Imperfect Alliances: The Sex and Gender Wars

A TERF, a Trad, an Enby and a Trans Woman walk into a conference...

Below is an imagined conversation on sex and gender between four very different feminists and me. Each character is inspired by an individual, but the views they present are an amalgam of multiple related positions. I’m planning to follow this up with some additional posts that explain my view of sex and gender with more precision. In the meantime enjoy, and please vote for your favorite feminist in the comments!

RATIONALIST REGAN

Welcome to the 2023 Culture Wars Convention and thanks for joining our Angry Internet Feminist panel! With us today are esteemed guests Trad-Feminist Louise, Trans Woman Natalie, TERF Sheila and Non-Binary Judith. I think we’ll have A LOT to discuss.

(to the panel)

So, let’s start with something none of you will agree on. How do you think about gender? 

TERF SHEILA

Well, the first thing I’d say about gender is that we ought to be focusing on sex instead. It is imperative that we continue the project of female liberation!

NON-BINARY JUDITH

Excuse me Sheila, but the idea that you can discuss sex without recognizing the ubiquity and power with which gendered acts govern our ability to interpret reality, including our perception of corporeal sexual differentials is painfully naive.

RATIONALIST REGAN

Judith, I see that your famed clarity in writing is mirrored on stage as well. Can you translate that for those in the audience that might not be steeped in queer theory?

NON-BINARY JUDITH

Sheila’s sex essentialism mistakenly views socially constructed gender as inevitable. Gender is not biologically determined. Normative gender categories are continuously constructed through our speech and actions.

TERF SHEILA

GENDER is not biologically determined but SEX IS! The role of feminism is to OPPOSE gender norms, which mainly consist of male sexist ideas about women, in order to liberate the female sex! Feminism is for females!

NON-BINARY JUDITH

Defining women by their biology is a tool of patriarchal essentialists.

RATIONALIST REGAN

Sheila, we’ll get back to you. Judith, what exactly do you mean when you say gender categories are continuously constructed?

NON-BINARY JUDITH

Gender assignment is an ongoing process that begins at birth - it is both imposed by others and enacted by the individual. Rather than gendered behavior being an expression of identity, the performance of gender creates gender identity and reinforces gendered categories by referencing, consciously or not, conventional understandings of gender. 

   TRANS WOMAN NATALIE

Judith, I reject your claim that gender identity is necessarily created rather than inherent. While that may be true for you and me, plenty of trans people feel that they’ve always been the gender they transitioned to. For them, gender identity amounts to more than how people treat them and how they behave, it is core to who they are. 

NON-BINARY JUDITH

Natalie, I see trans people’s self-identification as a brave refusal to accept the oppressive gender categorization that was assigned to them. Rigid categories only serve to constrain our imagined self, but we can choose to subvert these categories by problematizing gendered norms. That’s why I’ve rejected the binary entirely… 

TRANS WOMAN NATALIE

But being trans is generally NOT a choice. Your theory potentially undermines activist efforts to make trans healthcare affordable and widely available. Not everyone has access to or can afford to transition like I have.

TERF SHEILA

Both of you are talking nonsense! Gender forms the foundation of the political system of male domination. We don’t need to “problematize” it, we need to abolish it. Anyways, Natalie… if being a woman is a matter of self-identification why did you even feel the need to transition? Your desire to “pass” just leads you to uncritically reproduce oppressive notions of femininity.

TRANS WOMAN NATALIE

To the degree that I seek to “pass” as a trans woman, I do so to limit my dysphoria and because I get treated better by others, not because I need the affirmation of cis-people to “truly” be a woman. And if oppressive beauty standards are the issue then why aren’t you complaining about all the hyper-femme presenting cis-women?

TERF SHEILA

Natalie, I recognize that many non-trans women also reproduce oppressive notions of femininity. But the feminist project is for social, political and economic equality for the female sex, regardless of how they present or conceptualize their gender. Trans ideology convinces women who don’t fit sexist stereotypes to understand that mismatch, not as a symptom of living under patriarchy, but as a symptom of them being men. This is homophobia and internalized misogyny plain and simple. And it’s leading to the disappearance of The Butch Lesbian… just look what happened to Judith!

NON-BINARY JUDITH

Who gave you the right to define feminism and police my gender identity, Sheila?

TRANS WOMAN NATALIE

She’s so melodramatic. There’s no trans menace coming to get all the lesbians, Sheila. I’m a lesbian!

TERF SHEILA

Judith, while I agree that gender is constructed, the subjugation of women as a class is inseparable from the patriarchal desire to control our reproductive power. What we need to prioritize is protecting hard-won female spaces from incursions by men regardless of how successfully these autogynephiles impersonate women!

TRANS NATALAIE

I can’t believe we’re into the AGP discourse already. Listen Sheila, if some trans women identify as AGP that’s fine. But that “paraphilia” does not describe the majority of trans women’s experience. Also, what about cis-women that can’t reproduce?

TERF SHEILA

How men in dresses, who’ve experienced none of the subjugation that is defining of womanhood, came to be the central focus of the “women’s movement” is beyond me…

TRAD-FEMINIST LOUISE

As usual, these feminists miss the point entirely and mischaracterize the desires of the class they claim to represent. Sheila, most women are not overly focused on the need to protect women’s only spaces. Most women want to cooperate productively and form families with men. As for Judith and Natalie, sex differences are real regardless of what word games you want to play with “gender”.

TERF SHEILA

Louise, we’re not just talking about women's bookstores here. How about women’s prisons, how about MALE PERSONS who’ve been convicted of SEXUAL ASSAULT against FEMALE PERSONS who have a PENIS being allowed to serve at a WOMEN’s prison because they’ve decided to self-ID as a WOMAN. The need to nurse these male delusions is now apparently so great that it’s worth putting the most vulnerable women in our society at undue physical risk.

TRANS WOMAN NATALIE

Transphobic feminists like Sheila always disguise their aggression with this sort of victim narrative.

TERF SHEILA

Then how do you explain the rapid rise in female patients at trans healthcare clinics around the globe? The medical validation of the socially contagious phenomenon of Rapid-Onset-Gender-Dysphoria is doing irreversible damage to young girls.

NON-BINARY JUDITH

Sheila, how is your denial of trans men’s identities in any way liberatory. Everyone should be free to determine the course of their gendered life. Increased trans visibility explains the increase in trans-identifying youth, no conspiracy needed!

A wild-eyed Gordon Peterson enters from stage left.

GORDON PETERSON

Judith’s position is one of pure chaos! SHE seeks to compel speech in order to destroy the most fundamental categories we have, male and female. By forcing people to pretend there is no reality to sex and gender these ideologues open the door to questioning the very values that produced the unbelievable accomplishment that is Western society and I’m NOT having it. At least Natalie has the decency to try to LOOK female before demanding that we call her by her chosen pronouns. After all, gender identity is not something we get to unilaterally define, it’s negotiated with those around us. 

RATIONALIST REGAN

How did you get on stage?! Maybe you’d have been invited if this was 2018, but… security, please remove him. 

Security guards haul Gordon off stage by force.   

GORDON PETERSON

(still lecturing)

Thus… the dragon of chaos must be slayed lest the devouring mother consume the entire world! This is just the first front of the world-devastating ideology of the post-modern-neo-marxists who gave us “toxic-masculinity” that wretched phrase…

TRANS WOMAN NATALIE

Ok Daddy, maybe you should focus on destroying the dragon of chaos that is your benzo addiction rather than misgendering trans people on twitter.

NON-BINARY JUDITH

Sorry Natalie, he’s too busy crying about the “end of men” and radicalizing preteens online.

TRAD-FEMINIST LOUISE

Gordon has a point though. Women and men want visions of femininity and masculinity that they can aspire to. 

TERF SHEILA

No, Louise. Women and men want the freedom to exist as they are, without undue pressure from rigid gendered expectations.

TRAD-FEMINIST LOUISE

No! People, especially women, don’t want unending freedoms! The sexual revolution granted women the appearance of freedom but has been the opposite of liberatory. Women are by nature more agreeable and lower in socio-sexuality than men. The rise of hook-up culture and an ethos of “anything goes” so long as it’s consensual has changed men’s expectations - expectations that agreeable women feel pressured to meet. With absolutely no leverage on the dating market, this has left women having sex they’d rather not. 

TRANS WOMAN NATALIE

As usual conservatives seek to control and regulate women’s bodies, excusing their authoritative aims with the patronizing excuse that they’re “protecting” women.

TRAD-FEMINIST LOUISE

Natalie, your critique fails to make contact with reality. The anti-motherhood, pro girl-boss message of mainstream contemporary feminism has left women ashamed to embrace what they truly desire, ultimately leaving them unfulfilled. Despite messaging to the contrary, most women yearn for a committed monogamous partnership and children. 

TRANS WOMAN NATALIE

Louise, you’re arguing on the basis of false consciousness which is exactly the same argument that you oppose from the other side: that women don’t really want to stay home with their kids. At the end of the day we have to take what women say they want at face value.

RATIONALIST REGAN

I have to agree with Natalie. Women are capable of defining what a fulfilling life means to them  and making their own choices about how to achieve it.

TRAD-FEMINIST LOUISE

What I care about is the degree to which women can actually choose a fulfilling life, not the degree to which they technically can. When women exist in a society which is bombarding them with messages that if they prioritize family they’re letting not only themselves but the broader feminist cause down they’re not meaningfully free.

TRANS WOMAN NATALIE

Comparing the soft-social pressure to have a career and date around to what women face under purity cultures is a false equivalence! Maybe we’ve overcorrected but going back to enforcing traditional values by ruthlessly shaming women should not be on the table.

TRAD-FEMINIST LOUISE

Well what about simply returning to the truth that being a mother is a sacred, pro-social role that deserves to be celebrated? And anyways, shame isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I’d rather see shame used to enforce norms that lead to a functional social order than ones that leave us atomized and on the brink of cultural collapse. 

TERF SHEILA

Louise, it’s ALWAYS women who bear the brunt of blame and shame in societies that enforce traditional gender norms. While I can agree that sex differences exist at the means, there’s huge variance within each sex. We need to make room for the many women and men who don’t conform to traditional gender norms.

TRAD-FEMINIST LOUISE

I’m not discounting individual variance, but norms should serve the average, not the exceptions. The belief, despite all evidence to the contrary, that sex differences are so minor as to be unimportant and that gender is totally independent from sex has only created confusion. 

RATIONALIST REGAN

Well, I think we’ve heard your message about sex Louise, but I don’t think anyone other than Judith has even attempted to explain gender.

TRAD-FEMINIST LOUISE

Judith can’t adequately explain gender because she won’t recognize the reality of sex. All she can do is confuse and “subvert” it.

RATIONALIST REGAN

Well, to be clear, I agree that sex is “real” and that gender is strongly related to sex. Sex is a biological construct whose categories are currently defined based on genes and the presence of primary and secondary sexual characteristics. While there are people who don’t clearly fit either side of the sex binary, the vast majority can be easily classified as either male or female. And yes, on average people classified as male have differences across a range of characteristics vs. people classified as female, most uncontroversially in terms of physical strength and size but also in some personality characteristics.

TRAD-FEMINIST LOUISE

Sex is not a “construct”, it’s been understood for all of known history and exists in basically every species!

RATIONALIST REGAN

To clarify, when I said construct I didn’t mean to imply that sex is an unstable or culturally contingent category - if we compared how we would categorize some population of people by sex now vs. thousands of years ago we’d surely overlap almost entirely. That said, the specific characteristics which define sex have shifted over time, after all we didn’t even know about chromosomes until the late 1800s.

NON-BINARY JUDITH

The idea that we can look at average personality differences and assume they’re “biologically determined” is ridiculous! We live in a patriarchal society that instructs and enforces the very patterns found in the “empirical evidence”.  

TRAD-FEMINIST LOUISE

Judith, your ability to doubt sex differences is truly remarkable. Have you ever interacted with humans?? Or do you only spend time with queer-feminists who’ve selected into that field specifically because they’re NOT representative of most women.

RATIONALIST REGAN

I tend to agree with you both here. It seems likely that there are average sex differences in personality which are in many cases reinforced and exaggerated by gender norms.

TRAD-FEMINIST LOUISE

But gender doesn’t exist without sex! 

RATIONALIST REGAN

I don’t think gender is independent of sex but I also don’t think it’s identical to it. I agree with Judith, Natalie and Sheila that gender is a social construction, but it’s one that’s built on top of, and is constrained by, sex differences. 

TRAD-FEMINIST LOUISE

If gender is constrained by sex differences and sex is biological then in what sense is gender a social construction?

RATIONALIST REGAN

Well, analogous to sex there’s a large set of non-biological characteristics and behaviors that we associate with each gender, most of which are neither necessary nor sufficient to categorize someone. But, unlike sex, that set of characteristics is not explicitly defined and is much more dependent on social and cultural context as well as your personal understanding of gender. If an individual has a large enough subset of the characteristics we associate with that gender we’ll classify them as such. But which characteristics we think are the most important vary significantly. For instance, Judith and Natalie feel that self-identification should override everything else, while Louise thinks sex determines gender.

TRAD-FEMINIST LOUISE

Yes, because sex as separate from gender wasn’t even conceived of until the 1950s.

NON-BINARY JUDITH

Louise, there have always been people that didn’t fit into arbitrary binary categories, for example two-spirited people in indigenous American societies. What’s relatively new is the Western insistence that they must!

RATIONALIST REGAN

Still, in our culture the idea that you can separate sex and gender was only popularized in recent decades. But either way, just because it’s relatively new doesn’t mean it’s not helpful. There are some areas of life where sex is the more relevant categorization, like in medicine, and some where gender is, like in exclusionary social settings such as a women's book club, and some where it’s unclear, like women’s sports.

TERF SHEILA

There is NO lack of clarity on sports and I don’t want penises in my book club either!

TRANS WOMAN NATALIE

As expected, Sheila’s concern for the safety of female prisoners was a cover for her much broader trans-exclusionary project.

RATIONALIST REGAN

Sheila, I don’t share your level of concern around protecting most female spaces. But I agree that questions around trans women in prisons, the most ethical approach to treating transgender youth and the best way to integrate trans women into sports don’t have easy answers. People should be able to engage in nuanced discussion of these issues without being immediately tarred as transphobic. 

TRANS WOMAN NATALIE

Sure Regan, I agree that people should be able to discuss those issues, but I tend to lean to the side of accommodating trans people whenever possible. And you have to admit that what some people call “nuanced honest discussion” is actually just trans erasure. 

RATIONALIST REGAN

Natalie, I agree that we should accommodate and respect trans people. But gender is loosely defined and clearly people have different conceptions of what it means. We can’t force, or even expect, everyone to agree that gender is determined by self-identification. You have to make the case that your conception of gender is better or more useful and then convince people to adopt it.

TERF SHEILA

Louise, I fundamentally oppose your heteropatriarchal vision of the world, but at least you have a handle on the reality of sex. If we can’t recognize women as a class, feminists have no chance of successfully fighting for the end of female oppression. 

TRAD-FEMINIST LOUISE

Agreed, I’ll abide your anti-family lifestyle so long as we agree that women can’t become men and vice versa. 

TRANS WOMAN NATALIE

Judith, while I think a surface reading of your theory could be used to oppose some of the demands of trans activists, we need to unite against those who refuse to recognize our right to exist.

NON-BINARY JUDITH

Agreed, Natalie. We need to give people more freedom to create themselves, not police the category of women. 

RATIONALIST REGAN

Well, I guess that’s how imperfect alliances are formed in the sex and gender wars.

Until next time! Huge thanks to Marc Andelman for extensive help with editing and to Vaishnav Sunil for our many hours of productive discussion on sex and gender :)