The rise of the social justice warriors on various college campuses has given rise to all sorts of fake problems (or highly selective narratives) like the rape culture, white privilege and the wage gap.
However, there is one problem where both SJW and conservatives are wrong: gender. Indeed, both groups are constantly confusing gender with sex, which are not necessarily the same.
Sex is determined exclusively by chromosomes. In humans, XX is female and XY is male. With very few exceptions (there are XXY and XYY males, some people are born with both genitalia), these are the only sexes human have. XY humans are generally taller, hairier and physically stronger while XX humans are shorter, have larger hips and breasts and can carry children in their wombs. No amount of surgery – with the present state of science – can completely turn one sex into the other; it’s at best an aesthetic change. No XY human born without a uterus could ever bear children.
In other words, it’s basic biology and no amount of mouth foaming can change that fact.
Gender, on the other, is a social construct that varies through societies and centuries. It's usually what is expected from both sexes. For example, I was taught in school that several Native societies in New France were matriarchal, i.e. women were the heads of households and power was passed down from mother to daughter. This is the exact opposite of Western societies, where males dominate family and political lives and where the father’s name is the one that (generally) gets transmitted to children. Many women also tend to take their husband’s name or hyphenate their maiden name with their husband’s.
Because they have to bear the burden of maternity, women are thought to be more nurturing and caring for the children. This may explain why many still go for “traditional” jobs like teaching, where a maternity leave doesn’t mean their skills will go to waste. However, a woman that doesn’t want children, or at least not before age 30, isn’t less of a woman because of that. Nor is she “butch” because she works.
The same thing goes for a man that is a home maker. My father stayed at home because my mother had a more stable job as an auxiliary nurse in a hospital. Is he any less of a man because of that, and is my mother any less of a woman because she was head of household?
Gender is something that changes through the years, and there is nothing wrong with that. In fact, the change from the “traditional” household with only one bread winner was a huge victory for women since they were finally able to become full-fledged citizens. Before 1965 or so, women in the Canadian province of Quebec had the legal status or a child – they couldn’t own anything in their name or sign official documents.
A Society without Bearings
However, the changes wanted by the most vocal SJW want are not only ludicrous, but also dangerous.
Ludicrous because they try to do away with sexual distinctions between men and women. Like it or not, Nature has made men and women distinct. They should be equal under the law, but saying that they are “the same” is just a comforting lie. And I’m sure that if there are trans people that feel offended with the term “pregnant woman”, there are very few and far between. Nor would most of them feel harassed when women say that they form half the population.
Dangerous because, just like the South Park episode on sexual education, they hope to propagate their erroneous conceptions of sex and genders to primary schools. With very few exceptions, can we just say that boys and girls – at least before they hit puberty – are boys and girls by default? Can we just go on a case-by-case basis for those who have gender dimorphism rather than ask EVERYONE what their gender is?