormitory, or a hostel or a prison than it is to imagine a rape survivor in a context where the law says any male could enter her heretofore female only protected space on the basis of Self-Identification, a totally subjective concept.
Regardless of the legal realities, social institutions, like state interscholastic athletic associations, have already lept ahead. Self-ID is the means by which you can enter a range of spaces already; female only athletic competitions, bathrooms, locker rooms, and prisons. Surgically intact male people enter female prisons all the time. Most trans-identified “females” with male bodies will not cause trouble in this context, but some will. Some will have used this loophole for nefarious purposes as we’ve already tragically found out. When you consider the widely recognized statistic that most women in prison have suffered sexual abuse by men, this new Self-ID social twist will only increase their anxiety of abuse happening again, but this time during incarceration.
Yet we don’t seem to mind putting people with penises in these spaces because we seem to be more concerned with the perspective of people with penises than with vulnerable biological females. Stock’s feminist perspective claims this is just another form of misogyny.
On page 72 of Stock’s very fine book “Material Girls: Why Reality Matters For Feminism.”(Kindle edition) we read about a previously convicted male paedophile who was placed in a UK women’s prison.
"Trans woman Karen White, in receipt of neither surgical nor hormonal intervention nor a legal Gender Recognition Certificate, was put in a women's prison on the basis of gender identity and promptly sexually assaulted female prisoners there.1https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/oct/11/karen-white-how-manipulative-and-controlling-offender-attacked-again-transgender-prison
Stop the madness.
Source: The Scottish Sun
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As a Classic Christian I encourage everyone to “Embrace, Don’t Affirm.” Individuals with a Gender Identity Disorder (Gender-Dysphoria) need Truth-filled Love. Please read this post for more details.
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