Can we commit to promoting the basic truth, confirmed by science, that humanity is divided into two sexes? And the fact that sex is ordered to procreation? And marriage is ordered to the flourishing of children? Let every person with XY chromosomes dress as he will, let every person with XX chromosomes work where she wants, but there are only two sexes. Gender might be a construct and identity a parlor game, but let’s insist first on the binary nature of the sexes and hold on as if our lives depended on it. [read it all]

Governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 132, The Transgender Respect, Agency and Dignity Act, into law last year. The law allows “transgender, non-binary and intersex people to be housed and searched in a manner consistent with their gender identity,” according to a press release from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Translation: men are now being transitioned into women’s prisons, allowing violent criminals to bunk with what in quaint terms use to be called the opposite sex. Sane feminists, calling themselves Women’s Liberation Front, or WoLF, are raising the alarm on the obvious danger this poses to women prisoners, whom officials are planning to “protect” by the dispensation of condoms and abortion-inducing pills.

Women incarcerated in California’s largest women’s prison are describing the conditions as “a nightmare’s worst nightmare” after the introduction of new pregnancy resources in the Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF) medical clinics. The new resources are a tacit admission by officials that women should expect to be raped when housed in prison with men, where all sex is considered non-consensual by default within the system. Women’s prisons across the state appear to be making final preparations such as these for a massive wave of transfers after nearly 300 requests were initiated following SB 132 going into effect in January of this year. So far, only about 20 of the transfers have been processed (and exactly zero transfer requests have been denied) — leaving hundreds of men, many of whom are sex offenders, awaiting entry into the women’s estate.

The women are already in prison meaning they cannot escape this manoeuvre; many come from unstable backgrounds, many are in process of long-term healing from difficult lives that led to poor decisions, and now they are kicked in the teeth by the system itself.

At a recent CCWF Captains’ Meeting, one woman read a statement in which she pleaded for help and accused COs of ignoring their previous concerns about being housed with a serial rapist:

“How do we feel safe in our community? When we reach out for help we get nothing… There has been an assault on a woman and we still are silenced. We have had our hope taken away once again. Does anyone care that we are being forced to house with 6’2, 250+ lbs men with penises that are here for brutally raping women? We have been warned by the officials in this prison, more are coming with worse charges. Where is the safety concern for us. If we say we are in fear, we are the ones locked up.”

Recent years have pitted many identity groups against others, for example when Muslims attack gays, or Blacks offer anti-Semitic remarks — then advocates for these sub-groups need to assess the situation and take sides. (Merely affirming virtue and human dignity isn’t an option.) It would seem as though some animals on the farm are more equal than others, sayeth the pigs. And yet this is something stalwart feminist JK Rowling knows very well.

Nathanial Blake at the Ethics and Public Policy Center has written an excellent piece, “The Transgender Industry is Culling Tomboys Out of Existence,” based on a little girl in Virginia, whose mother has decided she needs to be a boy:

The biggest sources of sex stereotypes and strict gender roles in America today are the trans movement and its allies. Many self-described feminists have knuckled under, cheering as it is said that girls should stick to dresses and dolls and that girls who like “boy” things must actually be boys. The transgender movement is far more sexist than the most retrograde, fundamentalist Christians I’ve ever known — at least the latter still let their daughters enjoy basketball and PE.

[Sophia’s] case demonstrates how it is often adults who are pushing for children to transition. The reporter says, “It never occurred to Sophia that she was anyone other than a boy,” which makes it odd that the story does not relate any instances of Sophia saying that she was, or wanted to be, a boy. No evidence is provided for this central claim of the story. Instead, the article tells about Sophia, then around five years of age, admiring Max from “Stranger Things” to the point of wanting to be called Max. This is presented as a major milestone in revealing Sophia’s trans identity. But “Stranger Things’” Max is a girl. This was nothing more than one tomboyish little girl admiring and wanting to be like an older tomboyish girl on TV.

Indeed, reading the story, which relies entirely on Emily for pertinent information about Sophia/Max, it is striking that no evidence of gender dysphoria is presented beyond a little girl being a tomboy. However, it does appear Emily was distressed at her daughter being a tomboy instead of a girly girl, and we are told that Emily can now get her little “boy” to cooperate in dressing up, albeit in bow-ties and button-down shirts rather than dresses.

Setting aside the [unproven] fear that lack of affirmation will increase chances of the child harming himself, or the inability of a five-year-old to even conceptualise what male or female really encompasses, we have the example of a rambunctious child who is always on the move. We have witnessed decades of feminist insisting that girls should have all options open to them, they shouldn’t be told to sit in the corner and play with dolls, and Being Yourself might mean shaving your head (and nothing else). Now along come the Storm Troopers for Team Trans telling us, ‘Move over, the monkey bars are for boys.’  Next, they’ll suggest that parents wait for six months for their gender reveals, and then newly-mobile infants will be invited to roll towards the pink or blue pillow. That would make about as much sense as this shallow assignation. (Just beware — make sure no stuffed animals are nearby — transspecies surgeries aren’t available yet!)

[One more irony: For years the schools have lamented the rambunctiousness of boys, wishing them to be less physical, wanting them to sit still for hours on end, and setting up the feminine model of focused attentiveness as the paradigm of good classroom management. Will ‘Max’ be the exception? A rowdy boy to be celebrated rather than medicated? Stay tuned.]

The problem my pastor friend faces is how to counsel parents of teenage girls who will not drink anything before going to school lest they have to use the bathrooms that, thanks to the stroke of President Biden’s pen, are now open to teenage boys who think—or claim—to have been born in the wrong bodies. It seems that anxiety and physical discomfort caused by the new bathroom policy will now be the new normal for young high school girls. Trans activists like to use the language of “safety” as a way of playing to the aesthetics of our therapeutic culture and delegitimizing their critics. Well, these biological women no longer feel safe. Their spaces, like their gender, have been stolen from them by men and for men. They now feel themselves to be in such danger that they cannot even hydrate before school lest they have to use the restroom during the day. America has had a number of presidents whose appetites meant that they arguably posed a danger to many women who crossed their physical paths; but the current president has out-performed them all. His policies have made him a danger to all women everywhere, even in high school restrooms.

The OED defines intersectionality as “the interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage.” Theoretically, a person can count up the “groups” he is in (like checking off boxes: female, latino, bisexual, quadriplegic, etc.) to see how “marginalised” he is overall–like racking up coupons at the checkout. But what happens when the disparate groups have competing interests? Clearly, the #MeToo movement stressed the vulnerability of women, and highlighted how past trauma can create fresh tension when faced with a member of the abusers’ group, which inevitably comes into direct conflict with the discomfort of those men who wish to present themselves as women–and who also want to avoid male-only spaces. Who will prevail?

Not only will bathrooms, locker rooms, and dressing rooms prove challenging to girls who wish to have a male-free environment, but domestic abuse shelters will now force traumatised women (and their young children) to bunk l-i-t-e-r-a-l-l-y next to deeply confused men. Intersectionality is an abstract game that now forces victims of different groups to square off for safe spaces, set-asides, scholarships, and vaguely defined quotas. It is no surprise that feminists are deeply divided over the issue–with J.K.Rowling taking most of the heat for defending the vulnerable women! Think about that: one of the wealthiest and most popular women in the world spoke against this transgender madness on behalf of those with same-sex attraction (note: LGB is at odds with the T) and she has been vilified beyond measure. Why does she do it?

I’m concerned about the huge explosion in young women wishing to transition and also about the increasing numbers who seem to be detransitioning (returning to their original sex), because they regret taking steps that have, in some cases, altered their bodies irrevocably, and taken away their fertility. Some say they decided to transition after realising they were same-sex attracted, and that transitioning was partly driven by homophobia, either in society or in their families. Most people probably aren’t aware – I certainly wasn’t, until I started researching this issue properly – that ten years ago, the majority of people wanting to transition to the opposite sex were male. That ratio has now reversed. The UK has experienced a 4400% increase in girls being referred for transitioning treatment. Autistic girls are hugely overrepresented in their numbers. The same phenomenon has been seen in the US.

So clearly the science isn’t settled, the present trajectory is deeply troubling, massive regret comes after following the present party line, and a calm discussion must take place. In the meantime, everyone will pay the price for this madness, even the average schoolgirl who just wants to learn. Seven+ hours without a bathroom (180 days a year) is quite a price to pay in a first-world nation, when her parents’ tax dollars have paid for facilities just down the hall.

Since 1972, Title IX has guaranteed that every institution receiving federal funding must provide equitable access to men and women, boys and girls, and although it covers every aspect of participation in all institutions, Title IX’s impact on sports has drawn the most attention. While equal access sounds benign, schools in particular have had to adjust their financial outlays to conform to the new standard, and financing this radical realignment of structures led to the onus being shifted from choice to outcome.

The premise was that males and females chose differently only because of cultural norms, and if society recalibrated its expectations from an early age, then the differences between men and women would become indistinguishable. Thus, encouraging young women in myriad fields seems to have paid off, for not only did women’s sports grow exponentially, but they flooded the universities in such numbers that by 1982 they achieved parity with men, and now they comprise almost 60% of matriculated college students.

Young girls have been told for decades that if they work diligently, they can achieve whatever they wish, no matter the obstacles—but in recent years the social engineers have added a new twist. The flip-side of erasing differences between men and women means that men who identify as women will now be allowed to compete in women’s sports—the very arenas created for them to showcase their newly-tapped talents. This is because a century of feminism has been persistently morphing its agenda. From its roots of simply providing women equal opportunities to a more aggressive form of forced parity, now even the most radical ideologues have been supplanted by gender feminists, who insist on erasing the most foundational notions of what constitutes a woman.

An Olympic medalist in volleyball, Ana Paula Henkel wrote to the International Olympic Committee noting that their policy of allowing transgender men to compete in women’s events in the 2020 Olympics was absurd. “This rushed and heedless decision to include biological men, born and built with testosterone, with their height, their strength and aerobic capacity of men, is beyond the sphere of tolerance. It represses, embarrasses, humiliates and excludes women.”

As absurd as the present predicament surely is, it is only the logical outcome of rejecting that there is such a thing as natural law, and setting aside the intrinsic differences between male and female. The hormonal games that allow cross-sex transitions today began with the birth-control pill that was readily embraced as an effective way to trick the human body—the first foray into changing the consequences of our natural behaviours. Such hormones have become foundational to how we live, how we establish relationships, and how we navigate the demands of a family-crushing culture; they have become a part of our very identity.

How many of the dreams we offer to young women depend on distancing themselves not only from virtuous and balanced decisions about their lives, but on rejecting their very nature? Are women any happier today than they were fifty years ago when this dangerous experiment of mainstreaming hormones began? To inspire in girls a gender-neutral dream only to sandbag them in this irrational way is not only unloving but perverse. Perhaps it’s time for an honest discussion about the premise of this unnatural social experiment and find a reset button. There is another, more honest way to live.

It’s unclear what exactly the royal may have meant by the term ‘fluid,’ as there are multiple interpretations of what that might look like. As parents, the royal couple may decide to avoid dressing their firstborn in certain colors that are associated with one gender more than the other and encourage their child to play with a variety of toys that are typically associated with specific sexes, for example dolls and trucks. On the other end of the spectrum, there is a small group of parents who are raising ‘theybies’ — children who aren’t identified as male or female.

Ok, while I am a firm opponent of stereotypes (which are substantially different from reasonable cultural norms), we’ll have to see how this pans out in coming years, and pray that this child doesn’t have more than its share those challenges that come with being raised in a fishbowl. We can play games on paper and in brain-storming with friends, but we’ll see how too much silliness sets with the public, who’s financing the royal family and who, in return, hopes for some return on its investment in stability.

Hands down. Why? Because it degrades the whole effort to encourage and affirm girls. Profiling an all-girl team (seriously, ten-year-old girls) against a full-fledged male lineup with 10 times their body weight, they were allowed to pathetically move the ball forward because the other team refused to play. Is that what we want? “Inspiring girls to be strong, smart, and bold” by promising that others will tilt the field and defy reality? It’s like playing checkers with grandpa, who won’t jump your vulnerable pieces on principle.

This is beyond pandering, it’s a rousing insult to every authentic gift these girls have, and sets them up for perpetually impossible expectations. Their website promises that “When girls unite, anything is possible,” but there is no indication of working with men, no understanding that complementarity is fruitful by nature, and no acknowledgement that men’s and women’s bodies might impact their choices. None of the mentors or alumnae showcased are mothers, and the resources are stripped of any moral content or traditional wisdom. The goal?

• Confront notions of female fragility. Challenge views in the media and elsewhere of assertive
women as “unfeminine” or destructive.
• Celebrate the accomplishments of women who are competent in nontraditional areas. Through
books, videos, the Internet and real life meetings introduce girls to a wide range of successful
women.
• Ensure that child-rearing classes and materials promote an approach to raising children that is not
limited by gender stereotypes.
• Ask a girl if she wants a truck or a doll, a jewelry box or a chemistry set, a flute or a bass drum, a
new dress or some new software.

The first two points are hilarious, given the ad. Moreover, they claim to empower the whole girl, but seem to have a profound aversion to marriage and motherhood. Making healthy choices means wider access to contraception rather than learning chastity, and babies are asserted to be counterproductive to happiness and success. Stunningly, pursuing education is still assumed to be more arduous for girls, despite the fact that females outnumber males in colleges across the board. Not stunningly, SEICUS ranks prominently as a resource, so we know that collaboration with abortion providers and the rainbow coalition is lurking behind the [nearly-transparent] curtain.

I’m no lover of stereotypes, but the gift of femininity isn’t to be found on the gridiron, or in a sexuality that eschews child-bearing or collaboration with men. Sadly, promoted against the backdrop of a boring, uneven game, this 18-second ad still managed to be more nonsensical than anything else seen last night.

(BTW, this is an old chart, so assume disparity has grown since.)

Do we require women deacons to assist at naked baptisms? No. Do we require women to be ordained so that they might have the authority to administer the church’s charitable work? The splendid work of our teaching  and nursing sisters precludes the need. Women are already administering the church’s charitable work effectively at every level. Do we need deaconesses to be diocesan chancellors, school principals, parish pastoral associates, directors of faith formation, Vatican administrators, professional consultants, diplomats, journalists, and financial advisers? No. Plenty of women already fulfill these roles. Do we need women to be ordained as deaconesses to be spiritual directors, theologians, cultural activists, broadcasters, evangelists, writers and scholars? No. We have a growing number of women already doing this.

But men can only say so much, because most of the men we have in our pious ranks are gracious towards women. What they cannot say without an unsightly blowback is that this is more than anything else an unseemly power struggle. Having explained first that the use of deaconesses preceded the flowering of Religious orders, which freed women to tend to apostolates beyond the family; and secondly that the wider culture now allows women to assume positions of influence that assist the ageless work of the Church, all that is left for a new rank of deaconesses to do is to tinker with the Deposit of Faith. This is the rub, because it requires power, not authority. Power (from the Greek, dunamis) is related to dynamite, and explosions are diametrically opposed to safeguarding a treasure passed along from generation to generation.

Power struggles within the family crush its weaker fragile members; power struggles within the Church will trample the subtleties hidden in her traditional teachings, primarily the teaching concerning the nuptial embrace between ordained clergy and the mystical bride. Why are men reticent to say this? Because they have been entrusted with an authority that rests on a hierarchy, a matter of antipathy to modern ears, and this is better explained by wise women who understand. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. Lets remain on the side of the angels in this matter, and leave ordinations to those who embody the bridegroom. Far more fruit that way.

Estrogenics bind or stick to estrogen receptors situated throughout the body. When an estrogen, a steroid hormone, enters the bloodstream the estrogen receptor cells will change. Jay’s book does not give an exhaustive list of external sources of estrogen, but singles out weed killers, soap, fragrances, sunscreen, soy, red food coloring and plastics. Some of these substances contain natural estrogens, others artificial. Among the most egregious of estrogens is EE2, the artificial estrogen of the birth control pill. While all the other estrogens can be damaging, one of the problems with EE2 is that it “was intentionally designed to. . . activate the estrogen receptor and stay in the body longer than natural estrogen.” As to the gravity of the influence of EE2, Jay notes that 100 million women worldwide use the birth control pill. While many are single, it is worth pointing out that a staggering 60% of married women use the birth control pill. He goes on to list seven major health problems that can be traced back to the presence of estrogenics, particularly in the water…

Obesity, depression, low sperm counts, various cancers, blood clots, and more are not related simple to the one who imbibes the Pill, but are shared because they eventually flush into the water table, as is EE2 (sprayed liberally on crops). If your moral arguments against artificial birth control fall on deaf ears, perhaps this well-documented book about this widely-sanctioned carcinogen will grab some attention. Changing the trajectory of our culture is daunting, but this may at least begin turning the wheel of the supertanker before it washes up on the shoals.

If, though, we agree to the term “toxic” for some male actions, then we must turn the spotlight around to women and ask how they are prone to corrupting their femininity. Women on a wide scale are rejecting chastity, marriage, motherhood, and creative collaboration with men. Having pointed to men’s corruption, we must admit that many women abuse their own creative powers, by replacing love with manipulation, and cooperation with contempt for authentic masculinity. Thus, too many men and women have issued a non servium, and while masculinity is targeted as the root evil of today, the suggestion that we must “feminise” men is to ask them to act in ways that women themselves have abandoned.

Did a little poking around on the net, and found that some claim that there a toxic femininity, but of course it’s as I feared: huswivery, birthin’ babies, traditional marriage, and the like. I’m braving the waters to discuss it tomorrow [very early] on Relevant Radio, with John Harper (7am East Coast time). Overall, if we have no divine mission (“Go forth, multiply”) and no deference to the instruction manual (complementarity between men and women to build a civilisation of love) then all our energies — sexual, creative, intellectual, and physical — will be spent on a bonfire of vanities and trivialities. If every man/woman is for himself, his pleasure, his power, and his social construct, then what would have been devoted to personal holiness, the well-being of the family, and the good of the community will well-nigh be wasted at the gym, on the screens, and roving about, hoping to scratch the incessant itch. We are knocking about in a self-made cave, refusing to come into the sunlight. Fie on us, and our benighted progeny. Jesus, mercy.