TERF movement pushing back against transgenderism
Martina Navratilova, the world-class tennis player who identified as a lesbian in 1981, recently weighed in on the idea of transgender women competing in women’s sports. She called it “insane” and “cheating.” The LGBT sports group Athlete Ally retaliated by cutting ties with the tennis star.
Navratilova is not the only LGBT individual to speak thus. Intellectual author and committed homosexual Andrew Sullivan published an informative and provocative article, “The Nature of Sex,” in the Feb. 1, 2019 edition of the Intelligencer. Sullivan begins as follows.
It might be a sign of the end-times, or simply a function of our currently scrambled politics, but earlier this week, four feminist activists — three from a self-described radical feminist organization Women’s Liberation Front — appeared on a panel at the Heritage Foundation. Together they argued that sex was fundamentally biological, and not socially constructed, and that there is a difference between women and trans women that needs to be respected.
The four feminist activists Sullivan mentions are part of the Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERF) movement. They oppose the Equality Act, supported by LGBTQ activists, that would add “gender identity” to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, thus prohibiting discrimination against the transgender community.
These radical TERF feminists, including some lesbians, are opposed by the LGBTQ establishment and silenced by the mainstream media for resisting the postmodern narrative of gender identity. So Ryan Anderson of the Heritage Foundation gave them a platform to air their concerns about the transgender and gender-identity movement. To see the hour-long panel discussion go here.
TERF recognizes the reality of biology
In this often emotional discussion, the TERF panelists articulate the clear distinction between the LGB movement and the transgender movement. They assert that LGB is rooted in biology, in the modern worldview–“I am born this way,” but the gender-identity movement is rooted in the postmodern argument that biology (reason and science) is dead and gender is a social construction. These TERF activists recognize that it’s the transgender movement that’s the social construction. If the trans arguments wins, biology dies, and with it the identities of lesbians, homosexuals and anyone who recognizes that our sexual nature is rooted in biology. They see the passing of the Equality Act as the end of male/female and homosexual/lesbian distinctions.
TERF sees more clearly than many Christians the inequality of the Equality Act. If transgenderism gains legal recognition as a civil right, the transgender community will have made great strides in their goal of abolishing human biology (sexuality), including the complementarian nature of male-female distinctions, and the destruction of the concept of the natural family. We can be thankful that these radical feminists are courageously speaking out.
Homosexuality and transgenderism are different
How do we sort out these issues and difference? Sullivan writes:
We can treat different things differently. We can accept that the homosexual experience and the transgender experience are very different, and cannot be easily conflated. We can center the debate not on “gender identity” which insists on no difference between the trans and the cis, the male and the female, and instead focus on the very real experience of “gender dysphoria,” which deserves treatment and support and total acceptance for the individuals involved. We can respect the right of certain people to be identified as the gender they believe they are, and to remove any discrimination against them, while also seeing biology as a difference that requires a distinction. We can believe in nature and the immense complexity of the human mind and sexuality. We can see a way to accommodate everyone to the extent possible, without denying biological reality. Equality need not mean sameness.
We just have to abandon the faddish notion that sex is socially constructed or entirely in the brain, that sex and gender are unconnected, that biology is irrelevant, and that there is something called an LGBTQ identity, when, in fact, the acronym contains extreme internal tensions and even outright contradictions. And we can allow this conversation to unfold civilly, with nuance and care, in order to maximize human dignity without erasing human difference. That requires a certain amount of courage, and one thing I can safely say about that Heritage panel is that the women who spoke had plenty of it.
For Sullivan’s complete article go here.
Christians are cobelligerents with TERF against postmodern transgenderism
Obviously those of us who are shaped by Judeo-Christian theism would be united in our view of the humanity and thus the human dignity of members of both the LGB and trans communities. But we would break with the postmodern, transgender denial of reason and science, a denial which allows gender to be seen as a social construction. We would join TERF in supporting biology (reason and science) and fighting against the agenda of the transgender, sexual-identity movement.
We would be cobelligerents with TERF, not allies. As Christians, understanding that we live in a moral universe created by God, we would part company, on moral grounds, with the agenda of both the LGB and transgender communities.
Herein is the critical balance. We celebrate the intrinsic worth and humanity of all people, including those who identify as LGBTQ. At the same time we resist the agenda of their communities. If you have acquaintances, friends or family members in these communities, welcome them, embrace them and love them. And at the same time, lovingly stand against the ideologies of modernism and postmodernism from which these “lifestyles” have grown.
Thanks to the Heritage Foundation for giving a platform for TERF to present their arguments and concerns. May we all engage in the discussions whose outcomes will significantly change our lives, communities and nations. May we be a voice of the wonder and beauty of human dignity and of the complementary nature of male and female sexuality.
– Darrow Miller
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