An allegorical representation for all

For the biggest part of my life, I believed I was born female. Now I know I was, in fact, assigned female at birth (or AFAB, for the dangerously and inexcusably uninformed). Some troglodyte doctor glanced briefly at my external genitalia and pronounced me a girl, and everyone believed it to be true.

I am outraged.

I wasn’t pushed gently from the banks of the River of Gender, and allowed to float downstream, stopping wherever and whenever I chose. Instead of spending time in the Mangroves of Mystigender or relaxing in the shallow Cove of Cassgender or riding the Rapids of Retrogender or navigating the Estuary of Ectogender, I was chained firmly to the female dock. Like being up Shit Creek without a paddle, only worse. Unlike the unfortunate traveller immersed in excrement, with no way out, I was blissfully unaware of my predicament.

Because being AFAB generally starts off okay — lots of attention and oodles of pink stuff — but at some point you realise that being a boy (assigned male at birth — AMAB) is a way better deal.

Sometimes it happens before the slap in the face with a wet fish that is female puberty. If not, then insufferable menstrual cramps that leave you curled in the foetal position for hours, and bathroom scenes reminiscent of Psycho bring it home with a bang.

Especially when your male peers know no such torment. While you’re adjusting to a monthly dose of womanhood, those jerks are getting bigger and stronger, and the fun appendage hanging between their legs gets to be hugely more entertaining.

And, don’t get me started on pregnancy — avoiding it, attempting it, doing it, and eventually squeezing another human through an impossibly tiny passage IN YOUR BODY. One of my aunts told me first time round it was like being constipated and then crapping a watermelon. She was right.

None of that matters now, however, because all of us can cavort freely in the River of Gender.

We can be whatever we want, however we feel our ‘gender’ to be, and all those messy bodily functions are meaningless. You know those boys we spoke about? With the penises and testicles and the bloodless puberty? They can be female if that is their innate sense of themselves.

Personally, I can’t extricate being female from the body I’ve lived with for many decades. Perhaps I lack the necessary insight into the essence of womanhood — a ‘knowing’ males who transition to female apparently have in spades.

If only they could explain it to me, because just saying you always knew you were a woman, even though the ‘gender’ assigning supremos said you weren’t, isn’t very helpful.

Maybe I need a good solid dunking in the River of Gender, or I could drink from it. I hear its waters taste like sweet, fruity cordial.

Or, maybe I could turn to the law of Tasmania, Australia, and the wondrous definition of ‘gender’ it now contains. Thanks to the brilliant efforts of one of our female parliamentarians, we have a meaning for the ages.

Wait for it.

‘Gender means –

(a) male; or

(b) female; or;

(c) indeterminate gender; or

(d) non-binary; or

(e) a word, or a phrase, that is used to indicate a person’s perception of the person’s self as being neither entirely male nor entirely female and that is prescribed; or

(f) a word or phrase that is used to indicate a person’s perception of the person’s self as being neither entirely male nor entirely female’.

The River of Gender runs free in Tasmania, wild, and unconstrained by any notions of sex-based reality. You can bathe in ‘boyflux’ or shower in the fine, enveloping mists of ‘omnigender’. The choice is yours.

If you wish to maintain some grip on reality, however, you must avoid the seductive pull of the Whirlpool of Circularity — a trap that assails both logic and the unwary River traveller. Inconspicuous at first glance, but obvious on closer inspection, the Whirlpool lures many into its vortex of chaos, where the unfortunate victims can become rapidly and hopelessly ensnared in an ideological ‘gender’ prison.

In plain language, Tasmanian law now says that a reference to ‘male’ or ‘female’ in the definition of gender is a reference to the ‘male gender’ or the ‘female gender’. In other words, ‘gender’ can mean ‘male’ and that means ‘male gender’, or ‘gender’ can mean ‘female’ and that means ‘female gender’.

It’s like saying ‘four-legged animal’ can mean ‘dog’ and that means ‘four-legged dog’.

Confused?

Definitions, especially in legislation, are meant to give relevant terms a distinct meaning in order to aid interpretation, not render them deliberately obscure in pursuit of an uncompromising dogma.

In Tasmania, that dogma is the inviolable supremacy of ‘gender’ over sex, and the River of Gender has become a raging torrent.