TL;DW: The modern concept of gender as separate from sex was not (originally) a progressive move. It was conservatives’ reaction to the medical discoveries of the nebulous nature of biological sex, to justify imposing the gender binary on trans people and especially intersex children.
Conservatives claim to care a lot about protecting trans kids from “radical decisions”, but the places that enact legislation to prevent teenagers from using puberty blockers are the same places that still allow and encourage mutilating surgeries on intersex babies.
It is not an accident. It is ideologically consistent with conservatives’ drive to impose their religious and cultural vision of the binary gender as a completely fixed universal truth, and they’ll use extreme violence to ensure it remains binary, fixed and universal.
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TL;DW: The modern concept of gender as separate from sex was not (originally) a progressive move. It was conservatives’ reaction to the medical discoveries of the nebulous nature of biological sex, to justify imposing the gender binary on trans people and especially intersex children.
Conservatives claim to care a lot about protecting trans kids from “radical decisions”, but the places that enact legislation to prevent teenagers from using puberty blockers are the same places that still allow and encourage mutilating surgeries on intersex babies.
It is not an accident. It is ideologically consistent with conservatives’ drive to impose their religious and cultural vision of the binary gender as a completely fixed universal truth, and they’ll use extreme violence to ensure it remains binary, fixed and universal.