tara’s Reviews > On the Meaning of Sex: Thoughts about the New Definition of Woman > Status Update

“This is not about concern for trans people. This is not 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. The fact that this can be hailed as progressive, and supported by humanists and feminists alike, is completely incomprehensible.” 👏🏼

“The moral that runs through these books is that children who are not old enough to have sex, vote, drink alcohol or get a tattoo, ought to undergo significant medical interventions which risk making them infertile for life—and parents must not even ask them to wait. Those who question the ethics of interventions on minors are lectured.”

“There is an undertone saying homosexuality is too inappropriate for the traditional family and a bit too boring for the modern one. And while homosexuality does not require any interventions, gender reassignment is a project expected to involve the entire family. Above all, nothing should be questioned.”

“When it comes to the risks and proven side effects of treatment, the inquiry displays a shocking indifference to the risks for trans people. It is as though their bodies, their selves and their futures are something that do not need to be taken seriously. If they become infertile, if the hormones are proven harmful, if their health deteriorates following treatment: none of this seems a major concern.”

!!!

“Surgery on children with intersex variations is described as a human rights violation… However, when the inquiry refers to similar interventions on children it has named transgender, these are called a human right.”

🥴 FGM, for example, would cause outrage in most cases, but if you filter it through this ideology I suppose it would be acceptable or even encouraged.

“The focus has shifted from an alleged concern about the well being of transgender people to viewing them as some kind of avant garde showing the way towards a new world order. This avant garde has now taken on a political identity. This is, however, an avant garde that is also given the role of guinea pig. When it comes to treatment, the caution of ten years prior is gone.”

“Nowhere is there even the slightest mention that a person is fine as s/he is and ought to be accepted even when s/he doesn’t fit in with society’s ideas of how a girl or boy should look and behave.”

“An inquiry tasked with making life easier for a vulnerable minority group ends up stating that society should radically change the definition of sex. The changes recommended have massive implications for equality between men and women—being able to refer to sex is a prerequisite for recognising discrimination.”

“The focus has shifted from the priority stated in the 2007 inquiry of improving mental health outcomes for transsexuals, into changing social norms. A key part of these changes involves doing away with biological sex as a category.”

“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? If it has—as MacKinnon argues—nothing to do with biology, it is an utterly incredible coincidence!”

Ain’t that the truth.