Recently on Facebook:

Can someone please explain why so many Libertarians are concerned with the gender controversy? Our motto is literally don’t hurt people or take their things, other than that do what you want. So if someone says they are not male or female, or they’re somewhere in between, that’s their freedom, no? Seems like there are a lot of people who fight for freedom when it comes to guns, businesses, and property, but not freedom of your own thoughts — that just makes you an asshole (or a republican).

First Answer:

I have many problems with “gender” talk. I will name three.

1. The concept is all about identification by “group.” Young people are being encouraged to conform not to their natural desires and interests, but to some set of group identifiers, often at the expense of biological facts. Confession: I am an individualist before a libertarian, and I want people to individuate, not tribalize. Become their own persons, not members of a club, complete with an ideology that makes them feel in-group/out-group love/hate. The “gender” movement is a neo-tribal groupthink ideology.

2. Gender theory has developed in tandem with the postmodernist movement, shanghaing Marxian class analysis from its goofy economic interpretation into a nebulous cultural orientation. Marxism is a disease of the mind. It falsifies reality and encourages collectivism. So does gender theory in practice.

3. Gender has been degraded in popular speech as a substitute for “sex,” which still embarrasses people to talk about. This swap is stupid, and it is common. Everyone who uses “gender” when they mean “sex” should be ashamed of themselves. And that is a majority of the word’s users, at least some of the time.

Second Answer:

Also, consider this part of original challenge: “So if someone says they are not male or female, or they’re somewhere in between, that’s their freedom, no?”

You can call yourself a toaster, but that doesn’t mean I’d put bread in your slot and expect a nice, dry and crisp and hot treat.

This is an issue of sex. The number of people who are hermaphrodites or have strange chromosomal issues is minute. These people have difficulty determining their sex. And I feel for them. But to those of us with either cox or kunz, balz or fallopians, xy’s or xx’s, we are either male or female.

“Male” and “female” are not gender concepts. They are sex concepts. We use sex as identifiers in common speech because it is objective and easy.

“Masculine” and “feminine” are the terms of “gender theory.” Two among many, actually.

Gender theory is about what people do with their sex, how they and others think about it. If you think “male” and “female” are gender concepts, you have misunderstood the theory.

Alas, many gender theorists misunderstand the theory, because they are incompetent thinkers who cannot rub two ideas together and get a synthesis.

twv

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