The current tangled knot surrounding sex and gender is one of patriarchal reversal and a smug ‘gotcha’ by men and anti-feminist women built on feminist works ‘pre’ and post gender’s entry as a term into feminist theory.
Postmodernism provides the philosophical underpinnings for the post truth-era.
However, the current state of affairs, particularly with regards to feminism, is not the fault of postmodernism alone. Judith Butler coupled postmodernism with queer theory in her impenetrable waffle that is Gender Trouble.
Radical feminism posits that women are oppressed as a class on the basis of their biological sex and presumed reproductive capabilities. This structural oppression of women as a sex-class is known as Patriarchy and is imposed through gender. As Simone de Beauvoir argued in The Second Sex, ‘the division of the sexes is a biological fact, not an event in human history’.
Julie Bindel has reiterated the radical feminist position that ‘Genitals determine our physical, biological sex, and indicates whether we are male or female, not whether we are destined to like pink or blue. No one, medic or otherwise, can ‘determine’ gender because it has no basis in material reality’.
Source: Sex and Social Constructionism – Dr EM (Banned from Medium)