In my Salvo article, “Feminists Under Fire by Radical Trans,” I point out that on a deep primal level, nobody truly believes the meaning of a man or woman can be separated from the physiological realities of a person’s body. For consider, if being a man or a woman really could be disengaged from physiology, then why is there such a fixation with changing people’s physiology to fit their chosen gender? This presents a paradox at the heart of the transgender movement. The trans community wants it both ways: on the one hand, they want to deconstruct the man-woman binary; yet on the other hand, they are still very beholden to the biological correlates of the man-woman distinction. After all, if a person’s chosen gender really can be disengaged from their anatomical characteristics, then why such an obsession with altering the latter to correspond with the former?
This point was made brilliantly (though in French) by Mathieu Grossi in his article for The Symbolic World, “What is a woman ? de Matt Walsh, et le symbolisme du questionnement.” Grossi pointed out that
Trans identity relies on the distinction between gender and biological sex. Therefore, terms like “gender,” “man,” and “woman” must be defined clearly enough to justify significant medical interventions and social restructuring, yet vaguely enough to allow individuals unrestricted self-identification. Without the concepts of masculinity and femininity, a biologically male individual claiming to be a woman cannot explain what “being a woman” means. This collapse also undermines other ideological constructs, including modern feminism and all components of the LGBTQ movement. [Translation into English by ChatGPT]
So what do transgender activists actually believe about anthropology? Nobody knows!