Norfolking Way
The Norfolk Police in the UK have recently come under a bit of fire for their in-house ‘training’ material which describes 37 different gender and sex-orientation terms. Presumably this is so they can work out whether the victim’s guts were sliced open in a gender-appropriate way. Or whether the burglar alarm on your house is properly respectful of the wonderful menagerie of identities we have in 2022.
I live in Norfolk.
This is my police force.
For many years now I have seen the sign
. . . and thought “tell me something I didn’t know”
Let’s have a look at some of definitions in this glorious list
PANSEXUAL: Attracted to all genders and/or not concerned about gender when attracted to someone.
POLYSEXUAL: Attracted to many genders.
ANDROSEXUAL: Attracted to masculine gender presentation.
GYNOSEXUAL: Attracted to feminine gender presentation.
DEMISEXUAL: Experiencing sexual attraction after forming a strong emotional bond.
GREY ASEXUAL: Experiencing attraction rarely, on a very low scale.
HETERONORMATIVE: Belief that heterosexuality is the norm and that sex, gender, sexuality and gender roles all align.
VARIORIENTED: When your sexual and romantic orientations do not target same set of genders.
ERASURE: Ignoring the existence of genders and sexualities in the middle of the spectrum.
GENDERFLUID: Having a fluctuating gender identity.
AGENDER: Not identifying with any gender.
BI-GENDER: Identifying as two genders, (but not exclusively) male and female.
POLYGENDER: When you identify with multiple genders at once.
NEUTROSIS: Identifying as neither male, female nor genderless.
GENDER APATHETIC: Not caring about identifying as any gender.
GREY GENDER: Having a weak gender identification of yourself.
MAVERIQUE: Non-binary gender outside of orthodox social bounds of gender.
So, according to this list, I have been able to work out my own gender identity.
I am, apparently, a gynosexual, demisexual, erasure, agender, neutrosis, gender apathetic person - a GAGANED.
I haven’t been able to say I’m “heteronormative” according to their definition, because I don’t understand it. I’ve no idea what believing that “sex, gender, sexuality and gender roles” all aligning means. Aligning with what? Each other? I don’t believe that. Homosexuality exists. But heterosexuality is definitely the norm. For now.
I also don’t “identify” as male, or female, or anything, really, so that fits the definition of “neutrosis” and “agender”. I am a male - which is not at all the same thing as identifying as one. And I sure as hell don’t care about “identifying” as any gender - so pretty apathetic about it really.
One argument you’ll hear when complaining about all these social “justice” issues is that it’s all just a tiny minority of vocal people and things like cancellation, gender ideology, and the like, are not really big issues at a society-wide level. We are, it is said, worrying our right-wing, fascistic, boomer heads over nothing.
Someone needs to send the Norfolk Police that memo.
I’ve spent a little bit of time trying to understand what the heck all this gender woo-woo is about. The more I read about it, the less I understand it. For example, here’s Teen Talk, a resource for teenagers in Manitoba, talking about the difference between sex and gender (there are lots and lots and lots of other websites saying essentially the same thing) :
Gender identity is how a person feels and who they know them self to be when it comes to their gender. There are more than two genders, even though in our society the genders that are most recognized are male and female . . . and usually is based on someone’s anatomy . . . This is gender assignment and it is based on an assumption that someone’s genitals match their gender. However, gender isn’t about someone’s anatomy, it is about who they know them self to be.
It all sounds very tolerant and affirming and compassionate and understanding but what does it mean?
“Who they know themselves to be”
“Gender identity is how a person feels”
I was trying to figure out how I know I am a man. And I ran into some difficulties. Now I’m not at all sure.
I shed a tear or two at the end of the movie The Notebook
I like chocolate
I have a shit ton of fragrances (I used to ‘collect’ them back in the days when disposable income was a thing)
I have 20 pairs of things to put on my feet
I used to grow roses and had over 40 different varieties in my garden
On the other hand, I couldn’t tell you the difference between rustic farmhouse white and Swiss coffee white at the paint store
The principal reason I don’t understand it all is because it doesn’t make sense. At least not anything I am used to describing as “sense”.
In biological terms there are men and women - and there’s a very small percentage of ‘intersex’ people for whom things went a bit tits up and a bit bolloxed (I’m trying to be fair to both biological variants here)
Biology can be a bit of a bugger like that.
Things don’t always go quite according to plan. But the existence of the tiny intersex category, for whom something went wrong, is not a reason to eradicate the categories of man and woman altogether.
One problem, amongst many, comes when you introduce the very concept of ‘gender’ and allow the gender of ‘woman’ to be entirely divorced from the sex of ‘woman’. As Queen Elizabeth the first never said
I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have cajones the size of housebricks
Maybe Lizzie 1.0 was genderfluid and was identifying as a man when she made that speech.
So, today, someone may have the body of a woman, but know themselves to be a man, according to Teen Talk. All sounds super-duper wonderful and tolerant. But it completely falls apart when you ask the pertinent question:
So you know that you’re a man. Could you tell me exactly what it is you know yourself to be?
This is why Matt Walsh’s documentary What is a Woman? is so powerful - because it exposes the foundational flaw at the heart of it all. You identify as a woman? That’s nice. Could you tell me what it is you’re identifying as without using the word woman? (in other words, without a self-referential and circular definition).
In biological terms we know what a woman is. In gender terms it’s a vague, shifting, subjective, gloopy mess that means different things to different people. In other words, we might as well say, and with every bit as much real meaning, “today I am a fiddlethwock”.
It seems time to properly reconsider the whole concept of gender and at least attempt to put it on a more logically-consistent foundation. But we seem intent on hurtling headlong and heedlessly into some version of The Hunger Games where the oddities are definitely not in your favour.
What i think is hilarious though dark- that endocrine and hormonal distruptors have been affecting our sexualities for decades, feminizing men and masculating women through the foods we eat and environmental exposures. (Seneff, Toxic Legacy is one source). So, I will never be sure my 'choice' to be a lesbian is really 'mine'. I think it's hilarious, we never want to say we have possibly poisoned ourselves out of existance, reproductively. I can see why the gov's are hijacking this one, it works for them on multiple levels.
I watched the trailer and some of Matt Walsh's videos on "what is a woman", and it was hilarious and interesting. I can't wait to see the documentary.
I see some word confusion between biological sex and gender. Sometimes the same word is used for both, like woman. The woke movement needs a consistent distinction. For example the word woman refers to one's biology; a person with a vagina, uterus, clitoris, and propensity for secondary sex characteristics of the XX chromosomes. (Acknowledging that there are hermaphrodites). And then using the word female or feminine for gender (including gender expression in behaviors), it would clear some things up.
Gender has a lot to do with social constructs; society has determined certain behaviors and roles to be more "masculine" or "feminine". I think it's good that this is breaking down, so both men and women have more freedom to express their power, strength, love and compassion without social limitations or judgments. It's becoming more accepted for men to clean the house and cook and care for the children, and women to be the primary breadwinner and take out the trash if they want. When women first started wearing pants in the united states, it was an outrage because of the defiance of the cultures accepted gender expression of women! I think more openness leads to a greater expression of the whole human soul, without culture limiting that so much.
Gender expression, engaging in behaviors and appearance that the culture considers more masculine or feminine, of course does not change one's biological sex. It doesn't change the fact that a person is biologically a man or a woman.
Biological sex does create behavioral tendencies in men and women, and I think this has a lot to do with the amount of estrogen and testosterone. So you can have gradiations of masculine women and feminine men. You would not know how much is due to hormone levels and how much is due to simple behavioral preferences and cultural influences.
Of course, this would mean that trans women are not biological women, nor a trans man is a biological man, even after a sex change. I sympathize that this may be painful, and I try to be kind and respectful to everyone I meet. I appreciate single use locker rooms and bathrooms for everyone to use when they want. Biological males should not be allowed in women's bathrooms, locker rooms, and in women's sports because of biological differences. A majority of people have a understandable level of comfort during intimate acts of undressing or toileting with those of the same biological sex, due to lots of things. This needs to be respected.
I think some woke people take their gendered behavior as their identity, which is why their identity can change from day to day. But really any of our behavior understandably can change day to day, and some people thinks this changes their identity. The word "identity" refers to something more lasting and unchanging, but still can have cultural constructs, like identifying as a lawyer or a gardener. Or on biological facts, like a man or woman, a short or tall person. Or personal characteristics, like a smart or kind person. There needs to be more understanding and distinction between identity and behavior in the woke sphere.
Biological sex is a fact across the human and animal kingdom, irrespective of culture. Here is where language gets confused again amongst the woke, because we don't call female horses women horses. 😄 So the word female for human gender would then be applied to the biological sex of the horse. No matter what we call the horse though, it doesn't change the fact that some horses grow babies inside their bodies and other horses produce sperm. Helloooo.... And this is where hilarity ensues in Matt Walsh's documentary.
There are more behavioral expressions that could fall outside of binary cultural categories of masculine and feminine, so I'm talking about these in relation to biological sex of men and women. When I see all of the definitions you refer to in your article, I think who cares? I can see myself in a few, as you can, but who cares? Any identity that we have has a little narcissism in it; we get a little irked or hurt when people don't see us for the kind or intelligent person we want to project. I think mastering all these definitions involves a little bit of narcissism. In Matt Walsh's interview on Dr Phil, the person explaining these definitions kept saying it's confusing but you'll get it, and I thought there was a bit of narcissism in mastering the definitions, and they really didn't amount to much when it comes to interacting with one another. But young generations get involved in all sorts of things in their teens and twenties that older generations don't understand.