The Gender Revolution

By Patricia Weerakoon   When we biologists say that sex in humans is binary, and there are two sexes, male and female, we are not talking about sexual intercourse, chromosomes, body types (body shape, breasts), behaviour (masculine or feminine) or personal identity (the so-called inner feeling that you are male or female). When biologists say that sex in humans is binary, we are making a statement about the number of distinct reproductive strategies the human species is capable of.  The term ‘reproductive strategy’ is a biological concept. It’s not something unique to humans. It simply means the system for propagating genes and forming a new individual organism. Different kinds of plants and animals have different reproductive strategies. For example, some plants reproduce asexually, through budding or fragmentation. The new plants are genetically identical to the parent, because no new DNA has been introduced.  Humans possess a binary reproductive strategy. I mentioned i...

By Patricia Weerakoon   As Kamal said in a previous post , “[t]he biological basis of binary sex should not be contentious” because our embodied biology “demonstrate[s] that there are only two sexes.”  But that invariably raises the question “what about people who are intersex?” Transgender ideology trains people to believe that the “I” in the LGBTQI acronym is evidence against binary sexuality.  The brief answer is: no, it’s not. I prefer the term ‘disorders of sex development’ (some use the term differences in sex development) because it better represents what happens to people’s bodies and is therefore less confusing.  There are two reasons why intersex isn’t evidence against binary gender, one scientific, the other to do with a proper description of people’s experiences.  The scientific understanding of male and female  The well-established, scientifically verified definition of man and woman is based on a person’s body structure – in particular, the pu...

By Kamal Weerakoon  The biological basis of binary sex should not be contentious. Our bodies demonstrate certain consistent patterns. Science carefully examines and exhaustively documents those patterns. And those patterns demonstrate that there are only two sexes.  But this begs the question of what authority our embodied biology has over our understanding of our self, and following on from that, what authority our biological constitution has to guide our way of life. Biology may indeed be binary. But - so what? What right does binary biology have to 'identify' me – to authoritatively tell me something about my self and how I should present and relate to others?  Christianity’s doctrine of creation gives Christians good reasons to recognise the authority of embodied biology. God’s creation of humanity as male and female ( Gen 1:26-28 ) is consistent with the binary nature of other animals ( Gen 6:19-20 ) and is an aspect of the goodness – the overall integrated wholesome...