On the Meaning of Sex: Thoughts about the New Definition of Woman

by Kajsa Ekis Ekman

A new definition of woman has taken hold in Western societies. Instead of a matter of biology and material reality, we are told it is an identity. Anyone who declares herself to be a woman is a woman; the body has henceforth become irrelevant. Gender, we are told, is a spectrum, and it resides in the mind. In countries such as Norway, Canada, Argentina, and Australia, laws have been enacted that give anyone the right to change his or her legal sex, irrespective of whether the person has had a medical procedure. At the same time, the industry for gender reassignment surgery is growing at an unprecedented pace. Seven out of 10 teenagers who seek treatment are now girls. The new definition of sex has been hailed as progressive. But is it really? And is it new? In this groundbreaking book, Swedish feminist and Marxist author Kajsa Ekis Ekman traces the ideological roots of this new definition.

Genres: Feminism, Nonfiction, Gender

380 pages, Paperback

First published February 7, 2023

About the author

Kajsa Ekis Ekman (born 1980) is a Swedish journalist, writer and activist. She is the author of several works about the financial crisis, women's rights and capitalism critique. She writes for the major Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter and is an op-ed columnist at the leftwing daily ETC.

Reviews

[Rosie · Rating 5 out of 5]

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have a lot of thoughts and feelings regarding this book, but my main thought is that Ekman is brilliant, and my main feeling is that of excitement. I’ve read a few other books on this topic, but this is one of the best (if not the best!) I’ve found. It’s very detailed and comprehensive. Ekman really deconstructs the edifice – she approaches it from almost every angle, and, thoroughly and carefully, she picks it apart. At the same time, she’s full of compassion and care for everyone involved. She could only be accused of “transphobia” if the accuser was an ignorant person who deliberately misunderstood everything she said, or if the accuser was someone who had not read even a single page of her work. On a similar vein, here on Goodreads, I was at first surprised to see the book’s averaged-out rating was at about 3 stars, but then I realized that the vast majority of readers rated it 5 stars, a few gave it 4 stars, and another large portion rated it 1 star – meaning, those people who rated it 1 star likely hate-read the book because they knew she was criticizing gender identity ideology, or they angrily rated it 1 star without reading it or purchasing it, for the same reason (and I would wager on the latter as being most likely). But to move on: I found Ekman’s writing extremely witty – despite this book being a translation – and I probably underlined about half the book with a colored pencil, since, for once, I bought this book, rather than getting a library copy. This is because neither my public library nor university library have this book (and I doubt they would ever purchase it). I’ve been interested in reading this for almost half a year – I considered asking for it for Christmas, but, in the end, I decided on other books – and I finally made the impulse purchase a week ago. I’m glad I did! I wasn’t disappointed at all, and it’s one of those books that has lines you can keep coming back to. She puts into words many things which are difficult to put into words, and she describes things I didn’t notice but in retrospect can see are completely true (some examples are provided among the quotations I chose)! I actually learned a lot, despite my being quite well informed on this topic. One thing was the whole inequality of the equation, that trans women are the exact same as women, but women cannot be trans women. Huh? Logical fallacy there! There are a lot of logical fallacies, really. Another was how trans/cis is a new version of woman/man, and with this new dichotomy, women are supposedly the “oppressors”. I was really surprised by the way Ekman described how bad the position of biological women is in this new ideology – there is no way for us to not be considered some type of oppressor, whether as “cis” or as “trans men”, and it makes it so that we cannot name the way we are oppressed as a sex class. It’s astounding! But also very interesting. There are so many different intersecting elements of this ideology that I didn’t notice and now am aware of, due to reading this book. I think all women (and men, but especially women, since this concerns us more, due to the effects gender ideology has had in eroding our rights) could benefit from reading it, no matter their view point, as long as they enter into it with an open mind (instead of going into it already hating it and the author and thinking, What a nasty, evil, bigoted, Nazi, transphobic, TERFy cunt, how could she write this, I’m going to go on Twitter and cancel her, I can’t believe she wants to exterminate trans people, this bitch is just as bad as JK Rowling, etc., etc.). Another thing I really loved about Ekman was how systematic she was. I think that’s because she has a background in Marxism. My dad often says that one thing you’ve got to admit about Marxists (he is not one) is that they have a really fantastic analysis of class, and I would say that extends to their analysis of a lot of elements in society in general. In this book, Ekman demonstrates her ability to look beyond all the fluff and smokescreens to see the concrete structure of this new ideology, and she even describes it in three layers, though I don’t think I included that particular quote above. Finally, in terms of how this book made me feel, I felt a LOT of different things reading this book. I actually was so irritated at some points (at the things Ekman was talking about and the quotations she was providing as examples and deconstructing) that I got out clear sticky notes, drew angry faces on them, and stuck them to the inside of the book, as little reaction-emojis. Some of them look pretty funny. But I also felt really grateful and happy – that Ekman is doing this work, that she is pointing this out, that her work has been published, that women worldwide are speaking up against this. I’ll finish on that positive note!

Quotes:
“According to Magnusson, however, biologism is saying that a woman is a woman. To be defined as a woman you now no longer need to be a woman and the definition can extend to anyone at all. Following this logic would require abolishing all classifications, since they are all biologist: why can only sheep be called sheep? Why shouldn’t a cow be allowed to be a sheep? Why should a car not be called an airplane? Shouldn’t everything be welcome in the category ‘car’? Shouldn’t CEOs be welcome to be part of unions in the name of equality?” (17)

“If we remove the material base that previously provided the grounding for the definition of sex, we are left with little other than stereotypes and cultural norms. These are now to replace sex chromosomes as the basis for the definition of sex.” (18)

“But hold on a minute. Wasn’t gender meant to be dissolved? Wasn’t this new ideology supposed to be about questioning old patterns and ‘daring to be yourself?’ Lo and behold, when we scratch the surface, the story has suddenly changed tack. Gender is on the contrary very fixed and determined, not just by the body, but by our behaviour. Here we immediately come face to face with a biological determinism minus the biology, where feminine and masculine are ascribed certain behaviours and characteristics. These appear to be disconnected from the body and exist in their own, ethereal world. Prohibited, from now on, is the connection Vagina = woman; authorised, from now on, is the connection vain, vulnerable, affected = woman. We were initially presented with a story about ‘openness’ and ‘acceptance’ regardless of gender, something that resembled the narratives of the gay rights movement and feminism so closely that we didn’t pay much attention. When we now turn around to take a closer look, something completely different has happened.

Gender roles are back without us having noticed! It’s just that sex and gender have swapped places. Gender is now real and sex is the construct. Sex is said to be ‘assigned’ at birth, that is, a social construct that society applies by force to the child. Gender identity, on the other hand, is said to be innate. This is nothing but gender essentialism: gender as an essence regardless of the body.

Gender is not dissolved at all, contrary to what we first thought. It is in fact exactly the opposite. Gender reigns supreme, having defeated sex, and the pillar it is standing on is nothing but the same old stereotypes. What we’re seeing is a kind of ideological reshuffle. Gender identity theory borrows fundamental terms from feminism, but attributes opposite meanings to these terms. The term social construct is retained, pledging allegiance to feminist theory, as well as the term biological sex, which used to denote what is fixed and immutable – but these two terms have swapped places with one another. Now, gender roles constitute the real sex. Womanhood is no longer about having a uterus, but pink ribbons and dolls. Masculinity is no longer synonymous with having a penis but with war and machines. And, these gender roles, it is said, are innate.” (23-24)

"The general public might still believe that the trans issue is about being tolerant of adults who have felt their entire lives that they want to be the opposite sex and have gone through hell to get there – but what we are witnessing here is something else entirely: children are being diagnosed as deviant for using the wrong toys.

This is not about concern for trans people. This is not about openness and tolerance. It is the exact opposite. This is the return of an extremely rigid understanding of gender that pathologises and medicalises children who do not behave according to narrow gender roles. We have to go back seventy years in time to find an equally invasive theory of gender. The idea being presented by gender identity theory is that each sex should be cleansed of all individuals who don’t fit in, and who thus should be deported to the other sex. The fact that this can be hailed as progressive, and supported by humanists and feminists alike, is completely incomprehensible.” (70)

“In the next layer, we are suddenly told that gender is to be defined according to stereotypes: girls are passive and vain while boys are determined and want to be police officers. One’s sex is now one’s gender, and gender is back to being a psychological category with fixed delimitations. One has to fit in, be normal, and not break the gender mould. The boy in the dress disrupts this mould – the girl in the dress does not. While in the past, they took away the dress from the child with a penis, now they take away the penis from the child with a dress. Freedom is the keyword – freedom to be like others. We are told that liberation from social norms can be attained by wanting to be normal, about the right to be different but also that not fitting into gender norms leads to life-long suffering. We are told about being yourself by becoming someone else, that the binary model of gender must go – and then that blue is for boys and pink for girls! Genitals have nothing to do with gender, yet they must be altered to match gender identity. Sex is no longer to be defined by biology, but gender identity is described as innate. Through combining these very contemporary ideological elements, gender identity theory succeeds in appealing to homophobic traditionalists and ultraliberal progressive postmodernists alike. The former seek normality, the latter diversity: both find it in gender identity.

This story continuously claims to be abolishing certain concepts, only to then require a prior understanding of exactly the same concepts to be comprehensible. The words woman, man and sex are obsolete, yet the story is literally drenched in the very same words. We are told that sex is assigned at birth, thereby understanding sex as non-existent prior to the midwife’s act of bestowing it upon the child. However, if sex did not exist, there would be nothing for the doctor to reassign – it would just be a matter of discourse. This narrative therefore relies on the fact that we do actually know that biological sex exists – otherwise the word ‘trans’ would be incomprehensible, since its referent is biological sex. Juggling opposing concepts, gender identity theory expects us to forget about biological sex and remember it at the same time.” (72-3)

“We must understand that while alliances on strategic issues, such as women’s sports, can be useful, conservative thinkers actually hold an idea very similar to gender identity theorists. Conservatives want to maintain the union of sex and gender, but believe sex determines gender. Thus, women are feminine, men are masculine, and that is the way things are supposed to be. Advocates of gender identity theory also want to keep the two concepts together but conversely hold that gender determines sex. In other words: those who are feminine are women, those who are masculine are men, and that is the way things are supposed to be. Same coupling, different order, which amounts to a kind of postmodern biologism. . . . Yet even though the conservative is old-fashioned and the gender identity activist is seen as progressive, when they spot a ‘tomboy’ or a ‘sissy’ they both have a similar reaction: they want to change her or him! One wants to change their behaviours, the other wants to change their bodies, but none of their theories has room to tolerate them as they are.” (87-8)

“Those cultures which have institutionalised full sex change as a cultural practice are in fact often the most patriarchal societies in the world, and not those which have come the furthest in terms of feminism and gay rights, as shown by the fact that sex change is most common in Iran and Thailand.

Iranian doctors had long been at the forefront when it came to this kind of surgery, and following the Islamic Revolution, Iran became the country that carried out the second largest number of sex changes surgeries in the world. Gay people are often forced to undergo sex change operations, if they don’t, they risk a flogging or even capital punishment. Homosexuality is seen as a disease with a cure: sex change. This practice brutally restores the heterosexual order – we are no longer dealing with a man who desires a man but a woman who does so – and points to an extreme readiness of the individual to submit to this order, to the extent that they sacrifice their fertility. A man who confides in a mullah that he dreams of having sex with other men is often sent to a sex change clinic. . . . Many Western journalists seem to have frequently overlooked what is actually going on here: that a state is ‘curing’ homosexuality by sterilising gay people.” (109-110)

“The vast majority of young people seeking treatment at trans clinics are homosexual or have one or several neuropsychiatric diagnoses. Most come from a highly educated family background and 41 per cent previously identified as gay or bisexual. 62.5 per cent of girls in a British study had previously been diagnosed with a psychiatric or neuropsychiatric illness. Anorexia is especially common, as are ADHD, depression and trauma. The figures are nearly identical in other countries: 60 per cent of patients at transgender clinics in Sweden and Norway suffer from complex mental health needs. Similarly, a US study found 44 per cent of girls aged three to 12 diagnosed with gender dysphoria who did not undergo hormone treatment turned out to be lesbian or bisexual in their teens. A 2011 Dutch study followed up 77 children referred to a gender dysphoria clinic when they were aged eight and obtained similar results: the majority later turned out to be gay or bisexual. This was overwhelmingly true for boys, 46 per cent of whom no longer had gender dysphoria in their teens. Around half of the participants later identified as gay and, of those whose gender dysphoria persisted, all were in gay or bisexual relationships. . . . Yet one thing is clear: it is above all gay children and teenagers who are taken to gender reassignment clinics. Through injections and later surgery, they are made to resemble members of the opposite sex. In other words, made to look heterosexual. The boy who behaves ‘effeminately’ and is taken to a clinic at age eight, is made into a girl and probably sterilised in the process.” (145)

“What one tends to forget when comparing these struggles is that gender reassignment is a market. A completely new customer base has emerged for the pharmaceutical industry: in the US, this demographic is approaching one per cent of the country’s young people. It is the ideal consumer group: they come of their own volition, beg for medication and once they have begun, remain on it throughout their lives. . . . Repeat customers are every company’s dream and here is a patient group that has no choice but to continue.” (160-1)

“The problem is that what are being referred to as ‘rights’ are not what is ordinarily understood by the term, such as the right to not be bullied or subjected to discrimination, but a full-scale ideological change of course.” (165)

“For idealists fighting for LGBTQ rights this is a progressive revolution. For clinics and pharmaceutical companies it is nothing more than business. Somewhere along the line, these two stakeholders – who could easily have clashed and become adversaries – have merged into one. The activists are fighting for everyone’s right to be themselves while the clinics’ main focus is transforming people, yet instead of fighting one another, they have entered into a curiously symbiotic relationship. What would otherwise be considered a cynical business that sterilises young people to turn a profit, is instead considered one that saves lives, increases tolerance and subverts gender boundaries. Sales and profits are being passed off as humanitarian assistance. The line between industry and activism is blurred, and suddenly the industry has become a human rights hero.” (166)

“Very few describe a desire to actually be a boy. Instead, it is not wanting to be a girl which clearly dominates the accounts [of trans men], with the most unpleasant part being the transformation of the body from that of a girl to a woman and the confrontation with the world during this process.” (177)

“Ramnehill wants us to do away with the words girl and woman but says nothing about the word man. This word, in contrast, is not seen as problematic or exclusionary; it is a point of reference that all others must relate to, like the sun at the centre of the solar system. The suggested term ‘non-men’, implies the existence of two groups: men and everyone else. The first of these, man, is a fixed category and is not carved up into ‘sperm producer’, ‘scrotum bearer’, ‘penis haver’ but remains whole and functions as its own reference point (the term ‘non-woman’ is not applied to him). In the other group, which used to be called ‘woman’, we now find ‘everyone else’. The independent status of this group has been dissolved and they can now only be referred to by their organs and what they are not. . . . It is becoming increasingly common to reduce women’s experiences of sexuality and reproduction to being solely about organs. This creates big challenges for the feminist movement, which is having to formulate oppression as if it was body parts being oppressed instead of women.” (212-3)

[sanae! · Rating 5 out of 5]

“…conservative thinkers actually hold an idea very similar to gender identity theorists. Conservatives want to maintain the union of sex and gender, but believe sex determines gender. Thus, women are feminine, men are masculine, and that is the way things are supposed to be. Advocates of gender identity theory also want to keep the two concepts together but conversely hold that gender determines sex. In other words: those who are feminine are women, those who are masculine are men, and that is the way things are supposed to be. Same coupling, different order, which amounts to a kind of postmodern biologism…even though the conservative is old-fashioned and the gender identity activist is seen as progressive, when they spot a ‘tomboy’ or a ‘sissy’ they both have a similar reaction: they want to change her or him. One wants to change their behaviours, the other wants to change their bodies, but none of their theories has room to tolerate them as they are. Countering this, feminists have long held that sex ought to be liberated from gender. Sex, say feminists, has nothing to do with the social construct, the oppressive hierarchy, the rotten set of sex-stereotypes that is called gender. For feminists, sex is unproblematic, and gender the culprit that should be abolished. For feminist theory, the tomboy and the sissy do not pose a problem.”

“Gender identity theory borrows fundamental terms from feminism, but attributes opposite meanings to these terms. The term social construct is retained, pledging allegiance to feminist theory, as well as the term biological sex, which used to denote what is fixed and immutable – but these two terms have swapped places with one another. Now, gender roles constitute the real sex. Womanhood is no longer about having a uterus, but pink ribbons and dolls. Masculinity is no longer synonymous with having a penis but with war and machines. And, these gender roles, it is said, are innate.”

“We are told that liberation from social norms can be attained by wanting to be normal, about the right to be different but also that not fitting into gender norms leads to lifelong suffering. We are told about being yourself by becoming someone else, that the binary model of gender must go – and then that blue is for boys and pink for girls! Genitals have nothing to do with gender, yet they must be altered to match gender identity. Sex is no longer to be defined by biology, but gender identity is described as innate. Through combining these very contemporary ideological elements, gender identity theory succeeds in appealing to homophobic traditionalists and ultraliberal progressive postmodernists alike. The former seek normality, the latter diversity: both find it in gender identity.”

“…whereas the gay rights movement fought for the right to be oneself against pathologisation and medicalisation, transactivists now struggle in favour of medicalisation – most often of the very same gay people. Thus, what is being portrayed as one and the same struggle are in many instances in fact polar opposites. When three-year-old Jazz Jennings’ parents who took him to a doctor because he liked wearing dresses…he was not being ‘accepted as he is’. Rather, he was being labelled as flawed on the basis that a boy should not wear dresses…’feminine’ young boys who like wearing dresses, experimenting with different hairstyles, putting on dance performances at home and do not take an interest in football are being sterilised. Girls who are disinterested in cosmetics, like football and fixing cars and sit with their legs uncrossed are, in turn, being rendered infertile. Is this not in reality a form of gay conversion therapy? Where medical practitioners diagnose gay and lesbian people as deviant and reassign them as heterosexual?”

“Simone de Beauvoir never meant that ‘woman’ was just a construct that could be created out of thin air, but that woman was a person whose oppression by patriarchy was defined by her being a woman. Since we are people with a self – and the self is important in de Beauvoir’s thinking – it is not possible to see woman as just a ‘role’ one assumes, as people react and act based on their situation. The famous quote is as follows in its entirety: 'One is not born, but rather becomes, woman. No biological, psychic, or economic destiny defines the figure that the human female takes on in society; it is civilization as a whole that elaborates this intermediary product between the male and the eunuch that is called feminine. Only the mediation of another can constitute an individual as an Other.’ For de Beauvoir, there was nothing difficult about defining woman: a woman is a person born with a female body. Regardless of how a woman dresses, lives or thinks, she is a woman. Saying that one is not born a woman is shorthand for the subordination which society sees as being the lot of women is determined by society, not biology. Biological determinism is thus not a belief that biology exists, but making the connection between woman – a physical fact – and so-called femininity – a social characteristic.”

“Serano applies a double standard which has become one of the key features of gender identity theory: on the one hand, biological women do not exist as an oppressed group; on the other, when speaking of a privileged group, they suddenly do exist... at the drop of a hat, women as an oppressed group have been reinvented as privileged and the definition of the most oppressed has become … those born with a penis.”

“Yet in the absence of an awareness of the situation of our sex, we cannot understand our circumstances and will remain unable to organise for our betterment. This is why all oppressed groups must have a name. All – workers, the colonised, homosexuals, black people – have named themselves, sending the message: this is who we are. Those white people who insist on being colour-blind do not comprehend that it is precisely through the erasure of the possibility to mention skin colour that the opportunity to fight for better conditions is also erased. Similarly, erasing the word woman is a full frontal attack on the women’s movement.”

“According to this view, a man is seen as a woman if he can ‘pass’ as one, that is, the extent to which he physically resembles a woman. In practice, this is about how much surgery he’s had, how he dresses, his height, hands and how well he’s managed to adjust his voice. If he can’t manage this, then he isn’t seen as a woman and, according to Ramnehill’s definition, is not a woman. This definition is completely dependent on a prototype of ‘woman’, and this prototype cannot be anything other than a biological, natal woman’s body. A man who wants society to see him as a woman will presumably not be that successful in his endeavours if he has five breast implants added or enlarges his Adam’s apple. Ramnehill’s thesis relies entirely on the existence of a point of reference. This point of reference is the female body.”

“Fleshphobe writes on Tumblr: Black women aren’t your prop for arguing that males are a part of the lesbian community. We’re just as female as any other ethnicity of woman and having dark skin is in no way comparable to having a dick…”

“Our naming of the world around us matters. Being able to call men’s violence against women men’s violence against women, and not ‘domestic violence’, ‘family violence’, ‘initimate partner violence’ or the French ‘crime passionel’ has been a long, persistent battle for the women’s movement. Revealing power relations and who does what to whom has not been easy. Without a doubt, the word man is the most controversial in this context. The same word which in general language is so neutral and universal, becomes incredibly charged in the context of criminal acts against women and children. As we well know, the classic headline reporting a rape does not read ‘Man suspected of rape’ but ‘Alleged rape of woman’. What is going on here is that as soon as a man decides he is a woman, our ability to name him vanishes into thin air. He undertakes a kind of linguistic exiting from patriarchal existence and becomes the victim rather than the perpetrator. Feminism’s entire terminological apparatus is thus sidelined.”

“No contributors problematise this intact male space for the simple reason that its threats of violence are naturalised. Men fight and rape anything feminine – that is just how things are and there is no need to challenge the status quo. Yet the fact that women, for the same reason, might find it unpleasant to be naked in a room with people they consider to be men – well, that is just prejudiced and must be challenged vociferously! Tolerance is not required of men, only of women, since women’s spaces cannot threaten violence. The staggering truth is that what implicitly dictates the boundaries of men’s spaces is the law of violence.”

“If the only difference between men and women is their status in the sexual hierarchy, and if this hierarchy is entirely ‘constructed’, why is it that those with a certain role in reproduction, namely giving birth, always end up at the bottom of the hierarchy…we are apparently dealing with a theory that purports to abolish key concepts only to then rely on them being retained because without them, the whole theory would collapse.”

“…removing the word woman does not rid us of women’s oppression. Women will continue to become pregnant and give birth. Women will continue to carry out the majority of all reproductive work on the planet and to own less than one per cent of its resources; we will continue to be the majority of victims of sexual offences and domestic violence; we will continue to be discriminated against in the workplace; we will continue to be sidelined and ignored in medical research; we will continue to be ridiculed and hated if we attempt to reach power; we will continue to love more and get less in return; we will continue to be drained economically, physically, sexually, emotionally. We will just not be able to understand it or explain it. We will not know what to say. When we attempt to fight for our rights we will notice that our category has vanished.”

[Muriel (The Purple Bookwyrm) · Rating 5 out of 5]

More accurate rating: 9.5/10.

Notes from my Reading Log:

An excellent and thoroughly comprehensive (feminist) analaysis of genderism and its multiple harms. It covers all possible facets of the topic, with numerous citations included in every single chapter. Insights from biology and medicine, philosophy, history, dialectical materialist analysis, criminology, etc... are all, more or less equally integrated into the author's dissection of the subject matter. Necessary criticisms of some fellow feminist thinkers – such as Catharine MacKinnon – are also made in relation to tracing the origins of the current situation.

The author consistently displayed an ability to articulate important points of theory and criticism in a very clear and concise manner; she was also decently funny at times! Most importantly, she does an amazing job of demonstrating just how fundamentally patriarchal genderism, and its ideological capture of various institutions and administrative bodies, is. It's misogyny (and broader sexism, and homophobia), all the way down – always was, and always will be!

PS: also, honestly, does a banger of a job demonstrating how harmful genderism, as it currently stands, is to actual trans people.

PPS: I'll probably get a physical copy at some point, just because of all the quotable paragraphs I found in this book!

[Maher Razouk · Rating 5 out of 5]

إذا بحث المرء عن كلمة جنس في الموسوعة البريطانية، فسيجد التعريف التالي: "... مجموع السمات التي يمكن من خلالها تقسيم أفراد النوع إلى مجموعات - ذكور وإناث - يكمل كل منها الآخر تكاثريًا". فئة إنجابية ولا شيء غير ذلك. لا يذكر هذا التعريف شيئًا عما يجب أن يبدو عليه الرجال والنساء، أو كيف يجب أن يتصرفوا، أو ما يجب أن يشعروا به - ويبدو أن النقطة الأكثر أهمية هي أن هناك جنسين وأنهما قادران على التكاثر معًا.

ومع ذلك، عند مراجعة موقع خدمة الصحة العامة السويدية في عام 2019، يحصل المرء على إجابة مختلفة تمامًا. تحت عنوان "ما هو الجنس؟" يقول الموقع: “لا يتم تحديد جنسك من خلال جسمك أو ما هو مكتوب في جواز سفرك. المهم هو ما تشعر به" . وبالمثل نجد ما يلي في أحد المواقع الإلكترونية التي تقدم معلومات عن الدورة الشهرية:
لكي تأتيك الدورة الشهرية، يجب أن يكون لديك رحم، لكن ولادتك برحم لا يجعلك بالضرورة امرأة. أنت فقط من يستطيع تحديد جنسك.

يتبنى عدد متزايد من المؤسسات وجهة النظر القائلة بأن الجنس لا علاقة له بالجسد، وقد أصبح هذا الرأي سياسة رسمية في العديد من الدول الغربية. لقد أصبح الجنس - أو النوع الاجتماعي - هوية مستقلة، ومن الواضح أن الإشارة إلى شخص ما على أنه امرأة أو رجل بناءً على أعضائه التناسلية أصبحت الآن خطأً زائفًا - فلا ينبغي لنا أن نفترض أي شيء دون أن نسأل، لأنه لا يمكن معرفة الجنس من الخارج.

تذكرنا مجلة Teen Vogue الأمريكية أنه حتى وجود لحية كثيفة مشعرة لا يمكن اعتباره دليلاً على كون الشخص رجلاً. توصي العديد من المجالس والمنظمات والمدارس التمهيدية بأن يبدأ الجميع يومهم بذكر الضمائر المفضلة لديهم. على الرغم من حقيقة أن الجسد أصبح فجأة غير مهم، فإن ما إذا كان الشخص يعتبر نفسه امرأة أو رجلاً لا يزال في غاية الأهمية، ومن المحتمل أن تتم الإساءة إلى شخص ما عند استخدام ضمير خاطئ وجرح مشاعره!!
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Kajsa Ekis Ekman
On the Meaning of Sex
Translated By #Maher_Razouk

[Tri · Rating 1 out of 5]

Diverging from the usual collection of anti-trans literature, ‘On The Meaning of Sex’ is the first that I’ve found that is a translated text rather than having English origins. Despite offering a unique perspective from Sweden, the text heavily borrows from US and UK discussion and discourse, and thus ends up repeating what over a dozen anti-trans books in English have already been regurgitating.

It seems that much of the book’s criticisms are that of semantics, largely of that from cisgender people talking about how to categorize trans people. ‘Woman’ is by itself largely understood to mean female humans, but is also extended beyond their reproductive capabilities, especially when millions of women could be categorized differently on the basis of varying primary and secondary sex characteristics. The author reads out popular but confusing (often cis) perspectives, bemoaning the likes of ‘71 genders’ by Facebook’s gender selection and other such well-meaning but poor forms of trying to include trans people in the conversation without actually including trans people.
The book sometimes quotes trans people on their perspectives, but the author opts to more often than not pull from more philosophical and poetic-waxing authors than folks who are more privy with speaking to the layperson about trans topics.

Unlike other anti-trans literature, the author here directly acknowledges a facet of trans lives that impact their treatment:
“The reverse is also true: a woman walking home alone at night being followed by a bearded individual isn’t going to have time to find out whether the man was born a woman and is actually a trans man. These experiences affect and shape us…After many years, a person who has gone through gender reassignment surgery will have gathered a set of experiences similar to people born in that sex, and will have much in common with them. If experiences arise as a result of the treatment we receive in society, and this treatment depends on the body we have, then presumably those who inhabit a woman-like body have women’s experiences...”
However, the empathy and understanding trans people as a minority that experience minority status and situations begins and ends with sexual and violent brutality against them. The author is able to call upon intersectionality when it comes to race or class, but ‘trans’ as a minority status that is just as vilified, misunderstood. and oppressed is simply not in the author’s vocabulary. Trans women (and only trans women) are routinely considered by the author as a class of extreme privilege; one that, in many other anti-trans literature, is reduced to a caricature of a savage. The complexities and spectrums in trans people as a whole are not articulated and thus rendered almost inhuman.

Trans men are briefly mentioned in a chapter of their own, dozens of facets of trans men’s lives and histories condensed into a few paragraphs. Ironically, the book laments that trans men are rendered invisible, and falsely claims ‘No documentaries are being produced concerning trans men in sport…’ and ‘For all that is said about male privilege, trans men do not seem to get any of it. The only thing conceded to them are the pronouns; other than that, males do not share power, spaces, brotherhood, prizes or political offices with them.’

These claims are not only false, but demonstrably so. ‘Changing the Game’ (2019) is a documentary about trans youth in sports, with a trans man front and center during the film. There have been many films, documentary or otherwise, made about and sometimes by trans men. Trans men also hold positions of communal and political power, and trans men have been on record to say that being a man has gained them many privileges they didn’t have before.
I’d say that the author’s country of origin would be a barrier for accessing English-speaking articles, film, and various literature on the subject of trans men, but if she’s able to parrot Lisa Littman’s ‘theory’ and uncritically sing praises for Rowling, then surely she has the power to access counters to her claims.

The book concludes that the word ‘woman’ has been destroyed, and that ‘woman’ should exclusively be that of a class based on reproductive rights. While women’s liberation has important foundations around reproductive rights, to say that women’s liberation and women as a whole begins and ends with reproductive ability greatly underestimates the needs of women beyond the circumstances of pregnancy.
It’s like saying ‘gay’ or ‘gay liberation’ begins and ends with the legalization of same-sex marriage; While it is an important milestone in recognizing legal and social rights, legalizing same-sex marriage is only one of many aspects of a gay person’s life and only goes so far to improve the quality of one’s wellbeing.

This book, despite being called ‘On The Meaning of Sex’, has very little to do with the intersections and histories of sex and its overlap with trans people and liberation, and is instead yet another book that puts trans women as an opposition to feminist movements instead of a complex group with direct ties to it with trans men being a silent speed bump for people to run over. I’m also disappointed that while also being a book from a non-primarily-English country, the book takes mostly from English-speaking anti-trans literature published before and only adds Swedish accounts as anecdotes to punctuate that.

[Pip Snort · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is lots of challenging stuff in here, some of it self-evident, some more complex. It gives a thoughtful analysis of where we are and some thoughts about how we got here and what might happen in the near future. It is controversial, strongly worded in parts and somewhat repetitive.

Worth reading regardless of your perspective or your conclusions.

[Roo · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very important feminist perspective, sharply argued. I'm glad I read this.