Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on A Harvard professor.

…“sex is a biocultural construct. Gamete size represents but one of multiple components and developmental processes—including gonads, hormones, genitals, fertility, mating, parenting behaviour, secondary sexual characteristics, and gender identity.”

And yet none of these other factors results in a third gamete, or individuals that are, biologically, partway between male and female. None of these other complications allow humans to change sex, or offer some “other” pathway for being a woman. “It’s complicated,” doesn’t do the heavy lifting they claim it does. Sure, it’s complicated, but it’s not magic. It’s not arbitrary. It’s not swayed by wishful thinking. It’s not as uncertain and unknowable as they would have us believe. Transgenderists have to bury biology under the rug in order for their word games to work. They think that retooling the language retools reality. The stench of their desire for this to be true would be pathetic if it weren’t so dangerous. They need these other factors and complications to enable them to “become women” after discrediting the only definition of woman that counts, the one that precludes their being female. It’s a sick love-hate complex they’ve set up and launched against women.

They might plead otherwise, but trans identified females are an afterthought in all of this. If this movement were founded solely on the desires and delusions of women pretending to be men, it would have gone nowhere, and would have acquired none of the power and influence it now enjoys. The whole point of this is for men to invade women’s spaces. Unlike the charge that women defending women’s rights are really only out to hurt trans people, trans identified males really are out to take over everything women have or want for themselves. “WE JUST WANT TO PEEEEE!” was never true.

“Although the gametic definition makes reference to biological systems, it is sophistry, not science. Those who promote this definition favour the assertion that sex inheres in gamete (sperm and egg) production because, in part, it facilitates their political aims by fuelling unhinged panic in some quarters about transgender threats to traditional gender roles.”

And transgenderism is not a political program? I would say that the denial of the gametic definition of sex by genderists “facilitates their political aims”. Material reality is the biggest obstacle to the claims of gender identitarianism, so, given their inability to rebut reality, it’s only natural that they must attack the character of those who uphold its salience. Just more of the phenomenon of “Every accusation is a confession” that we’ve seen before. The threat posed by transgenderism is not to “traditional gender roles” (which are bullshit for reasons having nothing to do with “gender identity”) but to women.

Feminists would be happy to burn the traditional, sexist, patriarchal gender roles to the ground. How do you account for their stance against the “sex spectrum”? This is bad because gender ideology depends on the reification of those very traditional roles to justify the whole “born in the wrong body” trope. Susie Green decided her son was actually a girl because he was playing with the wrong toys. She decided to “trans away the gay” on the basis of gender stereotypes. Where would Susie have gotten her diagnosis of “trans” without the idea that “dolls are for girls”? Instead, because of her and her husband’s homophobia, she short-circuited any possibility of desistance and pushed her son into the gender-industrial complex.

And last, there’s the link between those who hold the gametic view and bigots:….[T]he recent favour bestowed on the gametic definition of sex by anti-trans gender traditionalists appeals selectively to science to naturalise and rationalise inequality and exclusion.”

If you can’t argue against the message, shoot the messenger. If you can’t support your own argument, claim the both the messenger and his message were evil, and that the messenger deserved to be shot, and the message is too vile to be heard by anyone, ever. But GAMETES BAD isn’t an argument that shows that sex is indeed a spectrum. You might think you’re crippling the best horse in the race, but you still have to run the track to claim victory. You still have to produce evidence, proof, and arguments. An aspiring scientific explanation still has to prove its worth and validity; it doesn’t “win” by default or acclamation. You still have to make your case. At some point you have to stop handwaving and start building. If genderism could do this, it would just go ahead and argue how it is better at explaining how the world actually works than any other competing hypothesis. It wouldn’t have to rely on the bogus political strawman to scare and intimidate people into their camp. This is just a wordier version of “NO DEBATE!” That game isn’t going to work any more. You have to show your work, which means doing the work in the first place.

There are lots of fruitful avenues of research that genderism could be exploring, but isn’t. Where are the rest of the “colours” of this supposed “spectrum” beyond and between male and female? Give me a definition of “gender identity” that isn’t circular. Provide an evolutionary explanation for the origin of “gender identity,” and a physiological explanation for its operation and functioning within a given individual. If gender identity actually existed, it would be a whole new field of scientific enquiry. But like astrology and comunicating with dead people, it is no more than a cruel scam.

And as for “inequality and exclusion”, those are not necessarily bad things, particularly when you turn it around to see what genderists mean, and what they want. “Equality” for them means TWAW, that men can become women and are women if they say so. “Inclusion” means that men get access to all female single-sex spaces. This is the ultimate goal and result of denying biology and claiming that sex is a “spectrum.” This is what they’re fighting for. This is what they want: a nightmare blend of Huxley, Orwell, and Kafka that we’ve been living through for more than a decade. Anyone giving legitimacy to this is aiding and abetting crimes against women, girls, and children. Slow clap. Well done. Fuck off.