No, gender theory does not deny the existence of biological sexes. It would be ridiculous, of course, but it is not true, and it is unacceptable that we allow this type of comment to be made in our media, whose fundamental mission is to enlighten us. So, let’s take a few minutes to remember what the researchers who have been working on this question since Simone de Beauvoir in 1949 are really saying. It’s actually a fairly simple thing: there’s more to an individual’s identity than to their biological sex.
Remember: Madame de Beauvoir explained to us in The second sex that “we are not born a woman, we become one”. By this she meant that, to this first biological identity, being either a boy or a girl—a girl in this case—societies add cultural characteristics to being one or the other. In other words, there are two levels – at least – in a person’s identity: their sex and what we call their “gender”, that is to say what is socially constructed. The first is said to be innate and the second to be acquired.
This gender is acquired in many ways, often with many social pressures, for girls to look like what is expected of them in their society; boys must also fit the role assigned to them culturally. By the way, this is why masculine or feminine behaviors are not universal.
Genres are different depending on the cultures that give rise to them and the eras that see them born. I don’t dress like my grandmother did in her time, and the choices available to me, in the same society, are much wider than those allowed to her. I don’t dress like an Afghan either and I have infinitely more choices in my society than they do in theirs. Gender theory is that simple.
It is correct that gender theory has become the fundamental analytical framework of contemporary feminism because the characteristics associated – or imposed – on the female sex have long thwarted the autonomy of women, their right to manage their own body, and denied their full equality with men, as is still the case in many countries. These characteristics, supposed to be the essence of the feminine, have also long excluded us from power and the public sphere. It is this determinism of sex that feminists oppose.
It is also true that gender theory is one of the foundations of the analyzes which frame the struggles of the LGB, lesbian and homosexual male community, because cultural and social pressures push boys and girls towards heterosexuality and that a part of the world’s populations cannot adhere to these patterns or lifestyles. These social and cultural pressures are said to be heteronormative.
In certain countries, heteronormative pressures are extremely violent. Deviation can lead to capital punishment. It is these heteronormative pressures in the construction of gender that homosexual activists and lesbian activists oppose.
I am not a specialist in transsexuality, the T in the term LGBTQ+, but it seems to me that with a little empathy, by reflecting on the data of this theory, we can understand why people are so uncomfortable are so comfortable with these pressures and the cultural roles imposed on their gender that they become sick. It is against these pressures that activist representatives of transsexual people and their allies are fighting.
Finally, let us remember that all religions (yes, all) consider and teach in their temples that men and women have different roles to play in their lives because God would have wanted it that way. It is therefore obvious that these religions will never be able to admit a theory which states that sex is not a social determinism, or simply that it should not be.
Religions will always oppose gender theory. This gender theory is, however, emancipatory, and it is for this reason that it has its place in our schools. It helps human beings live full, whole and harmonious lives. It is against the obscurantism of those who oppose it that we must rebel because the identity of an individual is not limited to their biological sex.