On ‘Gender,’ the Left Is Shooting Itself in the Foot

Rarely have the special accommodations demanded by one group been so deleterious for others.

Gender ideologues are notorious for word games and language manipulation. When it suits them, the word “gender” is used as a synonym for “sex.” At other times, and depending on the context, gender is taken to refer to roles and behaviors stereotypically associated with being male or female. And, when all else fails, gender is interpreted as an ethereal inner essence, like a soul, that cannot be directly observed or studied, but must be taken at face value as real and only knowable from a first-person perspective. Together, these inconsistent, overlapping definitions are used by gender ideologists to resist being pinned down, to evade addressing logical contradictions, and to dismiss material reality.

What makes the gender subterfuge so effective is that gender is simultaneously cast as separate from and synonymous with sex. When seen as separate, it’s argued that a person’s gender expression—stereotypical behaviors and preferences associated with being male or female—can only be arrived at by a conscious individual sometime after birth. But as “gender” is also used as a surrogate for “sex,” an inability to pin down a person’s chosen gender expression immediately upon emerging from the womb is used to argue that biological sex itself cannot be determined at birth (let alone in utero!). Instead, gender ideologues insist that doctors simply “assign” a gender and/or sex to infants, where there is again endless equivocation between sexual anatomy and social roles.

All of this would amount to little more than bizarre navel gazing was it not for the fact that gender ideology, when allowed to influence policy, has significant negative impacts on women, gays, lesbians, children, free speech, freedom of religion, and democratic rights.

The Democratic Party, The Green Party, Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, La Leche League, the National Organization for Women, the British Labour Party, Unitarian Universalists, the mainstream media, Democracy Now, practically every university, many local school districts, and nearly every socialist group have joined the gender religion. When the dam breaks and people realize the fraud being perpetrated by gender ideology, it is toward these organizations that popular anger will be directed.

People are free to disbelieve Catholicism, Islam, Judaism, astrology, and any number of other belief systems. No one claims that this “denies the existence” of Catholics, Muslims, Jews, or astrologists. But gender ideologists insist that failure to adhere to their ideology is to deny their very existence. This overreach is manipulative and undemocratic.

None of this is progressive, let alone revolutionary.

If the left doesn’t get itself sorted out on this issue—and quickly—the right will opportunistically step in to pose as the guardians of reason and civil liberties. This has already begun. Absent left-aligned forces willing to stand up for women, gays, lesbians and children on this issue, traditionally conservative law firms, politicians, and media personalities have begun to fill the void.

As always, there is a heavy price to be paid when the left finds itself on the wrong side of a major issue—lining up, as it were, on the wrong side of the barricades. That price is paid not only by those organizations and individuals who fail as leaders, but by the many average people who suffer directly and indirectly from that misleadership.

The alarm clock is ringing. It’s time to wake up!

Source: On ‘Gender,’ the Left Is Shooting Itself in the Foot

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