One can learn so much about gender studies ideology by simply listening to and observing its most faithful adherents. Become a student, and it can be quite entertaining.

What a different world we’d have if more people evaluated a belief system, not from what they assume about it, but what they learn from the experienced and serious people who hold those beliefs. Because of my work at Focus on the Family, I’ve had the fortune to do this over the last decade or more with the gender studies community.

They are quite different than I am. Like 99.999 percent of the world, I hold that humanity presents itself as male and female, solely. Our gender studies friends believe this is a tragically uninformed, if not oppressive, view. What have I learned by venturing outside my own bubble and observing this different world? I have much to tell, and no one could make up this stuff.

Much of this experience comes from speaking at more liberal college campuses all around the country on different aspects of gender issues. Out of the gate, I tell audiences my belief on this subject is founded in the reality that humanity exists and is fundamentally understood as male and female, that both are wonderfully unique and they need each other.

It’s typically normal for such crowds to boo, hiss, and laugh raucously at the statement. I long ago came to anticipate the reaction like a match to gasoline, its own little law of nature. Group fun at the silly hayseed’s expense. I let the amusement simmer down then repeat back to the audience what just happened. “I said this, and you guys did that.” Wisconsin Public Radio hosted and recorded one such event at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and edited out this exchange in their broadcast. Simply noting the behavior without commentary is its own commentary.

I’ve Never Met a Third Sex

I then go on into my remarks asking if the males in the hall will raise their hands. Many do. The females? They make themselves known as well. “Are there others who don’t fit into either category?” On most campuses, I get a sprinkling of hands raised.

I say to these folks the same thing you might. “Please come up afterward and introduce yourself. I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting someone who isn’t male or female.” Who would pass up that opportunity, right? Each one who’s responded to the invitation over the years has only left me disappointed. Falsehood in advertising. They are always some hope-crushing variation of male or female, and often times, not that varied.

A butch female is not a new gender, and no amount of “butch” can make her one. A femme or androgynous guy is simply a femme or androgynously fashioned male. Neither is a third, fourth or ninth gender, just a different kind of male or female.

I’ve never had Fox and Owl in my audience, but they perfectly represent what I see time and again. Fox and Owl, a British man and woman, publicly contend they are not a man or woman, although you would never know by looking at them. They are a self-proclaimed non-binary queer couplet, two modern day Copernici, overturning the binary-centric assumption about humanity.

Warning: They intend to shatter what you thought you knew about gender. Warning2: Theirs is not a spoof video. But they do struggle unsuccessfully to come up with a name for something that is supposed be a perfectly natural and normal human phenomenon. Certainly not something that’s just made up.

The illusion is actually quite sad. Fox and Owl are like small children who live in a completely make-believe world of their own creation and demand everyone else play along. (I don’t say that to be clever or mean, just honest.) Still we know there must be more than two genders, because T-shirts tell us so, like this and this. They couldn’t print it on a shirt if weren’t true, right? But any attentive students in the school of gender studies must ask, “Then why do the shirts only come in male or female?”

We’re Not Supposed to Stereotype, Say the Stereotypers

Another gender study truism I’ve learned is that it’s unfair to determine whether one is male or female (much less any of the other supposed genders) by the way a person looks. Some people’s bodies tell lies about them, when a whole different gender exists in their minds. You can’t tell by just looking.

I was invited a few years ago to participate in a colloquium on the problem of “heteronormativity” at a major university in Denver. They were nice enough to want to include someone who had very differing views. As the conference opened, the organizer gave the day’s purpose and defined “heteronormativity” so everyone would be on the same page. This is precisely what she said: “Heteronormativity is the thoughtless and dangerous assumption that everyone is straight.”

I was disappointed. In one brief statement, she stripped me of my role as the token heteronormative, because I was pretty sure, and not one bit alarmed, that quite a few people in that very room were not “straight.” I don’t know anyone who does. I supposed no one else in that room assumed everyone is straight. So what were we there for? Well, one reason was to hear the sponsoring faculty member give the opening talk.

He started out by reciting to the students this fundament truth from the Gender Studies Creed: While he appeared to be a man, he could actually be one of many genders. We can’t know by looking at him, only by hearing his own personal story. Any assumption diminishes the essence of the person. All heads nodded their secular amen.

He then launched into a truly important talk on sexism in print advertising. One after another, he demonstrated how the women in these ads were presented as sex objects and the men as the callous consumers and oppressors of said product. He was absolutely correct and right to call students’ attention to this. But he couldn’t live consistently with his own stated belief. I’ll explain.

During Q&A time, as a sincere and diligent student, I raised my hand asked what was to me the obvious question. Referencing his opening comments about not being able to determine one’s gender by mere sight, I asked how he could give his entire talk by doing precisely that in assuming which people in the ads were women and which were men just by looking at them. Clearly I must have missed a key point. Not so, it turned out. My simple and obvious question took the professor and the group into an undetected black hole.

Your Dogma Doesn’t Actually Work in Real Life

This obvious inconsistency had never occurred to this clearly intelligent man, nor to any of his bright students. It seems to cause the gender theorists no real concern when their own, actual-life experiences and behaviors violently T-bone their dogma. This happens quite often, as in this recent news story. CNN, and many other major outlets, recently reported that a Portland man, Trystan Reese, recently gave birth to a child with his male partner, Biff Chaplow. We are expected to be shocked. What? A man? Giving birth to a baby? That’s impossible!

Well, as we learned, it’s incorrect to determine one’s gender merely by looks. Sure, someone might have all the requisite female parts, and appear by all indicators to be female, but that doesn’t make her a girl. She could very well be a man. It’s a violation of that person’s own reality to make our own assumption about her/him/them based on what that person’s body says. I might even “do violence” to that person in the observation.

Because one of these men just happens to have a full complement of ovaries, uterus, and vagina and the other has all the stock man parts, these men are now rejoicing in their biological baby boy, giving him the definitively strong, masculine name of Leo. Every news outlet is playing along with Trystan and Biff’s brave new reality with no appreciation of the irony at play here.

A whole rainbow of gender possibilities is open to their baby, and these two non-binary people simply assigned the baby a very binary “boy” based solely on external appearance. A major gender theory no-no. Trystan certainly found it hurtful and demeaning when people made such assumptions about her. This young man knows just how painful that is. So how can Trystan and Biff—or any of the smart journalists reporting the story—not realize this serious transgression against this child?

It’s them, not you, who haven’t been paying attention in class. As our parents told us, if you’re gonna tell lies, you better have a good memory. These folks don’t have good memories. Their cornucopia of incoherence is also ever-giving. Here is one more, a recent celebratory Twitter post from KLM airlines.

A first day student can detect the problem here, but it seemed to be totally lost on the social media team at KLM, or anyone else at the airline. Diversity is great in theory, but the objectivity of air safety is terribly narrow-minded. Heterosexual buckling is its only option. That darn binarity.

One can learn so much about gender studies ideology by simply listening to and observing its most faithful adherents. Become a student, and it can be quite entertaining. The tragedy, however, is that this madness is being forced upon children as if it’s actually real. There are stunningly severe penalties for not playing along. It is up to the adults in the room to start raising their hands, asking honest questions, and calling out the embarrassing and damning inconsistencies. And if respectfully asking honest questions is not tolerated, then God help us.