It's time for a gender counterrevolution
Let's refuse gender redefinitions and subjective gender pronouns
It’s 2023. Humanity is at a crossroads. A transgender revolution has redefined gender, created new gender pronouns, surgically altered people’s bodies to align with those definitions, and upended social norms to conform to them.
And now a gender counterrevolution is underway. A diverse coalition of religious traditionalists, conservatives, liberals and feminists is pushing back. The trans male invasion of women’s sports and private spaces has galvanized feminists. Parents are filing into school board meetings to defend their children from woke indoctrination. The medical system’s bodily mutilation and chemical castration of children has crossed a red line, even for many LGBT supporters. And the fascistic cabal of governments and employers forcing people to use new transgender language and display their preferred pronouns has united liberals and conservatives in defense of free speech.
English is known among ESL learners to be a difficult and sometimes inconsistent language, but transgender newspeak has to be the most confusing thing to ever happen to it.
According to webstersdictionary1828.com, Noah Webster’s early 19th century dictionary listed gender. As a noun it was defined as “kind; sort…sex, male or female…a difference in words to express distinction of sex…the distinction of male and female…” As a verb it was defined as “to breed.” Gender was also used in the 1611 King James Bible as a verb to indicate sexual reproduction.
Gender had the same definition for 500 years, according to etymonline.com: “The ‘male-or-female sex’ sense of the word is attested in English from early 15 century.” But in the late 20th century psychologists began using the word for their purposes. Then during the sexual revolution, feminists also divorced the term from biology and used it to “refer to traits that are culturally assumed to be appropriate for women and men.” Now the transgender revolution has redefined it as a person’s feelings or subjective identity. Many still use it interchangeably with biological sex.
I believe it’s better to anchor gender in biological reality and return it to its traditional definition. I also think its useful to use gender as a synonym for sex so it can be used to avoid confusion between a person’s sex and a sex act.
In 2005 the American Physiology Society’s Journal of Applied Physiology reported, “Sex is biologically determined and gender is culturally determined.” The World Health Organization and National Institutes of Health agree with that distinction between sex and gender.
In 2011 a Psychology Today article about “Sex Difference vs. Gender Difference” quoted the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association: “Gender is cultural and is the term to use when referring to women and men as social groups. Sex is biological; use it when the biological distinction is predominant.” Not surprising, the title of that article ended with “Oh, I'm So Confused.”
In 2019 Psychology Today reported, “It is not surprising that people might be confused by the concept of gender.” Of course, the subject being introduced as confusing was “the many meanings of gender.” In another article that year Psychology Today also pointed out the many contradictions in transgender ideology. “Gender cannot simultaneously be socially constructed and inherent to the individual.”
When the people who study the human mind admit how confusing their own definitions of gender are, it shouldn’t be surprising when society begins acting out that confusion.
I counted 44 gender identity options a person can choose from to display on their Facebook profile. Last year LGBTQ Nation reported, “Unfortunately, we can’t provide an exhaustive list of all [gender] pronouns, as people come up with new pronouns all the time.” They listed 17 options. Grammarly lists 11.
In 2019 Merriam-Webster Dictionary added a definition for the word “they” to indicate its use as a non-binary gender pronoun. In 2020 Breitbart reported Merriam-Webster updated the definition of “female” to include “having a gender identity that is opposite to male.” And in 2022 Breitbart reported the Cambridge Dictionary updated its definition of “woman” to include, “An adult who lives and identifies as female though they have been said to have a different sex at birth.”
Ever since the term gender was divorced from biological sex, it has been embroiled in chaos and confusion and has purveyed chaos and confusion into society. At a Twitter roundtable discussion about gender pronouns hosted by Mario Nawfal on February 2, neuroscientist Dr. Debrah Soh said, “Biological sex is determined by gametes. These are mature reproductive cells. Men produce sperm and women produce eggs. Gender is how you feel in regard to your biological sex. For 99% of us our sex and gender is the same. For transgender people their gender identity is the opposite of their biological sex.”
Feminist activist Kara Dansky disagreed with Dr. Soh’s gender definition. “From a radical feminist perspective, gender is sex stereotypes. It has nothing to do with feelings. It has to do with sex stereotypes that are imposed on people based on sex.” Dansky also said she will not refer to a biological female using male pronouns.
Though the feminist definition of gender is at odds with the transgender definition, feminists may have paved the way for the transgender redefinition. In 2017 Scott Yenor wrote a report published by The Heritage Foundation. He stated, “This notion—that biological sex can be willfully separated from gender—originated in the arguments of influential radical feminists writing from the 1950s through the 1970s. The premises of their theories, in turn, have ushered in the new world of transgenderism.”
From what I’ve observed, Barack Obama played the biggest role injecting the LGBT agenda into mainstream American society during his presidency from 2009-2017. He spoke about “squeezing out as much progress as we can” and “fundamentally transforming America.” Joe Biden picked up where he left off.
In 2015 pro-LGBT wellness publication SELF reported, “According to the Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index, in 2002 just five percent of surveyed corporations had a gender-identity protection clause in its nondiscrimination policy. This year 89 percent do, including [67%] of Fortune 500 companies.” In 2022 the Fortune 500 statistic rose to 91%. Within a decade or two, the transgender revolution went from hardly noticeable to capturing corporate America.
According to Gallup, in 2021 transgender people comprised 0.7% of the U.S. adult population, a small fraction to have the rest of the country placating their every demand. But it is a large number of people. In 2021 adults comprised 77.81% of the 332+ million U.S. population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Estimating .35% of those adults were transgender males means there are at least 904,238 transgender adult males in America who could potentially use female bathrooms, locker rooms and showers with women and underage girls if California-like transgender laws are adopted nationwide.
Gallup also reported people who identify as LGBT is growing exponentially with each new generation. In 2021 Generation Z became the first surveyed to have a higher percentage identify as transgender (2.1%) than lesbian (2%.) In 2021, 2.6% of Baby Boomers, 4.2% of Generation X, 10.5% of Millennials, and 20.8% of Generation Z identified as LGBT.
Bill Maher quipped last year, “If we follow this trajectory, we will all be [LGBT] in 2054.” He added, “If this spike in trans children is all natural, why is it regional? Either Ohio is shaming them or California is creating them…It’s a blow being struck in the culture war using children as cannon fodder…”
“Never forget children are impressionable...Gender fluid? Kids are fluid about everything. If kids knew what they wanted to be at age 8 the world would be filled with cowboys and princesses. I wanted to be a pirate. Thank God nobody took me seriously and scheduled me for eye removal and peg leg surgery.”
(warning: the following video has content not suitable for children.)
Transgenderism is roleplaying and delusional thinking. It’s not a physical reality. Trans activists say trans women are women. But if they were, there’d be no need to call them trans women. They are called trans women because there’s a fundamental difference between them and women. They are men.
If you want to talk about the masculine-feminine spectrum, gender feelings or gender identity, why not say “masculine-feminine spectrum,” “gender feelings” or “gender identity?” If you want to talk about gender stereotypes, why not say “gender stereotypes?” Why do you need to redefine gender?
I believe it’s better to anchor gender in biological reality and return it to its traditional definition. I also think its useful to use gender as a synonym for sex so it can be used to avoid confusion between a person’s sex and a sex act.
You can call people what you wish, but I am going to use gender pronouns in a way that respects nature and objective biological truth as a priority over people’s individual subjective preferences. But as averse as I am toward using a person’s adopted name when its gender affiliation misaligns with their gender, I realize there is no way around it. There needs to be mutual understanding when communicating, especially when naming people in news reports. One reason I oppose gender redefinitions and subjective gender pronouns is to avoid the chaos and confusion that goes with it. For the same reason, I’ve decided to use transgender people’s new names.
In 2018 a Virginia teacher was fired for refusing to use a student’s preferred gender pronouns because they weren’t aligned with their gender. Washington D.C., New York City and the state of California have civil laws against so-called “misgendering” transgender people. Elsewhere, those laws come with criminal penalties. In 2021 Breitbart reported a Canadian father was jailed for “misgendering” his daughter.
On Real Time last week Bill Maher said, “If you’re part of today’s woke revolution you need to study the part of revolutions where they spin out of control because the revolutionaries get so drunk on their own purifying elixir they imagine they can reinvent the very nature of human beings…in America today that human is no longer born male or female…I’ve spent three decades on TV mocking Republicans who said climate change is just a theory and now I have to deal with people who say, You know what else is just a theory? - Biology.”
(warning: the following video contains content not suitable for children.)
Maher also cited Beatles song “Revolution” and pointed out it’s mistakenly interpreted as a revolutionary song, but actually contains a counterrevolutionary message. John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote, “You say you want a revolution…But when you talk about destruction,
don't you know that you can count me out…if you want money for people with minds that hate, all I can tell you is, brother, you have to wait…You say you'll change the constitution…You tell me it's the institution…You better free your mind instead…if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao, you ain't going to make it with anyone anyhow…”
The transgender revolution is falsely labeled a civil rights movement. It is the opposite of that and worse. It’s an attack on three pillars of human life: nature’s gendered reality, people’s natural rights, and the natural sensibilities of men and women, boys and girls. It’s not an armed revolution, but it has used lawfare and has the help of a public/private fascistic cabal enforcing its decrees with an iron fist. So too, the counterrevolution is not armed, but with the efforts of governors like Ron DeSantis, it’s using the power of law and public policy to restore freedoms, return to common sense and protect basic decency.
In 2021 Abigail Shrier wrote “We Must Win the Gender War - But We Can’t Keep Fighting as We Have” on her Substack publication The Truth Fairy.
Shrier wrote, “Here, then, is what winning might look like. Conservatives ought to spend the next decade championing one of the most aggrieved constituencies: America’s parents. We might fight for decent, evidence-based medicine or responsible therapeutic practices. We ought to show compassion for those children with gender dysphoria while taking note that the activists are exploiting them to advance a cynical, dangerous agenda. We ought to oppose gender ideology in the schools, which is both harmful and broadly unpopular. We ought to defend the rights of women and girls where they are threatened because an America that is no longer safe or fair for them is hardly worth saving at all.
“And no, Gavin Grimm is not an example of the last issue. As a biological female, Grimm posed no threat to the boys in the bathroom. This is not standing on principle. This is turtling: Withdrawing into a shell to declare, Not in my bathroom. Batten down the hatches and wait for the floodwaters to wash away the wicked. Just don’t breach my threshold, my town, my state, my church.
“It’s a defensive posture and a losing strategy. It strikes this deal with the broader culture: We will not attempt to alter or influence you, so long as you do not invade our space. The majority culture is now held hostage by illiberal social-justice warriors who care little about individual liberties. In the end, the authoritarians always liquidate the ghetto.”
A southern California community activated after Rebecca Phillips complained about a naked man in the female locker room when she was showering. At the city council meeting in Santee, California, Brittany Mayer of Rooted Wings said, “This is a war on women…If everyone can be a woman then no one is a woman. If feelings now drive and supersede basic biology then anything goes…The logical conclusion of policies that are catered to ideologies that are not based in any truth is utter and complete chaos.”
In Matthew 7 Jesus told a parable comparing a house built on rock with a house built on sand. Of the house built on sand he said, “And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.” (Matthew 7:27) When we divorce our beliefs and lifestyles from reality, we are building a society on sand. When cultural transformations remove our society from the foundation of objective truth, they make our society unstable to the point that when the storm comes, our society may fall.
But as an eternal optimist I see hope the gender counterrevolution is gaining ground and will prevail. From the east coast to the west coast sparks are flying at city council meetings and school board meetings. Victims of the transgender revolution are gaining courage, taking a stand and speaking out: Riley Gaines, Rebecca Phillips, Chloe Cole, the list goes on. It seems to me the turning point when the tide shifted in favor of the gender counterrevolution was last year when Matt Walsh released his film "What is a Woman?" on Daily Wire.
Transgender supporters like to quote what Jesus said about throwing stones when they confront gender supporters, as if the gender supporters are throwing stones at transgender males when speaking against their attempts to go into private spaces with females. John 8:7 is a very important Bible verse. And if anyone did start throwing stones or threatening physical harm toward a person just because they think they are transgender, Jesus’ words would apply and any Christian should step in to defend them.
But Jesus never told us not to protect women and children. He never told us not to speak against harmful and predatory agendas. In fact, he was protecting a woman from a mob that was trying to harm her when he said not to throw stones. And Jesus made some very serious comments about the importance of protecting children and the level of confrontation that may be called for. As to criticizing the misconduct of others, Jesus criticized the immoral woman he saved from stoning, and told her to stop sinning.
Jesus is calling his church to peacefully, lovingly, and assertively protect women and children. There should always be a stark contrast between loving Christian activism and the hateful activism of LGBT militants who often express genocidal anger against their opponents.
It’s not too late to reverse this madness. In the name of science, conscience, common sense, women’s rights and protecting children, it’s time for a gender counterrevolution.
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I’ll be back next week with news on Chloe Cole, a California woman whose childhood bodily mutilation at the hands of so-called health care providers was made possible by the transgender revolution. And a multi-part series on the gender counterrevolution will follow.
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