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Denise Champney's avatar

I haven’t read a Maggie Merten’s article but it makes me sad to think that she might suggest that if only women trained harder they would get the same benefits physically as men. Elite women athletes work and train just as hard as men but due to biological differences they do not achieve the exact same results. Women should not be made to feel bad because of this.

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MM's avatar

There are just sooo many things wrong with the dominant ("progressive") narrative about gender being promoted by trans advocates, but at its most fundamental it's just based on complete falsehood, that sex is "just a construct" and arbitrarily "assigned" at birth (a narrative we support we use "assigned female" as you did here; "observed female" is the reality of what happens at birth).

From this basic falsehood, the narrative (rooted in postmodernist denial of any material reality) then posits that "binaries" inevitably lead to hierarchies (no evidence of that, no real way of proving it...), so we must "destroy the binary" as a matter of... justice? Related, the notion that acknowledging that sex exists and that females and males are *different* (on average) inevitably means females are *inferior*. Also, just doesn't follow, though the physical differences have historically been used as the justification for the (historically unfair and harmful to women) social differences (i.e., gender).

But it's also possible (and reality-based) to just acknowledge that sex (and average sex differences) exists and that male puberty confers a physical advantage when it comes to most tests of strength and endurance ("sport") that humans have come up with. Michael Shermer offers a nice visual of this reality in the bell chart here: https://michaelshermer.substack.com/p/trans-athletes-and-conflicting-rights

To the extent that we all couch our critiques of the dominant narrative on transgenderism in any kind of "sympathy" that denies the reality of sex, we're just perpetuating the problem. Male and female are it. There aren't "all kind of variations in between." Intersex conditions are not some third sex that prove that sex is "just a construct," just "assigned" at birth; they are disorders of sexual development that happen (very rarely) to males and females. It is possible for creatures as intelligent as we are to promote a society that allows for equality between the sexes ("undoing" gender) without denying that sex exists and that sex differences exist. The latter, while historically being used as the excuse for patriarchal practices (gender), doesn't necessarily mean patriarchal practices are inevitable. (Assuming best intent for the gender essentialism being promoted by the dominant trans narrative; they think they're "undoing" gender by denying the reality of sex, though they're actually just reinforcing it.)

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