Last autumn, I wrote a post that ruffled some feathers. The TL;DR: Sex and Gender are two separate things. Sex is mammalian biology, Gender is socially constructed ie the culturally “acceptable” roles and behaviours of people based on their biological sex. Sex doesn’t cause Gender and Gender doesn’t cause Sex.

That’s it.

And yet I was hounded, shouted at, abused, called a foul shit and “transphobic” by trans activists.

Yes, because I accept the scientific definition of Biological Sex, I am apparently transphobic. I’m not alone. Women all over the web are being told by trans activists and their allies that they can’t speak about their own bodies, they can’t speak about gender, they are being told that penises are female, they are being called bigots, racists, cunts and told to die in a fire to shut them up. And it’s working because women are afraid. I’m afraid even posting this because I know that it will open me up again to exactly the same abuse I received before. Just watch.

Now, grab a comfy seat. I’m going to teach you something about hearts.

There are two ways human beings view hearts.

On the one hand we think of it as a biological muscular organ that is in our chests, pumping away day in day out without us thinking about it very much at all. Hearts are also found in all other animals with a circulatory system, which includes the vertebrates. *cracks neck* *continues*

Most people are born with healthy hearts, some people are born with congenital heart disease. Some people acquire heart disease later on, usually due to not living a healthy life.

The average human heart, beating at 72 beats per minute, will beat approximately 2.5 billion times during an average 66 year lifespan, and pumps approximately 4.7-5.7 litres of blood per minute. It weighs approximately 250 to 300 grams (9 to 11 oz) in females and 300 to 350 grams (11 to 12 oz) in males.

Boom-boom. Boom-boom. Boom-boom.

The other way we think about hearts is as the centre of our emotions, specifically love. This started with the Ancient Egyptians who believed that the heart, rather than the brain, was the source of human wisdom, as well as emotions, memory, the soul and the personality itself.

The Roman physician Galen saw the heart as the seat of emotions which influenced the development of the medieval Christian devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

In Chinese medicine, the heart is seen as the center of shén “spirit, soul, consciousness”.

heartfelt

heartache

heartbreak

heartless

heartsick

heartstrings

heartthrob

You get the idea.

We can discuss the validity and analyse the origins of the second, cultural, meaning of “heart” all we want, but it’s not going to affect the first, biological, meaning of “heart”. We can say that the heart is where we feel our emotions, but our real hearts are going to just keep on beating without any cultural analysis of them.

We can change the name of our hearts – maybe we want to call it jb like the Ancient Egyptians or le cœur like the French or just make up a whole new name for it like Qvertizk– but that isn’t going to change the fact that our hearts still beat. Nor will changing its name to SuperHealthyHeart change the fact that some people are born with congenital heart disease and still others are going to acquire heart disease by living an unhealthy life. Et cetera.

Biology- the real blood and guts and proton gradients one, not “the study of” one- doesn’t care about words.

Boom-boom. Boom-boom. Boom-boom.

Equally, the fact that I menstruate once every 28-ish days has absolutely NOTHING to do with any cultural beliefs about menstruation. You can call it Lovely Lady Drops or pretend it’s blue and it’s still going to happen month after month until I go through menopause. My body exists outside of any cultural interpretations of it. It is a real thing.

I have been pregnant and carried two babies to term. I didn’t need any cultural analysis to actually give birth. If you get pregnant and carry a baby to term “giving birth” is going to happen whether you want it to or not, whether you believe it or not. Whatever name you give to it has absolutely no relevance at all to whether pregnancy or birth are real things that really happen. Chimpanzees don’t have any language to describe pregnancy or birth or the type of chimpanzee that gives birth and the type that doesn’t, and yet Female chimpanzees still give birth.

Despite the efforts of many people to redefine them, vaginas, uteri, ovaries, Fallopian tubes, cervixes are all parts of the Mammalian Female Reproductive System, they are not specific to humans:

The mammalian female reproductive system likewise contains two main divisions: the vagina and uterus, which act as the receptacle for the sperm, and the ovaries, which produce the female’s ova. All of these parts are always internal. The vagina is attached to the uterus through the cervix, while the uterus is attached to the ovaries via the Fallopian tubes. At certain intervals, the ovaries release an ovum, which passes through the fallopian tube into the uterus.

When I talk about “Female Biology” that is what I mean, the blood and guts and proton gradients one. The one that doesn’t care about titles or labels or classifications.

Biology- the study of blood and guts and proton gradients- does, however, care about classifications and labels and titles…

Kingdom: Animalia -> Phylum: Chordata -> Class: Mammalia -> Infraclass: Eutheria -> Magnorder: Boreoeutheria ->Superorder: Euarchontoglires -> Order: Primates -> Suborder: Haplorhini -> Infraorder: Simiiformes -> Parvorder: Catarrhini -> Superfamily: Hominoidea -> Hominidae -> Family: Homininae -> Genus: Homo -> Species: H. sapiens (<–that’s us, kids!)

If you want to reclassify Males and Females, and redefine Vaginas and Penises, then you’re going to have to reclassify Male and Female in over 5,000 different species of animals from Mammalia on down.

So… Good luck with that.

Can we all just accept that Biological Sex is A Real Thing and Gender is Culture, which is open to interpretation and analysis, and get on with destroying the pernicious effects of the latter? Please?