I’m so sick of the gender war but I will probably write about gender a lot
(also, welcome to my Substack)
I’m tired of talking about gender. Eventually I’d love to never speak about, think about, or write about gender again.
I don’t even believe gender is real. Humans have a biological sex, and a personality. On a population level and driven in large part by biology, there are certain traits, behaviours, preferences, and abilities that are more common to either males or females, and together form the basis of a culture’s “gender” stereotypes. And from these stereotypes arises the concept of gender as a distinct entity, which is defined in infinite—and equally nonsensical—ways.
To some, gender is a performance. To others, it is a feeling. To the most fervent believers of gender ideology, gender is your essence—it is the very soul that determines who you are, inside and out. If your gender soul doesn’t match your physical body, then your body is wrong, not your mind. You don’t need therapy; your body needs to be changed. Children can be born into bodies that are wrong and require hormonal, and eventually surgical, intervention to become “right.”
I do not believe any of this. I repeat: We have a biological sex, and a personality. Our talents, preferences, and common behaviours comprise our personalities, not our gender. To me, gender is a made-up and useless concept. But here we are, mired in a nasty culture war between people who believe in gender souls and people who believe that biology trumps any concept of gender, whether they believe in gender or not.
As you likely know, since you are reading this, I’ve been entrenched in another gender war for more than two years: a battle to keep my nursing license after two activists offended by my words told my regulatory body that I am a danger to patients because I know that human beings cannot change their sex. My nineteen-day hearing—longer than some murder trials—resumes in October 2023.
I have no choice but to keep thinking, talking, and writing about gender. I must—to fight for my job and care for my sons, to preserve Canadians’ right to free expression (that’s Canadian for “free speech”), and to counter the harms that gender ideology inflicts upon women and children. That doesn’t mean I’m not bored to death of the concept.
How many more years will women have to insist that we are not a costume, or a performance, or a feeling that exists in the mind of males with autogynephilia? How many more women will be raped by males given free entry into women’s prisons and rape shelters? How many more children (usually gay and autistic children) will be sterilized and maimed by our medical system?
There are no new arguments to be made in the gender war. There are, however, minds to whom these arguments are new. And then there are the growing number of victims of gender ideology. It is for these people that we continue to shout “men are not women” until we are blue in the face. Canada, in particular, is lagging behind internationally; for instance, while we are passing laws that make it illegal—by threat of prison time—for healthcare professionals to question whether or not a toddler is transgender, Scandinavian countries are outlawing sex changes for minors. We have to keep fighting.
On that note, I am grateful you are here reading my Substack. I will likely write on gender quite often (not exclusively) and will do my best to refresh the same old arguments. Here’s to the day that I can focus on fluff pieces about puppies, gin cocktails, and the best places in town to buy croissants. (Please let me know if you know of any good croissant places.)
-Amy
Black is not White, Dogs are not Cats. This should not be hard.
Fight hard, Amy.
The vast majority of us know you are right. A very noisy, rather nasty, minority cannot let that stand. We will beat them. Whatever you need, yell.
You can sense the turn. People are fed up with "gender ideology". The girls would like their own spaces thank you very much. Mr. Otter can stay the Hell out. (Thanks Eva.)
We're winning.
Wow - I don't envy you with your lone battle, yet I imagine even in Canada there are a few people who've seen through all this bullshit and are willing to give you support. You're right - here in Scandinavia people are more sceptical and ready to be more open about being sceptical because freedom of speech is seemingly taken more seriously here than in Canada, and employers take no notice of busybody's from the general public who think they have some kind of moral prerogative to get people fired from their jobs by complaining about something an employee in their capacity as private citizen may have posted on Twitter. Two show cases in Norway over the past year have resulted in the cases being thrown out before reaching court. Sweden and Finland have resolutely applied the brakes on medically transitioning children and now do so only in exceptional cases and in a research setting and the Karolinska Institute even went so far as to report itself to the police for quacksalvery when it realised there is no quality evidence to back up the treatments they had been practicing for nearly a decade, and detransitioners were beginning to come to the surface with complaints of serious bodily harm as a result of transitioning. Sweden was probably also the first country to be able to document that not only does transitioning not reduce suicidal behaviour amongst trans youth but probably actually increases it.
So keep fighting Amy and know you are fighting the good cause, and that however clever the gender industry is at isolating people and making them feel they are alone in the fight, in fact you are among the huge majority who know all this is BS.
Consider emigrating if the courts strike you off - your skills will be welcome here in Denmark.