God’s Good Creation

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

+++

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.

If you haven’t already added your email to my list, do so and I’ll let you know when the blog is updated. 

Email: blog@blueridgemountain.life