Gender Daze: Just Say Sex
Simone de Beauvoir's "The Second Sex" demonstrates that sex's dual grounding in the natural and social realms gives it far greater conceptual power than the untethered notion of gender.
Until a few decades ago, gender only existed in grammar books. As we learned back in primary school, many languages have nouns and pronouns—but not people—that possess genders. To the disappointment of those who claim there are only two genders, the Indo-European language group often features three. In some languages, there are upwards of 20 genders. Often, a noun’s gender is considered masculine or feminine, but not always. For example, Danish has two genders: common and neuter. Hungarian is one of several genderless languages; the same pronoun is used for both males and females.
Like human cultures, our languages showcase abundant variety but are always tethered to limits. Their surface structures may vary, but one essential aspect of all human languages is the distinction between nouns and verbs.
Substituting “sex” in favor of “gender” is now common in the English language, although some traditionalists still insist on using "sex." But since these two words are not synonyms, this trickster of a word “gender” dazes and confuses all discussions of sex. Perhaps another motivation is a lingering Puritan discomfort with sex’s aura of chaotic creativity? Swapping "gender" for "sex" places a sterile linguistic shroud over the churning abyss of sexual power.
This sex squeamishness certainly motivates many parents to refuse to throw sex reveal parties after a doctor discerns their child’s genitals with an ultrasound scan. Even within the illogic of gender ideology, which holds that people are free agents in choosing their “gender,” there can be no question of an unborn fetus announcing any such decision in utero. One kick for a boy, two kicks for a girl? The tension created by the close proximity of the words “sex,” “reveal,” and “child” is discomforting to many. Gender acts as the unborn baby’s modesty screen.
A possible non-grammatical definition of gender could be the extension of aspects of sex beyond obvious biological attributes. Put another way, gender is the surface appearance projected by the internal essence of sex. But in practice, this is not the limit of its use. In many realms, the word "sex" is totally banned from any discussion of men and women. This shift serves to sever the concepts of male and female from nature, biology, and essence, relegating them to the gulag of the social.
In contrast, with race, there is no distinction between its biological and cultural aspects. When forensic anthropologists study ancient skeletal remains, they can determine the deceased human’s biological race and sex. But why, when social scientists discuss how humans move through society, is the word "race" maintained while "sex" is switched to "gender"?
A baby step towards resisting genderism is to just say "sex" and relegate the word "gender" back to the dustbin of grammar books. As of today, there are no laws forcing anyone to use the word "gender" outside of its traditional grammatical context.
Cosmopolitans versus Nationalists: The Rise of Sexual Open Borders.
As the name suggests, feminism was initially a form of sexual nationalism. Women, motivated by perceived oppression, gathered together in a kind of victim-parochialism, united in resistance to patriarchal oppression. The goal was the promotion of group interests, such as acquiring the right to vote for women. As is typical of all nationalist-style groupings, feminists deployed an incisive Us/Them array: women were the in-group victims, while men served as out-group oppressors. Feminists highlighted their sexual distinctiveness to achieve what they judged to be political victories.
This style of explicit Us/Them politics is typical of the widely despised petty bourgeois social strata and is often associated with the political right. In fact, many early feminists sold their project as a way to advance elite interests by doubling the rich’s voting power. These wealthy women were banking on chauvinistic proles never allowing their women to go to the ballot box.
Over time, tensions rose as a left-leaning intelligentsia slowly infiltrated the feminist movement. Trained in academia, this new generation’s political instincts were cosmopolitan. While nationalists seek to highlight differences, cosmopolitans seek to emphasize indistinctiveness. To a cosmopolitan, at least on paper, we are all one. For feminism, this results in an incoherent form of sexual open borders. But just as a nation cannot survive without borders, how can feminism survive if there is no distinction between men and women? At some point, why not just label it humanism and be done with sex and all its messiness?
In a case of ideological strange bedfellows, cosmopolitan feminists found — perhaps unconsciously — an ally in Christian doctrine. As a universalist religion, Christianity's mission statement is to dissolve human multiplicity into an atomized mass, united yet indistinct in their worship of Christ.
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:28, ESV).
In the Christian-inspired cosmopolitan worldview, progress is achieved first and foremost through the universal identification of each individual with humanity as a whole, while shedding in the process their national, racial, sexual, or social class particularities.
As much as any movement claims to be universal, strife always develops and enemies inevitably appear on the horizon to attack. Cosmopolitan feminists have aimed their ideological guns at the “TERF” (Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist) menace, who, as it turns out, are simply feminists who prefer sexual nationalism, advocating for distinct boundaries between the sexes. Another, much more ominous enemy of cosmopolitan feminism has emerged over the past decade. Voting patterns indicate that rank-and-file women in the Western world are increasingly rejecting both sexual and national cosmopolitanism.
How did feminism reach the point where it seeks to deny the very purpose of its existence by turning against so much of its natural female base?
Nature vs. Nurture: Biological Determinism vs. Social Constructionism
Despite genderist dogma to the contrary, sexual differentiation exists not only in humanity but throughout the natural world. The only way for idealists to escape this conundrum is to claim that humans are post-natural and no longer subject to instincts and human nature. However, the idea that humans have surpassed the stage of natural instincts has yet to be reported in any scientific journals. What is true is that our natural instincts, developed in part during our long evolutionary history as hunter-gatherers, do not always align well with the cultural demands of civilization.
Sexual dimorphism occurs when males and females of the same species display biological distinctions beyond genital differences. In humans, men on average have larger bodies, possess greater muscle mass, exhibit unique cranial features, have lower pitched voices, and display higher levels of aggression. Only women have the capacity for pregnancy, breastfeeding, and menstruation.
In addition to men being exclusively susceptible to prostate cancer and women to cervical cancer, there are profound medical differences between the sexes.
Imaging has found anatomical and volume differences in the brains of women and men, but these differences do not reveal any functional differences between the sexes. Heart and kidney diseases present differently in women and men. Although twice as many women as men report stress-related diseases, few studies are designed to explore mechanisms that highlight both similarities and difference between the sexes.
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The two sexes are differentiated as females, who have ovaries and produce eggs, and males, who have testes and produce sperm. In mammals, females typically have XX chromosomes and males typically have XY chromosomes. All sex differences in the zygote, or fertilized egg, stem from harboring two different sex chromosomes. Both sexes have all classes of reproductive hormones such as estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone, albeit at different levels.
Biological determinism posits that all human characteristics, both physical and mental, are determined by natural and hereditary factors. At the opposite extreme, social constructionism contends that genetics and nature are irrelevant, asserting instead that all human characteristics are shaped by environmental and social conditions.
Heated political environments lure partisans into purity spirals that push them towards one end or the other of the nature/nurture binary. At one extreme, there is no free will, and our fates are believed to be determined solely by the way our mother's and father's DNA intertwine into spirals at conception. At the other extreme lies the blank slate hypothesis, which denies the existence of any inherent human nature and posits that genes play no role in shaping our futures.
This debate exemplifies the dangers of binary oppositional thinking. A third, more dialectical hypothesis suggests that nature and nurture interact in complex ways to shape the trajectory of our lives.
The sheer diversity of human societies cannot be fully explained by genes alone. However, there are universal aspects and certain limits that apply to all human societies. Among the most prominent universals is dichotomous thinking, characterized by the use of binary opposites such as light/dark, man/woman, hot/cold, and nature/nurture. Additionally, tools, myths, concepts of luck, ethnocentrism, vengeance, families, and fear of snakes are other examples of universal aspects found in every human society.
Using the mythical metaphor of the half-man, half-horse centaur, the 20th-century Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset offers a more nuanced explanation of humanity's relationship with nature:
Man's being is made of such strange stuff as to be partly akin to nature and partly not, at once natural and extra-natural, a kind of ontological centaur, half immersed in nature, half transcending it.
Like the mythical centaur, the word "sex" is anchored but not entirely determined by nature. This interplay between the physical and conceptual imbues it with a deeper significance than the ambiguous and ever-changing term "gender." However, even with this more stable foundation, there are areas of contention regarding sex. Asserting that there are only two sexes is not entirely accurate. Some individuals are born intersex, with reproductive anatomies that do not strictly align with typical male or female characteristics. There are various categories of intersexuality, and some individuals in these categories can conceive and bear children, yet they do not comfortably fit into conventional female categorizations. This complicates the assertion that only women can experience pregnancy, which varies depending on how intersex individuals are socially categorized. Despite these complexities, the concept of sex, rooted in biology, facilitates more focused discussions and rational conclusions than the elusive concept of gender ever will
The use of the term gender suggests a liberation from biological and genetic constraints. However, this freedom from nature is often perceived as selective. For instance, it is uncontroversial to acknowledge that men are incarcerated at a rate nineteen times higher than women, attributed to an innate tendency towards aggression among males. Rarely are these disproportionate male imprisonment rates attributed to the misandry of a small group of dominant matriarchs.
Nor is it unreasonable to assert: one is not born a criminal, but becomes one. Innate male aggression can be amplified and weaponized by a dysfunctional environment. Nature and nurture are not mutually exclusive; rather, they intertwine and mutually influence each other. Was it the genetic predisposition of a violent father, or the traumatic environment he fostered, that contributed to shaping the criminal his son became? Perhaps it was both. Male nature undoubtedly plays a role, as evidenced by the fact that girls raised in similarly harsh conditions exhibit lower rates of criminal behavior compared to boys.
However, a lifetime of prison is not biologically or socially predetermined for such boys. Many young men are born into and raised by violent fathers yet manage to lead productive and peaceful lives. Neither strict biological determinism nor pure social constructionism adequately explains human society, which is a complex waltz between nature and nurture.
The Second Sex
Simone de Beauvoir’s feminist classic “The Second Sex” extensively discusses the biological differences between males and females without once mentioning the concept of gender. She underscores that before puberty, aside from their genitals, girls and boys are similar in both mind and body. Implicitly, de Beauvoir acknowledges the clear biological distinctions between men and women that emerge after puberty. Despite the seemingly straightforward nature of this observation, in certain genderist circles today, such divergence from genderist dogma places de Beauvoir in the reviled TERF category.
The genderists cloak their ideology in the notion that humans are born as blank slates upon which society imprints the characteristics of adulthood. The concept of the blank slate (tabula rasa in Latin) has a long history. Aristotle was the first to propose that humans are born without innate knowledge.
Motivated by a desire to emphasize free will and human agency, the 17th-century English philosopher John Locke revived the concept of the blank slate. He argued that humans are born into the world without pre-existing knowledge or predispositions, and instead acquire all desires and knowledge through sensory perception of the natural and social environment. Locke acknowledged the role of heredity but maintained that humans are not born with innate instincts, characteristics, or tendencies.
During the 20th century, Locke's concept of the blank slate was appropriated and exaggerated by social engineers. From the communist Soviet Union to fascist Germany, and through consumerist America, ideologists pushed the limits of human nature. For instance, the American tobacco industry, supported by the notorious propaganda expert Edward Bernays, launched the successful "Torches of Freedom" advertising campaign, which briefly persuaded women that puffing on cancer sticks would empower them to challenge patriarchy.
While these experiments often succeeded in influencing human behavior, they never completely altered humanity. Limits were inevitably reached, and human nature reasserted itself. This is evident today in the backlash against genderist ideology.
One infamous sentence that de Beauvoir wrote, "one is not born, but becomes a woman," initially conveys a blank slate perspective, which is why it is frequently appropriated by genderists who assert that de Beauvoir anticipated their views.
Taken out of context, the phrase does superficially align with genderist ideology. The idea that one becomes a woman only after birth can be seen as a rejection of biological determinism and genetics. If womanhood is perceived as a social construct, then theoretically any individual could undergo this process of social construction.
No, that interpretation is refuted just a few paragraphs later as de Beauvoir uses similar phrasing regarding human intelligence: "one is not born, but becomes a genius." It would be incorrect to suggest that de Beauvoir is asserting that any individual can achieve genius status simply by society labeling them as such.
No. What de Beauvoir is emphasizing is that those born with the inherent intellectual potential do not automatically become geniuses solely based on their biological gifts. Innate intelligence is indeed a necessary foundation, but it alone is insufficient. Every potential Einstein relies on society to help them realize their intellectual potential through education and social interaction. It takes a collective effort—a village—to cultivate a bright child into the recognized social role of a genius or public intellectual. This model underscores that without adequate social nurturing and educational support, individuals with remarkable cognitive abilities may not fulfill their potential, much like how talented athletes require proper coaching to excel in sports.
Exactly, de Beauvoir is not suggesting that individuals with average intellectual abilities should be labeled as geniuses, despite the unfortunate tendency to do so in contemporary American culture. Similarly, de Beauvoir argues that only females are born with the biological potential to fulfill the social role of "human females." However, it is through social influence and cultural norms that this biological potential is shaped into the specific roles that women are expected to fulfill in different societies. De Beauvoir's central point is that these societal roles imposed on women are not inherently essential or natural; they are socially constructed and can vary significantly across different cultures and historical contexts. Thus, she challenges the notion of essentialism in defining sex roles, emphasizing instead the role of social and cultural influences in shaping human identities and behaviors.
There are nearly as many different social roles for women as there are societies. Yet, one universal aspect that most societies incorporate into their concept of womanhood is the biological reality of childbirth. Societies that idealistically ignore the necessity of a viable mode of reproduction risk obsolescence in the face of genetic realities. Many Western feminists have an ideological stance that undervalues women's centrality in the reproductive process. This position leaves many prosperous nations in the 21st century vulnerable to being supplanted by cultures that prioritize childbearing over consumerism.
De Beauvoir’s famous dictum is a response to 19th century French author Stendhal’s candid declaration that, "all the geniuses that are born women are lost for the public good." Here, Stendhal is not employing biological determinism to justify the existing social structure. Instead, he acknowledges that girls are born with innate potential that could be cultivated into genius through societal support. However, society chooses to prioritize what it perceives as the public good by relegating women to more domestic roles. Since genius is a rare occurrence among both sexes, society in this context decides that the personal sacrifice of a few women is justified for the greater public good. De Beauvoir vehemently opposed this injustice and critiqued societal norms that hindered women from realizing their full potential as geniuses or in other roles beyond traditional domesticity.
De Beauvoir's prominence as a public intellectual was indeed influenced by her sexual relationship with the male genius Jean-Paul Sartre. Her writing aimed to dismantle societal barriers that stunted the growth of potential female geniuses. However, she did not argue that women or geniuses are solely products of social construction from blank slates.
By embracing both biology and culture, De Beauvoir illustrates that humans, like the mythical centaur, have the capacity to transcend purely natural constraints. Through cultural and technological progress, humans can mitigate some of nature's influence. However, only genderists argue that humans have entirely severed their material ties to nature and achieved complete emancipation through idealism. This disregard for the enduring influence of nature reflects a recurring theme of human overreach and narcissism.
In an interview given in 1975, de Beauvoir made it unequivocally clear that she was not denying the reality of sex:
Question: Do you think the obvious biological differences play no role in the subsequent interior behaviour of an individual?
De Beauvoir: I think they can play a role--yes certainly. But the importance we give them, the importance that these differences take, is derived from the social context in which they are situated. What I mean by that is of course it’s very important that a woman can become pregnant and have children whereas a man cannot. That’s a significant difference between the two, but this difference isn’t what creates a difference in status and the state of exploitation and oppression that women are subjected to. It’s in some ways a pretext on which the female condition is built. But biology is not what determines this condition.
De Beauvoir rejects both extreme forms of biological determinism and social constructionism. She acknowledges the profound biological differences between men and women but argues that these differences do not inevitably lead to a social structure that necessarily oppresses or exploits women. The concepts of oppression and exploitation, she suggests, are subjective and relative.
As a public intellectual, de Beauvoir constructs the feminist narrative that the traditional one-income model, where men work in corporate cubicles while their wives manage household and childcare duties, can be seen as a form of oppression or exploitation. This perspective may ring true subjectively for women like de Beauvoir who possess high intelligence and aspirations beyond domestic roles. However, once this narrative gains traction, subsequent generations may attempt to universalize it.
In contemporary society, some women lead smear campaigns against the idea of stay-at-home motherhood, viewing it as an archaic practice to be eradicated. As modern women strive to balance demanding careers with the responsibilities of raising children, or face the possibility of remaining childless and feeling disconnected after years of corporate advancement, many begin questioning whether the feminist rejection of the one-income family structure was ultimately a revolt in paradise.
Sex Roles and Demographic Regulation
In the context of hunter-gatherer (HG) societies, the division of labor between men and women was often shaped by biological differences. Women typically engaged in gathering tasks near their temporary camps, while also caring for and nurturing children, which was essential for the tribe's reproduction. Men, benefiting from greater muscle mass and aggression, undertook tasks such as hunting game, patrolling the outskirts for defense, and establishing boundaries against neighboring tribes. This division of labor was influenced by their respective biological strengths: men excelled in protective roles, while women played a crucial role in reproductive activities within the tribe.
Recent studies indeed suggest that in some hunter-gatherer societies, women participated in hunting activities alongside men. This flexibility in division of labor reflects the adaptability of human culture, where roles can vary based on environmental conditions and specific circumstances. Therefore, it's not surprising to find instances where traditional divisions of labor are not strictly adhered to and may adapt to meet the needs of the community in unusual situations.
In many hunter-gatherer societies, capturing large game was irregular, leading studies to estimate that women gathered approximately 70% of the tribe's nutrition on average. Additionally, women typically provided at least 90% of the childcare responsibilities. This dynamic meant that men often assumed roles that were more expendable and dependent on the contributions of women in these societies.
From an economic standpoint, it would make sense to minimize the involvement of women in hunting activities during times of peace. The logic behind this decision was practical: why risk the participation of those primarily responsible for childcare and the bulk of food procurement in potentially dangerous and less consistently productive activities like hunting? This strategic allocation of roles helped ensure the sustainability and well-being of the community by maximizing the efficiency of labor according to each sex's biological and social contributions.
Indeed, in the absence of effective protection mechanisms, hunter-gatherer tribes were vulnerable to devastating raids from enemy groups. Successful raiding parties could result in the death of all adult males within a tribe. Additionally, reproductive-age women and their younger children were often captured and assimilated into the conquering tribe's structure. This practice was a strategic way for raiding tribes to increase their own numbers and expand their influence, assimilating captives into their culture and community over time. This highlights the harsh realities faced by many hunter-gatherer societies in terms of defense and survival against external threats.
The idea of achieving complete human liberation from the dominance of nature, where humanity transcends its animalistic origins, is hubristic folly. Despite the remarkable power of human innovation and cultural development, our existence remains fundamentally tied to natural imperatives such as survival and reproduction.
Throughout history, idealistic social organizations have often faced annihilation due to environmental catastrophes or demographic collapse. In the Darwinian struggle for survival, societies that maintain a balance between their environmental sustainability and demographic stability tend to endure and write the narratives of history.
Human nature, while adaptable, has definite limits in its flexibility. Throughout history, female roles in society have often been pivotal in managing demographic dynamics, akin to how cooling rods regulate nuclear power plants. Balancing demographic reproduction is crucial, as both having too many children and too few can have detrimental effects.
In 18th-century West Africa, during a period of demographic expansion, women in the Republic of Dahomey played extraordinary roles as Amazon-style warriors. They engaged in capturing the unfortunate from neighboring tribes to be sold to Atlantic slave traders or used in ritual human sacrifices, where their souls by the thousands were offered to the gods upon the death of an important king. However, economic changes and European colonial pressures eventually compelled Dahomey women to transition from slave raiding to palm oil production.
This grisly disposal of demographic excess in Dahomey is sadly a universal aspect of human culture. Georges Bataille in his acclaimed work The Accursed Share, introduced an innovative economic theory that explores surplus and overproduction as fundamental drivers of human culture:
According to Bataille's theory of consumption, the accursed share is that excessive and non-recuperable part of any economy which must either be spent luxuriously and knowingly in the arts, in non-procreative sexuality, in spectacles and sumptuous monuments, or it is obliviously destined to an outrageous and catastrophic outpouring, in the contemporary age most often in war, or in former ages as destructive and ruinous acts of giving or sacrifice, but always in a manner that threatens the prevailing system.
In the 19th century, Europe also confronted a demographic explosion and addressed it in a manner that aligned with European cultural norms. Many surplus Europeans sought opportunities in settler colonialism across the New World—both North and South America, North and South Africa, Oceania, and to a lesser extent, Asia. Those who remained in Europe often faced harsh conditions and were subjected to fatal exploitation in factories and coal mines to manage the demographic surplus.
The strict sexual mores of Christianity historically acted as a restraint on demographic over-reproduction. When these moral prohibitions were insufficient, surplus population often found refuge in convents or cloisters. However, Christianity's influence in population control was effective only when coupled with material constraints, particularly limitations in food production.
The industrial and agricultural revolutions of the 18th century marked a significant shift by lifting the Malthusian limits on European reproduction. Colonial expansion and industrial exploitation initially provided outlets for surplus population. However, as these avenues became saturated, more drastic measures were required. The devastation wrought by two world wars served as short-term solutions to manage population pressures.
With the decline of Christianity's influence, feminist ideology emerged, supported by increasing prosperity, to play a long-term role in shaping reproductive patterns in Europe. In stark contrast, China, lacking the cultural influences of Christianity or feminism and facing resource constraints, implemented the One Child policy as a blunt instrument to impose demographic limits through government mandate.
Today, the balance of demographic supply may have swung towards deficit in many regions, leading to uncertainty about future demographic demand. Traditionally, capitalism has relied on population growth to sustain economic expansion and service debts. This reliance on demographic growth has been linked to policies promoting mass immigration in response to prosperity and feminist-inspired low birth rates.
Frustrations among women who feel marginalized in the reproductive sphere due to ideological and economic restraints are contributing to a political shift. Increasingly, women are turning to "far-right" political movements, seeking to address their perceived disenfranchisement and reclaim agency over reproductive choices and societal roles.
Future demographic demand will depend on technological change. With the advent of robotics and artificial intelligence, a tantalizing “post-work” era of conspicuous leisure may only be decades away. Why the owners of super-computers and robots will want their glorious machines to slave away day and night to the benefit of lazy and entitled humans is not yet clear.
One enduring mystery is why so many feminists devalue their historic domination of humanity’s mode of reproduction? Why is priority given to gaining power within the more prosaic mode of production? Rebalancing, sure—but is one mode inherently superior to the other?
Feminism is a diverse and vastly creative intellectual domain within which many dissident pro-natalist and anti-girl boss factions are now emerging. While not precisely a return to “Leave it Beaver” family prosperity, at the very least these movements recognize the inherent value—to both individuals and humanity as a whole—brought by the generous provision of children.