A few days ago I wrote a piece here, criticising some of the material used by the Safe Schools Coalition to ‘educate’ children on gender. In that piece, I spelled out some of the problematic thinking which lies behind a particular piece of resource material.
Included
in the Safe Schools Coalition ‘resources’ section is a video; ‘What are Pronouns?’ which stated intention is “to help young people understand the importance of respecting the pronouns used by your transgender and gender diverse friends.”
The video by ‘Minus18’ films one of its young gender diverse participants stating that “one of the biggest mistakes people make… it’s a pretty easy assumption to make, but genitals and body don’t reflect anything about a person’s gender at all.”
This statement represents one of the key claims of radical gender theory, and as the young person states “it’s a pretty easy assumption to make…” They are absolutely right. Many of us assume a strong connection between the body and gender, if not an almost complete convergence.
Yet here lies one of the contradictions in radical gender theory:
If we believe that there is no connection between the body and gender, then how do trans-gender theorists explain the urge of people to change the appearance of their body in order to match their identified gender… which has nothing to do with their body?
What’s more, if gender has nothing to do with the body, then why do we need hormone blockers and gender reassignment surgery at all? A boy can identify as a girl without resorting to invasive treatment or even wearing a dress to school?
Isn’t the drive to change one’s body to match a different, preconceived image simply falling into the mental condition of gender dysphoria? More sinisterly, how is changing the body not simply a new form a chauvinism that feminists have been challenging and trying to expose for decades?
Photo by shimmishimmi 