Jennifer Horgan: Reiterated thesis that people must be either man or woman is false
Writer JK Rowling argues that the categories of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ are indisputable; she wrote in her 2020 essay that ‘woman’ is not a costume. ‘Woman’ is not an idea in a man’s head ... or any of the other sexist ideas now somehow touted as progressive.
Last week, Christian Voice Ireland organised an event in a boxing club in Dublin, where they shared damaging disinformation about the new SPHE curriculum in schools.
They are angered that the use of the club is being investigated, but disinformation is a very dangerous thing. It is the intended sharing of incorrect information with malicious intent. Misinformation is getting something wrong — something we all do at times, myself included.
It’s a distinction worth noting.
Having watched a recording of the event on YouTube, the level of disinformation was startling. Speakers described the new curriculum as being obsessed with gender identity.
The truth, as shared by teacher Eoghan Cleary in a separate article, is that the term is used only twice, in two of 39 learning outcomes.
But I’d like to discuss something more fundamentally flawed about the claims this week, and that is the assertion that the biology of men and women is straightforward in every instance.
Independent senator Sharon Keogan confidently declared at the event that children should not hear mention of anything that contradicts the basic fact that “men are men and women are women”. Later, Pastor John Ahern said “sex is binary and unchangeable”.
She concluded that to say otherwise was a “shocking recent modern invention, the long-term impact of which can only be guessed at”.
Ms Keoghan calls to mind JK Rowling, another person who vehemently argues that the categories of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ are indisputable.
Rowling wrote in her 2020 essay that ‘woman’ is not a costume. ‘Woman’ is not an idea in a man’s head. ‘Woman’ is not a pink brain, a liking for Jimmy Choos, or any of the other sexist ideas now somehow touted as progressive.
These people hold as a first principle that biological sex is clear and absolute. They say nothing about the millions of people who don’t quite fit that bill.
According to the United Nations: “Up to 1.7% of the population is born with intersex traits.”
The UN’s 2019 background report offers a helpful definition of what that means: “Intersex people are born with sex characteristics that do not fit typical definitions for male or female bodies, including sexual anatomy, reproductive organs, hormonal patterns, and/or chromosome patterns.”
So, it’s not just about babies having ambiguous genitalia at birth, it can also be something discovered later on, to do with hormonal and chromosomal patterns. This is one reason why it’s difficult to come up with an exact figure — there are many different presentations under the intersex umbrella.
Other sources will give a far lower figure. They will say it is as low as 0.5% of the global population.
That is still more than 40 million people. That’s the approximate population of Canada. Or Poland. That’s nearly eight times the population of Ireland. Essentialist thinkers like Ms Keoghan would like us to erase such people from our consciousness in order to fit a binary social order.
And isn’t it also striking that we hear so very little about intersex births from these people? Yes, they will argue against surgeries for people wishing to transition, but they will say nothing about the ‘corrective’ surgeries endured by tiny intersex babies.
According to a report by this newspaper in 2016, Crumlin Children’s Hospital — to take just one hospital in the country — sees two or three new DSD (disorders of sexual development) cases each year, where the baby isn’t immediately identifiable as a boy or girl.
The practice of ‘fixing’ a baby’s genitals to erase intersexuality is still accepted. These surgeries still happen in Ireland and most families are grateful for them.
However, intersex activists point out that these surgeries are rarely medically necessary to safeguard a child’s physical health and have more in common with religious practices such as female genital mutilation. The baby’s rights are not considered. The baby, born naturally, is surgically altered to fit societal norms and expectations.
According to Intersex Ireland, corrective surgeries are performed on newborn babies as social emergencies rather than being medically necessary.
Whatever the ethics of these surgeries, they are certainly working to make intersex people disappear from public consciousness.
Organised religion has a steering hand in all of it. As a culturally Catholic child, I was told that mankind came from Adam and Eve. Man and woman. Utterly distinct. I still, if I’m honest about it, find intersex a challenging fact.
But it is a fact.
I also had no idea until very recently that other cultures see biological sex and gender very differently. The binary system is very far from being a universal system and beyond the reach of organised religion, there is an acceptance of more than two genders.
Among the Mapuche people in Southern Chile and in Argentina, Machi gender is determined by their identity and spirituality, not by sex assigned at birth.
This fluidity of gender allows them to interact with the spiritual realm. The Muxes (pronounced mu-shay), a recognised third gender among the Zapotec people in Oaxaca, (Mexico) maintain cultural traditions that are less prevalent among the broader community.
On the island of Samoa, there are four recognised cultural genders: female, male, fa’afafine, and fa’afatama. The last two are fluid gender roles that move between the male and female.
It is not surprising to me that the people in attendance at the boxing club event last week were extremely religious. Christian Voice Ireland is a conservative group that claims to represent over 80 churches and ministries. What we must remember is that they are spreading disinformation — lies — when they talk about what’s going on in Irish classrooms.
It is also factually incorrect to base arguments on men being men and women being women. By every biological and scientific measure, that assertion is false. And it is heavy with shame, the shame of parents who are told that their naturally born baby is so different that they are in need of fixing.
Individuals and groups will seek to spread disinformation on this, but the scientific and medical communities widely recognise that sex is not strictly binary, and there is a spectrum of biological variations that fall outside the typical male/female categories.
From JK Rowling, to British actor Laurence Fox to our own senator, the reiterated thesis that people must be either one or the other, man or woman, is false.
The truth of sex and gender is grey, a greyness most Irish people are willing to embrace with kindness and compassion now, including many people of faith.
Most people are either male or female, but not all. Young Irish people have no issue hearing that gay, intersex, and transgender people exist, just as red-haired people exist, just as volcanoes and trees exist, as part of our hugely diverse, natural world. And in that natural world biological sex is more diverse than binary.
According to Petter Bøckman, zoologist at the Natural History Museum in Oslo: “There are a bunch of animals that are both … then there are a good number of animals that change sex depending on external factors.”
The world won’t fall apart because such knowledge, such fact, is shared, but we will become more and more divided if we tolerate and indeed give a platform to disinformation dressed up as religious freedom.
