Someone was paid a lot of money to produce a glossy set of Relationship & Sexuality Education guidance to teachers in NZ and we have a right to expect them to be of a very high quality given the consultation around the implementation of them involves no need for negotiation or agreement, ie. it is solely about informing and implementing, irrespective of stakeholders' opinions.
Some of what is in the guidelines is very good and it is pleasing to see the ubiquity of porn and its effects on young people being addressed, it is to be hoped the education process will also involve the interrogation of the malign and growing power of the global porn industry and sex trade, the incidence of femicide and rape, the merging patterns of economic exploitation in commercial surrogacy, and all the other massive impactors on young people's (especially girls and women) sexual health and wellbeing - in the broadest sense of the terms.
But it’s hard to escape the conclusion that this is more a vehicle for the promotion of gender identity theory and praxis or what can broadly be described as the current transgender orthodoxy.(CTO)
It will come as no surprise to readers of this blog that I have some issues with that orthodoxy. This does not mean I am anti transgender – I am not – but I find it both politically and critically impossible to reconcile my support for women’s sex-based rights with support for gender self ID specifically and for other aspects of the CTO.
The bottom line of what I see as a post hoc attempt to impose logic and consistency on an essentially contradictory set of metaphysical and highly politicised beliefs – is that gender – framed as the subjective, possibly inconstant, sense of personal identity on a continuum of masculinities and femininities – trumps biological sex; that there is a disembodied, inner, gendered self that is, and can conceive of itself as, separate from the material reality of the biological, sexed body.
In the Years 9-13 glossary of 44 terms – which is an important guide to people who aren't well versed in the CTO, and who want to make sense, both of ideas that are being embedded into the social contract, and ideas that are being removed from it – this results in some major inconsistencies and omissions.
Sex is defined as "biological sex characteristics - male, female, intersex" - which strongly implies there's a third (or more) sex(es) existing between male and female. (1)
Biological sex characteristics are defined as a person’s physical features – “genitalia and other sexual and reproductive anatomy, chromosomes, hormones and secondary physical features emerging from puberty.”
Gender is defined as "individual identity related to a continuum of masculinities and femininities. Neither femininities nor masculinities are defined, but we can assume this is derived from the pink to dark brown spectrum of jelly baby figures so popular with transgender equality and diversity trainers and lobbyists. Or more graphically – Barbie to GI Joe.
Sexual orientation is defined as a person's "sexual identity" - which is defined by the point/s on the "continuum of masculinities and femininities" a person is sexually and/or emotionally attracted to.
So, both your gender and your sexual orientation / identity are where you sit on the Barbie-GI Joe “continuum of masculinities and femininities”, and your sexual orientation or sexual identity is where the persons you are attracted to sit on that same continuum.
Apart from demonstrating how the lazy conflation of gender and sex gets people’s intellectual and political knickers in a knot – according to this, there is no such thing as a sexual orientation – there is just gender orientation.
Is it any wonder some lesbians and gay men are feeling anxious? They have good cause as shown when we delve deeper into the glossary of terms underpinning these important guidelines.
Lesbian is defined as "women who are attracted to other women" but woman itself is not defined, nor is man although trans woman and trans man are defined as people who were assigned male or female at birth but who identify as the opposite. (2)
Homosexual is not defined except in reference to the existence of homophobia, which is defined as an “irrational fear of or negative response to people who are homosexual.”
There is no definition of homosexual men - just “gay people (mostly men) who are attracted to "people of the same gender".
Heterosexual is defined as “attraction to the other binary gender" – so presumably they see homosexual as attraction to the same binary gender.
BUT…
Binary gender is defined as "the (incorrect) assumption there are only two genders".
So, if binary gender is deemed to be incorrect – i.e. to not actually exist because - spectrum – by this document’s logic, neither do heterosexuality nor homosexuality.
I'm all for kids being encouraged to dispense with those "masculinities and femininities" that owe much to imposed gender stereotypes, which have their roots deep in the biological, material reality of reproductive sex – (especially those heavily gendered, pornified behaviours and appearances that are commodified and sold to young people these days) (3) and to break with these essentially patriarchal and oppressive constructs.
Who knows, doing that might allow kids to do simple things like question the automatic positioning and implied hierarchy of male/female; man/woman; masculinities/femininities that is used throughout these guidelines.
Bottom line - if you are going to attempt to dig out the roots of the many complex beliefs and practices that centre around the existence of two sexes, and seek to undermine feminism’s differentiation between the material realities of biological sex and the social construction of ideas about sex roles i.e. gender, and how that has been and still is used to subjugate women – then best be prepared for a long hard dig. Best also be prepared for the very real possibility that your attempt will actually promote even more vigorous and invasive new growth.
(1) The wording of this reinforces the ideologically motivated claim that there is a literal “spectrum of sex” – which leads to confusions like the widely repeated and woefully wrong, assertion that there are as many as six sexes, all capable of reproducing. This is absurdism. All intersex conditions are chromosomal / endocrine disorders of the biological sex characteristics of one or other of the two sexes – female and male. All, apart from the purely cosmetic, like mild hypospadias, involve either infertility or sub-fertility, and some have profound implications for health or, in the absence of medical intervention, even for survival. The harnessing of these rare conditions to the gender identity plough is political, and it is all too often cynical or heedless of consequence. Acknowledging the existence of DSDs (originally disorders of sex differentiation, now differences of sexual development), in a world that is literally saturated in DNA damaging and endocrine disrupting chemicals, charting the incidence of them, ensuring people affected by them are treated with dignity and respect and have all the medical and other services they need – are all vitally important. Deploying this diverse (and increasing) set of genetic/endocrine disorders as a weapon in the arguments around sex and gender identity is unfair to the tiny and diverse minority of people who are affected by them.
(2) Given the current influence of a social milieu that believes or purports to believe gender identity is separate from, and superior to biological sex – i.e. the current transgender orthodoxy has a considerable weight of political, institutional, corporate, media acceptance and influence (despite its claims to be the most politically, economically, socially marginalised and vulnerable of all minorities) – the political slogan “transwomen are women” has a material outcome in the expansion of the term lesbian to include male-bodied persons who identify as women and who are sexually oriented towards women. For the most part, transgender lesbians (trans women who are sexually attracted to natal females) are not sexually oriented to other transgender lesbians. Lesbians who were born female can find themselves being shamed – by means of the socially toxic labels of transphobe, genital fetishist or essentialist etc – into being open to the idea of a sexual relationship with transgender women, many of whom retain male genitalia and who may have made no, or only superficial, changes to their biological sex characteristics or social gender expression, Including retaining male-typical patterns of behaviour if the extraordinary prevalence on social media of phallocentric, masculinist threats and insults from people claiming to be translesbians is any measure.
(3) What second wave feminist foresaw a 21st century in which masses of young women would believe looking and behaving in hyper-feminine and/or pornified ways, as liberatory? Who could have foreseen cynical fashion designers attempts to surf the gender wave and sell little girl gingham dresses, modelled by anorexic androgynes, to young men?
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