If a new Swedish bill becomes law, individuals will be able to self-identify as the opposite sex without any surgical or hormonal interventions.
The new definition being pushed via gender identity legislation turns everything around. Sex is no longer about reproductive function, but is an identity. This does not, however, mean that it is regarded as a free choice: according to certain physicians and trans activists, gender identity is an “essence” that exists separately from socialization processes and the body.
Few of us would deny the existence of children who truly feel like they belong to the opposite sex, or the cruelty of growing up in a society where deviance from the gender norms can be severely punished.
But our modern response to children stepping outside of gender roles raises several questions. Is it ethical to surgically modify children’s bodies when they are not old enough to understand the lifelong consequences? If seven per cent of boys now are “naturally effeminate,” is this then not a natural part of what it means to be a male? Why the rush to remove them from malehood, if this is the case? And does this ultra-progressive attitude not entrench a very conservative idea of sex?
While, in the past, we removed dresses from children with penises, we now remove the penis from children with dresses. The bottom line remains the same: children with penises must not wear dresses. This is not a liberation from biologism, but rather the opposite.
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