GENDER AND SEX: Why Tamper with the Order of Nature?

The British government has decided, apparently, to drop opposition to forming hybrid animal-human embryos for stem-cell research. Such research has been banned by everyone until now, because human dignity is offended and monstrosities will be created from these inseminations. The thirst for human knowledge has to be within certain limits, the ones that respect the natural order; some borders should not be crossed. Besides, there is no reason to do so. Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases can be cured using stem cells in adults and in umbilical cords.

But should we be too surprised? Charles Darwin said that we evolve from monkeys and it has been the fashion ever since to believe him; our educators have included his theory in the school text books. So, what’s wrong in experimenting with human beings, particularly in this embryonic stage where they will put up no resistance?

Related to all this are the recent developments of the feminist movement. This all began during the years of the French Revolution when, in 1791 Olympe de Gouges wrote her famous Declaration of the Rights of Women, in which she claimed political, economic and civic rights for women: even the right to be sentenced and imprisoned and to be guillotined. Which is in fact what happened to Olympe. The French National Assembly banned all women’s associations. The following year in England women demanded the right to vote and to full citizenship. German women some time later clamoured for equal rights in education and the professions. Women in these two countries were the first to be granted the right to vote, in 1918; Switzerland was the last in Europe, in 1971.

This movement took on a more aggressive tone, with "The Second Sex", by the French philosopher, Simone de Beauvoir, in 1949. Women, she wrote, were trapped by motherhood, and subjected to their husbands. The modern woman has to free herself from the ties of nature, through lesbian relationships, abortion, and handing over the education of children to the state. Feminist Shulamit Firestone, in The Dialectic Sex (1970), said women had to be liberated from the "tyranny of procreation" at any price. In the following years feminists discovered that trying to be like men brought tension and frustration. After all, men had destroyed the environment and brought us to the edge of nuclear destruction. So, women must become purely "feminine": all feelings and emotions, and downplay intelligence. This failed too.

Latest developments have been markedly sinister. Not only should women free themselves from male domination, and from their motherly function, but they must eliminate nature, and change their bodies. This equally applies to men, who, if they wish, should be able to have a womb implanted, and have the experience of giving birth.

And so the word "gender" is introduced, as opposed to "sex". Sex is the nature we are born with: male or female. Gender is Masculine, Feminine AND Neuter. "Family planning programmes should not only focus on attempting to reduce fertility within existing gender roles, but rather on changing gender roles in order to reduce fertility" (from a paper prepared for a conference in Bangalore, India, 26-30 October, 1992, in conjunction with UNFPA.). In fact, gender roles have become many more: heterosexual male, and female; homosexual and lesbian; bisexual, and "none of the above, whatever you wish". So these radical feminists are trying to build their own new world order, where male and female are just two of many ways on which we base our view of human life and interpersonal relationships. Gender feminism is promoted in some UN bodies, and has been a course in many universities for several years now. In gender ideology, the body is something with which to freely experiment. We only need think of some famous transsexual pop stars.

At the root of this is hostility to the body as we are born with it. This is not something new; it shows its face every few centuries with all its force. We have to accept our body and our bodilyness, with all that this implies. Otherwise we don’t accept ourselves as we are, and the result is emotional, psychic and spiritual disequilibrium.

There is the case of John Money (1921-2006), an American psychiatrist who tried to prove the theory that one’s sex depends only on the way one is brought up. He experimented on a couple of twin brothers, Bruce and Brian Reimer. Bruce had an accident soon after birth; Money used this opportunity to change the body into one that looked like a girl, and told the parents they should bring up the child as if he were a girl, and not tell anyone. Bruce became Brenda. The experiment did not work. When Bruce was 13, his father told him. The boy decided to undergo surgery to "revert" to being a boy. From then on his life was torture, psychologically, and physically, his body marked with open wounds. Eventually he committed suicide. Nature always reclaims its rights.

Sex and Gender are different, but related. A boy realises his sexual identity when he learns that biologically and psychically he is different from his sisters. A girl understands her gender identity when she becomes aware of her social and cultural role as a woman, and that it is not the same as that of her brothers. Men and women don’t see the world with the same eyes; they solve problems and react differently; they don’t plan or foresee things in the same way.

Men generally have greater physical strength; women greater interior resources.. Women tend to be aware of the needs of those around them; whereas a man’s intentions are more evident. But these are the general rule, and there are always exceptions. Maturity is to develop the "qualities" of the opposite sex: for example, for a man to become more humble and welcoming. Neither men nor women are superior intellectually or morally; but in one thing they cannot be replaced, in being father OR mother.

When men scientists and feminist academicians try to tamper with the order of nature, they can instigate an incalculable trail of damage, physical and psychological; and it is up to national governments and international bodies to stop this before it gets out of control.

This is from a paper given at a single-sex schools conference in Barcelona in March.