If there is one thing that gender-critical or anti-trans people do not understand, it is biology.
If there is one thing that they and the anti-woke culture-warriors need, it is what they fight against. Race, colonialism, patriarchy.
Without these, all the above have no cause, and yet simultaneously they do not understand them at all.
Nothing grates more – daily in current times – than journalists, politicians, social media opinionates, sounding off about ‘biological males’ and ‘biological females’. These terms are repeated without critical thought, on the assumption that of course we all know they represent a self-evident truth. Search ‘biology’ in the search bar of this blog and you can read a few reasons why that is not the case, with links elsewhere too. Yes, there are two overlapping Gaussian distributions for a number of sex traits in biology – and there is not one trait but many. Even chromosomes, hormones, gene expression, organ sizes and so on are not strictly binary. Personality and sense of identity follow a similar pattern. For any particular trait it might look like this, with a greater or lesser overlap:
All of these are biological traits.
Observation or examination?
Yes, we look at people in the street and by and large we form quick opinions (not always) of a person’s gender. Yes, gender – not sex. Because we are looking at shapes, faces, clothes, presentation – in other words, outward appearance. When we talk about sex assigned at birth, we look at outward appearance of the baby’s body, and at birth this relates mainly to penis size. 1 in 200 live births present ambiguity, so what seems like clear observation of a single sex trait is not as clear as most would believe.
So, given the complexity of a number of sex traits that land individual humans near the middle of each of those overlapping Gaussian distributions, describing sex as a patently obvious binary is problematic to say the least. What about examination? We know for certain from our street observation, that further examination, like actually asking the person – not undressing them, please – would prove us wrong in a fair few cases. And why do we want to examine each other in this way, unless of course to disrespect them? Should we all have to carry gender certificates, so that the butch dyke in the women’s loos doesn’ have to strip off as proof when challenged?
A lot of us humans fall into the two broad sex categories and are happy to recognise clear opposites. Quite a lot fall in love with another from the other category and many of these thus reproduce. Many do not either reproduce – some because biologically they cannot – or do not fall in love with opposites. These days we are enlightened enough in most countries (though far from all) to accept that sexuality is innate. In other words, we accept there is some biology of sexuality that we cannot change.
What is biology?
Some gender critical folk like dictionary definitions (goodness knows why, since language is so fickle) with ‘woman: adult human female’ (seriously? without then defining adult, human and female in non-circular ways?). So what about biological male / female? Biology is just the study of living things. If you study sex traits there is no way you easily come out with simple things like ‘biological male’. I mean, does that term embrace other traits like sexuality and fertility, like personality and presentation, like sense of self and identity – and if not why not? Which bit of any of us is not, ultimately, biologically defined?
In the spirit of hashtags, I wish to tag myself as #biologicaltrans since that has no more or less meaning than those other hashtags. I am a living thing, and the traits I have regarding my body, my mind, my sexuality, my prenatal development, as well as my chromosomes (whatever they tell, because I have never had them tested) are contained within this organism that I call ‘me’. That and nothing else. I am not trans by socialisation, by choice, by persuasion or by behaviour. Therefore I am #biologicaltrans.
I very seriously propose that we all start using the terms: biological cis, biological trans, biological non-binary, if only to dissolve the ignorance of biological male / female and stop it being weaponised as something ‘don’t-you-dare-refute’ against trans and non-binary people.
I am also very well aware that much of this is not seriously about biology and variance at all – it’s about politics and power, distraction and ideology. But at least let’s point out the #biologicalstupid.