Update (2:42 pm). Thinking about Coleman’s truth bomb recounted in today’s essay Ledecky’s chances in the 800-meter freestyle and against the elite 17-year-old athlete….
If one believes scientific material is the best way to understand the actual world, which I do, and if one knows anything about natural history and physical anthropology, which I do, then one knows that Homo sapiens, and every other mammalian species, are sexual dimorphic, meaning that the female and the male of the species are different across a myriad of attributes, and not just in overlapping distributions. Gender is not a social construct. It is a scientific concept abstracted from empirical generalizations that exist in the real world. When we say that gender is a social construct in the way that, for example, the constituents of mythology are, and therefore is undetermined by the natural world, we are admitting that the concept of gender so understood is also a constituent of mythology.
Gender ideology thus admits it is a neoreligion. And if athletics competition is based on physical bodies moving in physical space-time, then religious systems are the inappropriate frame from which to fashion the rules of competition. Athletic competition is not a religious ritual, however much it might be framed in pomp and circumstance. Athletic competition is an experience of physical mechanics.
It is therefore action to undermine athletic competition by subjecting it to the demands of mythology. If athletics is no longer to adhere to the truth of the natural world, a truth ascertained by the demonstrated epistemological standards of scientific materialism, then athletics is no longer a legitimate activity for those whose lives are reality-based. It becomes—and by this example, I mean no offense to friends and family—professional wrestling or roller derby, which, however physical, has a predetermined outcome that only accident and happenstance may obviate.
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“I will never understand athletes who blame a transgender competitor on their own athletic failures.” —Hailey Davidson, trans identifying male attempting to compete against females in the LPGA Tour.
In the Washington Post yesterday, Doriane Lambelet Coleman (Duke Law School) published an op-ed “Why elite women’s sports need to be based on sex, not gender.” In it, Coleman notes that Katie Ledecky holds the women’s world record in the 800-meter freestyle. Then she drops the truth bomb: twenty-six US boys under 17 years of age have beaten Ledecky’s record. Coleman has made an error, though; sex and gender are synonyms (see Gender and the English Language). What’s the source of the error? Assumptions planted by queer theory and the medical-industrial complex—a religious-like faith and associated ritual that defy common sense and scientific materialism (see Misogyny Resurgent: Atavistic Expressions of a Neoreligion; Sacrificing Equity Upon the Altar of Exclusive Inclusivity; Dignity and Sex-Based Rights; Separating Sex and Gender in Language Works Against Reason and Science).
According to the standard interpretation of scripture, sex and gender are not the same things. A person may be biologically male but identify as a woman, an alchemy that transmute him into a “she”—in Imane Khelif’s case yields gold. We have been told frequently and loudly that the Algerian boxer Khelif is not a “trans woman,” i.e., a man who identifies as a woman, but a “cis woman,” i.e., a woman who identifies as a woman. Why? Because Khelif was born a female and has always been a female. The birth certificate says so. The passport says so. Khelif says so. And he and his attorney will prosecute you if you suggest otherwise (Khelif’s Trainer Told a French Magazine Khelif is Male). All this is a mess and none of it can be sorted out without rejecting, in toto, gender ideology.
The Khelif case is a bit odd in light of long-standing queer scripture, which holds that one is assigned a gender at birth and this assignment is arbitrary—the result of the imposition of gender categories—and mutable—one can throw off the straitjacket these categories represent. However, the scripture has been reinterpreted for Khelif to manage his circumstance. The assumption is not that a cis woman is born female (we know that Khelif is not female), but that a male assigned female at birth may identify as a woman and claim the truth of this identity on the basis of a birth certificate and a passport.
One might argue that gender identification on a birth certificate is cut-and-dry. It’s not. Queer advocates demand the ability to change gender on official documents according to the doctrine of gender self-identification. In the United Kingdom, for example, once a gender recognition certificate is granted, the individual’s gender is recognized for all legal purposes, including changes on official documents such as birth certificates and passports. In Khelif’s case, his gender was misidentified at birth, which might reasonably warrant a document change, and certainly justifies differential regard. In the case of a delusional male, documents may be changed to instantiate a fiction, while for somebody like Khelif documents become sacred writs to sustain one. In either case, because of the assignment, a magical thing happens: the male becomes female—and the IOC is fine with both. (See The IOC’s Portrayal Guidelines—a Real-World Instantiation of Newspeak.)
So which is the social construct? Which is mutable? Sex or gender? For some members of the congregation, sex is a biological reality, whereas gender is a social construct, and the individual is not required to match sex and gender (which admits they’re really synonyms). For others, female is a social construct and anyone can identify as female and therefore be a female. According to doctrine, a mammal can change its sex—and some presumably would if other species had a queer theory. For many churchgoers, adhering to Bob Stoller’s “gender identity” construct (which finds its roots in the madness of Magnus Hirschfeld), gender is innate, and so a woman can be born in a male body. Thus, according to the queer doctrine, which like all religious doctrine internally is contradictory and paradoxical, Khelif may be trans. Confused? Lots of people are. Queer theory is not a rational standpoint. However, the confusion is instrumental and the paradoxes strategic.
Since Khelif is a male identifying as a woman, Khelif a trans identifying person. It works also if we say that Khelif is a woman born in a man’s body. Or we can say that a female can have a Y chromosome, internal testes, achieve male puberty, and produce testosterone in the male range. —All of which are ontologically meaningless, however politically useful, since the categories are arbitrary, thus denying that it matters whether categories are empirical generalization abstracted from concrete facts. For queer activists, that Khelif’s gender was misidentified at birth is entirely beside the point, since such determinations are only arbitrary assignments of socially constructed categories produced and shaped by power.
The paradox at work here: since it is an article of faith that trans women are in fact women, the doctrine negates the existence of trans identifying individuals. That’s one way of looking at it (and one will be accused of “trans genocide” if he looks at it this way). Another is that Khelif is both a cis and a trans woman simultaneously. This is ideal. In his terminal liminality, the boxer becomes the perfect fetish of a neoreligion. And because Khelif is Muslim, he represents an extraordinary perfect fetish about which to organize ritual madness (“Queers for Palestine” and all that). This is why you know very little if anything about the other man who was allowed to punch women in the fact at the Paris games. Remember Lin Yu‑ting of Taiwan? (Lin is resorting the lawfare, as well: “Taiwan to sue IBA over Lin Yu-ting gender claims.”)
How is the madness going in the United States? There are some encouraging signs of sanity, actually. The New York Times reported yesterday that the “Supreme Court, for Now, Blocks Expanded Protections for Transgender Students in Some States.” The Supreme Court’s ruling concerned the Education Department’s rule change intended to protect transgender students from discrimination based on their gender identity in Republican states that had mounted challenges. (Neil Gorsuch’s take on this issue is notoriously bad, especially in light of the federalism and liberalism expressed by his opinions; see, e.g., Our Liberal Supreme Court; The Supreme Court Strikes a Blow Against Institutional Racism; The Supreme Court Affirms the Tyranny of Majorities.) This is an important development because allowing the rule change to take effect validates a manufactured minority group, manufactured because gender identity as defined in the doctrine of queer theory is a thing akin to the thetan (of Scientology lore), that is to say, it’s not actually a thing at all. The attempt to write Reverend Stoller’s crackpot construct into civil rights law and policy is, at least for the moment, frustrated.
Critics of the decision are arguing that the order erases “crucial safeguards for young people.” Cathryn Oakley, senior director of legal policy for the Human Rights Campaign said, “It is disappointing that the Supreme Court has allowed far-right forces to stop the implementation of critical civil rights protections for youth.” By “critical civil rights protections for youth,” Oakley means trans identifying youth. But it is the rule change, if allowed to go into effect, that erases crucial safeguards for young people. Validating gender identity in law and policy is one of the greatest threats to the safety and wellbeing of children and women in the history of the West. Those who care about women’s rights look forward to next summer SCOTUS rulings where the fiction of gender identity may meet its demise in law.
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I want to close with a counterfactual and speculative scenario. Let’s see if this rings true to readers. Russia was effectively banned from the games this year because the West is at war with Russia. But imagine Russia weren’t banned and Imane Khelif had been on the Russian women’s boxing team. What would have been the propaganda frame? Here’s my guess: Putin would be accused of sending to the Games a male with a false passport to compete in the women’s division of boxing to bring home the gold. Not only would Putin and his regime be accused of faking Khelif’s passport, but all of the doctors’ and other expert reports insisting that Khelif was really a woman would be rejected. The West would demand that Khelif undergo a gender test. Putin and his defenders would deny any fraud because Russia is anti-gay. Why would they put forward a trans person? Russia is one of the most LGBTQ unfriendly places in the world. Khelif would refuse the test and the IOC would refuse Khelif’s entry into the Games. The queer community, waving Ukrainian flags, would back the IOC all the way.
freedom and reason 