I'm done with the word "gender"

Here's why. . .

I’m vowing to never use the word “gender” again. I’ll screw up and use it sometimes, I’m sure. I’ve been using it for over 30 years, ever since I learned about the idea of gender being a “social construct” in my feminist studies classes in college.

It was first used in the manner that we now use it — to define a role connected to sex — by “sexologist” John Money in 1955. Considered the “Father of Gender Theory,” Money is thought to have sexually abused his minor patients and he is responsible for the disastrous “sex change” surgery performed on a boy who had suffered a botched circumcision. Money had promised the parents of the boy that “gender” was entirely a social construct or creation and that their son would be fine if he cut off his testicles, gave him estrogen and they raised him as a girl. The boy wasn’t fine. He committed suicide at 38, years after reverting to living as a male.

“Gender” is a pseudo-scientific invention unlike sex which is a biological reality. I think the word “gender” was useful for a time — which I’ll discuss below — but I think we have outgrown it and its original usage is being inverted and causing harm.

The gender ideology movement is leading children down a path of confusion and medicalization by teaching them that gender is real and sex is the construct and if their gender doesn’t match their sex-ed bodies — which are somehow imaginary and fake — they need to undergo horrible mutilating drug cocktails and surgeries so that their made up and sometimes very wrong sex-ed bodies match their real gender.

It makes no sense. It’s fucked up. And so I’m done with gender. It served its purpose for a time. But that time is over. There is sex and that is it.

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When I was in college I took a few feminist studies classes. I hadn’t thought much about any of this in high school, I was too busy doing back flips, breaking bones and starving myself. And feeling like a weirdo outsider who had nothing in common with my high school classmates.

But the college classes and the Take Back the Night marches and attempting to recover from an eating disorder which had me obsessed with the idea that my worth was entirely linked to a number on the scale all turned me into a proud feminist.

The only women who didn’t want to claim that word — the F word — in my circle of existence were Pi Phis drunk-dancing on the bar at frat parties. They were blonde and ditzy and superficial and going to college for their MRS degree — at least in my imagination — and they wanted no association with angry, hairy-legged feminists.

Despite never having hairy legs or armpits — I resorted instead to dyed black, very short hair, piercings, “vintage” stinky trench coats and tattoos (I was more goth than anything else, I suppose) — I did not relate to these sorority girls or want to be anything like them. They seemed unserious and anti-intellectual. The opposite of what I wanted to be. (You can make fun of me, I’m sure those ladies had more fun.) If that meant becoming angry and unpleasant to be around and adopting a pose of defiance and rage, so be it. I was a serious person not some floozy flashing my boobs at ΣΑΕ parties. (This was all perhaps a bit of though doth protest too much after spending years as a pin-curled pixie doing backflips like a trained circus animal. But whatever, I was finding myself!)

In my personal readings and my feminist studies 101 class, I learned about the first wave feminism of the early 1900s focused on women’s suffrage. The class mostly focused on second wave feminism (1960s-1980s) which was led by women fighting for equality in all aspects of their lives. These feminists led protests against the Miss America Pageant which they saw as degrading to women by placing a woman’s value solely in her looks. The feminists called the Pageant a “cattle parade.” This resonated with me. The “cattle parade” they described felt akin to being marched around my gym in a leotard, inspected by judges who might as well have wield a red pen to circle my problem areas. Instead the scariest gymnastics judge leaned in really close and told me that I shouldn’t have bangs because they made my face look fat. I was 18 and 95 pounds.

The second wave feminists got the Equal Pay Act passed in 1963, Title IX in 1972 and they ensured that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 barred sex-based discrimination in employment. In the 1970s, these feminists fought for women’s only domestic violence shelters and won. And by 1993 it became a crime in all 50 states for men to rape their wives, thanks to these women. Before that rape was actually defined as something a man could only do to a woman who was not his wife.

My sophomore year I read Gloria Steinem’s Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions for fun and the summer after my junior year I interned at the National Organization for Women in Washington DC. I was probably more of a moderate feminist — vs a “radical” one. I liked Steinem, after all. She was considered too soft and too attractive by the radicals.

In class, we read Andrea Dworkin and talked about the male gaze and how it was embodied in all media — primarily visual media — to objectify women, because of the patriarchy or something.

At the time (I went to college from 1988-1992), we took these things seriously, or I did anyway. Dworkin was an anti-porn feminist. I’d never seen any porn at this point — unthinkable for a 20-year-old today. In her book Pornography: Men Possessing Women, Dworkin wrote about how the porn industry hates and dehumanizes women. Despite the fact that I’d never seen any porn and wouldn’t for many more years, being against de-humanizing seemed like the right side to be on. And I still am. We read about and discussed the infamous 1978 Hustler Magazine cover with a woman’s legs sticking up and out from a meat grinder.

This was before Dworkin existed in the ether as something not to be. As a humorless, anti-man, anti-sex grumpy old lesbian with an axe to grind. It was before girls gone wild feminism — or maybe at the very beginning of it — when porn would come to be equated with sexual liberation and giving blow jobs to strangers would be considered girl power.

These 2nd wavers also talked about gender as a social construct. I didn’t know what that was. But came to understand it as an invention of sorts. This is how I understood it: there were gender roles essentially assigned to us based on the parts we were born with. Women were docile and meant to be at home barefoot and pregnant. They weren’t mean to be ambitious careerists.

And we needed to undo the shackles of the construct, according to my feminist studies classes. It was all invented, after all. A vagina didn’t mean you didn’t want a big job or want to wear your hair short. Some women presented as more masculine. Some were ambitious. Some were aggressive. Some didn’t want babies. That didn’t make them men. These feminists advocated for an expansive view of gender so that we were not trapped into specific roles because of our sex. You may be born a woman but you weren’t constrained by 1950s stereotypes. You could be and behave and present however you wanted to. I was fully on board.

What we all fought for was the right to be able to behave how we wanted and felt most comfortable. As a woman — XX, female sexed woman, the real kind, the only kind — I could be aggressive and angry, I could be ambitious, I could like sex, I could not have or want children, I could not wear makeup, I could wear jeans and boy-ish clothes. Our sex need not dictate our personality or dreams.

Third wave feminism — which was after my college experience, so I didn’t read about it I just lived IN it — focused on bodily autonomy and “sex positivity.” I felt the popular culture impacts of “sex positivity” even if I wasn’t reading academic texts about it. This was the full-on girls gone wild era and young women were somehow made to believe that meaningless sex with strangers was empowering. Our bodies our choice. Give that blow job to some rando! You’re in charge!

Despite Dworkin’s warnings or perhaps as a response to them, the girls gone wild phase is still happening. The actual show Girls Gone Wild no longer exists — it featured drunk college girls flashing their boobs (the behind the scenes was much seedier but I’m not getting into that here, you can read about here) — but the ethos is alive and well and amplified on Only Fans.

Take the story of Lilly Phillips — the Only Fans star who recently had sex with 100 guys in one day on film. In a heartbreaking moment after the stunt was completed, Phillips wept on camera talking about how she only remembered 5 or 6 of the guys, how this “deed” was not for the weak. Briefly, we got a peek into the actual damage done to an already damaged person.

Then she dusted herself off and pledged to do it all again, only this time it would be with 1000 men. She attempted to offset the earlier tears with some unconvincing talk of how no one is making her do this and she actually really likes it, and who are you all to judge her if she just really likes sex (on camera with strangers)?

Feminism has lost its way. Now in this 4th wave or whatever wave, not only does it equate porn with liberation but it tells us men are better women than women are. Real feminists are inclusive and include the men who say they are women. And oh by the way, real women better sit down and shut up and let males claiming to be women into their private sports and spaces. Because those males really want it. Good feminists elevate men’s desires above their own safety in today’s version of feminism. (I can’t believe we went from me too to this in a few short years.)

I’ve been lectured on this by a lesbian mom at the soccer field. She cares about all women and girls, I only care about some (the actual XX ones).

It’s all so twisted and retrograde. Maybe I’m still a second waver at heart because the feminism we fell in love with is the one we stick with? Just like the music of your youth is the music you will always think is the most iconic and frankly, the best.

But I don’t know, the 3rd wave seemed to shit all over the 2nd wave and essentially invert and debase everything these women had achieved. Porn wasn’t dehumanizing it was empowering! Men couldn’t rape you if you got there first and leaned into lots of meaningless sex. And now the 4th wave which says men can be women and to hell with safe spaces and women’s only shelters and locker rooms and sports is just a total cluster fuck.

Because now, the progressives who are often also “feminists” will tell you that if a boy has traditionally feminine characteristics and behaviors — say he likes playing with dolls and the color pink — he may in fact be a girl. And a girl who doesn’t like those things might be a boy. You see how this just reverses everything that the women of the 60s and 70s fought for? Not to mention being super duper anti-gay because now feminine little boys are all girls!

Gender used to explain how we need not be constrained by our biology. Now gender identity is rooted in the stereotypical characteristics that we were attempting to free ourselves from. This below chart is an actual chart being hocked by quack therapists to help “patients” figure out if they are male or female! If you like Barbie, you see, you are more likely to be female.

Gender is prioritized above sex as more “real” than biology (which is now the construct, because if you have a penis that doesn’t mean your male it’s just a reality constructed by the patriarchy that dictates said penis makes you male.)

The very worst gender ideologues will say sex is the social construct and that your body and biology have nothing to do with what sex or gender you actually are. It’s “biological” to think you’re a woman even if you have a penis because what’s in your head is biology. (Not mental illness or self-loathing.)

With the elevation of gender as more real than sex, women’s sex-based rights are being tossed aside in favor of protecting gender identity (i.e. men’s rights).

Perhaps I’m not a feminist anymore. I don’t know. I’m still ok saying I am. I want to take back the meaning. If not the night.

I think we’re beyond usefulness on the idea of “gender.” It is used as a weapon now and furthers harmful stereotypes. Try explaining gender without relying on old stereotypes and “norms” like men are strong-willed and athletic and women are sensitive and caring! You can’t. I dare you! You can’t.

And so, I’m pledging not to use the word gender at all. Maybe you’ll join me.

There are 2 sexes and endless personalities. Period.