The Cost of Acceptance: Eliminating Gender

Gone are the days of boys and girls. That’s right folks, it’s the year 2019 and reason and logic, along with science, have left the building. As I write this there are over 58 gender options you can choose from on Facebook. But if only having 58 to choose from isn’t enough, fear not, new ones are cropping up almost daily. You see, we are living in a time when we will tolerate ourselves and others to the point of normalizing pure insanity out of fear that we may hurt someone’s feelings.

In the Summer of 2018, I was diagnosed with something only a woman can be diagnosed with… or so I thought. Let me explain. After learning about this diagnosis; sad, upset, and longing for answers, I was hoping to find others in the same situation as myself. I knew of no one personally, so I looked for comfort from strangers in an online group filled with thousands of other women experiencing the same trials as myself. In this group, I thought I found exactly what I was looking for: friendly advice, compassion, and understanding for everything I was going through. For months I belonged to this group. I asked questions and advised others from my personal experience. This came to a screeching halt one day when the group I belonged to changed their group rules. This change happened because of one person. One person who could never truly experience what I or any of the other women in the group experienced because this person was, in fact, a male in transition.

To my dismay and other women in this group, the rules were changed because we weren’t currently being “inclusive” enough. Areas in this group that would have included the words “woman” or “women” were removed, filled with gender-neutral words instead. The admins aligned themselves with one person out of thousands of women. As hard as I tried to ignore it, I couldn’t shake the feeling that my real pain was being minimized and mocked. I knew at this point this group wasn’t serving my needs any longer and I decided to remove myself. I have since found that this was a first for me, but as a woman, it wouldn’t be the last experience of its kind.

It is this type of bullying towards “cis”-gendered women that make it possible for the next story to be conceivable. Jessica Yaniv, a transgender female, made news this summer for filing over 16 human rights complaints against female estheticians in Canada after being declined a Brazilian bikini wax. Fast forward to December, now the trans activist is “shocked and confused” that gynecologists won’t see her and believes this is also discrimination. Jessica has yet to go through gender reassignment surgery.

Women’s sports are also on the chopping block with records being shattered left and right by male born athletes. Could that be because the ease for which a biological man can dominate in an all-female sport can happen without much effort leading to an almost 100% chance of winning? Biologically born women are being pushed aside for biologically born men in transition in sports leading to, at times, very dangerous consequences.

For example, in 2014, trans MMA fighter Fallon Fox beat her female opponent Tamikka Brents so critically that Tamikka suffered a concussion and a broken skull.

Tamikka had this to say of the fight: “I’ve fought a lot of women and have never felt the strength that I felt in a fight as I did that night. I can’t answer whether it’s because she was born a man or not because I’m not a doctor. I can only say, I’ve never felt so overpowered ever in my life and I am an abnormally strong female in my own right… I still disagree with Fox fighting. Any other job or career I say have a go at it, but when it comes to a combat sport I think it just isn’t fair.”

Fallon is among many trans females to win with ease. Trans cyclist Rachel McKinnon won the world 200-meter sprint record for women and the next day won the UCI Masters World Track Cycling Championship in October 2018. Laurel Hubbard a weightlifter from New Zealand, Cece Telfer a track and field star, and June Eastwood a cross country runner are just a few others to name that are taking win after win.

Many years have passed since the beginning of First-wave feminism and Women’s Suffrage. Women fighting for their independence and the ability to vote. The hopeful thought that they would gain respect from their peers, for their accomplishments to have meaning, and the ability to stand out from their male counterparts. Yet here we are a little over 100 years later allowing some of what those women fought for to be taken advantage of. As a woman, I feel slighted. Something is being stolen from us rapidly and we as a society are allowing it to happen for the sake of being tolerant, accepting, and polite with no bearing on the consequences. I will leave you with a question to the main consequence being, will biological women lay claim to anything if we continue down this path?