A Critique of Gender Theory 9786156476036, 9786156476029

Table of contents :
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PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION
FOREWORD
INTRODUCTION
Chapter 1
WHAT IS GENDER THEORY?
Chapter 2
POSTMODERN PARANOIA: THE CONTEXT OF GENDER THEORY
Chapter 3
KINSEY’S SCALE
Chapter 4
PATRIARCHY, HETERONORMATIVITY, SEXISM, METOO
Chapter 5
GENDER MAINSTREAMING
Chapter 6
THE MANIPULATIVE FACE OF CONTEMPORARY FEMINISM
Chapter 7
POSTMODERN UNIVERSITIES
Chapter 8
GENDER THEORY AT THE INTERNATIONAL LEVEL
Chapter 9
THE MYTH OF “BORN THAT WAY” AND REINTEGRATIVE THERAPY
Chapter 10
DOES “GAY PROPAGANDA” EXIST?
Chapter 11
TRANSGENDERISM
Chapter 12
THE QUESTION OF INTERSEXUALITY
Chapter 13
ON POLYAMORY
Chapter 14
ARE DIFFERENT FAMILY MODELS REALLY EQUAL?
Chapter 15
IS GENDER THEORY AN IDEOLOGY?
Chapter 16
LGBTQ FOLK TALES?
Chapter 17
ORWELLIAN NEWSPEAK: ON POLITICAL CORRECTNESS
Chapter 18
BINARY BIOLOGICAL SEXES REINFORCED
Chapter 19
MAN AND WOMAN, NATURE AND NURTURE
Chapter 20
THE UNITY OF BODY AND SOUL
Chapter 21
ON THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL REVOLUTION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
_Hlk114935412
_GoBack
PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION
FOREWORD
INTRODUCTION
Chapter 1
WHAT IS GENDER THEORY?
Chapter 2
POSTMODERN PARANOIA: THE CONTEXT OF GENDER THEORY
Chapter 3
KINSEY’S SCALE
Chapter 4
PATRIARCHY, HETERONORMATIVITY, SEXISM, METOO
Chapter 5
GENDER MAINSTREAMING
Chapter 6
THE MANIPULATIVE FACE OF CONTEMPORARY FEMINISM
Chapter 7
POSTMODERN UNIVERSITIES
Chapter 8
GENDER THEORY AT THE INTERNATIONAL LEVEL
Chapter 9
THE MYTH OF “BORN THAT WAY” AND REINTEGRATIVE THERAPY
Chapter 10
DOES “GAY PROPAGANDA” EXIST?
Chapter 11
TRANSGENDERISM
Chapter 12
THE QUESTION OF INTERSEXUALITY
Chapter 13
ON POLYAMORY
Chapter 14
ARE DIFFERENT FAMILY MODELS REALLY EQUAL?
Chapter 15
IS GENDER THEORY AN IDEOLOGY?
Chapter 16
LGBTQ FOLK TALES?
Chapter 17
ORWELLIAN NEWSPEAK: ON POLITICAL CORRECTNESS
Chapter 18
BINARY BIOLOGICAL SEXES REINFORCED
Chapter 19
MAN AND WOMAN, NATURE AND NURTURE
Chapter 20
THE UNITY OF BODY AND SOUL
Chapter 21
ON THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL REVOLUTION
BIBLIOGRAPHY

Citation preview

GERGELY SZILVAY

A CRITIQUE OF GENDER T H E O R Y Reflections on the Anthropological Revolution from Feminism to Transgenderism

GERGELY SZILVAY

A CRITIQUE OF GENDER THEORY Reflections on the Anthropological Revolution from Feminism to Transgenderism

Gergely Szilvay. 2022. A Critique of Gender Theory. Reflections on the Anthropological Revolution from Feminism to Transgenderism Translation: Imre Körmöczi Proofreading of translation: Ferenc Sullivan Typeset and cover design: Sejla Almadi Copyright © Gergely Szilvay 2022 English Edition © Jogállam és Igazság Nonprofit Kft. 2022 Cover Design © Jogállam és Igazság Nonprofit Kft. 2022 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, for any purpose, without the prior written permission of the publisher. JOGÁLLAM ÉS IGAZSÁG NONPROFIT KFT. HU-1121 Budapest, Budakeszi út 36/c. Publisher: Miklós Géza Szánthó ISBN (printed): 978-615-6476-03-6 ISBN (online): 978-615-6476-02-9

Numquam naturam mos vinceret; est enim ea semper invicta; sed nos umbris, deliciis, otio, languore, desidia animum infecimus, opinionibus maloque more delenitum mollivimus. (Never could custom conquer nature; for nature is always unconquered; but as for us we havecorrupted our souls with bowered seclusion, luxury, ease, indolence and sloth, we have enervated and weakened them.) (Marcus Tullius Cicero: Tusculanae Disputationes V. 27.)

CONTENTS Preface To The English Edition 

9

Foreword 

15

Introduction 

17

Chapter 1: What Is Gender Theory? 

27

Chapter 2: Postmodern Paranoia: The Context Of Gender Theory 

51

Chapter 3: Kinsey’s Scale 

85

Chapter 4: Patriarchy, Heteronormativity, Sexism, Metoo 

91

Chapter 5: Gender Mainstreaming 

125

Chapter 6: The Manipulative Face Of Contemporary Feminism 

155

Chapter 7: Postmodern Universities 

171

Chapter 8: Gender Theory At The International Level 

181

Chapter 9: The Myth Of “Born That Way” And Reintegrative Therapy 

195

Chapter 10: Does “Gay Propaganda” Exist? 

213

Chapter 11: Transgenderism 

223

Chapter 12: The Question Of Intersexuality 

259

Chapter 13: On Polyamory 

265

Chapter 14: Are Different Family Models Really Equal? 

277

Chapter 15: Is Gender Theory An Ideology? 

297

Chapter 16: Lgbtq Folk Tales? 

311

Chapter 17: Orwellian Newspeak: On Political Correctness 

323

Chapter 18: Binary Biological Sexes Reinforced 

333

Chapter 19: Man And Woman, Nature And Nurture 

343

Chapter 20: The Unity Of Body And Soul 

387

Chapter 21: On The Anthropological Revolution 

399

Bibliography 

419

PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION The idea of writing a book on gender theory occurred to me in fall 2019 after reading a journalistic essay on transgender issues. In the piece, its author asked somewhat shockingly: when will somebody refute this madness? I had been addressing gender-related issues for several years, including during my Ph.D. in political theory. I had therefore been looking for books dealing with the question as a whole but failed to find any. I did locate some volumes that addressed certain aspects of it, such as same-sex marriage, transgender issues, feminism, or the nature/nurture debate, or which featured it among other topics (usually race.) However, I could not identify a single book that dealt exclusively with gender issues, covering every aspect of it. I therefore decided to write one myself, drawing party on the fact that my Ph.D. thesis also dealt with an aspect of gender issues. So, if you are confused on gender topics and need a comprehensive book to explain them scienfically, philosophically, and practically, you are holding the right publication. 1 In the present volume, I focus

1

Since the publication of this book in Hungarian, a similar book, by Debra Soh, has been published. Although our insights are largely identical, the philosophical approach and thematics of the two books are rather different. See: Soh 2020

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on questions concerning the nature/nurture debate, the supposed innateness of sexual orientations, gender identities, same-sex marriage, therapies, trans issues, polyamory, adoption, the equality of family models, and LGBTQ fairy tales. I also attempt to explain and critically approach postmodern theories, political correctness, and the question of ideologies (if gender theory is an ideology) that form their philosophical backdrop. The book was originally written for the Hungarian readership, which is remarkably different from the Anglo-Saxon world. Central Europe, where Hungary is situated, is a more traditional corner of Western civilization which lacks the “blessings” of extreme progressivism. Woke ideology and gender theory are not mainstream here, although they constitute a tiny – but growing – part of the Hungarian intellectual world. Here, you cannot be intimidated by radical progressive activists (unless you are a member of “the movement”) and we just do not use Twitter (it is largely uncompatible with remarkably longer Hungarian words.) In conclusion, Hungary is a relatively peaceful, safe nook of the West, without mass migration but with true freedom of speech. Here, topics that would be labeled “controversial” in countries farther westward can still be openly discussed, and “controversial”’ ideas are simply common sense – as of yet, at least. Despite its size, Hungary appears in international news with increasing intensity because of its conservative, patriotic governmental policy and philosophy 2 that goes against the mainstream liberal approach of the European Union and the West in almost every aspect. What is more, it is so popular that the cabinet gained its fourth term with a two-thirds constitutional majority in 2022. 3

2 3

Kovács–Molnár–Szánthó 2022 Szilvay 2022a 2022b 10

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Gender issues became a focal point of Hungarian politics and public life when the country’s post-communist, technocratic constitution was replaced by a new Fundamental Law in 2011. It declared marriage to be an alliance between man and woman and stated that a father is a man and a mother is a woman. Viktor Orbán’s government refused to extend the right of adoption to gay couples and made clear that one’s biological sex must be featured in personal documents; it also suspended possible state funding for gender reassignment surgeries (which, even before, had been approved on a case-to-case basis with the requirement of medical and psychological consultation.) Hungary’s generous and successful family policy is subject to cricitism by progressive groups. Although there is no same-sex marriage in Hungary, the purposefully introduced institution of civil unions is available for gay couples. The government has cut funding for the gender studies department at ELTE, the country’s most prestigious state university, and is accused of using legislative means to chase the Central European University (CEU) out of the country. Anyhow, CEU – founded by the billionaire George Soros, a promoter of progressive causes by rather undemocratic means – still has a foothold in Budapest and continues to operate its old buildings, with some new additions, in the city center.4 The most recent chapter of the ongoing gender conflict occurred when the Hungarian Parliament adopted an anti-pedophile child protection law in 2021 that was criticized by progressive groups as “homophobic.” The legislation bans gender ideology and LGBTQ propaganda in schools and states that parents’ right to the psychosexual education of their children is to be respected. It also makes clear that

4

Éva Fodor, professor of gender studies at CEU, wrote a sharply critical and highly ideological book on „The Gender Regime of Anti-Liberal Hungary” (Fodor 2022). 11

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only accredited organizations can educate students in schools about sexuality and gender and prohibits the screening of movies with LGBTQ content for minors (and for them only) on television. In 2022, a referendum was held on these matter together with national parliamentary elections. Both the legislation and the referendum infuriated the Left and LGBTQ organizations. The child protection law is remarkably similar to the Florida Parental Rights in Education Act, and reactions were also predictably reminiscent of it. In the U.S., this law was branded – misnamed – the “Don’t Say Gay Bill” despite the word “gay” not appearing in its text and its task not being the prohibition of speaking about anybody’s gayness. Although the bill was approved in summer 2021, the Hungarian Society of Psychologists and the Hungarian Society of Psychiatrists published what was intended to be a “scientific” refutation of it in January 2022, just months before the previous election. 5 Among other things, the statement declared that gender identity is innate and unchangeable, and condemned the so-called “conversion therapy” (matters discussed in this book.) As it turned out, this document was released as an informal coup d’état, with the agreement only of top leaders and without consulting or even informing the membership or the wider leadership board. The statement was pioneered by Judit Balázs, a professor of psychiatry whose term as president ended just days after its publication – so, the mess was left to her successor. Many leading psychiatrists6 and feminists were outraged by the unscientific publication. A debate is still under way within the psychiatric association as I write these passages. 7

5

MPT 2022 Pszichoérték 2022 7 See articles here (in Hungarian): https://mandiner.hu/tag/magyar_pszichiatriai_tarsasag?offset=0&limit=18. 6

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Over the past years, many voices in Hungarian public life took the position that the gender threat coming closer and closer to our small country is non-existent, alleging that the government’s “anti-gender” measures are merely the creation of a fake political enemy, to be used for mobilization. These generally pro-gender, progressive forces argues that the problems of the West are not our problems and therefore there is no basis for these governmental policies – although they are the very same forces who would like to make Hungary similar to the West in this respect too. Therefore, my conviction is that they are hypocrites. The “anti-gender” policies and rhetoric of the Hungarian government is considered to be no more than a politically motivated backlash aiming at mobilization and the creation of fake enemies. 8 In my opinion, this line of thinking is simply wrong; measured criticized by the progressives have a solid philosophical foundation and are well-intentioned. The conflict was started not by the Hungarian government but by feminist and LGBTQ movements across the Western world. The Hungarian government is merely reacting in a well-defined manner. 9 With this book, I attempted to provide Hungarian readers with a picture of what is going on in Western countries, together with a warning that gender madness will hardly avoid us. Part of the effort was to summarize recent literature, particularly books by gender-critical authors, for the Hungarian audience.

8 9

Előd 2020 Political Capital–Projekt Polska 2022

Szilvay 2020c 13

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Bearing English-speaking readers in mind, I partially modified the text of this book: these summaries were removed or abbreviated to give way for updates on the most recent news, scientific findings, and literature on the international gender debate. My hope is that the present volume also helps the English-speaking reader to navigate the strange world of gender theory – and practice. My aim is threefold: to collect and show evidence of what is going on to readers; to sum up scientific studies and absolutism; and finally, to interpret these from a classical, realistic philosophical point of view – the philosophy of common sense.

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FOREWORD “A mother is a woman, a father is a man.” This simple statement, which is a matter of fact according to the order of creation and nature, is said to be triggering and exclusionary to many. All this is “due” to the emergence of gender ideology a few decades ago, which by now has unfortunately become very popular in Western society. How did we get to the point where some people, in their feverish ideological blindness, deny reality? Feminism, homosexual propaganda, and gender ideology – these are the main “developments” of twentieth-century liberal progress. , It is a resemblance of Marxism; however, instead of the liberation of certain social classes, it now proclaims the liberation of “sexual identities” previously thought to be mere sexual deviancies. It is thanks to the “philanthropy” of some people who seek to rescue women from the “oppression” of men, those who are attracted to their own sex from the stranglehold of “heteronormativity”, and men and women from “socially constructed gender roles”, that some people today are ready to question the natural phenomena of the order of Creation. Because of our faith in God and common sense, many of us, including Gergely Szilvay, feel obliged to draw attention to the dangers of gender theory and its particularly destructive effects on society and individuals. The negation of the order of nature, fueled by man’s hubris, the eradication of historical and social traditions, the substitution of selfishness and self-centeredness for a role in the community, the denial of the createdness of man and woman, and the notion that “everyone has his or her own truth” are all consequences of the

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spread of postmodern liberal ideologies. According to these, there is no difference between anything and there is no right and wrong because everything is relative; total “equality” and “neutrality” are the new mottos. And as István Tisza, who was fortunate enough to live in an age that was unaware of the concept of “social gender”, pointed out more than 100 years ago, “the Enlightenment proclaims freedom and equality in words, but in reality it proclaims freedom of passions and equality in pleasures.” And the new advocates of “enlightenment” now aim to radically transform man’s basic capacities for life, rather than accepting that we are made for man and woman. In this book, the reader is given a thorough and exhaustive insight into the much-discussed “gender issue”, the madness that is being made to seem self-evident by being transformed into an everyday generality. Gergely Szilvay points out that madness, even if it is perhaps as old as mankind, is not such self-evident salon etiquette. That the exception should not be made the rule. Miklós Szánthó, Director General of the Center for Fundamental Rights, the Hungarian publisher of the book

16

INTRODUCTION In early 2021, a Canadian man was sentenced to jail for calling his 14-year-old daughter, who considers herself a male, his “daughter” and referring to her with a female pronoun. According to the father, Robert Hoogland, his daughter began to assume a trans identity after her school showed her propaganda videos about gender reassignment and sent her to a gender psychologist. The school decided to do this because the child was friends with boys and cut her hair short. According to the father, his child had a history of extreme emotional ups and downs, was almost pathologically in love with two male teachers and had suicidal thoughts. The elementary school in British Columbia, Canada, started treating her as a boy, gave her a new name, and even referred to her as male in the yearbook, but did not disclose this to the parents. The school has a gender psychologist, to whom Hoogland went with the child. The psychologist advised testosterone treatment for the pubertal girl. Both mother and daughter acknowledged the experimental nature of the therapy, but the father objected, preferring to find another solution, and eventually sought the help of the court. However, the judge ruled that he, the father, had no say in the matter and that the fourteen-year-old child could receive testosterone treatment. Moreover, he also stated that parents have a “duty to confirm the gender identity of their minor child”, because failure to do so would constitute “domestic violence.” “Here I am, sitting there as a parent, watching a perfectly healthy child be destroyed, and there’s nothing I can do but sit on the sideline according to Justice Boden at the time. I can only affirm, or get thrown in jail,” Hoogland said. In

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Canada, the Bill C 16 Act declares it hate speech to call someone by something other than their own self-identification.10 In 2015, Stefonknee Wolscht, a 52-year-old married Canadian father-of-seven, left his family to live as a transgender girl. He imagined himself as a six-year-old female. An elderly couple took him in and let him live as a little girl. Married for 23 years, he felt from the age of 46 that he was a woman and then a child.11 In 2014, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), sitting in a glass palace in Strasbourg, had to deliver a ruling in a strange case,12 A Finnish man sued his country under the equality clauses of the European Convention on Human Rights for not recognizing his identity and gender reassignment (without surgery). Same-sex marriage did not exist in Finland at the time, as it was only introduced in 2017. The man with a family wanted to be recognized as a woman, meaning that he wanted to be listed as a woman in his official documents. However, as this would have meant that two women were officially married to each other, he would have had to divorce his wife. The man rejected the possibility of divorce on religious grounds, but the civil partnership did not have the same legal advantages as marriage. The man’s appeal was dismissed by the ECHR on the grounds that the case fell within the jurisdiction of the State, as it was not governed by international conventions.13

10

The Post Millennial 2021 Neokohn 2021 Daily Mail 2015 12 The ECHR is not an institution of the European Union but of the Council of Europe. 13 See: http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/sites/eng/pages/search.aspx?i=001-145768#{“item id”:[“001-145768. 11

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INTRODUCTION

In 1970, the following story was featured in Our Bodies, Ourselves, a feminist volume revered as scripture: “When my partner began his gender transition my lesbian identity had been central to my life and my sense of self for well over a decade, and I didn’t know what his transition made me. Some people told me I was “obviously” still a lesbian, but it was just as obvious to others that I was now straight, or bisexual. It wasn’t obvious to me at all, and I struggled with it for a long time. Now I’ve been the partner of a trans man for as long as I was a lesbian, and I’ve gotten comfortable just not having a name for what I think I am. I think of myself as part of the family of queers and trans people.”14 Kenneth Zucker, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, ran the Gender Identity Clinic for Children at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto until 2015. But in 2015, CAMH closed the gender clinic and fired Zucker. For what reason? Professor Zucker was not uncritical of the idea that children with gender dysphoria should be raised against their biological sex. Zucker is one of the foremost authorities on gender identity disorder research and a pioneer in the development of therapies. He cannot even be called transphobic: he has recommended gender reassignment surgery to many patients over the years. The only thing he was against was the preparation of children for sex change — which is why his institution was closed. Zucker sued CAMH and won the case: his former employer was forced to pay him $586,000.15

14 15

Boston Women’s Health Book Collective 1970 In: Trueman 2020 Anderson 2018, pp. 21-24 19

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As of 2021, even the ban on incest is being challenged on the grounds that consensual violation of the incest ban (i.e., an incestuous relationship between, for example, parent and child on the basis of mutual consent) should not be a problem. And all this, of course, in the context of the emergence of parents who want to marry their own children.16 Such is the fruit of what we now call gender theory or ideology, which is the basis of a specific university curriculum, as Western higher education is already very much imbued with its approach. Gender theory is a “product” of the second wave of feminism, which originally aimed to “problematize” male and female gender roles in order to empower women. Some of its aspirations were noble and honorable: to support women’s participation in university education, their earning capacity and autonomy, and to provide a legal framework and social acceptance for the possibility of their empowerment in this direction (which is not the only and exclusive direction.) Beyond this, however, feminism and its gender theory also formulated ideas that were not strictly necessary, such as radical versions of the construction theory of gender roles. In practice, these became, again unnecessarily, very anti-male over time and also gave rise to other, different kinds of aspirations; thus, in addition to the “problematization” of gender roles, the theory could also be used to normalize non-heterosexual gender roles or practices (bisexuality, homosexuality, etc.) Moreover, it has subsequently provided fertile grounds for the proliferation of alternative gender identities, the result of which is that today we find ourselves at the point where the revolution is doing away with its followers before our very eyes, and where the latest offshoot of gender theory, the ideology of transgenderism, is confronting the original feminist idea.

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New York Post 2021 Szilvay 2016 20

INTRODUCTION

So, what is gender theory? Does it even exist? Is it uniform, and if not, what do its different forms have in common? And if there is a gender theory, can it be called gender ideology? The present volume seeks to answer these questions in particular, while also presenting the practical implications of gender theory. All this does not mean, of course, that all the assumptions, ideas, and views of gender theory should be rejected. There are many ideas, insights and aspirations with which one can identify; however, because the framework of the theory itself is incorrect, there are also many with which one cannot. For the proponents of gender theory, it may seem that I am arguing in favour of what they call “biologism”. I would like to make it clear that while I value the findings of evolutionary biology, neurobiology, and the natural sciences, I believe that to explain human beings solely in terms of these is a reductionist mistake. This volume and its author represent a kind of moderate essentialism and tolerant heteronormativity. I believe that while man’s nature can be tamed and kept in check, it cannot be denied or transformed. I am convinced that gender theory and its practical implications, gender mainstreaming, and the efforts of the LGBTQ movement represent an anthropological revolution and are therefore based on a radical reinterpretation of the human being. This revolution has a philosophy, and there are moderates, Girondists, who would at some point put an end to the revolution and consider it complete, and there are radicals, Jacobins, or uphill climbers, radical feminists, intersectional feminists and transgender activists, who would fuel it further. The in-between is the swamp; a dirty, confused, contradictory faction. However, during the course of the revolution, it is not only the moderates who are executed by the radicals, but they also do away with each other, so some of those threatened with execution will flee to the counter-revolutionaries for protection, and some may even become counter-revolutionaries themselves. I am not, of course, saying that this anthropological revolution is identical in every respect to the events of the French Revolution, but it is similar in its dynamics and virtually identical in its 21

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philosophy. The revolution may consist of several schools which are in conflict with one another; however, it is still the same revolution. The question arises as to whether the revolution could have been avoided or stopped at a certain point, or whether restoration is possible after all, with the necessary lessons learned. The book is structured into three parts: in the first chapters I introduce the theory of gender, with occasional critical comments; then I discuss its practical implications (“the tree is known by its fruit”); and the last chapters are devoted to a substantive critique of gender theory. The chapters stand on their own, without the need to read the volume in a linear fashion. The present book is a continuation of the research I did for my doctoral dissertation17 and is intended for all interested people, so instead of insider references I try to explain all the concepts and ideas known in the gender world in a way that is understandable for the “lay” reader. The reader who is less familiar with philosophy and social sciences will, however, be forced to familiarize himself with some, at first, perhaps strange (and perhaps even hard-to-digest) terms and theories, as well as with the names of hitherto unknown authors. You are not alone. The author of these passages has also traveled this path and can assure the reader that, even with a background in philosophy and social science, one can find theories in certain pockets of postmodernism and feminism that seem more self-serving than profoundly revealing.

17

I completed my doctoral studies at the Doctoral School of Political Theory at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of Pázmány Péter Catholic University. My dissertation has been published in book form: A melegházasságról. Kritika a klasszikus gondolkodás fényében (On Gay Marriage. A Critique in the Light of Classical Thought), published by Hungarian publishing house Századvég in 2016. 22

INTRODUCTION

Even English-language literature does not have any volume that focuses its critique specifically on gender theory. There have, of course, been many critiques of gender theory, for example, by Roger Scruton in the past, or more recently by Douglas Murray and Charles Murray. However, instead of being expanded in a single volume, these only formed part of individual works.18 There will be some who will miss the proper criticism of sources and literature, saying that I accept the views of authors whom they themselves do not like. Of course, my work contains plenty of source criticism, just not in the way that those claiming to be missing it, who are probably adherents, of postmodernism or Marxism and espouse a “critical theory” position, imagine. It could be argued that this is just a debate of narratives. But this would be a mistake. The postmodernists are fond of saying that because truth is unknowable, there are equivalent narratives “in circulation” in the world; meanwhile, postmodern authors take an indirect stand for certain narratives “under the radar.”19 I am convinced that some narratives are less and others more true, and that it is possible to argue against and for them even if there is unlikely to be a consensus on which is the truest. I am convinced that I will give valid reasons why the narrative I accept is the closest to truth and reality.

18

Scruton, R.: Sexual Desire, 1986; Murray, D.: The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity, 2019; Murray, C.: Human Diversity: The Biology of Gender, Race, and Class, 2020 19 A good example of this is Judit Takács’ Ph.D. thesis (who is a sociologist at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences): “Meleg század - Adalékok a homoszexualitás 20. századi magyarországi társadalomtörténetéhez” (Gay Century: Contributions to the 20th-century Hungarian Social History of Homosexuality; Takács 2018) In it, the author lists five narratives in historical order. In particular, the thesis examines “structural stigmas” and “coping strategies”, thus implicitly taking a position in favor of a post-structuralist-Marxist narrative defined by the notions of oppressors/oppressed/liberation. 23

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Again, there will be those who will warn that my work has some kind of “background ideology” or ulterior motives. However, since I make it quite clear what and why I think, if you like, what “philosophy” and worldview I hold and for what reason, this is a pointless suggestion — it would imply that there is another background ideology behind the volume’s own clearly stated theoretical context, but one that has not been consciously or unconsciously formed. Finally, one might wonder whether I am not reflecting on my own position as a white, heterosexual, European, middle-class man writing this volume, enjoying some kind of “structural privilege” with my point of view being necessarily biased (standpoint theory.) Although one’s position does indeed strongly determine him or herself and his or her experiences, I believe that we are capable of personal and ideological self-reflection as well as scientific reflection. We are able to question, listen and understand our fellow human beings and we are able to put ourselves in their shoes; in other words, we have empathy. I therefore consider this problem, together with the recognition of the legitimate insights of “standpoint theory”, to be surmountable.

This way of speaking, however, cannot cope with the problem that if it classifies the pattern of behavior to be liberated as ethical, and it makes a claim that it cannot make by its own standards; and if it invokes the relativity of morality, it pulls the rug out from under itself. On the other hand, if the question is whether anyone or any behavior is suppressed by “structural stigmas”, then the content and ethicality of the suppressed pattern of behavior can no longer be inquired into. One could say, for example, that pedophiles are victims of “structural stigmas” because the social system of habits is determined by pedophobia, which must be fought. Of course, one could argue that pedophile acts are unethical or even criminal, but this is also a moral principle formulated by history and society, so the objections to pedophile acts can be countered by the usual postmodern arguments. 24

INTRODUCTION

Feminist circles usually accuse their critics of being ignorant of feminist literature, and thus practically ignorant of the literature of gender theory. It also follows that those who criticize feminism and gender theory do so only because they do not understand what they are talking about. If they did, they would necessarily accept it as true. This work is partly born out of this need. I decided to read the literature on the subject for the purpose of human understanding. But then I went through the opposite process to what feminists expect: the more I read, the more I understood what it was about, but the less I agreed with it. I was amazed at the feats of intellectual acrobatics that some people are capable of in order to explain their strange and ideological, often bizarre and grotesque ideas to the world. It made me realize that gender theory is a comprehensive, universal explanation of the world, which looks at the world through a particular lens, considers anything to be explainable, and itself to be applicable to almost anything. For this reason, the inside cover also features a number of smaller “gender symbols” alongside the familiar male and female symbols. It’s common to joke or whine about the increase of two genders to three, five and then six — and then years ago Facebook came up with 56 and then 71 options for its users. On the cover, we’ve added symbols for bigender, androgynous and transgender, as well as genderqueer, intergender, and genderfluid. The names of many orientations refer to virtually the same thing (such as agender and neutrois, where both mean some kind of genderlessness); some terms do not actually imply a separate gender orientation or identity (such as demisexuals, who are only intimate on an emotional basis; or sapiosexuals, who are attracted to smart people). The question is usually asked: how many gender orientations will we invent beyond the two biological sexes that actually exist? Well, according to gender theory, our feelings are the only determinant of our gender identity and orientation. Hence, we should not be limited by external factors. Thus, the number of possible gender orientations is at least as many as there are people on the planet, because that is 25

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potentially how many of us can feel that we have an “undiscovered” gender; but if we consider that we have the right to change our “gender identity” at any time, then the number of possible variations is infinite.20 The present work therefore presents gender theory and its implications, while, of course, strongly criticizing it. Follow me!

20

Reilly-Cooper 2016 26

Chapter 1

WHAT IS GENDER THEORY? “One is not born, but rather becomes, woman. No biological, psychic, or economic destiny the figures that the human female takes on in society; it is civilization as a whole that elaborates this intermediary product between the male and the eunuch that is called feminine.”, writes Simone de Beauvoir, the French existentialist philosopher and supporter of the Marxist movements of 1968, and partner of JeanPaul Sartre, in her seminal 1949 book The Second Sex.21 Perhaps this sentence can be seen as the foundation of gender theory. The volume itself is a lengthy torrent of complaints, listing the wrongs done to women over the millennia, whether with or without reason. Beauvoir even ventures statements such as “In Soviet Russia the feminist movement has made the most sweepeng advances.”22 The bisexual Beauvoir clearly separates sex and gender roles, and sees women as becoming women in accordance with society’s expectations of femininity and women. She sees biology, the physical, as a kind of tyrannical phenomenon that hogties freedom and whose domination must be overthrown. In all these respects, Beauvoir was part of a long-established anti-essentialist school of thought in which we also find Hegel, Nietzsche, Marx, Freud, Marcuse, and others. For Beauvoir

21 22

Beauvoir 1956, p. 273 Ibid. p. 147.

A CRITIQUE OF GENDER THEORY

and the feminists, the body is not a destined reality that functions in a specific way, it is not an inseparable part of our humanity or even one of the foundations of it, but a kind of meaningless raw material from which women like her are alienated and which cannot be a limit to self-actualization and self-fulfillment.23 In English, “gender” originally meant the same as “sex”, i.e., biological sex. It was first used with a different meaning by John Money in 195524, when the term gender began to move away from its biological sex and increasingly came to mean gender roles, social gender, and the like. Defining and outlining gender theory is also difficult because the original theorists who formulated the theory did not use the term gender theory itself (let alone “gender ideology”.)Moreover, the various schools of feminism, the homosexual movement, and the transgender movements are easily caught at cross purposes and with conflicting aims and positions. The issue is systematically dealt with at the academic level in university courses called “gender studies.” “From a sociological perspective, the concept of social gender refers to the culturally and socially constructed regulations, norms, social meanings and unequal gender relations based on these meanings, which are created through the relationships and interactions between individuals, the various institutions of society, and the social system as a whole. Studies of social genders research these culturally and socially constructed meanings and relations, and the social phenomena in which they are manifested,” Anikó Gregor, a lecturer at Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest (ELTE), told Index, a leading Hungarian news portal, a few years ago.25

23 24 25

See also: Hanby 2014 Money 1955 Horváth 2017 28

WHAT IS GENDER THEORY?

It is common for gender studies academics and some feminists to object to the idea of a single existing gender theory being discussed by its critics. The explanation, according to gender researchers for any opposition to gender in the world and in our country would be that right-wing/far-right politics has successfully simplified and misinterpreted gender theory or theories, partly for political gain and partly because it does not understand what it is really about.26 For example, according to Weronika Grzebalska, Eszter Kováts, and Andrea Pető, “for illiberal populist actors, the concept of gender ideology has become a metaphor for the uncertainties and injustices of the current socio-economic order.”27 The feminist activist Rita Antoni wrote about this in the columns of the Hungarian daily Magyar Nemzet when the gender department of ELTE was launched, explaining that critics of gender theory fail to see how diverse the feminist movement is.28 And indeed, there is a lot of truth in this: within the four waves of feminism there are radical cultural feminists, radical lesbian feminists, radical libertarian feminists, psychoanalytic feminists, neoliberal feminists, Marxist feminists, materialist feminists, Islamist feminists, Christian feminists, Jewish feminists, even conservative feminists, as there are postfeminists and intersectional feminists, etc.29 Not to mention the obvious fact that each theorist’s thinking is a little different from the other.

26

See for example: Kováts–Põim 2015; Soós 2017; Dietze–Roth 2020. The issue is discussed in a nuanced way in: Kováts 2018a, b 27 Grzebalska–Kováts–Pető 2017 28 Antoni 2017 29 Pluckrose–Lindsay 2020, p. 135 29

A CRITIQUE OF GENDER THEORY

During an interview with Index, the two leaders of the gender department at ELTE, Ágnes Kövér-Van Til and Anikó Gregor, drew attention to the fact that their critics are conflating contradictory theories under the heading of gender theory; Gregor noted that, in her opinion, “the gender issue is identified exclusively with the equality aspirations of sexual minorities, for example, because it is a thorn in the side of the majority of society, and there are indeed human rights issues, such as the early hormone treatment of children who do not identify with their gender identity, that are easily used to scare and mobilize the average citizen.” The experts said that at ELTE they “would be more concerned with social inequalities, with the social gender aspects of social policy, and the systemic processes that produce them. After the regime change in Hungary, running parallel with economic liberalism, an individualistic, human rights approach emerged which became dominant in the field of gender inequalities, and within the framework of which it is very difficult to discuss structural problems.” Ágnes Kövér-Van Til says that “misunderstandings are fuelled by the fact that the ultra-conservative side also consciously constructs meaning.”30 Among the more important and dominant schools, liberal feminists have focused on the empowerment of individuals based on individual rights; Marxist feminists have criticized material inequalities and specific power relations; postmodern feminists, on the other hand, look for signs of “structural oppression” and the “power matrix” in every nuance of social existence and human relations — discourses, interactions, symbols — in an almost paranoid manner. Moreover, the LGBTQ movement is not united either; it is, in fact, a mere coalition of interests.

30

Előd 2017 30

WHAT IS GENDER THEORY?

Critics tend to interpret gender theory’s view of humanity as a “conflation of the sexes”, and the efforts of the LGBTQ movement and the resulting proliferation of gender identities (mentioned in the introduction) as “free choice of gender.” But their interpretation is wrong. The people concerned do not see it as a choice but as a freedom to embrace who they really are, which they did not choose, Therefore, it is not a choice from their point of view but a freedom of embrace. The conflation of the sexes is a legitimate criticism, insofar as the mention of differences between men and women is taboo in the eyes of many feminists; but many of them emphasize the very specificity of womanhood. One could rather say that in both cases the aim is to break down barriers. As Rogers Brubaker puts it, “If subjective gender identity is today endowed with credibility and authority, this is in large part because it is widely understood to be grounded in a deep, stable, innate disposition. Thus while the sex-gender distinction allows gender identity to be disembodied and denaturalized, the “born that way” story allows it to be re-embodied and renaturalized. It is this asserted objectivity of subjective identity that makes it possible to defend choice in the name of the unchosen and change in the name of the unchanging.”31 More recently, “gender identities” have also been interpreted separately from feminism, mainly thanks to the transgender movement. In this context, “gender identities” stand in opposition to feminist female identities. At the same time, the paths of “radical feminists” (“radfems”, “TERFs”–“trans-exclusionary radical feminists”) who see the transgender movement as a threat to feminist achievements, and “gender feminists” or “liberal feminists” who support the trans movement, are separated. The wording is misleading: in fact, it is the “gender feminists” who are the more radical. This suggests that gender theory has only a loose or even no connection with feminism, which is not true. 31

Brubaker 2016 Loc. 224 31

A CRITIQUE OF GENDER THEORY

There is a feminist critique of the idea that gender is a spectrum where anyone can be anything. The reason is that there are not only logical problems with this but also practical ones: “To call yourself non-binary or genderfluid while demanding that others call themselves cisgender is to insist that the vast majority of humans must stay in their boxes, because you identify as boxless.”32 According to Rebecca Reilly-Cooper, the idea of gender identities as they are is unnecessary because it is not gender but human identity that can be placed on a spectrum. According to her, “We don’t need gender. We would be better off without it.”33 However, she is also anti-essentialist. So, does gender theory not exist? Is it just an “ex-post construction”, an invention of feminists and opponents of the LGBTQ movement which they knowingly or unknowingly use to misinterpret the whole phenomenon and exploit it for their own political ends? Although some gender researchers like to explain the situation in this way, suggesting that there is nothing interesting here, this is nothing more than a sham. The reality is obviously more complicated.

ON GENERALIZATION Social scientists like to define things so clearly that they often cannot cope with the fact that a phenomenon that requires definition does not have clear boundaries or has its own schools. Many conservative thinkers like to claim that conservatism does not exist, instead there are only conservatives; similarly, the Marxist left likes to claim how diverse it is, how many different schools its followers represent. The

32 33

Reilly–Cooper 2016 Ibid. 32

WHAT IS GENDER THEORY?

same is true of neoliberalism, which is feminism’s other bogeyman alongside conservatism: there is no single form of neoliberalism, there are rather right-wing and left-wing varieties of it; and it is certainly not the same as capitalism as such.34 But this does not mean that there is no conservatism, neoliberalism or even Marxism. All of them have basic tenets, attitudes, aspirations, and perhaps even group identities. And if there is no gender theory and feminism, only gender theories and feminisms, then there is no conservatism and no neoliberalism. One of the main fashions in the social sciences these days is to criticize and ridicule “essentialism” (the idea that anything has an immutable essence, a “core”, a substance.) While these criticisms are often based on clever and legitimate insights, they throw the baby out with the bathwater. For my part, I advocate a kind of moderate essentialism. Although generalization is so often criticized in academic circles, without generalization there is no meaningful thinking, and there are no social sciences: the methodology of sociology is actually built on generalization. Nor could we say anything meaningful about historical processes without generalization. As the American philosopher Richard Weaver puts it, “it is useless to argue against generalization; a world without generalization would be a world without knowledge. The chaotic and fragmentary thinking of the modern age is due largery to an apprehensiveness, inspired by empirical methods, over images, wholes, general truths, so that we are intimidated from reaching the conclusions we must live by. The exception neither proves nor disproves the rule; in the original sense of the maxim it tests the rule: excceptio probat regulam.”35

34 35

Roy–Steger 2010 Weaver 1989, p. 14 33

A CRITIQUE OF GENDER THEORY

But let’s turn to a more authoritative source for a definition of gender theory. A reputable British compendium on critical theories even has a separate chapter on a singular “gender and queer theory.”36 Donald E. Hall defines gender theory in the following way: “Though commonly used, the term ‘gender theory’ is something of a misnomer or, at best, a euphemism. In reality, gender theory could more accurately be termed ‘sexuality theory’, because it explores the variety of ways that ‘gender’, our assignment to social roles in ways related to our biological sex, is connected intimately and variously to our experience of sexuality, and how that experience bears on our own and others’ identity. While gender theory is deeply indebted to feminist theory, it takes students and critics in very different directions. Building on its origins in the analysis of the differential valuations of women’s and men’s social roles, its specific interests are the ways that sexuality, in its myriad forms, has been variously defined, valued, prescribed and proscribed across time periods, social groups and world cultures. In short, gender theory examines critically the identity politics of sexuality.”37 Hall notes that because we have been reflecting on gender roles and sexuality throughout history, at least since the Greeks, we can talk about some form of gender theory in every age. But, we might add, modern gender theory, the subject of our inquiry, nevertheless emerged in the mid-twentieth century. Hall also points out that modern gender theory is closely related to Marxist and postmodern (poststructuralist, deconstructionist) theories of power (mainly thanks to the work of Michel Foucault). Logically, theories that oppose gender theory, such as approaches that emphasize the role of biology, could also be gender theories; however, the term has historically been used to refer to a certain type of approach to gender.

36 37

Malpas–Wake 2006 Ibid. p. 102 34

WHAT IS GENDER THEORY?

Hall refers to the sentence written by Simone de Beauvoir and quoted at the beginning of this chapter, pointing out that Beauvoir “sums up the social constructionist perspective: that one’s biology, body, and bodily functionings are not inherently meaningful; they are interpreted and inscribed upon by society and social value systems. For most feminist theorists, this means a complete repudiation of any reference to ‘natural’ or essential qualities of womanhood or femininity, with an emphasis instead on an iconoclastic questioning of the extent to which everything having to do with gender difference is a human construct, created to reflect and reinforce a set of power dynamics privileging men.”38 Although Hall’s definition is apt, gender theory is not primarily about sexuality: it is about our gender, and only in this context is it about sexuality. Latin definitional wisdom is also true for gender theory: per genus ad differentiam. In other words, despite the many differences (differentiam), it is only possible to define something on the basis of common characteristics (genus). The great common point that unites the advocates and theorists of gender theory is the radical separation of body and soul, body and spirit, and body and personality. This notion applies to all approaches: no matter which wave of feminism we are talking about, whether we are debating a liberal or a Marxist gender researcher, a modernist or a postmodernist, an LGBTQ activist or a feminist, the point is the same — the ignoring of biological constraints and the denial of human nature, together with constructionism.

38

Ibid. p. 106 35

A CRITIQUE OF GENDER THEORY

ON CONSTRUCTIONISM According to the political science professor Carlos Ball, we can distinguish between three degrees of constructionism: soft, moderate, and strict.39 According to soft constructionists, our sexual orientations are innate, but they are expressed in different ways depending on the cultural norms of a given society, and the types and meanings of our sexual actions vary accordingly. According to moderate constructionists, the very notion of samesex and different-sex is a social construction, meaning that the notions of women and men, heterosexuality and homosexuality are also social constructions. This includes the widespread view inspired by the work of Foucault, who died of AIDS and was a homosexual, that since the concept of homosexuality is a 19th-century construct, homosexuality could not have existed before. According to moderate constructionists, society determines both the direction and the specific forms of sexual desire. Strict constructionists go so far as to say that not only the direction and forms of expression of sexual desire are social constructions, but also the very concept of sexual desire; moreover, for strict constructionists, there is nothing about gender, sexuality, and the body that can be understood as a non-social construction, or as something natural and prior to social existence, and therefore as a universally valid phenomenon.

39

Ball 2002, pp. 388-410 36

WHAT IS GENDER THEORY?

Most theorists of queer theory (a branch of gender theory) are strict constructionists. One example is Judith Butler, who argues that the concept of materiality is also a product of heterosexual hegemony, since “this ‘irreducible’ materiality is constructed through a problematic gendered matrix” and “matter itself is founded through a set of violations”; at the same time, Butler says, “to deconstruct matter is not to negate or do away with the usefulness of the term.”40 Butler also thinks that even biological sex is a social construction.41 While her views are also controversial within the feminist movement, she is one of the most influential feminist authors. Martha Nussbaum, for example, argues that Butler negates the material aspects of life, that she is a Quietist,42 a determinist, and that her language is unreadable.43 Moderate and strict constructionism are also self-contradictory because, while their proponents fight for freedom of choice and for the free enjoyment and freeing from taboos of sexual desire, they raise the question: if everything, even sexual desire itself, is a social construct, how can a “heteronormative” society construct non-heterosexual sexual desires? If sexual desire, as it is, is a social construct, then it is self-contradictory to imagine sexual desires that defy social norms, that are innate in us, or at least that we develop independently of society. In this case, then, there should be nothing to fight for in order to be liberated and accepted.

40

Butler 1993, pp. 29-30 Butler 2010 42 She considers change in the world impossible and encourages passivity. The concept originated in early modern theology but has now become secularized. 43 Nussbaum 1999 41

37

A CRITIQUE OF GENDER THEORY

From the point of view of contemporary gender theory, however, it does not really matter which degree of constructionism is adhered to, since in practice all authors focus on ignoring biological constraints. Why? Social constructionism is not without purpose. The anthropologist Gayle Rubin argued in 1978 that if gender roles are social constructions, then they can be deconstructed: “I find most compelling is one of an androgynous and genderless (though not sexless) society, in which one’s sexual anatomy is irrelevant to who one is, what one does, and with whom one makes love.”44 Of course, not all feminists and LGBTQ activists have such a radical goal, but somehow things are pointing in that direction. And because of this, gender theorists and a large part of the contemporary social science world see the emphasis on the role of biology as “biological essentialism”, which is downright racism: racism within science.45 Feminist circles are sometimes desperate to portray critiques of their own understanding and work as simply an anti-scientific “backlash”, a self-defense of patriarchy. Of course, such critiques can be formulated in both scientific and non-scientific terms, but this effort by the feminist movement is a more desperate attempt and results in stonewalling. In fact, feminists who cloak their efforts in the language of scientism are more concerned with their political goals than with protecting the human rights developments and feminist struggles they claim to be consensual in the period since the Second World War from, for example, the “anti-gender movement.”46 Feminists have feared a “backlash” for decades, although their first such fears proved to be wrong, and one of their first authors, Susan Faludi, falsified so much data and misinterpreted so many scholars that her idea was labelled a “myth of the backlash.”47

44 45 46 47

Rubin 1975, p. 204 Bem 2008 See for example: Kovács 2017, pp. 209-218 Faludi 1991 Wolf 1990 Their critique: Sommers 1994, pp. 227-254 38

WHAT IS GENDER THEORY?

It was the liberal and Marxist thinkers of the second wave of feminism who, in the modern era, began to think about gender roles in a subversive way, as they wanted to free women from their previous constraints. The term gender originally meant biological sex, but their efforts led to it being translated as “gender” (in Hungarian the term used is “social sex”), i.e., gender roles as opposed to biological sex. Feminist methodology has been a useful tool for the LGBTQ movement, which has also seized this methodology, including sexual orientation alongside biological sex and gender roles. Then, with some Marxist postmodern influence, it all became “gender identity”, which encompasses all three aspects. These form part of what is now called “gender theory”, the dominant current school of which is the gender theory that can be classified as one of the postmodern “critical theories.” The proponents of this postmodern gender theory feel entitled to examine anything, and while they produce what they call “highly complex” theories that incorporate the multiplicity of identities into their investigations, their methodology is actually quite simple: “to look at everything through a lens that magnifies potential oppression, bigotry, injustice, and grievance, as well as complicity in a system of power and privilege.”48 Feminism is, of course, correct that it is wrong to treat women as being inferior, or in its critique of the idea that has often appeared in different cultures throughout history that women are merely and exclusively the servants and subordinates of men, or that they should only be concerned with the household. One such culture that literally sent women back into the kitchen was that of the ancient Greeks, who almost never let women out of the house. Women in the upper classes of Greek society were also uneducated and spent their entire

48

Pluckrose–Lindsay p. 134 39

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lives in the house of their father and then their husband. This was because Greek men were very protective of their wives, or rather, jealously guarded their legal succession.49 But feminism exaggerates the opposite. In her book on the derailment of feminism, the feminist author Christina Hoff Sommers distinguishes between the classical liberal feminists to whom feminism owes much and the “gender feminists” who arrived with the second wave and who are “derailing” feminism; they distrust women, see structural problems and male oppression everywhere, envisage male critiques as sexist, reactionary and defensive of patriarchy, and label women who agree with critiques as traitors and collaborators.50 Although the author of this volume is not a classical liberal, he recognizes the struggles of the feminists mentioned by Sommers and considers many of their achievements important. The work held in the hands of the reader is primarily, but not exclusively, a critique of the approach of gender feminism.

THE SEPARATION OF BODY AND PERSONALITY IN FEMINISM Mary Wollstonecraft’s demand, formulated in her 1792 work A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, that natural rights have no gender and that what applies to men should also apply to women, was also justified within Western civilization. (Although natural rights do have a gender, in that the physical nature of men and women precludes

49

See for example: Németh 1999 Sommers 1994, pp. 17-18 Examples of such gender feminists include Gloria Steinem, Patricia Ireland, Susan Faludi, Marilyn French, Naomi Wolf, Catharine MacKinnon, and others.

50

40

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men from being mothers in terms of their parental roles.) The English proto-feminist wrote her work essentially to ensure that women have the same educational and learning opportunities as men. And the otherwise utilitarian-liberal John Stuart Mill was right to oppose the subordinate status of women and that women are taught to accept this in his 1869 essay The Subjection of Women, which he co-authored with his wife Harriet Taylor Mill. (Mill’s argument is similar to that of his wife’s 1851 work The Enfranchisement of Women.) First-wave feminist writers such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, who fought in 19th-century America, emphasized the similarities between women and men fighting for equal rights, notably the right to vote and, for example, to ensure that women did not lose their rights when they married. Other feminists, such as Hannah More, Frances Willard, and Clare Boothe Luce, emphasized the specific characteristics of women (Luce was a political conservative51). So, feminism in its original form did not include the idea that our biology, or more specifically the female body, should be radically separated from the notion of femininity and the female role — although Mill herself was dualistic, or constructionist if you like. This idea emerged, more in a declarative manner instead of a systematically developed argument, among the authors of the second wave of feminism because childbearing was seen as fundamentally opposed to freedom. Beauvoir, for example, argued that women are the “most alienated of all” because subjugation to the reproductive function of the female body is one of the most difficult subjugations. And the woman who rebels against this “affirms herself as an individual.”52

51

Clara Boothe Luce (1903-1987) was the first female United States ambassador. She was famous for her anti-communism and her opposition to British colonialism in India. She became a Catholic in 1946 and from then on always campaigned for the Republican Party candidate. 52 Beauvoir 2009, p. 44 41

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According to Shulamith Firestone’s 1970 work, The Dialectic of Sex, not only male privilege but all gender distinctions must be abolished so that they do not count culturally at all, and notions of hetero, homo, and bisexuality must be transcended by pansexuality. Firestone wanted to break “the tyranny of the biological family” and relied primarily on biotechnology to do so. Her ideas were in effect paraphrases of Marx and Engels’ ideas in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, only Firestone substituted women for the proletariat.53 Firestone’s ideas, formulated at the age of 25, were shared by Beauvoir, who believed that “women will not be liberated until they have been liberated from their children and by the same token, until children have also been liberated from their parents,” and that the family should be abolished.54 Similar sentiments were expressed by Betty Friedan in the feminist classic The Feminine Mystique, in which she explained that American women are discouraged from exploiting all their talents. Kate Millett also shared these ideas (Sexual Politics, 1970), arguing that even the original meaning of gender, namely sex, is a completely arbitrary concept. It is clear from the writings of the feminist “founding mothers” that the purpose of separating gender roles (the feminine) from the biological sex (the female body) was to free them from the role of mother. They were right to rebel to the extent that limiting women’s destiny to the role of mother was clearly wrong, but they went from one extreme to the other and became downright hostile to motherhood. They were not merely attacking a society that wanted to limit women’s role to this (which even then was not true), but were hostile to the fact that the female body is “designed” to pass on life, that this is its “physiological destiny” and thus that this is women’s “natural vocation.”

53 54

Firestone 1972 Schwarzer 1984, pp. 39-40 42

WHAT IS GENDER THEORY?

When Betty Friedan said to Beauvoir in 1975 that if women wanted to stay at home, they should be allowed to do so, the latter replied, “No, we don’t believe that any woman should have this choice. No woman should be authorized to stay at home to raise her children. Society should be totally different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one.”55 Beauvoir does not seem to have trusted women, but rather she aggressively sought to liberate them, even those who did not ask for it. Although Friedan was more permissive, she also believed that in a male-dominated society, only the biology of the female body mattered, that women could not fulfil themselves, and that this was a kind of suicide. The “feminine mystery”, she said, buried millions of women alive in the America of her time.56 But gender feminists have problems not only with motherhood. Anyone who thinks that liberation from motherhood is about freer love and sexuality is wrong (although for some it is.) Gender feminists tend to look down on and condemn romantic love and sexual relations between men and women as a ploy by patriarchal capitalism to buy off and fraudulently keep women dependent rather than to give them real independence by radically transforming society.57 “Gender”, which originally simply meant sex (male, female) in English, then began to take on a different meaning through feminist authors. An early example is Ann Oakley’s Sex, Gender and Society (1972). Two psychology professors, Suzanne Kesler and Wendy McKenna, were already arguing for gender as a social construct in Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach in 1978. From there it was a straight road to Judith Butler’s aforementioned idea that “biological sex” is also an arbitrary concept, and to Gayle Rubin’s androgynous society. 55 56 57

Sommers 1994, pp. 256-57 Friedan 2010, pp. 462, 495 Ibid. p. 259 See for example: Jaggar 1983, p. 219; Steinem 1992, p. 260 43

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Gender theory therefore in principle covers any study of gender roles, sexuality, sexual orientation, and gender identity. In practice, however, gender theory is characterized by a one-sided constructionist approach, and it approaches society with the skepticism and hostility of critical theories, or even with hysterical paranoia. The aim of genuine intellectual inquiry, whether philosophical or contemplative, is to gain the deepest possible understanding; however, gender theory aims for a profound transformation of society according to specific criteria. Regardless of its school, its specific characteristic is the radical separation of body and personality and to ignore our physicality and its consequences. While this separation, or even opposition of body and soul was already suggested in ancient Greece it became fashionable again during the Enlightenment through the work of René Descartes (1596-1650) and Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).58 As Descartes put it in his classic on the method of philosophical enquiry, “Next, examining attentively what I was, I saw that I could pretend that I had no body and that there was no world or place for me to be in, but that I could not for all that pretend that I did not exist; on the contrary, from the very fact that I thought of doubting the truth of other things, it followed incontrovertibly and certainly that I myself existed (…). I thereby concluded that I was a substance whose whole essence or nature resides only in thinking, and which, in order to exist, has no need of place and is not dependent on any material thing. Accordingly, this ‘I’, that is to say, the Soul by which I am what I am, is entirely distinct from the body and is even easier to know than the body; and would not stop being everything it is, even if the body were not to exist.”59

58 59

See: Descartes 2006, 2008, Kant 1991, 2015 Descartes 2006, p. 29 44

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In technical jargon, this is also called substance dualism, Gnostic or Cartesian dualism. Aristotle tried to describe the relationship between body and soul in terms of the body being the substance and the soul being its form, or ordering principle.60 St. Thomas Aquinas, who made Aristotle “fashionable” again in the Middle Ages, held the same view.61 According to St. Thomas’ commentators, the position of the “angelic doctor” is that man as a unity of body and soul constitutes a substance (substancia completa), and that the body itself is only substantia incompleta, an imperfect substance.62 The point is that both Aristotle and St. Thomas were trying to express by means of the conceptual kit of philosophy that the body and the soul are intimately connected and that man has an immutable essence (immutable human nature; ontological, or existential structure.) In the case of St. Thomas, this was not at odds with his Catholic faith, since Catholicism confesses the resurrection not only of the soul but also of the body (“I believe in the resurrection of the body”, says the Credo.)

60

Aristotle: De anima. See Aquinas: Summa Theologica I, q76 a 1; Summa Contra Gentiles II, cc. 56-59, 68, 70 . Comm. de anima, II, 1. 4. III, 1. 7.; De spiritualibus creaturis, a 2.; De anima, a. 1-2. The Thomist position is very briefly summarized in: Ripperger 2013, p. 14 Summary in Hungarian: Bolberitz–Gál 1987, pp. 40-59, 113-130 There are, however, uncertainties: St Thomas says that the soul is “some kind of an incorporeal and substance-less principium”, i.e., an independent being capable of existing independently of the body, but he also says that the soul is also the substantial form of the body (to be precise, only the “intelligent soul” is the form of the body.) So, body and soul together constitute man as a substance. It is a very important philosophical problem how a part (or even a form) of a substance can be an independent being, or even how something that is not a substance can be an independent being. A little later in the same work, however, St. Thomas calls the soul a “non-material substance.” (Thanks are due to professor Tamás Nyirkos for his help.) 62 That St. Thomas himself would have thought exactly this, however, cannot be proven. 61

45

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We use the word soul in many different senses: in a religious sense, in a philosophical sense or simply as the “I”, the metaphor of our personality. In the philosophical sense used here, however, the soul is “the formal source (as opposed to the efficient cause) of the living operations of a living being, such operations as growth, nourishment, perception, and, in the human being, understanding and willing. The efficient cause of these operations, in the sense of the subject that performs these operations, is the living organism as a whole. Thus, the human being is not a soul using or inhabiting a body but a composite of soul and body (if by ‘body’ one refers to the material components in the makeup of a human being.)”63 The relationship between body and soul, or body and personality, is a major theme in philosophical anthropology.64 This concept from Aristotle and St. Thomas, perhaps the defining concept of antiquity and the Middle Ages,65 has been contested by many throughout the history of philosophy, including the aforementioned Descartes and his followers during the Enlightenment. According to them, body and soul (or rather mind in the case of Descartes) are two separate substances and the soul exists without the body;66 although Descartes states that the two substances are cooperating closely or even unite.67 Kant, as we shall see in the penultimate chapter, took a different approach, although he separated body and soul too sharply. The term Cartesian dualism is derived from the name Descartes. These two positions – substance dualism and monism – still exist today.68

63

Lee–George 2009, p. 67 For a brief introduction to philosophical anthropology, see e.g., Rokay 2000 65 For an overview of medieval philosophy, see Gilson 1991, 2019. On the history of scholasctic theology: Leinsle 2010 66 Descartes 2006, pp. 104-105 67 Ibid. pp. 35-49 Descartes 2008, pp. 51-64 68 See for example dualism in Swinburne 2019, Dualism is criticized in Lee–George 2009 64

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The Gnostic idea, built heavily on the teachings of Plato, was popular during antiquity and the early Middle Ages. The term gnosis means knowledge; according to the Gnostic school of thought, salvation is brought by the acquisition of a secret, higher knowledge. The Gnostics also looked down on the body, the material world, and sharply separated the soul from it.69 Hence the term “Gnostic dualism.” The Gnostics and Descartes thus strongly separated body and soul, but like St. Thomas, they believed in the soul and substances (essence). According to the political thinker Eric Voegelin, a Gnostic attitude, Gnostic elitism, and Gnostic fallacy characterize the entire intellectual elite of the modern age.70 Feminist theorists of gender theory, however, believe in neither the soul or substance, nor in unchanging human nature. Instead of the soul, they ascribe to a kind of individuality composed of structures and interactions, as a set of desires, traits and beliefs that have little to do with the body. Consequently, they follow the Gnostics and the Enlightenment by separating body and soul, but they regard the substances adopted by the latter as nebulous essentialist ideas, if they have an opinion at all. Feminists are less likely to refer to pre-Enlightenment times, and with a little exaggeration, they think as if the world was created in 1789. Of course, this strong emphasis on modernity has not prevented feminist work from studying earlier periods, nor prevented feminist political philosophy from flourishing.71 However, while there are still references to Descartes and Kant in the works of feminist authors,

69

On Gnosticism, see e.g., Filoramo 1990 See also: Voegelin 1987; Megadja 2019 71 Overview: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2009. Some classics: Okin 2013; Pateman 1988; Jaggar 1983 70

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there are far fewer references to Gnostic, ancient, and medieval authors. Yet it is true, as both British philosopher Roger Scruton72 and American author Ryan T. Anderson73 point out, that gender theory’s concept of the body is similar to that of Descartes, Kant, and the Gnostics; their writings reflect the same body-soul (or body-personality) divide. And if they dispute with the two Enlightenment philosophers, it is not about this separation but about the fact that most feminists do not believe in the soul (which Descartes does) and consider Descartes’ view of man too individualistic.74 Feminists’ dualism is not only analytical (for the sake of analysis); it is conceptual. Individualism here is not to be understood as it is in everyday life — not as some kind of anti-communal selfishness — but simply as the idea that man has an essence, and is not entirely subject to society and structures, but has freedom and responsibility, and at the same time has some room for maneuver. In any case, since feminists believe (rightly, by the way) that the reality of society also strongly determines our private lives; they consider it wrong to separate private life from public life. Although the influence is clear, contemporary feminist thought also sees this as justification for state regulation, close surveillance and subversion of the minutiae of private life (for example, in the legitimate but excessive fear of relationship violence, in order to eradicate it altogether.) All this is summed up in the feminist motto that “the personal is political”, which is not only consistent with the Marxian denial of pre-political existence, but was also, curiously enough, voiced by Mussolini’s favorite fascist philosopher Giovanni Gentile, and this conviction pervades his entire body of thought.75

72

Scruton 2006, pp. 253-283 Anderson 2018, p. 46 74 Scruton’s critique is of central importance to us and will be discussed in the final chapter. 75 See for example: Gentile 1960, pp. 176-178 73

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If the aim of gender theory and feminist founding mothers was to liberate women from the constraints of motherhood by radically separating biological sex and gender roles, as well as denying naturalness, then they were banging on an open door. The traditional view of humanity and the traditional concepts of femininity and masculinity, which do not ignore biology, do not claim either that women (and even men) should be exclusively in the service of reproduction. Even St. Thomas in the Middle Ages thought that “man also realizes that he can only maintain his own species by procreation (since he is also impelled to do so by nature), but this latter law, as far as its fulfilment is concerned, applies only to the ‘general’ and ‘many’ cases, but not to each individual human being who is, at least in principle, subject to this law.”76 If, therefore, some ages have confined women too strongly to the understood exclusive role of motherhood, it is to be regretted. But it is also unfortunate if, in its legitimate struggle against certain excessive social constraints, feminism ignores the fact that one of the most important natural vocations of women is motherhood, complemented by the equally natural paternal vocation of men, which is no less important and also biologically determined. Consequently, the leadership of the political community, the state and the government have the right to support and encourage practices, especially in times of permanent population decline, that promote and favor the survival of society, notably childbearing. In fact, “neutral” behavior is counterproductive, and if the political leadership of a political community in an “anti-family” era does not encourage motherhood and fatherhood as a priority mission in life, it effectively discriminates against them, as other structural factors work against

76

Bolberitz–Gál 1987, p. 140 49

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family formation and parenthood. The usual feminist objection, suggesting that emphasizing and promoting motherhood discriminates against those who do not choose it creates a hostile climate for them and “puts women back in the kitchen”, is untrue and exaggerated, and ignores the interests of society and the common good. The philosophy of gender theory and its anthropological revolution builds on Rousseau as significantly as the French Revolution did. It aims to radically transform society as much as the French Revolution did. So let us look at the intellectual background of gender theory.

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Chapter 2

POSTMODERN PARANOIA: THE CONTEXT OF GENDER THEORY The philosophical background and theoretical context of gender theory draws on the Enlightenment, postmodernism – which is rooted in the former but is a disavowal of it – and Marxism.

THE ENLIGHTENMENT The Enlightenment, which emerged from the 16th century and has the 18th century as its “golden age”, looked at the old beliefs, Christianity, traditions, and authorities with suspicion, and exalted first empiricism, then reason, then rationalism, and finally – in the 19th century – logic. The Enlightenment believed that the world could be rethought from ground zero, that society could be corrected by creating a secular and objective ethic, and that everything could be based on the natural sciences. It was during this era that the belief in progress and philosophical individualism spread. The latter means starting from the individual, not from communities, and placing the individual at the center. John Locke was one of the apostles for the suppression of religion and

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one of the main critics of Catholicism, while Jean-Jacques Rousseau was the prophet of the Enlightenment’s turn towards anthropology: whereas until then, man’s nature had been consideredfundamentally corrupted by original sin or at least imperfect, Rousseau believed that man was inherently good, and that only society could make him bad. (Although Rousseau is not always clear on this point, he is credited with this turn of events.)77 The greatest theoreticians of rationalism were the Frenchman René Descartes, after whom Cartesian thinking was named, and Immanuel Kant.78 The question, of course, is how man, if inherently good, can build a bad society. On the other hand, it has since become apparent that philosophical individualism is one-sided, views the individual as being too isolated within himself, and neglects the role of communities.79 The Enlightenment overestimated reason by failing to see that man has both moral and mental limits and that reason must therefore rely on community, tradition, and best practices. Likewise, the Enlightenment failed to see the limitations of the natural sciences and that their methodology is only valid within their own domain and cannot be extended to the world of man, morality, and society. And most of all, it failed to see that human nature cannot be changed: it set about transforming man with fervent optimism, but without success.

77

See his Social Contract and the Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men (Second Discourse.) 78 For a summary of the Enlightenment, see Cassirer 2009 79 This has been pointed out by communitarian philosophers, e.g., MacIntyre 2007 52

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MARXISM Rousseau’s ideas were put into practice by the Jacobin terror of the French Revolution. Karl Marx was the next significant stage on the road paved by the revolutionaries, and the communists clearly saw themselves as the heirs to the Jacobins. Marxism sees history as the struggle of the oppressed classes for power. Marx believed that our position determines our consciousness and that economics is primary. The upper, oppressive classes make the lower classes believe that they are fine as they are and fill their heads with religious fantasies; those who accept the social order therefore have a false consciousness because they have internalized the explanations of their oppressors. Marx believed that bourgeois revolutions and capitalist transformation must necessarily be followed by proletarian revolution, a proletarian dictatorship, and then the state (in a mystical way not explained by Marx) will disappear and Canaan will come, and everyone will do what they like: work, rest, and write poetry. The fathers of communism stated that “the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, consequently also controls the means of mental production, so that the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are on the whole subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relations, the dominant material relations grasped as ideas; hence of the relations which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance.”80

80

Marx–Engels 1998, p. 66-67 53

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Moreover, “the production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men, the language of real life.”81 Communists were accused even back then of wanting to abolish the family. The Marxists responded by saying that what they really wanted to abolish was the “bourgeois” family and that they wanted to educate children publicly and free of charge.82 Engels stated outright that under communism the two foundations of marriage would be abolished: the dependence of the woman on her husband and the dependence of the child on its parents.83 Feminist writers often quote Marx and Engels, a particular favorite being the latter’s The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.84 According to Marx, there is no essential, fixed human nature; instead, it is a product of history. The result of Marx and Engels’ ideas, the voluntarist promotion of “historical necessity”, and a by-product of the social transformation “efforts” of the communist regimes was hundreds of millions of dead “enemies of progress”.85 Incidentally, Marx was an armchair scientist who never saw much of a working man during his life, and when Engels invited him to visit factories, he did not join him. For much of his life he was financed by Engels, parasitizing him and selecting the economic data used in his works to suit his own tastes and to support his theory.86 Marxism has been widely and pervasively criticized by many, and here it is perhaps enough to refer to Roger Scruton’s critique: the interplay between “economic life” and “social life” is a matter of chick-

81

Ibid. p. 41 Ibid. pp. 94-98 83 Marx–Engels–Lenin-Stalin 1975. The Hungarian version is cited here: Marx–Engels– Lenin 1974. p. 110 84 Engels 2010 85 Courtois et al. 1999 86 Johnson 2007, pp. 52-81 82

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en and egg, since it involves back and forth effects in a complex way. It is not possible to establish any kind of primacy for the economy.87 And the equality imagined by Marx is of course utopian, a kind of “secular eschatology”, together with the ideal society of the Enlightenment; in other words, it is the realization on earth of the Christian kingdom of heaven, which is doomed for failure.

THE POSTMODERN What makes Butler think that “biological sex” is also an arbitrary concept, or a social construction, is that, according to her, we are imprisoned by language. We think about and perceive the world through language, but instead of reflecting reality, language distorts it. This idea is peculiar to postmodern philosophies. Language, which distorts reality, determines our consciousness and the conceptual framework in which we think. Hoowever, it is not only language that creates such a structure; traditions, customs and society are also contributors. The main characteristic of postmodernism is relativism: truth and the world are unknowable, or if they are knowable, one cannot decide what truth is.88 In the 1970s, the French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard, one of the most important postmodernist thinkers, argued that the views of the world as objective, the “grand narratives” or “big stories” or “metanarratives” or “master narratives”, although dominant and determining views of a particular era, claim to be universal, which gives them a totalitarian – and therefore oppressive – character. In contrast, the postmodernism he prefers favours “small narratives”

87 88

Scruton 2015, pp. 1-37 On the history and types of relativism, see Baghramian 2004 55

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that embrace their particularism and do not consider themselves universal.89 Central to postmodernism is the poststructuralist Michel Foucault’s conception of power, according to which power is present always and everywhere, flowing through the capillaries of human relations. For Foucault, all discourse is a manifestation of power, and the two central concepts of social relations are power and knowledge. Power is monopolized by the bourgeoisie because it determines what counts as normality.90 Today, Foucault is one of the most read and quoted authors in the humanities. To this is added the thought of Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Marxist philosopher of the first half of the 20th century, who argued that if reality is not a given but constructed by us, then identity does not exist in itself and it is also a historical product. Objectivity, according to this view, is always a ploy of power or a construction of power that excludes other interpretations.91 For approaches and “critical theories” associated with postmodernism (such as structuralism, poststructuralism, Marxism, perspectivism, deconstruction, postcolonialism, narratology, psychoanalytic criticism, many schools of feminism, gender and queer theory, critical race theory, etc.), nothing is certain in the world except “context dependence” and so-called “power structures.” All positions are context-dependent, there is no outside perspective, and all contexts, but most of all the classical Western tradition, reflect power structures. According to the postmodernist, legitimacy is based on “an opaque web of power that has developed formal objectivity to hide and obscure itself.”92

89 90 91 92

Lyotard 1984 Foucault 2019, pp. 92-98 Malpas–Wake 2006, pp. 35-36 Bókay 2006, p. 172 56

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Poststructuralists like Judith Butler, for example, “don’t (normally) doubt that there is a world: their anxiety concerns what we can claim to know about it with any certainty.”93 This is due to language as a distorter of reality and to the theory of postmodernism concerning power structures. According to postmodernism, therefore, almost nothing has an eternal essence, there is no stable human nature, but neither is there a female or male essenc, nor is our personality stable. There is no essential “self-core” (no soul, for example), but instead personality and our ideas about the world are the product of “social interactions.” An explosive mixture of these views has given rise to the standpoint that Western civilization and thought is itself a totalizing, oppressive “grand narrative”; that objectivity, realism, logic and the metaphysical view that language reflects our concepts and does not create them is a power ploy, and a power ploy undertaken by the most privileged, white, heterosexual male in power in the West. One extreme branch of gender theory, queer theory, of which Butler is a founder, is rooted in one of the most radical philosophies of postmodernism: deconstruction. It was developed by Jacques Derrida who proclaimed “the-thought-that-means-nothing”, and “the thought that exceeds meaning.”94 Derrida argues that nothing has a fixed meaning, that every text can be explained in infinite ways, and can even be read against itself. The possibility of transcendent truths and logic is the myth of Western culture, of the white man.95 Derrida described as phallogocentrism his own assertion that the privilege of “meaning-making” is in the hands of the male, and that the masculine point of view is decisive in interpreting the world. Deconstruction

93 94 95

Belsey 2002, p. 71 Derrida 2002, p. 12 Derrida 1982, p. 213 57

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thus rejects the given interpretation, and even the possibility of a fixed meaning, because, in its view, all interpretation is an act of power. In essence, therefore, meaningful debate is impossible. Hence, the followers of deconstruction favor irony and a rhetoric that dances away from the question in a circular fashion. Professor John M. Ellis explains in Against Deconstruction that what Derrida was right about was nothing new; what he claimed to be new was a radical error. Derrida “discovers” a problem that has already been discovered (by Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, 18571913) but renames it (logocentrism instead of essentialism). In other words, he contrasts an imagined extreme (that every text has a privileged reading) with another extreme (that every interpretation is also a misinterpretation and that all interpretations are equivalent), which in turn renders any interpretation meaningless. While most texts have multiple interpretations, Derrida needs a privileged interpretation to attack. According to Ellis, deconstruction is a prisoner of its own narrowing, binary logic even though it is precisely against “binarity” that Derrida had struggled so much.96 The English philosopher Roger Scruton takes a more poetic approach to deconstruction: he sees Derrida’s followers as an idolatrous tribe, repeating their master’s magical incantations; their holy text is Derrida’s Of Grammatology. This idolatrous tribe, in turn, worships the “substantified void”, which is the conscious worship of Nothingness; in other words, they are nihilists, if not intellectual Satanists. In Scruton’s words, deconstruction is “the world of the Devil.” It is no surprise that Scruton in his work Modern Culture titled the section on Derrida “The Devil’s Work.”97

96 97

Ellis 1990 Scruton 2014, pp. 135-148 58

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Queer theory, derived from deconstruction, is a catch-all name for “non-normative sexual practices or identities” (essentially everything except heterosexuality), and others “making visible” and “problematizing” the “skeleton” of all identities. According to queer people, the basis of identities is fiction: it speaks of “those fictions of identity that stabilize all identificatory categories.” Queer theory, as the often comically convoluted interpretations listed by Annamarie Jagose, is “the point of convergence for a potentially infinite number of non-normative subject positions”; queer theory “then, is an identity category that has no interest in consolidating or even stabilising itself”, as it is not an identity but “a critique of identity”; and “its most enabling characteristic may well be its potential for looking forward without anticipating the future.” According to Jagose, “part of queer’s semantic clout, part of its polítical efficacy, depends on its resistance to definition, and the way in which it refuses to stake its claim.” In the words of Judith Butler, “‘normalizing the queer would be, after alI, its sad finish.” It does not attempt to stabilize the mobile field of queer identification. The essence of queer theory is “a zone of possibilities always inflected by a sense of potentiality that it cannot yet quite articulate.” Its theorists celebrate “queer”, that is, queer theory and the strange, ambiguous gender identity that gives it its name, as “queer is always an identity under construction, a site of permanent becoming” that is “utopic in its negativity”, “although frequently described as aggressive, queer is also tentative”, while at the same time “its suspicion of homogeneous identity categories and totalizing explanatory narratives necessarily limits its own claims.”98

98

For these definitions, see Jagose 1996 59

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This gibberish is the current endpoint of postmodernism, a complete denial of all human stability, permanence and common sense, and also one of the most influential branches of gender theory that is highly popular in the academic world. Consider two cases of postmodern absurdity. In 1996, Alan Sokal, a professor of physics and mathematics, managed to get the postmodern journal Social Text to publish a paper that quoted extensively from what were then classic sentences by postmodern authors, entitled “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity.”99 The article argued that the idea of quantum gravity is in fact a mere social construct. Quantum gravity is the field of theoretical physics that investigates gravity from the starting points of quantum mechanics in order to explain the gravitational properties of phenomena such as black holes and neutron stars. However, after the article was published, Sokal disclosed in Lingua Franca magazine that the text was completely meaningless and full of gibberish. As he wrote, he wanted to find out whether a prestigious postmodern journal run by respected editors would accept a text full of nonsense that matched the ideological stance of its editors. Sokal had intentionally mixed together scientific terms with postmodern language. The fact that Social Text accepted and published his “study” is, in his view, a sign of the intellectual arrogance characteristic of postmodernism.100 In 2017-18, the same prank was perpetrated by three scholars, James A. Lindsay, Peter Boghossian and Helen Pluckrose (the Grievance Affair), only they managed to publish four nonsensical “studies” loaded with postmodern terms or that proposed absurd moral ideas in gender and queer theory journals concerning themselves with “critical theories.” The project was supposed to continue until 2019, but in October 2018, journalists discovered that the alleged author of the

99 100

Sokal 1996a Sokal 1996b 60

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studies, Helen Wilson, did not exist (hence the four studies out of the originally planned twenty.) Both Sokal and the authors of the Grievance Affair have devoted volumes to critiques of postmodern theories, Sokal calling them “fashionable nonsense”, Pluckrose and her colleagues describing them as “cynical theories.”101

A CRITIQUE OF POSTMODERNISM Postmodernism does not share the Enlightenment’s optimistic faith in reason; it actually swings in the opposite direction. At the same time, it makes trust impossible in society and human relationships because it sees power in everything, and therefore everything is suspect. It is also not clear why, if everything is unknowable to the postmodernist, power is knowable; after all, power is primarily not a material phenomenon. While the postmodernists believe that neither history nor the social world can be known, they pretend to be able to look into people’s souls. And if language is a distorter rather than a mediator of reality, it is a good question why humanity did not die out long ago, since without linguistic communication it is difficult to survive and build civilizations. At the same time, postmodernism, by overemphasizing differences between cultures and individuals, ignores the universal human experience, the values shared by all, and neglects man’s self-reflective capacity and free will. Postmodernism is not a constructive, productive form of doubt, but a destructive, extreme manifestation of skepticism. And critical theories, under the spell of postmodernism and Marxism which seek to explore and critique the power relations in society, are of course no more critical than any philosophical school. Systematic, reflective thinking of the world is inherently critical.

101

Sokal–Bricmont 1998 Pluckrose–Lindsay 2020 61

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In any case, it is this postmodernism, mixed with Marxism, that provides the intellectual background for gender theory. Of course, there are many schools and nuances of postmodernism and Marxism, as well as post-Marxism, but essentially it is about the above. In contrast to the schools of philosophy that have been fashionable since the Enlightenment, classical philosophy from antiquity to the modern era has mostly remained within the realm of common sense, even if there were antecedents of postmodernism (the Greek Sophists, against whom Plato’s master Socrates took stance), and of course there were many competing schools. Chesterton captures this well when he describes Aquinas’s concept, and what he writes is typical of all pre-Enlightenment thought from the Greeks through to the modern age: “The philosophy of St. Thomas stands founded on the universal common conviction that eggs are eggs. The Hegelian may say that an egg is really a hen, because it is a part of an endless process of Becoming; the Berkeleian may hold that poached eggs only exist as a dream exists; since it is quite as easy to call the dream the cause of the eggs as the eggs the cause of the dream; the Pragmatist may believe that we get the best out of scrambled eggs by forgetting that they ever were eggs, and only remembering the scramble. (…) The Thomist stands in the broad daylight of the brotherhood of men, in their common consciousness that eggs are not hens or dreams or mere practical assumptions; but things attested by the Authority of the Senses, which is from God.”102 The philosopher Zoltán Frenyó, formulates the same insight in a different way, says: “human nature has a faculty of seeing essence, expressed in everyday consciousness on the one hand, and in metaphysical vision on the other.”103

102 103

Chesterton 2015 Loc. 1560-1570.On the history of tomism: Cessario 2003 Frenyó 2016, p. 313 62

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What would a postmodernist say? Probably that the egg is a linguistic construct and we cannot exactly know what it is; that the egg was created by history, and we can change it. Further, that to reserve the linguistic category of “egg” for the egg is a discriminatory and oppressive linguistic act. One of the starting points for postmodern relativism is the diversity of moral beliefs in the world. This is undoubtedly a convincing starting point, but in the same way the common moral starting points that characterize humanity as a whole and the more or less common ethical framework that spans history and space, cultures and civilizations can also be pointed out. For example, according to French philosopher Rémi Brague, “there are no Christian morals.” What does exist is a “common morality”, an established morality, that was shared and is shared by the great world religions and others, and there is a “Christian interpretation” of it. The Ten Commandments are “hardly more than a reminder of the natural law.”104 Elsewhere he says: “there are no such a things as moral with an epithet. There are no ‘pagan’ or ‘Jewish’, ‘Islamic’ or ‘Buddhist’ morals, nor for the matter a ‘humanist’ morals, and for heaven’s sake no ‘Christain’ morals. There undoubtedly are, on- the other hand, different ways to understand what moral bevahior is all about.”105 There is, then, a common morality based on common sense and the common good, and while it is not external to history and societies, it transcends them. While it would be easy to argue with this idea of Brague’s, he is certainly right that humanity has a common moral conviction which religions do not replace but complement and explain.

104 105

Brague 2019, pp. 78-79 Ibid. p. 85 63

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In another respect, according to postmodernism, reality is also a human construction; not something we learn about but something we construct. This is true to the extent that human civilization is a human construction. This is, however, not a very profound insight, and if postmodernism wants to point this out, then the mountains have gone into labor and given birth to a mouse. It succeeds in pointing out the obvious in an over-refined and convoluted manner. Beyond this, however, postmodern authors also tend to argue that, for example, time and distance are also human constructs, as evidenced, for example, by the difference between medieval and modern concepts of time and distance. In the past, both were blurred, they were not measured in precise divisions, and even today we say that distances are short in Hungary and long in the United States. What used to be a day’s walk on foot or by cart is now an hour by car. There is no doubt that people’s perception of time and distance can vary from age to age and from place to place, but we can also get used to or adapt to different perceptions of time and distance. There are also scientific questions regarding both. But our measurement of time is still based on days and nights, the cycle of the Moon, and the path of the Sun, just as distances can be objectively compared. Our perceptions of time and distance change, and we measure both differently today; however, we are talking about the same time and the same distances.106

106

See more: Swinburne 1981 64

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INDIVIDUALS AND STRUCTURES One fault line for feminists is between the liberal and the radical (sometimes extreme) left-wing schools. Liberal feminists believe that it is all about liberating the individual through rights and opportunities such as the right to vote, the right to education, methods of contraception, and the sexual revolution of the 1960s. For postmodern-Marxist radical feminism, so-called “formal equality” is not enough. Instead, “real equality” is needed, meaning that the framework of laws is insufficient. From this perspective, patriarchy that holds women’s minds captive should be dismantled, preferably by the state. Patriarchy creates a false consciousness in women, from which they must be freed. If, however, as post-structuralists claim for example, our personality is entirely a phenomenon created by culture or by language, and there exists in fact neither individual freedom nor individuals, only so-called agents, then it is also a good question what or who created the oppressive structures, since there are no responsible persons. We could go on listing the contradictions of this concept. The two approaches have radically different views on sexual intercourse, for example. The first fought for women’s sexual freedom and is happy that women are free to choose when and with whom they go to bed. According to the second school, this is a sham because patriarchy and a millenniun of male domination means that women are not free to choose, their minds being conditioned to choose men. The latter idea is based on the idea of structures, language, and personality as explained above. Our personality is created through “social interactions”, i.e., power relations (male domination) and language (patriarchal terminology), through the lack of a core of personality (soul, essence, innate traits), and by the patriarchal view that creates a false consciousness (the question is how such a consciousness can be false if there is no consciousness created by non-structures.) At the same time, postmodernism emphasizes the human need for recognition and abolishes the merit-based idea that recognition is due 65

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when it is earned. Because “merit” is a matter of luck, heredity, and innate qualities (which one cannot help), there is no merit; on the other hand, recognition comes “by default” and is due to everyone because it is the confirmation of one’s humanity, without which one is denied human dignity.107 This idea is self-contradictory because, on the one hand, it assumes that a patriarchal structure creates subordinate personalities for women, but at the same time it also assumes the possibility of subordinate personalities becoming self-aware and rebelling. However, it is difficult to imagine an oppressive structure creating personalities capable of rebelling at all. This is only possible if there is a core of personality that is not controlled by the structure. This means, on the one hand, that there is free will, which contemporary postmodern left-wing thinking denies, and on the other hand, that our personality is not entirely the product of social interactions. To quote Professor Attila Károly Molnár: “if the ‘I’ is created in interaction, in dialogue, where does the ‘I’ come from that requires the recognition of someone?” So, if the self is pre-interaction, then it demands the recognition of someone in its own defense; “but in this case the ‘self’ does not come into being in interaction”, or else the ‘self’, the identity, does come into being in interaction, but then “the ‘self’ is not only not autonomous, but does not exist.”108 Philosophy distinguishes the isolated individual from the person formed by the interaction of the individual and the community; this is how our personality is formed. It does not mean, however, that our personality is solely a product of our upbringing and environment (or of some structures and interactions), and the very fact that we have a consciousness and are able to reflect on the environment that influences our personality is a refutation of the poststructuralist view.

107 108

Taylor 1994 pp. 25-74 Molnár 2014a pp. 96-97 66

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The human person is essentially different from animals even though he shares a physicality with them. This essential, qualitative difference (which today is usually denied) has two main factors: the capacity for conceptual thought and self-reflection (self-consciousness), as well as free will, make us moral beings, unlike animals.109 The existence of freedom of the will (which is not the same as political freedom) is still a matter of great debate; suffice it to say for now that human choices are not entirely determined by antecedents and circumstances. In other words, “his environment, heredity, and character together were insufficient to bring it about that he choose this rather than that, or even that he choose rather than not choose. Expressed positively: he himself in the very act of choosing determines his act of willing. Human beings are ultimate authors of their own acts of will and (together with nature and nurture) their own character.”110 Contrary to Marxist and postmodernist ideas, history does not create man despite the fact that man can adapt to many different circumstances. Although “man and humanity, by virtue of their historicity, change culturally during their existence, which sociology and cultural anthropology can measure with their empirical tools, they do not change in their ontological structure, i.e., in their natural essence.”111 This is true if only because there is no being without nature. That which has no nature, core, essence, substance, does not exist and is uncategorizable and indefinable; so, for example, if there is no human nature, there are no human rights. And our substance, the essence of a being, can only be unchanging, as it can come into being and pass away but does not change.112

109 110 111 112

Lee–George 2009, pp. 52-65 Ibid. pp. 60-61 On free will, see Kane 1998; Swinburne 2012, 2013; Iredale 2012 Frivaldszky 2008 See for example: Aristotle: Metaphysics, 993b-1075a 67

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(It is important to note that nature, which in classical philosophy means ontological structure, is not necessarily the same as naturalness, for example the naturalness of desires.113) Nevertheless, man is spiritually, morally, and psychologically a very fragile being. Although he can adapt to many things and he is free to try to deny his nature, the latter attempt seems farcical. To live a physically and psychologically healthy life, we must not deny our own nature but instead realize it. Human thought has been aware of all this since Plato, and the millennia-long consensus on the subject was partially shattered by the Enlightenment (David Hume, who denied substance, and Kant, who denied the knowability of substance), but then completely by Marxism and postmodernity.114 Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir’s partner, cried out man “cannot be defined” and “there is no human nature”. So, “He will not be anything until later, and then he will he what he makes of himself.”115 Yet Plato’s question is a valid one: “How can that be a real thing which is never in the same state? For obviously things which are the same cannot change while they remain the same; and if they are always the same and in the same state, and never depart from their original form, they can never change or be moved”116 It is ironic that man should be questioned by an age that both absolutizes and idolizes him.

113 114 115 116

Frivaldszky 2001, pp. 316-331 See also: Frenyó 2016, pp. 197, 311-315 Sartre 2007, p. 22 Plato: Cratylus, 439e-440a 68

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Man is not, in the words of Rémi Brague, merely a “lucky monkey”,117 nor is human personality merely a product of social interactions and a social construct. Both ideas, despite their partial truths and their half-truths, are one-sided and wrong. However, their champions sometimes think in eerily similar ways. Today, the very highly Yuval Harari, for example, says: “there is neither soul, nor free will, nor ‘self’ – but only genes, hormones and neurons.”118 Harari is probably not liked by postmodern gender scholars, although they could have written that. Of course, I am not claiming that the postmodern constructionist discourse and understanding is wrong in everything. What I am saying is that it is utterly one-sided. It is true that civilization, culture, philosophy, ethics and even gender roles are man-made, and are, if you like, “social constructions.” But all this is created in an objective, physical reality in the universe around us. On the other hand, what we have created, or “constructed”, has become objective reality: the civilization we have created, our cities, our roads, and our technical achievements are objective reality; even our intellectual creations are objective reality, since they have been physically printed and are on the bookshelf. Once our philosophers, writers and poets have created, written, and “constructed” a work of art, it is an objective reality that exists independently of us and can be ignored or forgotten; nonetheless, it exists. All that I have written so far on this subject is, of course, probably acknowledged by postmodernists (except their most extreme.) However, it is also important to note that it is not only the external physical world and the physical and intellectual products of our age that limit us in our construction, but also our human nature. This means that

117 118

Brague 2019, p. 51 Harari 2016, p. 57 69

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while culture, civilization, physical and intellectual products, ethics, and gender roles are constructs, this does not imply that they could have been otherwise, nor does it suggest that this construction and creation is contingent or the result of power relations and interests. As Rémi Brague points out, the modern (and postmodern) concept of man is that he is an alien in a chaotic world. He can describe this world (cosmography), he can discover its physical-biological laws, and he has a theory of its origin (cosmogony), namely the Big Bang theory (the theory of a Belgian priest.) However, he cannot explain the meaning of the universe and he has no cosmology. Cosmology brings logos to the cosmos and explains the meaning of the universe and why it is not chaos but cosmos, order instead of disorder. This is what the theory of causa finis (final causes or purposefulness) was able to provide: the premodern view, common throughout history from the Greeks until the dawn of modernity (still one school among many today), that the existence of all matter in the world, including humans, living beings, and even inanimate objects, has a purposeful meaning, i.e., a function. This idea was discarded by Francis Bacon and Descartes. This means, to explain Brague’s ideas, that things work in some way and have an “operational normality.” If something has a function, then it has both a proper use and an improper use. Just as a coffee machine has a proper use, and if it breaks down, that is improper, so too man and all things that exist function in some way; their existence is directed towards some purpose. The world is thus inherently meaningful, and meaning in the world is discovered by man, not created by him (a radical contradiction of the postmodern view.) Man is a meaningful part of the meaningful world: he is not an alien in the chaos and is therefore able to make sense of it.119

119

Brague 2019, pp. 47-50 70

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Therefore, the fundamental laws of the environment, the world, and human nature can be known objectively, even if not in full detail and complexity, if not otherwise, by experience. So, constructionists are wrong to claim that the external world cannot in fact be known with certainty. One does not have to fall into the error of so-called naïve realism to have this as a starting point, nor does this mean that there cannot be different interpretations of the world, religions, ideologies, and narratives “in circulation.” The appropriate middle road is moderate realism. We can avoid excessive subjectivism in a way that we do not fall into the trap of extreme objectivism. St. Thomas, for example, said that “truth is nothing but the adaptation of the intellect to the object. Therefore, we understand the material world as it is. But the conditions of this understanding, both subjective (rules of thought, psychological aspects) and objective (the opening-up of actual reality), must be provided, and in this sense our understanding of truth is an activity which is never a closed process in our earthly life.”120 The order of thinking and the order of reality are interdependent.121 Thus, if the “construction” emphasized by the postmodernist had been for some reason not at least fundamentally in accord not only with the physical world, but with the laws122 and workings of the world and human nature, it is unlikely that humanity would have survived very long. In other words, one cannot construct in any way whatsoever, and although man has some room for maneuver, of course, there are limits to “social construction”, for it must be in accordance with the laws and function of the world and of human nature.

120

Bolberitz–Gál 1987, pp. 38-39 Ibid. p. 55 122 For the locus classicus on the law of nature: ST. XCI. 1-6. XCIV. 1-6. For the history of the law of nature, see Frivaldszky 2001, Frivaldszky 2006, Frivaldszky 2007, and Angier 2016. For a classical contemporary interpretation and exposition, see Finnis 2011. 121

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Of course, the potentiality and function inherent in human beings, which is also defined by biology, cannot be precisely delimited, no catalogue can be made of it. However, it is certain that it is not just one purpose, for example, it cannot be just to have children. It is a different question to that of whether having children is necessary for the survival of society. At the same time, it is certainly possible to identify a few ideas and aspirations that run counter to man’s function. For example, the denial of our biological nature and its consequences, since the body is not the prison of the soul but its home, is contrary to the fulfilment of our humanity, precisely because the two affect each other inseparably, as our body is our constitutive element, without which we do not exist. The body, in fact, by its very structure, has both a sex and a gender. The male and female body is complementary to each other. Our self cannot be the opposite sex of our body, since our sex is determined by our physicality. Biological sex cannot therefore be separated from gender roles, even if it does not define it deterministically.

THE GREAT CONFLICT OF MODERNITY What is at stake here can be described as a conflict between two opposing concepts of the world and of man. In the pre-modern era, people saw themselves as a meaningful part of an ordered, meaningful world, but today we see ourselves as aliens in the chaos. Part of this distinction is that, before the industrial revolution and before the “explosion” of technological development, people saw the world, society, and human nature as a given, and as an almost immutable order, but since technology has increasingly enabled us to change the world around us spectacularly and very quickly for our own convenience, we have come to see the world as a mutable substance. The societies of the industrial age and the post-industrial, digital age are indeed more malleable, and it is true that we have since been able to shape the 72

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world to our own needs to a much greater extent than the societies of the agrarian age. However, this can give us the illusion that postmodernism claims: that reality is entirely of our making and that there is no meaning present in the world, we merely bring meaning into it. It is common to describe this as: man began to imagine himself as God. And it is true that this saying is expressive. In any case, Charles Taylor calls the world of a given order a “mimetic vision” and the vision of the “world as a material to be formed” a “poetic vision.”123 (Mimesis means imitation, poesis means creation.) Our self-image has also changed: if society and the world can be transformed, so can people. At the beginning of this volume, we described this view as man being the product of history and what he makes of himself. This contrasts with the view of man that sees his nature as permanent and unchangeable. The first may be called anthropological optimism or anthropological idealism, because it believes in the general reparability of man; the second anthropological pessimism or anthropological realism, because it does not believe in it. The difference between the two visions of man is the main dissimilarity that lurks deep within modern ideologies and political visions. The economist and thinker Thomas Sowell calls the first “constrained” and the second “unconstrained”,124 while the linguist-psychologist Steven Pinker speaks of “utopian” and “tragic” images of man, noting that our image of man, as developed through the natural sciences (biology, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and psychology, etc.), is closer to the “tragic” image of man or to anthropological realism.125

123 124 125

See: Taylor 1989, 2007 Sowell 2007 Pinker 2002, pp. 283-305 73

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The whole question of gender theory is about whether there is a permanent human nature, whether human beings can be repaired, and how body and soul, and body and personality are interconnected. Feminist theorists of gender theory have mostly adopted a Marxist and postmodernist position. This philosophy is the heir to the philosophy of the French Revolution; the precursors of the Marxist proletarian revolutionaries were the Jacobins. While the postmodern perspectives we have outlined partly transcend and criticize the modern, enlightened human rights zeitgeist (with which they overlap), this transcendence is at the same time in some cases a completion and radicalization. In any case, the modern enlightened human rights zeitgeist and its radicalized, postmodern versions, as well as the various schools of gender theory embedded in them, can be seen as part of a modern and contemporary trend towards denying the legitimacy of all differences between people and thus attempting to abolish them. This “identity ideology” is what the French jurist Jean-Louis Harouel calls “memism.”126 After the social hierarchies enshrined in law, it was the turn of customs, of differences of all kinds, and now biological differences. According to the French philosopher Chantal Delsol, to deny all rootedness and attachment is “the theft of existence.”127

126 127

Harouel 2020, pp 50-52 (Hungarian edition of Harouel 2016) Delsol 2020, p. 28 (Hungarian edition of Delsol 2016) 74

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To the extent that this modern enlightened human rights approach (and postmodernism in its footsteps) considers itself rational, it renders what can be placed within its framework based on a few loud, even sentimental slogans and irresistible without any serious rational considerations, precisely because it is the zeitgeist. While the champions of the many aspirations that make up gender theory believe that they are the rational ones, and their “backward” opponents are the (often unconscious) prisoners of irrationality, unexplained traditions, fear of the other, and hatred, it is precisely slogans and questions such as “Isn’t it enough to love each other?” or, in relation to transgenderism, “If he feels that way, why could he not be the opposite sex?” that disregard rational reflection and merely appeal to zeitgeist, indifferentism and compassion. In contrast to this zeitgeist, which is certainly that to which the broadly understood Western economic, political, artistic, intellectual, and media elite subscribe, I believe that postmodern relativism based on the unknowability of the world is wrong, as is the understanding of the entirety of social existence, including gender and sexuality, as a matrix of power alone. Logic and reasoning are relevant activities. Not all distinctions between people are oppression or a matter of human rights, as there are legitimate distinctions, and it is possible to talk about right and wrong, as well as correct and incorrect. Our body and our personality form a unity, meaning that the two cannot be radically separated, and our embodied existence is a purposeful, meaningful existence.

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THE POSTMODERN ENLIGHTENMENT AND IDENTITY POLITICS In any case, it is worth summarizing the essence of the postmodern approach behind the gender theory discussed in the book. According to Pluckrose and her colleagues, one of the two main principles of postmodernism concerns knowledge, while the other is political: radical skepticism toward the existence and acquisition of objective knowledge (of reality and truth) and that society is shaped and governed by power structures and hierarchical systems which determine (through language, customs, norms, and everything else) what and how we can know (i.e., reality is constructed by language and interactions.) It also determines individuality and individual beliefs. As a result, the four main themes of postmodernism are: the blurring of boundaries; language as an instrument of power; cultural relativism; and the loss or negation of the individual and the universal. Hence, the scientific and social methodologies, logic and reasoning that have developed in the Western world are merely instruments of Western oppression, and boundaries and categories (such as male and female) are not real but rather constructs of power.128 What seems real appears so only because of “performativity”, particularly the constant repetition and regurgitation of words, and because we act as if it were real. Thus, power relations and oppression can be created and maintained not only consciously, but also unconsciously, even against our will.

128

Pluckrose–Lindsay pp. 30-42 76

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The first postmodern writers were originally so nihilistic and so skeptical about the possibility of changing the world that they saw only the use of “language games” and irony as a means of minimally addressing the problems they detected and hysterically magnified. Since the mid-Eighties, some have proclaimed the death of postmodernism. However, the aforementioned “critical theories” have since emerged, which, while starting from the convictions of postmodernism, somehow include the belief that they have an ethical duty to fight against the conditions outlined by postmodernism. This is what is called the “social justice” movement, which first took hold in universities and now pervades the corporate world and, increasingly, everyday life. The “social justice warriors” (SJWs) fight against patriarchy and masculinity (male domination), heteronormativity (domination of heterosexuals), cisnormativity (domination of those who identify with their biological sex), white supremacy, and even against oppressive systems of “fatphobia” (the perception of fatness as a health problem) and “ableism” (the domination of people without some kind of physical disability and the perception of physical disabilities as physical disabilities). This activism, based on and intertwined with postmodern critical theories, draws its goal-orientedness from the determination of the Marxist Frankfurt School, which has contributed greatly to the emergence and spread of “critical theories” and “cultural Marxism” (the latter focusing on culture rather than on material wealth and interpreting it with a Marxist set of concepts and ideology.)129 After all,

129

On the Frankfurt School, see: Bottomore 2003; Bronner 2011. On its impact and spread: Walsh 2017. The Frankfurt School was founded in 1930 by Max Horkheimer and was named after the fact that he was the director of the Institute for Social Research at Frankfurt University. The Frankfurt School also includes Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse, Jürgen Habermas, and Alfred Schmidt. Its members frequently criticized the Enlightenment, capitalism, and consumer society from the Marxist point of view. 77

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it was the Frankfurt School that envisaged the “long march” through the institutions and promoted the idea that the cultural institutions of the Western world should be taken over by the progressive intelligentsia. The project was a success. Pluckrose and her colleagues call this “applied postmodernism.”130 The movement considers those who embraced postmodern principles and began to fight for “social justice” to be “woke.” The means of combating oppression and all kinds of power relations and power groups are “problematization” (magnifying existing problems and inventing non-existent ones), deconstruction, the fight against “binarities” (breaking down the categories of male and female), and absolutizing the perspectives of groups considered oppressed (women, black people, LGBTQ people). It is also important to eradicate terms considered oppressive, exclusionary, and discriminatory from language and replace them with polite, non-stigmatizing, neutral, and even “inclusive” terms — in other words, political correctness. The idea of “standpoint theory”, mentioned in the introduction, is a product of postmodern skepticism: since society is defined by power relations and dominant groups, and objective truth and logic are the ploys of these groups, the solution is to adopt the position of an oppressed minority, since we are inescapably defined by where our gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity and other characteristics are located in the power matrices of society. Dominant groups know only their own vision, whereas non-dominant groups know the dominant vision as well as their own, and so have a richer viewpoint.131 This is the reverse of the Marxist idea of false consciousness: here it is not the oppressed who have false consciousness, but the oppressors.

130

Pluckrose–Lindsay 2020, pp. 45-66 For a comprehensive overview of “standpoint theory”, see: Harding 2004. Summary and critique: Pluckrose–Lindsay 2020, pp. 181-236 131

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We can always benefit from the insights and experiences of others. But if truth and reality are unknowable, we do not know whether any of the oppressed minorities and non-dominant groups are right. But proponents of critical theories do not engage with such questions. Instead, they absolutize the identities considered oppressed and their viewpoints: their “lived” experience and their feelings take on the status of absolute truth. Those who belong to an oppressive group have no right to speak out as they actively contribute to the oppression by their very existence. They are only allowed to remain silent, to fight against oppression, and to constantly exercise self-criticism. A person can, of course, be a member of several oppressive or oppressed groups, and these categories can overlap or “intersect.” The most oppressing is the Western, Christian, white, heterosexual male, and among the most oppressed we find the black, immigrant, transgender, Muslim woman. The white woman or the black homosexual man are intermediate categories. If someone from the oppressed groups speaks out in a dissident voice and agrees with the oppressors on something (meaning that they criticize postmodern critical theories and the activism that flows from them), he or she is a traitor by embracing the oppressors’ positions or by being paid off. In doing so, one acts as an oppressor and is no longer considered a member of the oppressed group. This phenomenon is now called “identity politics” because it absolutizes belonging to a social group. However, this approach is fraught with a number of internal contradictions and ethical problems. On the one hand, the women’s movement, for example, used to fight for individual women to be judged not solely on the basis of group characteristics applicable to women but also on an individual basis. Identity politics denies individual talent and personality, and instead focuses once again on race, ethnicity, and gender as absolute determinants, thus reinforcing what it is supposed to fight against. On the other hand, the person who speaks out is not immediately judged by the physical characteristics of the group, but as if the group in question 79

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had an ethos, or an expected system of behavior, and only the person who acts according to it belongs to it, while at the same time fighting against such systems of expectation. Moreover, the entirety of identity politics is fraught with dangers to mental health because it encourages the magnification and absolutization of problems rather than addressing them properly, thereby creating a “snowflake generation” at Western universities whose members are hypersensitive to every little thing, not for psychological but for ideological reasons. Lastly, the whole approach outlined above is characterized by isolationism, as it is barricaded from criticism, which is seen as a means of self-defense by the dominant oppressive groups, and as a betrayal if it comes from a supposedly oppressed speaker. The circle is now closed, hysteria and paranoia have become self-inducing. The representatives of “critical theories”, in contrast to other disciplines, feel themselves entitled to critically examine all existing phenomena of the world and society and to analyze them according to their own distorted point of view, in order to find the power relations and repressive acts they are looking for in the smallest nuances of human relations and social phenomena. The monomaniacal obsession with structure has led to the adjective “social” becoming a prefix to everything, and the obsessive search for oppression and power has given rise to a “critical” branch of everything (there is already, for example, critical psychology and critical geography.) Anyone who is determined to find signs of oppressive power in every human relationship will find them, even if there are none. In other words, postmodern critical theories, identity politics, and the woke movement themselves excel at what they accuse the world of doing: artificially constructing power relations. They paint monsters on the wall and then they become terrified by the villains they have painted; what is more, they want to imbue the world with this terror.132

132

On the rise of wokeism, see: Williams 2022; Trueman 2022 80

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Power relations exist, of course, and unfortunately oppression exists too. However, it is possible to recognize this and to fight against truly unjust oppression without critical theories.

POSTMODERN GENDER THEORY Let’s apply this to feminism and gender theory.133 The feminists of the 60s and 70s (the second wave of feminism) separated the body and femininity, in many ways for legitimate purposes, but excessively. In any case, they fought against the previous image of femininity and thus women were defined by their biological sex, and their aim was to expand the possibilities of individual fulfilment so that they would not be judged on the basis of their previous ideal of womanhood and their physical sex. This is where the postmodern turn of feminism comes in, the third (or even fourth) wave, which struggles towards liberation by seeing women as necessarily subordinate to men in today’s world, denying the possibility of women’s autonomy (all women are oppressed in the patriarchal structure), and paradoxically contradicting itself and the previous generation. And if any woman disagrees with this view of postmodern critical theory, she is no longer a “woman” in moral terms, because she has, whether consciously or unconsciously, switched sides to men and is acting as a man.

133

See for example: Ciurria 2019 Saraswati–Shaw 2020. An ironic approach: McGrath 2019 81

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Thus, while woke identity politics judges everyone, including women, based physical characteristics, it does set up a standard of female behavior to which if one does not conform, one is not a woman, at least in a moral sense, even if one is biologically so. The same woke identity politics seeks to break down “oppressive” barriers such as the categories of male and female, so if a man feels like a woman, i.e., is “transgender”, he is welcomed into the camp of women; this is also an act against male domination. But if a woman, for example, J. K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, protests against this, she becomes an agent of oppression. This means that whether one is a woman or not is no longer a matter of biological and physical characteristics, nor of some moral requirement, but instead it is dependent upon purely subjective feelings: anyone who says they are a woman is a woman. However, the possibility of this subjective feeling is only available to members of groups oppressed on the basis of their physical characteristics. Members of oppressor groups are not allowed to play members of oppressed groups in films (straights to play homosexuals, but especially cisgenders to play transgenders and whites to play blacks); the other way round, of course, there is no problem. At the same time, those who subjectively feel that they are women (transgender people) mostly feel the need to transform their bodies, behavior, and dress to adapt to the traditional notions of women as biologically and behaviorally defined, which until then they wished to surpass (sex change surgery and crossdressing.) And if a woman thinks of herself as a man and becomes a trans man, it doesn’t matter that transgender people are oppressed because she has “become” a man, and is therefore included in one of the most important oppressor groups. Although the struggle against “binarities” and fixed categories takes place under the banner of liberation, if one dares to argue with the representatives of the categories that identity politics seeks to liberate (for example, the trans movement), one is not participating in a liberating act of category dismantling but is effectively “dehumaniz82

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ing.” Identity is then no longer created by the biological sex, ethos, or subjective feeling, but by language, and critique is an aggressive attack on the identity created by language. After all, if words have created someone, words can also dismantle him. Meanwhile, it is the same view, according to which there is no fixed identity, because a person’s character, personality, worldview, and of course even their cells change throughout their life. The idea of a stable identity is naïve, but if one dares to argue with an oppressed identity, it is an attack on identity. Personality or identity is essentially non-existent or fiction, but to argue is dehumanizing. Remember the case of the lesbian woman quoted in the introduction who became completely confused about her self-image by the fact that her partner had a sex change operation and (seemingly) became a man, and was perplexed by her own identity from then on? Carl E. Trueman warns: “There is a human tragedy here. This kind of emotive personal testimony is often used (as in Our Bodies, Ourselves) to give a sentimental power to the plausibility of the sexual revolution. Yet notice what it really says: Queerdom has left this woman hopelessly confused about who she really is.” Trueman continues: “The purpose of critical theory is not to establish anything at all. Rather, it is to destabilize as potentially oppressive any claim to transcendent truth or value. Its target is the destruction of all metanarratives, and thus the bombastically rebarbative prose is itself part of the ‘argument.’ Leaving readers hopelessly confused about even the simplest things is an important part of the game, pellucid simplicity being one way the oppressors made their oppression seem natural.” All this is not helped by the fact that, inadvertently, it is itself a metanarrative: “All previous metanarratives have, for good or ill, attempted to provide the world with stability, a set of categories by which cultures can operate. They may have offered different, even mutually exclusive, accounts of the world, but offering stability was still the intention. The metanarrative

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of the death of metanarratives does the antithesis of this: It serves only to destabilize everything.”134 Contemporary feminism is full of contradictions: at one time biology is important, then constructed identity, later the individual, then the group. Anyone can declare themselves to be a woman, individual freedom and responsibility are questioned, and individualism has turned into a total questioning of free will and individuality and personality. The waves of feminism have crashed together, and self-contradictions mix in a vast, postmodern chaos. In this Marxoid-postmodern approach, in the words of Rosalind Delmar, “The feminine subject becomes trapped by the dynamics of self-reflectivity within the narcissism of the mirror image.”135 To put this into everyday language, third-wave feminism is an ideology of narcissistic and ritualistic self-admiration. Joanna Williams writes that “fourth-wave feminism finds a comfortable home within the inherent narcissism of identity politics.”136We can probably say that the world of postmodern critical theories, woke activism, and identity politics in which contemporary gender theory is embedded is a hysterical, paranoid, and completely contradictory, closed world. The woke movement, while radically denying the knowability of reality and truth, of morality, of the universal and the individual, is also absolutely confident as the champion of the only, and for some reason exceptionally universal, truth, and as the Gnostic elite with secret (woke) knowledge. However, since the only valid knowledge of the world, according to this movement, proves only its infinite depravity (oppressive hierarchies of power), the world must not be repaired but abolished and a completely new one built in its place. In other words, this postmodern critical approach is, to use Chantal Delsol’s phrase, a hatred of the world.137

134 135 136 137

Trueman 2020 Delmar 1986, p. 27 Williams 2017 Loc. 3377 Delsol 2016 84

Chapter 3

KINSEY’S SCALE The bipolar, binary view of human sexuality was declared unscientific by Alfred Kinsey, a bisexual zoologist at Indiana University, in the mid-twentieth century with the creation of the Kinsey Scale. Earlier, Sigmund Freud had also argued that the child is inherently multisexual and only later develops a stable sexual orientation.138 Kinsey’s work laid the foundations for constructionism, and this came in handy. He published his findings in a volume on women and a volume on men in the mid-twentieth century.139 Kinsey drew up a scale from zero to six, with 0 being fully heterosexual and 6 being fully homosexual (he marked asexual with an X) in an attempt to clarify the inadequacy of the concepts of heterosexuality, homosexuality and bisexuality.140 All this, as he points out, does not mean that there are seven sexual orientations, but merely that he wanted to cover a scale to be understood as a continuous transition,141 which describes the reality of human sexuality more faithfully than our simplistic notions of hetero, homo, and bisexuality.

138

Freud 2017 Kinsey 1948, 1953 (The two volumes are collectively referred to as the Kinsey Report.) 140 Kinsey 1948, p. 638 141 Ibid. p. 647 139

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According to Kinsey, 8 percent of men were exclusively homosexual,142 and 46 percent of the population could be broadly defined as bisexual.143 The vast majority of women were exclusively heterosexual.144 Kinsey’s results have been challenged over time. By his definition, even people who had only one homoerotic experience in their lives, even in their sleep or while drunk, were classified as a 1 on his scale.145 His methodology has also been criticized, for example, for the high number of prisoners and male prostitutes among his interviewees, and Kinsey basically did not expect that the total sample of subjects obtained by recruiting volunteers (his study sample) would not be representative and that the results would be biased.146 In fact, Professor Judith Reisman has also made criticisms, of course disputed and rejected by the Kinsey Institute, that Kinsey worked with pedophiles who sometimes reported to him sexual experiences with babies and young children, which raises the question of the unethical nature of the research and even the perpetration of sexual abuse.147 It is true that Kinsey’s book tables list the numbers of “orgasms” of children as young as six months old.148 One of Kinsey’s co-authors, the sexologist Wardell B. Pomeroy, has openly proclaimed that sexual relations between adults and children can sometimes be “beneficial” and that incestuous relationships can be “emotionally mutually enriching” if not “selfish.”149 And in Girls and

142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149

Ibid. pp. 650-51 Ibid. p. 658 Ibid. pp. 488, 499 Kinsey 1948, pp. 640-41 E.g., Maslow–Sakoda 1952 Reisman 1990, 1998 Kinsey 1948, p. 180 (Table 34) Time 1980 Pomeroy 1976-1977 In: Pierre 2015, p. 13 86

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Sex, he puts a positive spin on a number of specific situations that are clearly considered sexual harassment, and punishable by law.150 In response, Paul Gebhard, later director of the Kinsey Institute, and his colleagues attempted to statistically remove bias from the results, but the results did not change significantly.151 Kinsey’ figures on the rate of homosexuality have been cited ever since, but this does not change the fact that the previous twenty years of research had shown radically lower rates, although there are isolated estimates that have pointed to rates of as much as 20 percent.152 In any case, according to various surveys, the proportion of people in Western societies today with a non-heterosexual orientation is between 1.2 and 5.6 percent.153 By 2021, the rates had increased, although this was partly due to a teenage fad: according to a 2021 Gallup survey, 5.6 percent of the adult population in the United States identify as LGBT. This compares to 4.5 percent during the previous survey (2017). At the same time, 0.6 percent of adult Americans identify as transgender, while 15.9 percent of people younger than 24 years of age identify as LGBT. More than half (54.6 percent) of LGBT adults identify as bisexual. Around a quarter (24.5 percent) are gay, while 11.7 percent are lesbian. A further 11.3 percent consider themselves transgender, a very high proportion compared to the previous year — more on this later. In older generations, however, the number of people who identify as LGBT is much

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E.g., Pomeroy 1971, pp. 44, 49, 62 For a summary of Pomeroy, see: Pierre 2015, pp. 13-15 151 Gebhard–Johnson 1998 152 The Smithsonian 2013 153 Michael et al. 1994 Kuby 2015, p. 207; Office of National Statistics 2013 Gates 2011 87

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lower. In 2020, 2 percent of Americans over the age of 56 identified as such. The survey also shows that LGBT orientation is more common among women (6.4 percent compared to 4.9 percent for men.)154 In relation to a British survey, the gay rights organization Stonewall said that many people were afraid to admit their homosexuality in the anonymous questionnaire and therefore it underestimated the number of homosexuals.155 While this is never impossible, LGBTQ rights organizations were outraged in 2013 by the results of a comprehensive survey which found that homosexuals and lesbians make up only 1.6 percent of society and bisexuals only 0.7 percent.156 The Director of CenterLink’s Network of LGBT Health Equity openly stated that “the truth is, numbers matter, and political influence matters.” He added, “If we really are 2 percent vs. 4 percent, it means people are going to say, ‘Okay, I’m only going to care half as much.’’”157 American society estimates the percentage of non-heterosexuals to be many times higher, at 25 percent on average.158 In the light of the above, it is perhaps fair to say that whatever Kinsey’s cleaned-up data show, they are wrong. We might add: it is unrealistic that, given the political weight of the surveys, homosexuals would not dare to admit their sexual orientation in a Western democracy on anonymous questionnaires. One of the recent surveys even show us that many of those of indetify on questionnaries as LMBTQ, in reality live a heterosexual life – sympathizers of the LMBTQ movement sometimes just mask themselves as LMBTQ.159

154 155 156 157 158 159

Gallup 2021 LifeSiteNews 2014 Somasekhar 2014a Somasekhar 2014b Gallup 2011 Kaufmann 2022. 88

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It was also in response to the Kinsey Report that Irving Bieber’s psychoanalytic research, Homosexuality: A Psychoanalytic Study of Male Homosexuals was published, which was one of the foundation works in the field until homosexuality was removed from the list of mental disorders but has since been discredited. Bieber and his colleagues argue that homosexuality is caused by problems in the relationship with parents and that there is no such thing as “latent homosexuality”, rather that homosexuals are “latent heterosexuals.”160 Of course, Kinsey’s findings should not be completely discarded: there is indeed a kind of scale to human sexuality. However, Roger Scruton, for example, in his work on the philosophy of sexual desire, argues that the whole approach of the “the Kinsey Report and to other volumes of once fashionable nonsense” reflects an impermissible reductionism, “see orgasm as something like the aim of desire, the presence of the other person as its occasion.”161 The fact that one is not necessarily attracted only to the opposite sex because of one’s psychological fragility is merely a descriptive fact with no normative implications; it says nothing about what behavior, if any, is appropriate. Kinsey’s theory may describe a phenomenon, but it says nothing about what is or is not consistent with one’s nature and function.

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Chapter 4

PATRIARCHY, HETERONORMATIVITY, SEXISM, METOO In the constant crosshairs of gender theory and feminism advocates are the patriarchy, sexism, and heteronormativity, which they believe are still firmly in place and which of course should be fought against as they are oppressive structures. But what do these concepts mean and are their critics right?

PATRIARCHY Patriarchy originally meant the absolute rule of the father. Although patriarchy in the Greek and Roman sense has not existed since antiquity, it is a fact that the legal systems of the world until the end of the modern age were, to put it mildly, disadvantageous to women (although in Europe the Middle Ages were freer in this respect than the modern age.) Patriarchy is a system of male domination that more or less oppresses women and in which women are systematically subordinated to men and can be used, objectified, and exploited. According to this concept, the economy, culture, law, and, in short, everything is

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at the service of patriarchy, and women are also brought up to accept patriarchy against their own interests. The consequence of patriarchy is sexism and it is also closely linked to so-called heteronormativity. Even phenomena that are ostensibly respectful of women, such as chivalry, courtship, and rules of courtesy, are paternalistic, patronizing manifestations of a patriarchy that oppresses women, not to mention the institution of motherhood.162 The biological explanations — biological determinism, sociobiology, evolutionary psychology, etc. — explain patriarchy primarily in terms of biological differences between men and women, such as men’s innate aggression, their striving for dominance and stronger physique, and women’s role in the family due to childbearing, while feminist and social science approaches naturally consider patriarchy an unjustifiable social construct.163 For my part, I am a proponent of the mixed model: patriarchy is partly biological. However, it is very interesting how those who seek to identify the origins of this unjustifiable patriarchy have failed to do so. Feminist theorists are left to conjecture, and they are also at a loss to explain why matriarchy would have been more just. Of course, this raises the possibility of a society that is neither matriarchal nor patriarchal; in our view, we have been very close to this during the late second half of the twentieth century. Some feminists still talk about the pervasive patriarchy, perhaps because they would be left with nothing to do if they admitted that their enemy had been eliminated, or at least that they had succeeded in taming it, and so they deny its positive aspects.

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Green 2010 Various (constructionist) definitions of patriarchy: Ferguson 1999, Cannell–Green 1996, Meagher 2011, Rosemary 2012, Gardiner 1999, Fitzpatrick 2013, Hennessy 2012, On patriarchy, see e.g., Lerner 1986, Welby 1990. A constructionist explanation: Bourdieu 2001. An evolutionary approach: Smuts 1995. A classical exposition of biological theory: Goldberg 1973

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This is why, in Douglas Murray’s view, the critics of the patriarchy suffer from St George’s syndrome,164 in other words, they cannot give up full-time revolutionary work. Nor do they see that many of the everyday phenomena attributed to the pervasive, oppressive patriarchy (whistling at women and the like) are, quite simply, relatively harmless manifestations of human imperfection and fallibility. At the same time, feminist critics of patriarchy somehow forget stereotypes about men and women’s manifestations against men,165 “women’s practices”, and ignore the existence of violence against men by women and sexism against men.166 To this, some would of course reply that this is not true, because stereotypes about men are also considered harmful, including to men themselves. Even if this is true, it is still a secondary issue for feminism. (For my part, I consider the fight against male stereotypes and male discrimination to be only moderately desirable.) It is true, however, that there is a larger contradiction: the growing literature on the crisis of men sees the solution in the restoration of traditional roles, which is precisely what feminism and “men’s studies” are trying to prevent.167

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Murray 2019 Loc. 144 On the female side of domestic violence, see e.g., Benatar 2012, pp. 30-33 166 See for example: Benatar 2012 167 See for example: Esolen 2022, Donovan,2012, Rohr-Martos 2011. Denying the existence of a crisis of masculinity from a radically feminist and postmodern approach: Haywood et al. 2018 165

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MATRIARCHY: THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN? Moreover, according to American literature professor Daphne Patai, men could rightly claim that society is in fact matriarchal. She explains why. Women’s jobs are less physically demanding (except for child-rearing), they don’t have to go to war, they are better taught to look after their health, and they live longer lives on average. Men often have to step in to protect women. When it is in women’s interest to cry out for equality, they cry out, but when it is not in their interest because they have an advantage, a privilege in something, they do not. They demand the right to abortion, but they want to have a strong say in the rights and duties of fathers. So, in the event of divorce, the child is usually awarded to the mother, and women have learned to turn legal options to their advantage. Moreover, there are the emotional needs of women, who have a more developed, sensitive capacity for speech and emotion than men (the mystical sixth sense of women.) Boys are confronted from an early age with the fact that they cannot compete with girls’ verbal abilities, and women are quite capable of exploiting and emotionally blackmailing men if their interests so require. She points out that in their private lives, women constantly complain that men are not on the same wavelength as them, thereby frustrating men, who are also warned by casual remarks and small gestures that they are emotionally inferior. Women sometimes use their sexual charisma to blackmail men by withholding sex or making intimacy conditional on special requests. It is therefore fair to say that this matriarchy constitutes a complete power structure for the protection of women’s interests and positions of power, in which women systematically exploit men who are always looking for favor with women. Patai also notes that the “emotional violence” used by women is one of the mainstays of matriarchal ideology, the “problem without a name.” Whenever anyone brings it up, names it, women say it’s biology, but it is not; it is merely a power structure to maintain matriarchy and to keep men in their place. This matriarchy does not allow men 94

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to truly fulfil themselves, and men unconsciously adopt matriarchal norms (think, let us add, of the invaluable role of mothers in the upbringing of boys) and develop a false consciousness.168 We could run sensitization and awareness-raising courses for men and warn women about their own “toxic femininity”, says Daphne Patai. On the heels of this, we could even suggest carving a paragraph in the penal code prohibiting emotional violence, with the proviso that emotional violence depends on the victim’s own experience. While it is true that men commit the vast majority of assaults that cause physical harm and can be interpreted as domestic violence, it is also true, as research by criminologist Erzsébet Tamási shows, that 30 percent of all domestic violence is committed by women.169 Men are more likely to commit violence in the bedroom, while women are in the kitchen. Women are “less likely to resort to assault that causes serious injury against men, but experts also point out that the female form of domestic violence tends to be more verbal, meaning that women know what their partner’s most vulnerable characteristic is and attack it verbally. She typically makes derisive and disparaging remarks about her partner’s abilities, sexual performance, and financial situation, and thus keeps the man in a constant state of guilt and shame. Types of aggression also typical of women are material demands (typically with reference to the man’s traditional role as the breadwinner) together with psychological and physical pressure (one of the typical types is sex deprivation, as opposed to the more male-dominated sexual violence), which are types of violence that are destructive to health and well-being, and are less frequently reported to authorities.”170 In the

168 169 170

Patai 2010, pp. 10-13 Tamási 2008 Jámbor–Miniska 2020 95

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US, sociologist Suzanne Steinmetz has studied violence against men and concluded that the abuse of men is more hidden than the abuse of women. Her research has shown that women are at least as likely as men to initiate such conflicts, but that men suffer lighter injuries whereas women suffer more serious ones.171 In addition, the American school system is so focused on the alleged disadvantages faced by girls that it has long been detrimental to boys.172 Of course, Patai’s analytical sketch ends up being a caricature, but it is merely a curved mirror, one of tendentious and ideological thoughts about the pervasive patriarchy. This is not to deny the injustices, inconveniences and, in some cases, violence that men can inflict on women (which also has its opposite, violence from women towards men). But it is not worth overexplaining this and producing paranoid, overthought theories about all these phenomena.

HETERONORMATIVITY One of the first famous expositions of heteronormativity was that of Adrienne Rich, who interpreted “compulsory heterosexuality” in terms of “lesbian existence.”173 According to her, “heterosexuality, like motherhood, needs to be recognized and studied as a political institution”, but Rich finds it difficult to separate patriarchy (“male domination”) from heterosexuality, and in her study she seeks to uncover the “sources of male power”, which she sees as most evident in

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Steinmetz 1977-78. Of course, the feminist movement took the study as a frontal attack and tried to undermine it, see e.g., Straton 1994 172 Sommers 2001 173 Rich 1980 96

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that “heterosexuality has been both forcibly and subliminally imposed on women.” According to Rich, men today “idealize heterosexual romance and marriage” and are “genital fetishists.” Capitalism is responsible for women’s “structurally inferior position in the workplace”, and pervasive heterosexualism “eroticizes women’s subordination.” After a long list of evidence of women’s oppression, Rich explains that she believes that when girls grow up and first have sexual desires, and because the realm of sexual desires is also dominated by male ideas, they turn away from their female counterparts and identify with male identity, accepting their secondary place. Rich suggests that this sexual desire, these sexual feelings, are not natural but rather constructions of male domination, which in turn are accepted as inevitable because they recieve it as a dogma; and women “internalize the values of the colonizers.” According to Rich, one of the obstacles for the implementation of non-heteronormative ideas, such as lesbianism and anti-male domination ideas, is the “assumption” that most women are congenitally heterosexual, and one of the reasons for this is that the existence of lesbianism has been “written out of history.” Rich also questions whether heterosexuality can be freely chosen, suggesting that it has been imposed on women by a power structure (of course, her lesbianism is a freely chosen form of resistance.) As she puts it, “the failure to examine heterosexuality as an institution is like failing to admit that the economic system called capitalism or the caste system of racism is maintained by a variety of forces, including both physical violence and false consciousness.” Rich argues that heterosexual feminists should also question heterosexuality as a free choice for women. This would be “a form of nay-saying to patriarchy, an act of resistance”, and “a direct or indirect attack on male right of access to women.” At the same time, Rich rejects the categorization of lesbians together with homosexual men because the female experience is very different from the male experience and homosexual men are ultimately the upholders of male domination. Heterosexuality has been “imposed on women”, yet it is “a central fact of women’s history: 97

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that women have always resisted male tyranny.” Still “the lie of compulsory female heterosexuality” “afflicts “feminist scholarship” and all aspects of life. Part of this lie is the belief in the Western tradition that women are inevitably attracted to men and that love between the sexes is normal. Then there is the assumption, as part of this lie, that women turn to their own sex out of hatred towards men, although “profound skepticism, caution, and righteous paranoia about men may indeed be part of any healthy woman’s response to the woman-hatred embedded in male-dominated culture.” Hence, “historians need to ask at every point how heterosexuality as institution has been organized and maintained through the female wage scale, the enforcement of middle-class women’s ‘leisure,’ the glamorization of so-called sexual liberation, the withholding of education from women, the imagery of ‘high art’ and popular culture, the mystification of the ‘personal’ sphere, and much else.” However, “the question inevitably will arise: Are we then to condemn all heterosexual relationships, including those which are least oppressive?” The question, however, is wrongly posed, according to Rich. Differences within the institution of heterosexuality exist, of course, but “the absence of choice remains the great unacknowledged reality” without which women cannot control their own lives and sexuality. “The heterosexual norm is the idea that people are, by virtue of heredity and biology, exclusively and aggressively heterosexual: males are masculine men, and are attracted only to feminine women. The opposite is supposed to be true of females,” explains a 2001 study by an American lawyer, Jillian Todd Weiss, writing not from the perspective of a lesbian feminist but from the perspective of a transgender person.174 According to him, heterosexuality is “not just a norm”

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but a “normative principle.” And in its wake, transsexual people are “not only abnormal, but their very humanity is in question”; “it is not enough that heterosexuality be a norm; anyone falling outside of it falls short of human.” At the same time, heterosexuality is not taken for granted either, since it is also made into an issue: “The ultimate example of making an issue of heterosexuality is the announcements in the newspapers every Sunday that heterosexuals are getting married.” Weiss sees “non-heterosexual paradigms” as being “excommunicated” by heteronormativity. In the author’s view, the idea that equates (biological) sex, gender, and genitalia is “rigid dogma”, but “heteronormative mythology” holds “compulsory heterosexuality” firmly in place. The Derridean-deconstructionist text radiates linguistic fetish: according to the author, “heteronormative constructs regarding identity so deeply embedded in our consciousness since birth that we cannot recognize them as constructs.” The author reiterates the postmodern belief that “our language constructs our reality”, but most people believe that “most people assume that gender is essentially genitalia” and sex is biologically determined. In contrast, Weiss, who frequently quotes Foucault and Butler, argues for the opposite idea. The “essentialist view” that genitalia are the determinants of sex is, in his view, contradicted by the existence of intersex people (those born with hermaphroditic and other abnormalities), which heteronormative society tries to resolve by “medicalizing” intersex people and declaring them medical cases, as if they were “abnormal”; “intersexuals are not permitted to live without a sex.” Consequently, according to Weiss, “essentialists” have to decide which way to argue: if sexual organs are the important thing, then they cannot be corrected, but if they can be corrected, then it must be acknowledged that biological sex (sex) is not necessarily the same as (gender), and then we have already challenged “physical sex as a binary system.”

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HETEROPHOBIA According to Daphne Patai, the ideas advocated by critics of heteronormativity are “manic theories” that do not know their own limits. And if homophobia is an existing problem, the opposite problem for feminism is heterophobia. Hence, heterosexual feminists are always on the defensive against lesbians. Sheila Jeffreys, for example, has labelled “heterofeminism” what she sees as the school of feminism making a pact with men175 because she and lesbian feminists like her want to destroy the “heterosexual system.” According to Jeffreys, heterosexuality is based on an ideology of “difference”, of otherness, and what is needed is the opposite, the eroticization of sameness, and the power of sameness. Patai argues that heterophobia is when we fear confrontation with otherness and turn to sameness, pretending that it holds the possibility of the only authentic relationship. Patai says it is absurd to claim that it is all about power and it is amazing how heterosexual feminists have surrendered to lesbians and allowed their own sexual desires and their own feelings to be politicized and ideologized, even stigmatized, to this extent by lesbians. However, part of the reason for this is that there is a real tension between feminism and heterosexuality. Heterosexual feminists are reluctant to admit this and usually defend themselves by saying that their partner is one of the few right-thinking — we would say, domesticated — men.

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Authors such as Catharine McKinnon, Andrea Dworkin, and Mary Daly, or the two quoted above, are “notorious heterophobes” who Patai does not believe have “got to the root of anything.” Rather, their obscure rhetoric reveals that they “manifest a pathological aversion to men, a love of hyperbole, and an antipathy to heterosexuality that has had a strong and negative influence on feminism, as evidenced by their slogans that “all intercourse is rape” and that “all men are potential rapists.” We would add that, as we will discuss later, there is a high proportion of lesbians who have been harassed and sexually assaulted, which may explain their deep antipathy towards men. Meanwhile, if these feminists look out of their ivory towers, they are in for a shock, as Patai points out: “Go to the beach or the movies and see heterosexual couples cavorting unself-consciously. Could it really be that all these people are unaware of the ‘power differentials’ and ‘asymmetries’ that supposedly distort their relationships? They appear not to have heard about them.” Patai says that the fact that heterosexuality is such a natural part of everyday life only makes feminists more upset and disillusioned.176 Let us add that they do not conclude from this that they should come up with a less ambitious agenda; instead, they come to the conclusion to double down and fight the heteronormative gender matrix in an even more radical way.

IN DEFENSE OF HETERONORMATIVITY Let us pretend for a moment that we take seriously the bitter critique of heteronormativity. Both authors cited seem to question whether heterosexuality is innate or even to implicitly reject the very possibility that heterosexuality is innate. Several questions then arise.

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How is it that people cannot be born straight but can be born lesbian and transgender? How does a pervasive heteronormative structure allow for the emergence of non-heteronormative personalities and gender identities? Is there a flaw in the system? Or is there something essential about us and the system is not so pervasive? If women do not realize how they are indoctrinated by male domination, how did Adrienne Rich and other feminists escape this indoctrination? And why is it assumed that anyone who is heterosexual did not really have a choice? (Because that is certainly what they suggest.) If one is lesbian or transgender, does one have a choice in the matter? And if heterosexuality is not innate to us but is instead a mere construct, when and why did it come into being, for what reason, and how did it gain such pervasive dominance? How did it have the opportunity to do so and what is its meaning? Was it sheer domination? What sense does that make? And how does such a pervasive heterosexual power construct allow for lesbian and transgender constructs to emerge within it? Why does this system allow rebellion? How can rebels rebel if they believe that the system suppresses all rebellion? Since there is no such thing as a society without structures and power, would we be freer if a homonormative structure created our identity? (Except that in that case, humanity would quickly die out.) Would there be a possibility for heterosexuals to rebel against the homonormative gender matrix? But to respond to the substance: the above lines of thought are full of hidden self-contradictions that are also encapsulated in our questions. For example, the main self-contradiction in Weiss’s line of thought is that she tries to justify transgenderism, which takes as innate a gender identity that is opposite to the biological sex, by using Foucaultian-Butlerian radical constructionism and states that by definition we cannot have an innate gender identity, whether it is the same as or opposite to our biological sex. The transgender ontology requires an innate gender identity, which by definition contradicts Weiss’s radical constructionism, according to which gender identity is created by social structures and interactions. 102

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There are a few hysterical statements in both lines of thought, for example, regarding the alleged dehumanization of transgender people and non-heterosexuals; no one in their right mind has ever doubted that non-heterosexuals are human beings. At most, people get into an anthropological-ethical argument with them. One such hysterically absurd claim in Rich’s text is that she believes that a heterosexual relationship simply cannot be non-oppressive (it may, at most, be less oppressive.) Surely this hysteria stems from the fact that anyone who bases their identity on linguistic constructions will think that any criticism of them is an outright deconstruction of their fragile identity construction. In our view, however, the mere existence of the two authors and of people with non-heterosexual orientations and identities refutes the postmodern constructionist-structure-fetishist worldview, since ideas, concepts, sexual orientations, and gender identities that are contrary to the nature of the structure can only come from outside the structure (the heteronormative, patriarchal structure.) We might also ask: are the images above not merely the authors’ personal constructions of the world? Who decides which of these constructions is true? But the main problem with these notions is that their very starting point is false, for reality is not merely constructed by language but is also reflected by it, whatever the popular academic fashion of the day might say. Moreover, language is an open system that can be adapted to our experience outside of language (hence the “language constructs” that appear in history.) Poststructuralists and deconstructionists have got the wrong end of the stick: a phenomenon does not come into being when language constructs a concept to describe it. Rather, language responds to an emergent phenomenon by constructing a concept for it, whether it be a phenomenon of the material world or an intellectual idea. Thus, for example, heterosexuality and homosexuality have not existed since those concepts were invented because those concepts were invented to describe something. Of course, the conceptual framework of language shapes our thinking, and once we 103

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have named something we can think about it more consciously, but it is also clear from this that we can shape the conceptual framework of language. And the most ambitious attempt to transform language is specifically political correctness, constructed in large part by the advocates of gender theory. What is strangest, however, is the way the authors try to see heterosexuality not as a natural given, but as an imposed construct and institution. This is typical of the more radical elements of the LGBTQ movement: they complain that no one is researching what “causes” heterosexuality, and they tell themselves that it is a by no means inevitable mistake of history that most people are heterosexual. In order to justify their position at all costs, they distort the entirety of reality and resort to the most absurd explanations, such as that heteronormativity promotes the lie that heterosexuality is “natural.” They are obsessed with finding out what has burned heterosexuality and heteronormativity into us so deeply and inexorably. There are such voices also in Hungary. According to Domi Milanovich, “it is worrying [...] that no one is researching the origins of heterosexuality, no one is interested in its genetics or in exploring the environmental influences that play a role in its development. This is because being attracted to a person of the ‘opposite’ sex, or easily identifying with the sex assigned to you at birth, is still set as the norm, as natural, as superior in society, and sometimes considered basic even in scientific circles.”177 Heterosexuals do not tend to feel that their heterosexuality is a problem, so there is no problem to research. Secondly, heterosexuality is really the basis and the norm, the starting point from which all other attitudes differ. Simply, the anthropology and structure of human be-

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ings is heterosexual, as the two sexes are complementary. If we question this as the starting point, we will cause a lot of human suffering just because we want to accept a normless norm, or a dictatorship of relativism. Robert Spitzer, who as a prominent psychiatrist has helped the gay movement and could be hardly described as homophobic, said in an interview that we humans are “built on a program of heterosexuality.”178 And no matter how open and tolerant a society is, minorities with different practices and beliefs from the majority will always feel somewhat alien to it. The “heterosexual gender matrix”, or “heteronormativity”, is not the result of some mystical act of power or a male coup against the age-old matriarchal society but stems from the simple fact that the human person is physically and spiritually constructed in a heterosexual way. That it is how he or she is created, shaped, and that is what our whole physical being, including primary and secondary sexual characteristics, testifies to. The overwhelming majority thus becomes heterosexual, and anthropologically speaking, this is also true for non-heterosexuals. The structures of history, society, and politics do not create man, but, contrary to postmodern ideas, they receive man ready-made by nature, even if these structures may reflect back on him. If heteronormative structures can be observed in human societies, it is due to man’s natural heterosexuality, and these structures help man’s proper development. These heteronormative structures may often have been unfair to non-heterosexual people and caused them much suffering. This may be a reason for society becoming more accepting but it is not a reason to try to eliminate heteronormativity, which is an ontological property of man.

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This statement will never be accepted, of course, by those whose entire life’s work and beliefs, and their way of life, depend on defending the concept advanced by Weiss and Rich, which seems clever and profound but is fundamentally false. The gap between the constructionist and the realist-essentialist concepts is huge, almost unbridgeable; if reality is a linguistic construct, then we cannot know whether heterosexuality is really innate. But here’s the twist: we can’t even say the opposite with any certainty. The author of these passages can easily accept that heteronormativity exists, and that heterosexuality can be seen as a social institution. But these are not causes, they are consequences; consequences of the nature of man from before politics and society.

THE QUESTION OF INTERSEXUALITY AND INNATENESS Weiss is not right about intersexuality either because she misunderstands the essentialist argument, at least the version of it based on classical anthropology that is shared by the author of this volume. On the one hand, essentialism does not define man’s sex solely in terms of his genitals, the most obvious manifestations of man’s sex. Because of the fragility of the human psyche, we may deviate from heterosexuality and the male-female gender binary while our entire being remains heterosexual; indeed, the “operational normality” of man is heterosexuality.179 We can deviate from this, perhaps freely, but often for other reasons not of our own choosing; this can be both a minor or major dysfunction. Heteronormativity and gender binarity are therefore neither myths nor constructs but realities in harmony with human nature.

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When Candace McCullough, a deaf lesbian activist (whose partner is also deaf), wanted to have a child through artificial insemination, she chose a deaf man so that her child would also be deaf. Her first child is completely deaf, her second can barely hear, and McCullough says there is nothing wrong with that as deafness is just an alternative cultural form. Anyone in their right mind would know that this argument, to put it mildly, is weak. However, since we do not normally think about justifying such basic and obvious things, a fool who argues well can easily corner us with clever but evil logical acrobatics. Neurobiologist Maureen Condic (who was appointed a member of the U. S. National Science Board on a term running from 2018 and 2024, is a bioethicist, an ombudsman, and a graduate of Berkeley, among other places) and her philosopher brother Samuel Condic have argued that based on classical philosophy, Weiss’s ideas are wrong. In their paper Defining Organisms by Organization, they write: “The defining feature of an organism is organization: the various parts of an entity are organized to cooperatively interact for the welfare of the entity as a whole.” So, our organs are for the organism as a whole and our reproductive organs are for an even greater good: the sexual union of the two and the transmission of life. Gender as a condition is an acknowledgement of this kind of organization and purposefulness of the body. If an organ, be it the eyes, the ears, or the genitals, does not conform to this or is unable or can only partially fulfil its function, then it is not merely a divergence, a difference, an alternative of equal value not recognized by arbitrary social constructs, but a “malfunction”, an abnormality. Although deafness or blindness is not a disease in the classical sense, the deaf ear and the blind eye do not function well for the simple reason that the ear’s function is hearing and the eye’s function is sight (the writer of these passages wears glasses and does not take offence at the completely true observation that he has a defective eye.) Therefore, Weiss is wrong when she accuses essentialists of self-contradiction and of double reasoning about intersex people be107

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cause intersex is not stigmatized by heteronormativity. I fail to see how anyone stigmatizes such people and they would be seriously mistaken to do so, but intersexuality is objectively a birth defect. We know this because we understand, based on thousands of years of experience, how the human organism works and what organs serve what purpose. From good functioning we infer bad functioning. If this were not so, we would not be able to decide whether diseases are good or bad. Mere innateness does not constitute a norm in itself as it is the proper “functioning” of the whole human being according to its own nature that provides the norm. This is significantly influenced (determined, if you like) by our biological constitution, although there are birth defects that can be recognized.

FREE CHOICE AND SEXUALITY In this respect, heteronormativity is indeed not optional. But human nature, our life, and our framework of existence cannot be freely chosen. Freedom always exists within a certain framework where the options of choice are predetermined. A human being cannot choose not to be born (but can freely choose suicide) and we cannot make a square out of a circle. We can imagine a hypothetical situation in which our freedom of choice is directed equally to infinite options so that we are not even tempted to choose one rather than the other. However, since the existence of anything else already affects our freedom, this would require us to be the only beings in the world. So absolute freedom of choice is in practice the same as the total absence of choice (and of the world.) Rather than such absurd notions of freedom, it is worth returning to the classical, realist notion of freedom as simply the absence of political oppression, rather than some kind of dictatorship of human nature and “social structures.”

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There is no such thing as a society without structure and domination, nor can there be. Of course, the criticisms in the preceding paragraphs will be taken by Weiss and Rich’s sympathizers as merely a defense of heteronormative ideology driven by ulterior motives. This is what I was referring to when I said that there is no bridge between the two positions. At a minimum, however, we can say that what is inexplicable to Weiss and Rich’s thinking, and which requires them to elaborate theories (namely the origin and prevalence of heteronormativity), can be explained in a very simple, in fact self-evident, way using our essentialist-realist approach. However, Weiss and Rich’s constructionist and Marxist views form a completely closed, rigid, and dogmatic ideology which will take any criticism as justification for its own position. Consequently, dialogue becomes impossible at this point. In any case, the author of these lines believes that, while tolerance is desirable, heteronormativity is also necessary (and inevitable), since it would be unwise to deny the nature of man. Human nature is not a construct of structures and interactions but it is the heteronormative structure that arises from human nature.

SEXISM In everyday life, when we say sexism, we mean comments that are inappropriate, offensive, or vulgar, and which perhaps treat women as inferior. However, comments and actions that are directed at women simply as women are not usually understood as sexism. In comparison, feminism considers any action or word that discriminates or stereotypes women as sexist. As such, it is also sexist to bring flowers to someone as a man just because she is a woman.180 180

About sexism in general: Vetterling-Braggin 1981, Sunderland 2006, Mills 2008, Douglas 2010 109

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The term sexism is said to have been coined by Pauline M. Leet in 1965.181 It was modelled on racism and first appeared in writing in 1968 in a speech by Caroline Bird, later published in print. According to the latter, sexism is judging people based their sex at a time when sex does not matter.182 There are individual and institutional, direct and indirect, benign and malignant manifestations of sexism, and of course it is closely linked to patriarchy, male dominance, and misogyny. It is sexism for a man to ask his wife where the ketchup is because the question is based on the assumption that the woman has to serve the man.183 We are at the point today where any manifestation of a supposed patriarchy (and heteronormative gender matrix) is sexism in the broadest sense. That is, if we say or act on the basis of a group gender characteristic with which someone does not identify, we are already sexist. Ultimately, however, even the feminist movement cannot decide what sexism is, and they debate its meaning. In Hungary, for example, the Anti-Patriarchy Society (Patriarchátust Ellenzők Társasága, PATENT) writes in a publication that “Sexism is a system of prejudices against women based on their gender and the discrimination based on these prejudices, i.e., women’s unequal share of power in both social and personal relationships. Gender-based prejudice creates the tendency to see women as inferior. It acts as a lens through which women’s behavior is seen as imperfect, inappropriate, and even inherently wrong. Once they share this perception, men believe it is legitimate, even necessary, to control women, even through violence or abuse. Men’s perception that they can abuse women is not only personal. Much of it comes from institutions. Beliefs conveyed by

181 182 183

Feminism Friday 2007 Feminism Friday 2007, Siegel 2015, p. 54 Cameron 1998 110

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law, dominant culture, psychology, and other sciences, or religion, that ‘women are fickle’, ‘irrational beings’, or ‘inherently sinful’ certainly do not compel men to use violence against women but are a source of men’s choice to engage in this behavior.” Furthermore, “The function of the violence against women is the maintenance of the hierarchy that underpins patriarchal (male-dominated) society, i.e., men’s power over women. It is based on sexist values that use gender differences to reinforce the power differential between men and women. The main difference between violence against women and violence in general is that it is so-called structural violence, i.e., it is consistent with social and cultural norms and values. Therefore, it is perceived by society as smaller than real or normal and is not condemned as clearly as other forms of violence. It is difficult to describe as violence everyday phenomena that are fully embedded in the dominant culture.”184 Law, psychology, science and religion do not claim or convey the notion that “women are fickle”, “irrational beings” or “inherently sinful.” Original sin, according to Christianity, is something that everyone carries, equally, without exception, or with two exceptions to be precise: Mary and Jesus. The contemporary Christian community, on the other hand, is much more likely to regard men as the “bearers” of sinful sexual desires than women; but to think that this is in line with the ideas of feminism would be wrong because this is the false assumption of the prudish Victorian age about “virginal and asexual women.” The Victorian era was indeed a prudish one, although today’s lesbian feminists, if they were consistent, would have to look to this prudish era as some kind of a harbinger of the future. As will be discussed later, the attitudes of men and women do indeed differ in terms of rationality.

184 See: https://www.patent.org.hu/dokumentumok/nok_joga_sorozat/nok/lepore llo_mi_a_csalber_2014.pdf.

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However, none of the ideas above (science, psychology, and religion) convey the idea that women are en bloc irrational. Rather, it is a desperate exaggeration that breaks out of men during a relationship conflict that they probably do not take seriously in their sober moments. It is often suggested by feminists that it is a manifestation of patriarchy and sexism that men prefer to choose a partner they can control and that they do not like independent, smart women. But this is false: the vast majority of men prefer independent, smart women whom they can be proud of to those who follow them like shadows.185 And this is true even if, on average, women are slightly more interested in their partner’s education and men in their partner’s beauty. People, men and women alike, are looking, to use the somewhat soulless language of sociological research, for the partner with the “highest possible value.” Exchange theory states that when choosing a mate, we weigh the rewards we get from each other against the “costs” that we incur in relation to each other; evolutionary theory says much the same thing, except that we are looking for good genes and not social values; and attraction theory says that we are looking for people like us.186 According to research, “the most important thing is that one’s mate is first of all kind and understanding, and then interesting and exciting. For men, the physical attractiveness of their partner is significantly more important, and for women, the academic degree and earning potential of their partner is significantly more important.”187 In addition, “men are more likely than women to accept a partner who is younger than themselves, has lower earning potential and is of a different race, and women are less concerned than men about the physical attractiveness of their partner.”188 Finally, “for men, it is im-

185 186 187 188

Style 2020 Király 2018 Lőrincz 2006 Buss–Barnes 1986 In: Lőrincz 2006 Sprecher et al. 1994 In: Lőrincz 2006 112

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portant that their partner be at least somewhat physically attractive and intelligent, and for women, their partner should be at least somewhat intelligent and have some income.”189 Anthony Esolen says that today sexism is a word which is used to explain away almost every problem and mystery of the world, especially physical distinctions between the sexes: “‘sexism’ is simply a form into which we press everything we see. It is not that men have always been impelled to work both by their nature and by the need to support women and free them up to care for children and maintain households, especially before modern technology rendered cooking, cleaning, and laundry a less than full-time job. ‘Sexism’ kept women from having careers. It is not that men, at the highest grade, are better chess players than women. ‘Sexism’ somehow causes all the chess champions to be men. Why it would bother to do so pointless a thing, and by what precise mechanism, no one explains. Indeed, if you ask for an explanation, you will be condemned as a tool of the sexist system. This is not to play with conic sections. It is just to argue in a circle — a magic circle.”190

IN DEFENSE OF STEREOTYPES Taken together, the criticisms we have made about gender mainstreaming, patriarchy, and heteronormativity also apply to sexism. Since, contrary to feminists’ ideas, many of our gender roles do have a biological root; many of the differences between men and women are not an arbitrary invention of patriarchy; and many sexisms simply reflect real differences.

189 190

Li et al. 2002 In: Lőrincz 2006 Esolen 2022, Loc. 696-701 113

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Action against truly misogynistic sexism in the narrow, everyday sense is entirely justified. However, to make sense of the world and to manage our human relationships, it is simply necessary, especially when it comes to strangers, to treat them according to pre-conceptions rooted in centuries of experience, or if you like, according to generalizations along gender roles and “sexism”; what is important is to be ready to distance oneself from them when the occasion arises. The vast majority of women are indeed and rightly outraged if it is perceived or suggested that they should only try to find fulfilment in housework, but even the majority of educated, enlightened women expect chivalry and politeness based on classical gender stereotypes. In fact, they see it as a sign of men’s degeneration and the decline of masculinity that, in their experience, fewer and fewer men are chivalrous and men do not treat them as women. In other words, for them it is not chivalry that “objectifies” women, but its disappearance; the gender stereotype of chivalry was classically intended to tame male aggression. How do I know what categories and values a stranger does and does not identify with? According to David Benatar, feminists have created a Catch-22 for men: until now it was clear that the well-mannered, civilized and chivalrous man would open the door for women. But now, anything can happen: if a man opens the door to a feminist by accident, she will be outraged at the “stereotypical” move, but if he doesn’t open the door to a traditionally-minded woman in the name of emancipation, he will be called a jerk.191 There are many more examples of this, both small and large, in the area of male-female and human interaction in general.

191

Benatar 2012, pp. 243-44 114

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That is why a society cannot exist without taking into account stereotypes and group characteristics; otherwise, it becomes paralyzed. Stereotypes contribute to the predictability of the world. And the stereotypical norms that are in force will mostly be those that are established, or traditional, tried and tested, and those that are accepted as such by the majority. It is largely impossible to avoid the issue thatif a minority does not accept them, it will feel discriminated against. But even if we could abolish these norms for the sake of this minority, there are two possible outcomes: either we try to impose the norms desired by the minority, in which case the majority will be unjustly discriminated against, or we try to live without norms, which is impossible. And if there are multiple sets of expectations in place at the same time, even within the same social group, then unpleasant conflicts regularly arise from trying to figure out when and against whom to apply which one. In the example that represents sexism, whereby the wife serves her husband, it is of course true that it is a limiting and demeaning stereotype that the woman must always serve the man. However, in a marriage there is a division of tasks between the parties, and the husband who asks for ketchup is probably aware that his wife is not offended by his question. Feminists would probably reply that while this may be so, it only proves that the wife has unconsciously “internalized” a contemptuous sexism towards women. However, it may not be so typical for women to “internalize” such things; on the other hand, whether or not the behavior is internalized, if the couple is happy, on what basis do feminists have a say in the relationship? Wasn’t it said that sexism refers to categories and values that one does not identify with? Or is it that if one identifies with categories and values that feminists do not want, then one is immediately a victim of the false consciousness and oppressive patterns of behavior caused by male domination? Could it not be that the wife of the man who asks for ketchup also spontaneously asks her husband if he has cut the grass, chopped the firewood, repaired the car, or fitted the shelf? In 115

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the larger part of marriages, an equal division of labor will never mean that all household tasks are shared equally between the parties as this is unmanageable in practice. More typical is the division of tasks. This serves predictability and practicality. Whether this is sexist or not is completely irrelevant to the happiness of the spouses. Sexism and stereotypes will always be with us, even if some old ones are be replaced by new ones. Sexism tries to navigate us, whether for better or worse, along one of the most basic human differences. Some forms of it are legitimate to fight against and others should not be taken so seriously. Yet other forms are simply in huge demand outside feminist ivory towers. As with most human frailties, the truly offensive and negative forms of sexism cannot be permanently banished from the world, and the best, quickest, and most effective way to combat them is for those affected to take agile action.

METOO The MeToo movement was launched in October 2017, after an article in The New York Times in which former victims of Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein’s sexual harassment came forward. He was sentenced to jail in 2020 for his actions. In Hungary, it started with the harassment cases of director László Marton, roughly immediately after the Weinstein case. The movement’s name comes from the fact that its followers used the hashtag #MeToo on social media, encouraging everyone who had been harassed at work to come forward and fight for what is right, as victims are often ashamed of what happened and do not want to make it public. This is a very sympathetic and worthy ambition, and in fact it goes without saying why because it is so obvious. If encouragement is needed to take a case of workplace harassment to court, that encourage116

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ment should be given and the harassers should be held to account. Kay S. Hymowitz wrote the following in May 2018, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the sexual revolution linked to 1968 and the outbreak of the MeToo scandals: “Last fall, as the first #MeToo scandals scrolled across the cable news chyron, I happened to be reading Sticky Fingers, Joe Hagan’s superb new biography of Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner. As Hagan describes the magazine’s early years in the 1960s, just about everyone on the staff — male and female — was having sex with everyone else, under and on top of desks, on the boss’s sofa, wherever the mood struck them. Hagan quotes one writer claiming that Wenner told him that ‘he had slept with everyone who had worked for him.’ Compared with Wenner and the early Rolling Stone crowd, Harvey Weinstein was a ‘wanker.’192 Did the women at Rolling Stone consent to what was going on at the magazine, which today would be illegal workplace harassment? It seems to me that yes, and that the question should be asked whether the male staff freely consented to what the women were doing to them. In the company bathrooms, female employees graded the sexual performance of their male colleagues on a graffiti scale, not, as on university campuses today, that of the rapists. Jane Wenner, Jann’s wife, was known to rate applicants according to whether they ‘turned her on’, and in some cases personally tested their eagerness. One photographer, Annie Leibovitz, who made her name at Rolling Stone, usually slept with her subjects and was rumored to have had threesomes with the Wenners.” 193

192 193

See: Hymowitz 2018. Ibid. 117

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According to Hymowitz, “the sexual revolution endorsed the value of female sexual desire, autonomy, and consent; this is a genuine moral achievement and, thankfully, a settled part of modern life. But the revolution also helped midwife a number of the nation’s most troubling domestic problems: the soaring number of single-parent families, legions of fatherless children, and the related ills of inequality, poverty, achievement gaps, and men MIA from the workplace and family life.”194 MeToo has also fallen victim to overthinking feminism which sees it as an obvious manifestation of patriarchy and oppressive male dominance. This would not even be important in practical terms, but the movement has led to the widespread belief that sexual violence or sexual harassment can be is anything that the alleged victim feels it to be; and that the presumption of innocence, an outdated and patriarchal idea, must be suspended in regards to those accused of sexual harassment. Perhaps it goes without saying what the consequences of all this might be. Innocent banter or an attempt at courtship can be considered harassment, and so no man can know when any approach to a woman, however well-intentioned and decent, however traditionally polite, will be qualified as harassment. If the perpetration of harassment depends on the subjective impressions of the subject, then there are simply no social norms about what is acceptable and what is not. And to abolish the presumption of innocence would leave room for retaliation and false accusations.

194

Ibid. 118

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For example, the Hungarian journalist Éva Vándor wrote on the Hungarian news portal HVG atr the time that “for many women who have experienced sexual harassment on a spectrum ranging from ‘You have a nice ass!’ to rape, the testimonies on social media are a cathartic experience. Meanwhile, many men may not even understand what is happening; what is this barrier that has now been broken, where are all these stories are coming from, and there is also a sense of doubt: ‘Could it be that women are overreacting a little?’” She says that “when we talk about violence against women, we don’t say that men are the perpetrators.” And “when we talk about women getting pregnant, we don’t say that men are the ones who get them pregnant. In the statistics, we see women as victims of violence and not how many men have committed violence. We use passive constructions that leave out the active participant, even though the violence doesn’t just happen, but the violence is committed by someone.”195 It’s hard to draw a line on the spectrum, but “You have a nice ass!” is not sexual harassment on any level, even though it is hardly polite or chiseled. Depending on the tone of voice, “You have a nice ass!” can be a vulgar remark or a serious compliment, but it is definitely an – albeit oddly phased – acknowledgment of some kind. Whether it comes across as humiliation, a challenge, or a compliment depends not only on the tone of voice, but also, for example, on who is saying it to whom. Specifically, there are relationship situations in which such remarks are entirely appropriate and even expected. And if the recipient thinks it is rude and vulgar, she can take care of it by saying, “Get

195

Vándor 2017 119

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lost, asshole!” A compliment, including in its vulgar forms, is not sexual harassment, nor is it the first step towards it. If you want to harass, you can do it without a compliment. But Éva Vándor’s train of thought illustrates how the idea of “all is harassment that feels like harassment” makes it impossible for men and women to get close, and because traditionally it is the female expectation that men should approach women, her interpretation then leaves men paralyzed and powerless. In the wake of this, desperate comments like “Are there any real men left?” and demands that it’s up to men to make the first move spread across dating sites and in women’s magazines. Let me give you an example. The British Tory MP Damian Green once put his hand on the knee of the theater critic Kate Maltby and later sent her a text message asking if she would like to have a drink with him as he had not seen her for a long time. This shocking, tragic sequence of events was written about as sexual harassment by Maltby in The Times as part of the MeToo campaign. Green was investigated. Maltby and Green were old acquaintances, perhaps even friends.196 Perhaps there is no need to explain how, if this feminist wish were taken seriously, it would now be ridiculously bureaucratic and cumbersome for a man to approach women. He might send a probing letter through his lawyer, asking whether he is allowed to approach, but he might not do that either because even that could qualify subjectively as harassment. The majority of women, of course, retain their common sense and respond appropriately to unwanted advances. But there are always those who are prepared to take advantage of the situation and exaggerate trivial matters.

196

Maltby 2017 120

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CONCLUSION Have patriarchy, heteronormativity, and sexism only existed since these terms were coined or were they just meant to describe a phenomenon? Feminism and its various neologisms (“heterofeminism”) are themselves a refutation of the postmodern belief in linguistic determinism, not to mention of the idea that “language constructs reality”; or if it is not the case, then this is a feminist “reality” linguistically constructed by feminists, which we may not even know to be true.197 One could then ask whether the binary conception of the dominant male and the oppressed female (Carl Schmitt, the man who coined the enemy-friend theory, is licking his fingers198) is not in contradiction with the Foucauldian conception of power, according to which power does not have a locus but flows through the capillaries of human relations. Foucault’s concept of power is very explanatory and describes the situation well, but I do not consider it tragic that the world works this way. That said, it is true that in many areas of life women, not men, are dominant; on the whole, it is true that there is male dominance in formal positions of power, but any assertion that goes further is open to challenge. (Make no mistake, I am not bothered that in many areas of life there is female dominance. That’s life.)

197

This problem is not solved by Alfred Tarski’s distinction between object language and metalanguage, which does not explain why, within the logic of postmodern linguistic constructionism, metalinguistic formulations fall outside the world of realities constructed by language. 198 Schmitt 2007 121

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As Patai sees it, feminists believe that they have the right to impose their theories on the world, despite these views and their analyses being seriously questionable as they are based on one-sided, selected, and ideologically interpreted “evidence.” Patai thus concludes that, despite some respectable achievements, feminism can no longer be supported because it poses a threat to civil liberties, personal autonomy, the dignity of women and men, and to even feminism itself.199 What feminists and critics of patriarchy fail to realize is that they are not fighting against an unjustifiable power structure and ideology, but against human fragility and frailty – also against human nature. They interpret complex human relations in a one-sided and schematic way, and instead of seeing expressions of male frailty as a manifestation of human frailty in general, they view it as an act of power. The weaknesses of men cannot be erased from the face of the earth by re-education or administrative measures any more than the expressions of weaknesses in women. And just as human beings cannot be corrected, neither can women or men. Stereotypes and “harassments” attached to different sets of relations, and therefore outside the feminists’ field of vision, will also always remain with us. Just as we are at times unfair in word or deed to any of our fellow human beings, indulging in tasteful and distasteful jokes against any social group, nation, or ethnicity, so too is the situation in relation to women and men. We have to be ascetic puritans to even temporarily succeed in our attempt to systematically eradicate them. And if this is not successful in our other systems of relations, why should it be successful with regards to men and women?

199

Patai 2010, p. 5 122

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The conflicts between men and women will never go away. Conflict is a fundamental feature of the world.200 Just as most of us have been able to live with them relatively well in the past, we will be able to live with them in the future (of course, this is no excuse for violence.) What is more, if they were to disappear, the world would become uniform and boring. There are problems in the world that cannot be solved by government, international intervention, civil or individual initiatives; they simply have to be lived with. This realization, this insight, can be liberating. Anthony Esolen differentiates between patriarchy and male domination – by his description the first is ordered, constructive, the second is chaotic and destructive version of men’s power: “The point is that patriarchy — government by fathers — is a victory over the male domination and the male irresponsibility you inevitably get when women attempt to take over male executive roles. When the patriarchs are missing, what you get from the boys is either aggressive disobedience or underachievement and waste. And then you get unhappy girls who despise the boys they have helped to form. The girls, too, go bad, because the sexes are made for each other, and you cannot corrupt one without corrupting both.”201 Both heteronormativity, patriarchy — with the parallel presence of matriarchy — and sexism have learned a great deal and have been tamed during previous centuries, especially during recent decades. This “three-in-one” social institutional system has definitely become more open and tolerant. Anyone who claims that we are now dealing with an all-pervasive and totally intolerant, oppressive, and absolutist

200 201

See: Lánczi 2015 Esolen 2022, Loc. 1512-1516 123

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power structure towards non-heterosexuals and women is, quite simply, monomaniacal and paranoid. Heteronormativity, the parallel and intertwined institutional systems of patriarchy and matriarchy, and certain forms of sexism, are inherent in human nature. It is better to live with them and the conflicts that arise from them than to sacrifice an entire life’s work unnecessarily to eradicate them. We have the freedom to try to wage war on them, but if by chance we succeed in doing so, it will only be thanks to a rigid, totalitarian, and politically correct regime that poisons human relations and everyday life in the same way as Nazism and Communism did, and as Robespierre and his comrades first tried to do during the French Revolution.

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GENDER MAINSTREAMING The implementation of the ideas of gender theory is called gender mainstreaming. According to a 2009 publication for the Hungarian government, produced with the support of the European Commission,202 gender mainstreaming “puts gender equality at the center of policy-making” as “a comprehensive policy for achieving equality between women and men in society, aiming to integrate gender equality into general policy, program design, and sectoral policies and activities, and to mainstream this approach into all political and administrative actions and measures.” This handbook (From Edge to Mainstream) writes that gender is not something we choose for ourselves because it is not “a kind of changing view or belief” but “an essential element of our personality, a set of relations — male-female relations, including our own relations to them — that we receive from society (primarily from our immediate environment) and incorporate into our personality.” It also in-

202

Betlen et al. 2009. On gender mainstreaming in the EU context, see Jacquot 2015 Ahrens 2018

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cludes “our roles and attitudes related to our femininity or masculinity, as well as the social expectations of us and our relationship to them.” At the same time, “because it is a social construct — although the constructor cannot be pinned down in concrete terms — gender can be changed, albeit slowly.” However, this does not mean that “if we get bored of it, we can discard it”, “it just means that we can relate to it consciously and decide whether we identify with the role that society has for us as women or men in certain situations.” The starting point for gender mainstreaming is that women suffer from structural inequalities, mainly in four areas: in the labor market, in domestic tasks and responsibilities (housework, family), in public life (low participation), and in terms of violence against women. Formal, legal equality is therefore insufficient; but government support is needed to help eliminate them. These differences are perpetuated, according to the handbook, by “four major elements of discrimination”: “stereotypes, an institutional system tailored to men”, “segregation and violence.” These in turn “seek to justify the existing power order by claiming it to be the order of nature.” According to the authors, violence against women is not merely a reprehensible act or, in serious cases, a crime, but “the system of violence against women ensures the social position of men who are privileged over women” and “even those who never use violence can benefit from the advantages that other men have gained over the centuries”; in fact, “violence against women is a key to the survival of the unequal power relations between men and women.” And the whole “system of instruments” outlined is “aimed at the subjugation of women”, just as violence in the workplace is not aimed at the inhuman exploitation of others or at selfish pleasure but at “the subjugation, breaking, and exploitation of the female workforce.” In their work, the authors also frame the reference to private life as suspect, since 95 percent of parental leave is taken by mothers. They also consider that the situation is “exacerbated by the rise of conservative ideologies.” 126

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The consequence of this is that due to the “inequality between women and men”, “women, although more educated, earn less and have fewer creative opportunities; although working more, they have less money and leisure time; although creating more value, they have less say in decisions”, and this is “wasteful.” This calls for “equality policy solutions”, which are “equal treatment, anti-discrimination, equal opportunities, positive discrimination, and gender mainstreaming.” There are three schools of thought with regards to the matter: “anti-discrimination or equal treatment”; “women’s disadvantaged social position and the corresponding policy of equal opportunities for women”; and “transforming the discriminatory functioning of gender relations in society — gender mainstreaming.” What is certain, however, is that “treating women as formally equal to men is not in itself sufficient to overcome their disadvantaged situation”, i.e., “gender equality policy does not address the victims at the individual level” but instead at the group level. This is why the authors then advocate quotas, for example. But that is not all: “gender mainstreaming takes the view that inequality between women and men is a structural problem for society as a whole and cannot be treated as a women’s issue alone” because “they are constantly being reproduced in social structures.” The problem, and this should be emphasized, is a “social problem” (there is nothing that is not social: problems, justice, etc.) and at the root are “gender roles, the double burden of social and family gender roles that disadvantage women. The underlying causes are the family system of norms and the fact that the state itself contributes to the perpetuation of this system of norms through its interventions, but also through its non-interventions.” Gender mainstreaming therefore “aims not only to correct the statistical imbalances between women and men through affirmative action, but also to identify and address the underlying social and institutional causes of these imbalances”, which will lead to improved statistics. And here comes the point: “an effective equality policy cannot be limited to bringing women into line with male-centered, male-dom127

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inated social norms. As a long-term goal, society and public policy as a whole need to be transformed because the problem lies with basic social norms and their embodiment in institutions and public policy.” Furthermore, “The first step in gender mainstreaming is to review and rethink basic social norms and institutions by taking into account the aspects of equality between women and men. In particular, social norms about gender roles, a good family, a good workforce, the value of work, merit in the workplace, good leadership or good politics need to be reviewed.”

A CRITIQUE OF GENDER MAINSTREAMING When you start reading the book on gender mainstreaming, you can, to a certain extent, approve of it at the beginning. Who disagree with the principle of “equal pay for equal work”, and that no one should be discriminated against in employment for a job where gender is not an issue. Who would not be against the glass ceiling? Who would not like to see more effective action against domestic violence, and who would not want to support women’s empowerment? However, as we progress through the volume, our eyebrows become more and more drawn together. After all, feminists in private conversations usually remark that it is just a matter of a little correction, a little tweaking, a little tidying up. But then it turns out that the aim is a complete transformation of society. While the authors condemn, among other things, the influence of “conservative ideologies”, we must point out that the total transformation of society, as a demand, is by definition ideological. Such an aggressive social engineering attitude is reminiscent of the worst ideologies; the whole conceptual framework of the ideas presented above is provided by Marxist and postmodern ideology. (Whether

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gender theory is an ideology, or is at least ideological, is the subject of a separate chapter.) First of all, it must be stated that, in itself, the elimination of “disadvantages” for women or any social group is of course a welcome and appeal goal. The devil is always in the detail. In this case, for example, one of the main points of contention in the culture war is whether the possibility of abortion is part of the elimination of disadvantage, of whether abortion is a woman’s right or not, of whether the life conceived, the fetus, is part of the woman’s body or whether it is another body, another life inside the woman’s body. Often there is agreement between different worldviews and their political representations on a lofty, general goal, and the debate is about where that goal falls in the order of importance and what measures should be taken to achieve it. The fetus, however, is not part of the woman’s body but another body growing inside it. This is not a matter of ideology but of fact: for example, it may have a different sex, DNA, or blood group from its mother. The author of these paragraphsdoes not want to “send any woman back to the kitchen” and considers it important that everyone, women and men alike, should be able to study what they love, decide whether to be “gender-typical” or “gender-atypical”, be free to choose whether or not to marry and have children or not, and to find women’s participation in public and political life important, not to mention the fight against relationship violence. The author of the present book is also sympathetic to the idea that men should do as much housework as possible and not just “help” women. Nor does he wish to deny that women suffer from what might be called “historical” or “structural” disadvantages. Those who are not supported by their environment, or who are hindered in their further education or by lifestyle choices, should be given all the help they need. Having said that, it is necessary to point out several problematic points regarding the above. The first of these is the starting point that biology plays only a small role in the development of gender and social roles, and that otherwise there is a systematic male dominance. The 129

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“nature versus nurture” debate is, of course, endless, and at the end of the previous statement the reader can see that the position in this debate lies on the side of the environment. However, the final chapters of this volume explain, with scientific evidence, that our social roles are very much determined by biology, or by “nature’s order” if you like. Of course, “this order of nature” does not, in the opinion of the author, justify the many rules and customs throughout history that have restricted women, such as the loss of property upon marriage or the prohibition of education. But these were long gone by 2009 — they were abolished not in the recent past, but long ago. It is therefore desirable in the current situation to provide opportunities, and it is also desirable to help those who wish to take advantage of these opportunities — to study any subject, to take part in public life, or to start a business — if they are being held back or criticized for their choices because they are women. As will be shown in more detail later, in the most gender-equal and free societies, women and men for the most part still choose gender-typical occupations because of their biological drive rather than unjustifiable stereotypes, and gender-typical personality traits (such as the male-female difference in interest in persons versus things) prevail. In this sense, gender stereotypes and gender roles are doubtless rooted in nature and biology, and thus cannot be eradicated from us. Of course, these natural biological determinants, our innate characteristics, are principles and not laws; they are average, general characteristics from which there can be “outliers” and which cannot be contradicted by however large differences within the group of men or women. The author believes that the important thing is to have the possibility of being an “outlier”, and that “outliers” should not be at a significant disadvantage. However, the elimination of stereotypes is both utopian (suggesting that it is desirable but unrealistic) and undesirable. After all, some of the “prejudices” are in fact postjudices, and stereotypes are to some extent necessary to navigate the world in order to relate to our fellow human beings and to maintain social trust. 130

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Without some stereotypes, such as those related to gender, the world would be unknowable and chaotic.203 It is enough to be aware that stereotypes are stereotypes; since all our fellow human beings are in some way “outliers” of a certain stereotype, which is what makes us unique individuals, this os not too difficult. According to gender mainstreamers, in an ideal society there are no gender roles and no gender stereotypes because they are by definition restrictive. They would therefore idealize norm-free equality and freedom. However, they fail to realize that they themselves represent a norm (since there is no such thing as a norm-free society, and the impossible idea of neutrality always hides a counter-narrative), and that equality and freedom can be in conflict with each other (as in the case of communism.) It can also be argued that society will never be ideal in any sense (although the ideal society for gender theorists is, in the author’s view, rather hellish and dystopian.) Everyone has always been disadvantaged, and everyone has invariably encountered and continues to encounter restrictive social norms. This is part of life and is inevitable, especially if we want a united, healthy society able to defend itself. Gender mainstreaming advocates often rightly lament the individualization, atomization, and disintegration of society. But they fail to realize that their own absolutist aspirations for equality and freedom of choice necessarily contribute to further societal disintegration and atomization. For beyond a certain point, these aspirations are incompatible with the cohesion of society;204 instead of leading to an ideal

203 204

See also: Dalrymple 2007 See e.g., Deneen 2018 131

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or at least an optimal society, they point towards the end of society; the self-sustaining unity of the community and personal freedom are not compatible indefinitely. And various minimalist ethics (such as Habermas’ constitutional civic loyalty or tolerance as a necessary and sufficient basic norm) are not sufficient to maintain society. The difference, of course, may be that feminists believe that the cohesion of society can still stand the strain of increasing equality and freedom; those who share the thoughts of the author, on the other hand, see this disintegration as having been going on since the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. Because it can no longer be increased, we must take steps towards restoring cohesion. Another problem with the line of thought that pervades gender mainstreaming is an excessive focus on structures. Feminist authors usually criticize the “structural problems” of the “neoliberal world order” which call for “structural solutions” rather than individual efforts and are usually understood to be state and international regulatory intervention. Those who criticize them are accused of being individualists and of mistakenly believing in the mirage of “individual freedom” that is the deceitful product of American capitalism. American capitalism may have absolutized individual liberty, but personal liberty and freedom of will have been central beliefs of almost all societies for centuries. If only because, if it did not exist, we would have no personal responsibility for our actions. That there are structural social problems that cannot be solved individually is not a profound insight but a self-evident truism and one does not even have to be a Marxist to recognize this. The question is whether they can be “solved”, and if so, to what extent. The other question is what constitute a problem and what does not. Third, one of the main flaws of gender mainstreaming as described above is that it goes from one extreme to the other: it does not merely point out that there are problems beyond the scope of the individual but essentially portrays all problems as social and structural, which can only be remedied by violent transformation of society by the state. 132

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Meanwhile, Wendell Berry, an American farmer and agricultural writer who has been a lifelong critic of capitalism, industrialism, neoliberalism, and the logic of competition, says: “That will-o’-the-wisp, the large-scale solution to the large-scale problem, which is so dear to governments, universities, and corporations, serves mostly to distract people from the small, private problems that they may, in fact, have the power to solve.”205 In other words, too much focus on structural problems distracts us from what we can do ourselves and has a paralyzing effect. Not incidentally, the solution to structural problems also comes from individual initiative. Individually or in a small community, we may get our own way before the big structures are changed or we succeed in changing them. Feminists fail to see this despite the fact that they themselves operate in this way. Moreover, if we never have to fight for our own truth and for our own achievements, we are doomed to become soft and lazy. The misandry that is central to gender mainstreaming’s lines of thought of is astounding. Accordingly, male violence is always specifically aimed at the oppression of women; it never has any other purpose, and it is never purposeless. That violence against women can have such an aspect is undoubted; but that this is its only motivating force, whether conscious or unconscious, is, to put it politely, a biased view that follows directly from the over-socialized concept of personhood in gender theory. It is a good question, however, whether this male oppression is the result of an inherent and innate male aggression, in which case “nature” must be a significant source with regards to gender roles, or of some mystical social construct. If anti-woman male aggression is the result of a social construct, then the question is who created it, when, and for what purpose. Of course, the purpose,

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Berry 1989 In: Berry 2018 133

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according to feminists, would be “power” or social dominance created by men. But then further questions arise: why did men want to oppress women? Was it because of their innate need for dominance, reinforced by women’s indifference to dominance? This would mean that the constructionist theory is false. If men have such a need for dominance, why would they want to oppress their partner, a female? Why would they have a need to dominate specifically against her? And if that was the case, why did they succeed in “subjugating” women? But if this is not a question of innate characteristics, then the issue is even more obscure: what was the rationale behind the impersonal, mystical interactions and structures that circulate in societies that created male dominance, anti-female gender stereotypes, and restrictive gender roles? What was the purpose, what was the meaning? Was it to oppress women? But what is the point of that? Or was it an end in itself? Why? And if male aggression, male violence, and anti-women oppression are the product of interactions and structures, then maybe men are not responsible? After all, they, like women, are the products and victims of structures. A myriad of unanswered questions. Not to mention the fact that throughout history, there have always been quite successful attempts to tame male aggression: just think of the knights of the Middle Ages or the “gentleman ideal” of the modern era that originate from it. Gender mainstreaming pits men and women against each other. Instead of promoting the complementary roles of the sexes with equal dignity, it incites men and women against one another. This in turn contributes to the stigmatization of men, which is common within feminist circles and is based on stereotypes. Anti-masculinism is thus created.206

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See also: Iannone 2007 134

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Gender mainstreaming explicitly ignores the life situations of the vast majority, 95-99 percent, of people for most of history. It is as if gender mainstreaming only cares about political history and the great figures of history and art. Before the industrial revolution, but perhaps until the mid-twentieth century, the whole premise of gender mainstreaming would have been simply irrelevant to the vast majority of people. After all, they were farmers or craftsmen, perhaps merchants all their lives, and it would not have made much difference to their individual fulfilment if, for example, husbands had swapped places with their wives. Would any woman’s individuality have been more fulfilled if she had exchanged places with her peasant husband to do farm work? Hardly. In historical terms, until recently, not only women but even the vast majority of men were unable to continue their education and were severely limited by the opportunities of everyday life. However, this was not necessarily such a problem either; it is unlikely that these people felt that they were not living life to the full, having lived their whole lives in a village or town without traveling, and practicing a craft that had been handed down from generation to generation. That was the way of the world, and happiness did not depend on it. As Anthony Esolen puts it, “The Industrial Revolution robbed men of much of their patriarchal influence, by the mere fact that it took them out of the sphere of home and small shop and farm. There have always been soldiers and sailors and traveling merchants, but for the great mass of mankind this separation from the home was new, and not healthy. Often the exhausted, thirsty, and ill-used men would soak their troubles or replenish their lost sweat in beer or hard drink before they staggered home. And if that were not bad enough, the modern world has attempted to right the ship by removing the mother from the home also, rendering it a no-place, a number on a street.”207

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Esolen 2022, Loc. 1767-1771 135

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Besides, according to French historians, wives in the Middle Ages had a clearly freer position in marriage than in the modern era: they had wider legal rights and greater opportunities to act than between the 16th and the 20th centuries, and they had to give their consent to major economic transactions. The 13th-century encyclopedist Vincent de Beauvais writes that a wife is neither mistress nor servant to her husband, but a companion.208 Finally, the lack of respect for individual convictions and one’s private life in gender mainstreaming is a major concern. Yet we are talking about the same theorists who say that the state should not dare to enter the bedroom. One of the major contradictions of the social transformation plans proclaimed in the name of equality and freedom, whether they were right or not, has always been that they have had to restrict beliefs of people, at least of certain large groups of people, from above in the name of freedom. Therefore, they have had to fight paternalism, for example, in a paternalistic manner. Interfering in the name of freedom with the beliefs of individuals and small communities to which they adhere is highly repugnant because no one can be expected to act against their own convictions. No one, against his or her own convictions, can be expected to do more than show tolerance in the original meaning of the word. Society is therefore under no obligation to adopt a gender mainstreaming agenda. Feminists and their ideas deserve no more than toleration from those who disagree with them, on the basis of the modus vivendi of live and let live.

208 For a more informative overview, see e.g., Rubicon magazine, 2009/11 (in Hungarian only)

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What, for example, do gender mainstreaming advocates do with the masses of men who want feminine women and the masses of women who want masculine men and choose traditional gender roles? Because it is striking how many feminists disparage the masses of women who choose motherhood. What right do they have to want to use governmental tools to interfere in and transform people’s family relationships? Remarkably, all this is said by intellectual, social scientist feminists who otherwise refuse to allow anyone to “tell” a woman what to do or to interfere in anyone else’s life. Of course, everyone can have ideas about the organization of society, but these ideas from feminist scholars fully exhaust the notion of unwanted interference in the lives of individuals. The question is: where do they get the authorization to do all this? It is perfectly understandable when victims of individual or community tragedies work to minimize the chances of the cause of their tragedy occurring; for example, when victims of rape use every means of law and social activism to eliminate the possibility of rape as far as possible. And the ideal goal will be to ensure that such things never happen “ever again.” But then there is the danger that they will demand legislation and measures that interfere in the lives of partnerships, married couples, and families to a far greater extent than is reasonable, and that they will overregulate from above in order to eliminate even the remotest possibility of rape. Such overreaction is when, because of pedophiles’ crimes in a certain society, priests and teachers may be forbidden to stroke the heads of pupils, and even a father hugging his child may become a target of suspicion. Such overreactions and overregulation can have far more negative than positive effects. We simply have to accept that it is impossible to eradicate “once and for all” the softer and harder forms of human violence, including violence against women and men.

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THE WOMEN’S INTEREST AND ITS PACKAGE OF PROPOSALS In 2016, the Hungarian women’s advocacy association Női Érdek, (Women’s Interest) published a book entitled The Public Policy Recommendations of the Hungarian Women’s Advocacy Association,209 which is an excellent tool for examining how ideological assumptions lie behind the lofty and sometimes supportable goals. Below we take a selection from this publication to focus on the most controversial points. Instead of biological sex, the basic concept of the publication is gender, and it also aims to combat “intersectional disadvantages” by drawing attention to the importance of “avoiding essentialism with regard to gender.” The text describes “male-centered thinking” and “patriarchal structures.” It advocates gender mainstreaming and “gender budgeting”, otherwise known as “budgeting based on gender economics.” The work also seeks to help men, for example by “promoting making the traditional division of labor in the home more equitable through social policy instruments”, and one of its main aims is “to apply gender mainstreaming in all public policies and actions.” Eligible objectives (combating the glass ceiling, increasing women’s participation in politics, combating sexism, etc.) are therefore set out in a comprehensive plan of social transformation. The authors would promote female political participation, for example, by means of quotas for women: “legislators should introduce mandatory gender quotas for all parties, with a 50-50 gender quota for national and European Parliament election lists, in which male and female candidates alternate in positions with equal chance of success.” The authors recommend “the

209 Juhász 2016 See: http://noierdek.hu/2/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Ajanlas_ 2016_2-kiadas_vegleges.pdf

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establishment of a coordinating institution responsible for the aspect of gender equality in government and policy at a high level of the government hierarchy, with adequate professional and financial resources and authority.” They criticize the fact that since the change of regime, while women’s participation in higher education has increased, “attitudes have been reinforced which emphasize the traditional roles of the two sexes in the population as a whole (men as the main breadwinners and woman as providers for the family and the household.)” They also believe that “the European Commission’s proposal to introduce a 40 percent quota for the boards of directors of companies listed on the stock exchange is a remarkable transnational initiative.” As the publication puts it, “control over women’s reproductive functions is the most dominant practice of patriarchal society.” For “a woman’s task, derived from her capacity to give birth, is the emotional and physical care of children, family members, and the household. In fulfilling these responsibilities, women are constrained; they have little or no presence in the outside world: in the world of work, in decision-making, in community and public life, in leisure activities.” As a consequence, they point out that “questioning the biological determination of gender roles in society has long been high on the agenda of the women’s movement with a human rights approach.” And, of course, there is a call for ratification of the Istanbul Convention. They also criticize the Hungarian government’s approach to family policy, because “confusing the position of women with that of families ignores the diversity of families, the power relations within families, and assumes that the family is an altruistic community within which income is distributed equally and fairly.” This shows that Women’s Interest presupposes that there are certainly unjust power structures in the family in which the man holds a privileged position, and the reference to the diversity of families implies an acceptance of LGBTQ ideology. The denial of the biological aspect of gender roles is also noteworthy (a notion that will be critiqued in detail in the final chapters.) 139

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Women’s Interest proposes “the elimination of the horizontal segregation characteristic of the social sector [and] equal gender representation in paid care activities.” This means that the government should ensure that the social sector is divided 50/50 between women and men — a totally impossible undertaking not only in practical but also in moral terms. There is, of course, much to be done to improve the sector and the situation of those who work in it, but because of trends in occupational choice (discussed in detail below), which are largely determined by biology, achieving half-half employment rates for men and women is not possible in the social or any other sector (and therefore it is unnecessary to invest in any effort towards this.) The publication also reveals that under “women’s reproductive rights”, Women’s Interest believes in, according to the internationally accepted understanding, the right to abortion and declares, in relation to a government campaign that ran years ago and which promoted adoption rather than the abortion of conceived fetuses, that “campaigns should not be launched that stigmatize abortion and seek to influence public opinion on abortion and contraception in a negative way.” In addition, the authors call for no pre-abortion counselling. The question is why does the promotion of adoption hurt feminists so much, and why do they think that only their preferred options should be given publicity? It was memorable when in 2011, during a campaign by the Hungarian government to promote adoption instead of abortion, a prominent member of the PATENT Association, Gábor Kuszing, was so outraged that he wrote: “such biased, value-oriented campaigns also violate women’s right to balanced information. They portray the fetus as a living person, whereas it is a matter of debate and scientifically undeterminable. Instead, this is an individual, ideological question and a personal choice to decide when the person begins to form between the egg that is certainly not a person and the newborn baby that is a person, and how long the fetus is considered a part of the woman’s body.” According to PATENT, “adoption is not an alternative to abor140

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tion, because pregnancy entails health risks and physical changes that the woman has the right to avoid. In addition, many women become emotionally attached to the child they have already had in a way that makes adoption impossible for them.”210 It was a positive, pro-adoption message, embedded in a campaign to promote family-friendly workplaces and men taking on a share of the housework. It is highly contradictory that PATENT should object to a “biased, value-oriented campaign” by suggesting that it is value-free and unbiased, when it is not; the PATENT association is one of the most rigid, doctrinaire, and ideological representatives of gender theory in Hungary. PATENT absurdly emphasizes the health risks of pregnancy by completely misrepresenting abortion as unproblematic, not only from a health point of view but also from a psychological one, when it denies the seriousness of the phenomenon of post-abortion syndrome. In addition, the question could be raised as to whether concealing the possibility of adoption and emphasizing the possibility of abortion does not violate a woman’s right to balanced information. Silencing the possibility of adoption and promoting abortion could trigger a reverse mechanism of action. The one-sided rhetoric of feminists makes those who might be encouraged to keep their children insecure. In the field of education, Women’s Interest demands that “education on reproductive health and rights in primary and secondary schools should be made available, effective, and systematic. This would contribute to halting or at least reducing the increase in the number of sexually transmitted diseases among young people under 19, to reducing the number of abortions and the high birthrates among minors; and that girls and young women should be made aware of their reproductive rights and of the risks to their sexual health.”

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PATENT In: Dobray 2011 141

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This is all well and good, but according to the organization, “education is one of the most important arenas for gender socialization in society, and thus for the perpetuation and reproduction of gender inequalities and discrimination.” And, of course, gender discrimination in education occurs in areas such as “the content of formal curricula and teaching materials and the representation of gender in them; the conscious or unconscious gender socialization work of teachers; gender socialization by peers in schools; discrimination in classroom work; the orientation of boys and girls towards different professional and academic fields; discrimination in higher education and later in academic and teaching careers; the hierarchical structure of educational and research institutions, with a very low proportion of women in senior positions; and the lack of development of gender stereotypes awareness among prospective teachers during teacher training.” Thus, “labor market segregation may result to a large extent from the segregation of education into specific fields, which in the course of socialization directs boys and girls towards different fields.” Indeed, “gender inequalities in education and the world of work are rooted in social constructions of gender roles, which from birth strongly determine the place of boys and girls, women and men, in their families and in society, the opportunities open to them, the norms and values that are expected of them, and the social expectations that are placed on them. Gender stereotypes in education, both in curricula and syllabi and in social interactions in schools (e.g., that women are caring, submissive, child-loving, more interested in the family, physically weaker, less knowledgeable about science, whereas men are decisive, independent, creative, controlling, breadwinners) risk limiting individuals’ room for maneuver, development, choices, and the broad and free development of skills and qualities.” The authors go on to say that “the textbooks are stereotypical of gender, targeting primarily white, heterosexual, middle-class, science-literate, able-bodied boys, thus ignoring the diversity of the student population.”

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Well, that’s what we meant when we pointed out that the devil is in the detail when it comes to lofty and appealing goals. Of course, it is highly important that everyone in school is helped to develop according to their talents, whether they fit the stereotypes or not. Women’s Interest should consider the question whether, if these gender stereotypes are so pervasive in society, in schools, and among parents and teachers, it is not possible that the reasons for them are not arbitrary but that in the background there are real, innate, and biological differences and differences in interests between boys and girls. And because we live in a given world, in a given society, limited by time, space, and relationships, our choices are inherently “limited.” The individualistic approach that absolutizes and exaggerates the otherwise important possibility of developing individual abilities and qualities as the sole criterion is completely wrong. Stereotypes are prior expectations. The important thing is rather, as I wrote before, that the people concerned are able to override these prior expectations, because stereotypes have always existed and will always exist. It is a gross exaggeration to say that the potential distraction of girls from mathematics cannot be easily overcome by female students who are gifted in mathematics. Gender stereotypes in science have long since been fatally weakened and are not typically enforced in schools. In addition, the claims of Women’s Interest counter the international and national literature and the public perception that school is actually more of an effort for boys overall, and more “suited” to girls, to female abilities.211

211

Jessel–Moir 2015 Lippa 2005, pp. 237-241. See also the beginning of chapter 6. 143

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In their public policy recommendations, Women’s Interest states that “the mass influx of women into higher education has not changed the under-representation of women in science and engineering and in higher academic positions” and condemns the “widespread acceptance of traditional gender roles” as making it difficult for women to advance in their careers. They therefore say that priority should be given to “education free of stereotypes and prejudices” and that the system for assessing textbooks should be re-regulated and “left to experts in gender studies.” Schools should promote “career choices and further education paths that do not correspond to traditional female or male roles.” And a “gender perspective” should be introduced in teacher training. Women are underrepresented in science and engineering not because of unfair patriarchal social structures but because the vast majority of men and women have different biologically determined interests. This is not to say that there are no exceptions to this, but it remains primarily a question of the “wiring” of male and female brains. The underlying assumption of the Women’s Interest publication is that the fair distribution of women and men across various occupational fields should always half and half, and if it is not, it is the result of some unjustifiable injustice. Yet, as will be explained later, even in the most egalitarian and free societies, the more traditional division of labor between men and women returns. The fact is that justice requires one thing: that everyone should be able to study and work according to their interests and talents as far as possible. If there are no formal obstacles to this, and no serious social forces standing in the way of anyone doing so, then society is fair in terms of occupational choice. We should add that no justice requires society to provide everyone with the job that he or she wants. Justice requires that nobody should be prevented by prohibition from pursuing his or her desired vocation; but that society should provide for any man or woman such employment as he or she may desire is not a matter of justice.

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And it is impossible to educate without using stereotypes because education and socialization actually serve introduction and integration into society. If a critical approach receives an important role in education and we refuse to impose role models on our children and students, i.e., we allow them to be “outliers”, education would still not be role-free. Instead, the acceptance and transgression of stereotypes would permeate education and teaching as a strange mixture. Besides, most people stand out from gender stereotypes since everyone is a unique individual. It cannot be said that societies impose their role expectations on their members in a uniformizing way in every detail. In its chapter on the media, the policy booklet states that “the media as an institutional system operates embedded in other patriarchal structures of society and as such is characterized by male privilege. Media organizations, due to men’s roles as decision-makers and the dominance of male-centered thinking, also function as male-dominated workplaces, based on the assumption of women’s unilateral caring roles and do not respond to gender injustices. As a consequence, organizations run by predominantly men or, sometimes, by women who are adapted to a system of patriarchal values and expectations (publishing houses, editorial offices, etc.) are not, or only to a very limited extent, sensitive to the injustice of gender hierarchies and have little interest in examining the sector’s responsibility for creating and maintaining inequalities.” The publication recognizes that there are many media products for women on the market, but according to the authors, states that these invariably “reinforce the current unequal role of women in society and do not challenge social inequalities” and are, in fact, a major tool for the reproduction of gender discrimination; a “general sexism” pervades the media. At the same time, the media “allows a great deal of space for stereotypical gender portrayals, whereby women, despite their diversity and their important role in society, are generally portrayed in less prestigious roles than men.”

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Among the authors’ general recommendations on the media are the requirements for a sexism-free media, the introduction of accountable gender-ethical principles, the promotion of gender equality in media companies, and the teaching of “gender-ethical” journalism. Specific suggestions include “the creation of regular columns analyzing gender aspects of the news, equal distribution of articles requiring gender analysis between male and female journalists”; “the use of a balanced gender ratio in the selection of interviewees, experts and discussion panels”; “the avoidance of gender discriminatory interview and debate questions”; “portraying women as a non-homogenous group, and presenting the perspectives of women from different social, cultural, and economic backgrounds that show their strengths and diversity of roles”; “avoiding gender stereotypical, sexualizing, objectifying, or degrading portrayals of women”; and “using non-sexist, inclusive language.” The author of the book that you hold in your hands is a journalist with a double major in liberal arts. One of my majors was communication before the Bologna system was introduced, i.e., during the five-year, uni-vocational training system, and I later taught journalism and media studies at university. I am aware that in Anglo-Saxon media studies there is an almost exclusive leftist-feminist paradigm.212 I also believe it is important that journalistic ethics treat women fairly.

212

Stokes 2008, p. 10 (notion of Lajos Császi in his Introduction to the Hungarian edition.) 146

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However, I have several criticisms of the above proposals. First of all, if “gender-ethical” journalism means that general journalistic ethics also apply to women, including many of the above proposals, it is acceptabl., In this case, however, the term “gender-ethical” becomes merely an attention-grabbing catchphrase without any differentiating content; if, on the other hand, “gender-ethical” journalism means feminist vocabulary, themes, and social engineering, then it is effectively a case of feminists wanting to see their own worldview reflected in the media. This is understandable, of course, as everyone would like to see a stronger assertion of their own worldview in the media, but it is still a desire to see a worldview asserted. In addition, the media is characterized by a very high degree of contingency: frequent staff turnover, the difficulty of planning daily news, and the fact that the news is shaped by the situation, made difficult also by the need for constant thematic coverage. There is, of course, thematization and thematic sensitivity, but this is partly determined by the nature of the media (whether it is political, economic, cultural or feminist, for example) and partly by its ideological orientation. But the trickiest question is whether the media can be used to educate people. It is clear from the above package of proposals, as well as from the set of proposals on education, that if society does not present the image and state of affairs that feminists expect, then education and the media should be the ones to “break” society because women’s magazines are for some reason very popular with women, and these magazines both reinforce and challenge traditional gender roles. Moreover, these fashion and lifestyle magazines are much more widely read than political media outlets and are more influential in shaping public opinion. In any case, they reflect the needs of their readers. There is no doubt that both education and the media have a major impact on society, but in this chicken-and-egg dilemma, the chicken, specifically society, came first. Education and media always reflect the image and expectations of a society. This does not mean

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that it is not possible to educate people and shape society through them, but only to a limited extent. Just like society, the world of education and the media is made up of fallible human beings and just as society cannot be idealized and ironed out, neither can the world of education and the media. Feminists are wrong when they assume that education and the media should be a means of eliminating social differences and correcting society. They are both subject to the same ethical principles that apply to society as a whole, and it is within the framework of these principles that their professional aspects should be applied. Because us humans are imperfect, this ethical code is as flawed in these two fields as it is everywhere else. Moreover, feminists’ expectation that the media should be involved in social engineering is ethically problematic. While the Women’s Interest publication repeatedly denounces the “paternalistic” attitude, the package of proposals on education and media reflects precisely a paternalistic and contemptuous frame of mind in which feminist experts are enlightened authorities to be listened to, while otherwise having a self-image of representing an anti-authoritarian ideological school and professing “basic democratic values.”

GENDER THEORY AND DEMOCRACY The question is, therefore, whether gender theory and gender mainstreaming serve democracy; in other words, whether they are the depositaries of “basic democratic values.” “Basic democratic values” are usually understood in the broadest sense as the extension of equality and freedom, possibly with the additional aim of increasing voter participation in decision-making (deliberative and participatory democracy.)

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It is important to know that there is no single ideal democracy. It is not just that there are many types of democracy, but even the typologies are diverse. In the field of democratic theory, there are two different starting points: one sees democracy as a decision-making methodology (modus operandi), the other as a way of life (modus vivendi), as the realization of certain social ideals (equality, freedom, certain ideologies, etc.) Since the latter can be diverse, researchers of democracy tend to take the former, methodological approach as their starting point. Among the typologies that classify democracies, some consider liberal democracy (and there is no clear consensus on its definition) as the most complete form of democracy, while other typologies do not.213 One of the typologies, a worldwide study by the University of Notre Dame, distinguished between six types of democracy: electoral, liberal, majoritarian, participatory, deliberative, and egalitarian. These democracies are only more or less compatible with each other because their aims are diametrically opposed, nevertheless they are equally legitimate. Electoral democracy focuses on the struggle for power; liberal (consensual, pluralist) democracy on transparency and limiting the government accompanied by the guarantee of civil liberties and the rule of law; majoritarian democracy focuses on effective governance through centralization; participatory democracy on local decision-making and political participation; deliberative democracy on debate before political decisions; and egalitarian democracy on equality. Although there are compatible goals, these cannot always be achieved simultaneously, and the greatest conflict is clearly between liberal and majoritarian democracy.214

213

For a comprehensive overview of the theory and practice of democracies, see Møller–Svend–Skaaning 2013 214 Coppedge et al. 2011 149

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Liberal and Marxist approaches in particular, including feminism, tend to talk about democratic goals and core values. However, whatever type of democracy we talk about, whatever typology we use, we invariably run into a fundamental contradiction if we want to use democracy to achieve goals, and value-laden goals at that. And that is that such goals, which people like to present as democratic, are about what the end result should be. But democracy is essentially, at its heart, a method of decision-making. It is not about what to decide, but how to decide. From this point of view, there are no “core democratic values” beyond democratic participation in decision-making because the number one core democratic value is that all adult members of a given political community should have a say in the decision, meaning that the people should decide. Democracy is about how decisions are made, and the idea of “core democratic values” is about the outcome of those decisions. The two will not necessarily coincide, if only because democracy is, among other things, about the competition of interests, values, and worldviews. The question of “how” can easily clash with the question of “what.” If the participants of democracy (rule of the people) democratically decide that they do not wish to pursue the goals of gender mainstreaming and the LGBTQ movement, but gender mainstreaming activists and the LGBTQ movement believe that their ideas serve democratic goals, then the two factors are in irreconcilable conflict. This is not a purely theoretical problem. The LGBTQ movement, for example, while often claiming the democratic nature of its aspirations such as the legalization of same-sex marriage, actually avoids democratic procedures. Asked whether we trust the common sense of the people, which is a requirement of democracy, same-sex marriage advocates have so far answered no. Instead, they prefer the decision-making method that they expect to deliver the results they want, but also mainly by putting trust in the courts. In Canada and the United States, for example, the courts have pushed through the introduction of same-sex marriage, and in the US, the courts have usually 150

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overruled the results of state referendums, which is a clear democratic deficit. This means that same-sex marriage is not democratic in itself but democratic when it is democratically introduced, which is true of everything else, of course.215 This is a dilemma that not only afflicts the LGBTQ movement but also feminists. Democracy means rule of the people, and a democratic outcome is one that is the result of democratic decision-making, regardless of its content; that is, democracy is not about norms and values but about a decision-making methodology in order to avoid tyranny over the political community. The problem with contemporary public discourse is that today everything is legitimized by the claim that it is “democratic”; but this is merely a contemporary myth that transforms democracy into a religion rather than seeing it as a valuable political institution.

CONCLUSIONS Zsuzsanna Vajda and Éva Kósa state in their textbook on the psychology of education: “The school that emphasizes the social determination of gender roles tends to consider the relationship between men and women exclusively as a relationship of power, subordination, and superiority. However, it inconsistently deals with these power relations without examining the obvious material and factual differences between men and women, and even rejects that they play any role in the formation of gender roles.” Vajda and Kósa ask the question: “If biological endowments have nothing to do with social roles, why have all cultures to date created their own basic categories along these lines? Why do we talk about men and women?”216

215 216

See more on this: Szilvay 2016a pp. 86-111 Vajda–Kósa 2005, pp. 240-241 151

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The starting point and anthropology of gender mainstreaming is wrong or at least one-sided, and focuses exclusively on structures, which is again a one-sided, anti-male, absolutist ideology of equality and freedom. It contradicts human nature (the ontological structure of man) and refuses to accept that man is imperfect. The latter also means that if we were to rebuild human society from scratch, it would probably look much the same as it does now, with hierarchies, injustices, and of course gender roles and gender stereotypes. Because that is the way we humans are. Gender mainstreaming seeks to monitor systematically, permanently, and continuously the differences that develop during the spontaneous emergence of society and its life which it does not like. To this end, it seeks to interfere in the smallest details and most trivial decisions of people’s lives, which would enforce equality on an almost police-state basis rather than freedom. One could say, with slight exaggeration, that since the vast majority of rock bands over the last seventy years have been male, the advocates of gender mainstreaming are looking for the oppressive patriarchal-capitalist structures behind this, saying that they are an unfair male privilege. Their aim is to make public policy proposals to artificially create a ratio of male to female bands within the music industry that is as close to 50-50 as possible. And they are trying to achieve this even if they can never find enough female rock musicians to achieve even a fraction of the target. This is not a theoretical proposition: there are a number of examples of feminist proposals to examine and “fix” the world of popular music, including rock music.217

217

E.g., Shawchuck 1989 Wald 1998 Strong 2016 Carson 2004 152

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It is not society that corrupts man but fallible (not inherently bad, but of mixed nature and fallible) people who create fallible societies, which of course reflect on man. If man is inherently good and only society spoils him, it is impossible to answer the question of how spanners got thrown in the works, how evil (including aggressiveness, oppression and violence) entered into a society of inherently good people. And this is not resolved by Rousseau’s explanation that some people were suddenly overcome by selfishness; for if man is inherently good, then he will not simply be overcome by selfishness (neither by the desire for power nor anything else.) This idealism, which is also represented by feminism, takes into account neither the fallibility of man nor of the fact that evil is inevitable in the world.218 And that is why conservatism is called “the politics of imperfection”; on account of accepting human nature as it is imperfect, fallible and incorrigible, and it knows that imperfect people will create an imperfect society. Conservatism therefore takes a serene and generous attitude to these phenomena of imperfection and fallibility, not wishing to eradicate them from our daily lives but rather seeking to manage them, to control them, and it considers living with them to be the best humanly possible solution.219 Modern political conservatism is to a large extent a secularized Augustinianism; specifically, it is a reflection in modern political thought of the theological-philosophical tradition based on St. Augustine.220 This is not to say that it cannot embrace

218

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971), an American Protestant theologian who was highly critical of both capitalism and liberalism and was initially a socialist and pacifist but later broke with these ideals, is a very unique thinker in this respect. I would particularly recommend his following works: Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study of Ethics and Politics, 1932; The Nature and Destiny of Man, 1943; Christian Realism and Political Problems, 1953. The most classic book of the theme, however, is St. Augustine’s Civitas Dei (City of God.) 219 See Quinton 1978 220 On Augustinianism, see for example Frenyó 2018 153

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some of the aspirations of feminists, but it is more a question of making minor adjustments of what feminism considers to be a superficial treatment — necessary but not sufficient. The more ambitious social engineering plans put forward by gender mainstreaming, which “go deep” and “get to the root” of the problem, are entirely opposed by conservatism, which would rather preserve the basic social structures. Russell Kirk put it this way: “For the preservation of a healthy diversity in any civilization, there must survive orders and classes, differences in material condition, and many sorts of inequality. The only true forms of equality are equality at the Last Judgment and equality before a just court of law; all other attempts at levelling must lead, at best, to social stagnation. Society requires honest and able leadership; and if natural and institutional differences are destroyed, presently some tyrant or host of squalid oligarchs will create new forms of inequality.”221 Women and men are interdependent. Their ideological opposition is very dangerous for the order and harmony of society. Of course, in society, cooperation, harmony, and conflict, and conflict of interests, are often inextricably intertwined by simultaneously characterizing the same relationships. Far be it from me to describe society as purely harmonious; however, I consider it equally one-sided to focus solely on conflicts between women and men. Of course, narrowing the scope down to this is understandable in the case of advocacy organizations, but to manufacture a separate ideology for it is unnecessary and harmful. Gender mainstreaming is the absolutization and imposition of a single point of view on society. So, let’s look at the extent to which contemporary feminism’s claims about discrimination against women in America and the Western world are true today.

221

Kirk 2014, p. 553 154

Chapter 6

THE MANIPULATIVE FACE OF CONTEMPORARY FEMINISM British education expert Dr Joanna Williams, author of Women vs. Feminism222, as well as numerous studies and books on higher education in the Anglo-Saxon world, became critical of contemporary feminism when, during a university course discussing girls’ academic opportunities, she raised the issue that surveys showed that boys were doing worse than girls at school. In reply, the seminar leader argued that no one cared when girls did worse. Throughout the following week, it was all about the threat to girls and women from men, and whether it was their own fathers or husbands. “I thought of my own boys, then aged three and one. I wanted to protect them from knowing about domestic violence; I was devastated by the implication that they somehow carried guilt by association, that their essential maleness, their masculinity, was something dangerous and inherently threatening. If feminism meant ignoring boys falling behind at school and telling girls to fear members of their own families as well as half of their classmates, then it wasn’t something I wanted anything to do with,” writes Joanna Williams.223

222 223

Williams 2017 Ibid. Loc. p. 241

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But, she adds, critical thinking in this environment means looking at the world from a feminist perspective, not questioning feminism itself. Joanna Williams explains that feminism is increasingly disconnected from the realities of young women’s lives, and intersectional feminism aims “to demonize men and degrade women by imbuing them with a false sense of their own victimhood.”224 In the first part, Williams describes the life of today’s (American) woman, the working woman, the wage gap, and motherhood. In the second part, she examines contemporary feminist victimology, sex, relationships, and the “boy problem.” In the third part, she analyzes feminism and its various waves, followed by an analysis of the famous feminist aphorism that “the personal is political”, and the volume concludes with the theme of femininity. Let’s see what she comes up with! There are more girls and they perform better than boys in roughly all areas of education, the author begins, while discussing high school and university progression in detail. More girls graduate from high school, more girls go to university, and more girls complete their studies than boys. This trend began in America in the 1980s. While there are natural differences between the sexes in terms of who is good at what; whereas neurobiology used to emphasize the advantages of men, now it emphasizes the advantages of women. School performance is primarily a cultural issue, says Joanna Williams, who argues that contemporary feminism cannot cope with the fact that one of its long-standing issues, namely women’s disadvantage in school, has ceased to exist and has even been reversed, and that feminists have now begun to emphasize the characteristics of men framed as disadvantageous, which runs counter to the idea that gender is a social construct. (More women are also enrolling in higher education in Hungary.)

224

Ibid. Loc. 251 156

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There have always been more women teachers and in the Anglo-Saxon world the curriculum is strongly, explicitly feminist, Joanna Williams points out, adding that this also means high politicization and feminist readings. Today’s feminists have paradoxically reintroduced gender stereotypes and emphasize female victimhood. And they try to eradicate masculinity within boys, or at least attempt to make them feel guilty about their masculinity. What feminists can still use for their own purposes are the few areas of science where there is still some male predominance, and this is mostly in the sciences and technology research; however, the lack of men in veterinary medicine and pharmacy does not bother anyone.

WOMEN AT WORK According to Joanna Williams, women’s job status follows from their educational achievements. Today, almost half of working people in America and Britain are women. This also means that the number of working mothers has risen radically in recent decades, and more and more women are in managerial positions with an ever increasing number working in jobs traditionally seen as men’s jobs. However, the higher proportion of women in the labor market and in formerly male-dominated areas is not primarily the result of feminist aspirations, but of changes in the labor market. Fewer men are working and the nature of work itself has changed. The emphasis has shifted from industry to services, with physical strength taking a back seat and mental ability becoming the dominant factor in job requirements. In other words, it is the traditionally male-dominated sector that has seen its star fall. In America, female employment was at its highest at the turn of the millennium, with 74 percent of women working, but

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has since fallen below 70 percent, and even more so for men.225 The rate is 90 percent among childless, high school-educated women.226 Today, women make up almost half of the labor force in both America and Britain (47 and 46 percent, respectively.)227 And changes in the labor market have disproportionately disadvantaged men. Yet the narrative of sexism and women’s disadvantage persists in feminist circles. The gap between statistics and individual experience is widening. The author points out that feminist concerns about working women are predominantly about elite jobs. Since this does not affect the majority of ordinary women, they are not very interested. The most generous interpretation of this is that if feminists concentrate on the examination of elite jobs in elite companies, this might have a positive effect on the situation of other women; however, there is no evidence that this is the case. Quotas, which many feminists support, imply that progress is a matter of biology, not talent, while it is exactly the biological explanations that feminists reject. While a small elite group of women do indeed compete for the top jobs on an equal footing with men, mostly in the creative industries, the vast majority of women have traditional female jobs, the main purpose of which is not based on fulfilment or a career but to provide a decent income for the family. Men are no different, as most of them work for the same purpose. But instead of fighting for higher pay for all, for example, feminist campaigns reflect the problems of a small group of middle-class women.

225 226 227

Catalyst 2006 Court 1995

Office for National Statistics 2016a, b 158

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From 2010 to 2014, the number of creative directors increased from 3 to 11.5 percent.228 Of course, it might be interesting to know why more women do not want such jobs, “but the long, anti-social hours that make this work incompatible with family life may be a sufficient explanation.”229 The reality is that women in lower paid jobs are more likely to get results if they fight together with men, not against them. “It can seem as if feminism today has little to say to women who have jobs rather than careers,” says Williams.230 The new feminism is trying to create a new workplace etiquette, an ascetic set of rules that makes every man think twice before interacting with female colleagues, but for women the message is even more dire: that they are constantly at risk, threatened by misogyny and sexist compliments. If you question the oppression of women in the workplace, you may find yourself in a strange position. In 2016, Kevin Roberts was suspended as a director at the international advertising company Saatchi and Saatchi for daring to suggest that gender bias was not a factor in the advertising industry. Women make up 46.4 percent of the sector’s workforce, and 30.5 percent of those in senior positions are women. Such insights are futile, however, as any discussion of women in the workplace that does not emphasize that women are perpetually disadvantaged is immediately shut down by feminists. It is true that the contemporary feminist milieu is not very aware of the possibility of individual choice, seeing it as an illusion. As Joanna Williams points out, a lifelong commitment to a company, or even a profession, is becoming less fashionable, and many people do not look to work for emotional and intellectual fulfilment and inspiration. It may not be the individual choice that matters most, but perhaps whether one has the resources and support to make a choice as freely as possible. 228 229 230

The 3% Movement 2016 Williams 2017 Loc. 852 Williams 2017 Loc. 819 159

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EQUAL PAY: IS THERE OR NOT? “At a time when men and women are paid the same for the same work, and younger women earn, on average, more than men of the same age, belief in the pay gap is an expression of faith,” the author points out, referring to the gender pay gap, one of the most important myths of gender theory.231 Since the 1960s, the figure of the female breadwinner has become a reality in the United States, with a fourfold increase in the number of women who are the primary or sole breadwinners for their families.232 Not only are American women earning more than ever before, but the pay gap is the smallest it has ever been.233 These results are usually attributed to the feminist lobby. While feminists have indeed played their part, these achievements are only partly due to feminism, as they have largely been driven by demographic and economic changes. For example, the fact that studying at university and work have pushed back the time to marry and have children.234 Since the 1970s, the number of American women who have not had children has doubled,235 and this has contributed to the disappearance of the pay gap.

231 232 233 234 235

Williams 2017 Loc. 886 Cory–Stirling 2015 Moss 2015 Wolf 2013, p. 34 Ibid. 26 160

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The aforementioned change in the nature of work also played a role. As the emphasis shifted from industry and production towards services, men’s wages continued to grow at a much slower pace than women’s. Whereas women’s wages used to be a supplement or pocket money for the family budget, they are now a necessity. Yet feminists point out that women are not paid the same for the same work. According to some surveys, the female equivalent to a man’s dollar is 77 cents.236 However, as Joanna Williams points out, this is a one-sided and misleading explanation of the reality of the situation, as these statistics compare salary averages without taking into account the form of employment and the number of hours worked. If we are really comparing the same job, the same number of hours and the same form of employment, the pay gap between men and women almost disappears: “The beauty of the gender pay gap is that it can be simultaneously large, small, and non-existent.”237 Moreover, many countries have already made equal pay compulsory: the United States in 1963 and Britain in 1970. Feminist activists want to make this non-existent or barely existent gap look as big as possible, so they compare the average annual earnings of women and men, ignoring hours worked, field, education, and work experience. By contrast, “When the wages of women and men working in the same jobs for the same number of hours, at the same level and for the same number of years, are compared, there is no pay gap at all.”238

236 237 238

O’Brien 2015 Williams 2017 Loc. 972 Ibid. Loc. 1013; Press Association 2015 161

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Many more women than men work part-time, and feminists see even this as a result of sexism. Although it is true that this gap is also narrowing.239 And part-time work pays proportionately less.240 But if we look at the wages of part-time workers alone, the picture is very different: in America, part-time women earn more on average than part-time men; the trend is that they are earning more and more.241 A significant proportion of part-time women work in highly skilled, elite jobs, such as part-time doctors; men work part-time in low-paid, unskilled jobs.242 A person’s salary is not determined by their gender but by many other factors. Most importantly by age, as people over 45 started working during a completely different era and with different attitudes than today’s new entrants. Education, field of specialty, family connections, mentors, and ambition also matter. And for many, the limited range of job opportunities available in their area is a determining factor. But the real pay gap is between highly gainful elite jobs and poorly paid part-time jobs, regardless of gender, Joanna Williams points out, arguing that there is not a gender pay gap but a social pay gap:243

239

Belfield et al. 2017 Maybin 2016 241 Office for National Statistics 2016a, b 242 Belfield et al. 2017 Packham 2015 243 That is, instead of the “gender pay gap”, there is a “social class pay gap.” Williams 2017 Loc. 1065 240

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“Among cleaners, caterers, carers, and shop workers, the gender pay gap is very slight; minimum wage jobs tend to pay the minimum wage to both men and women alike. Among Chief Executive Officers, on the other hand, the gender pay gap is roughly 30 percent: more men work as CEOs, many have been in post for longer and they tend to be in bigger, more established firms.”244 The remaining, disappearing and shrinking pay gap is more likely to affect women over 45 years of age. The solutions to the almost non-existent pay gap are not always what feminists expect: for example, some companies simply do not hire women for lower-paid jobs in order to improve their average statistics. A good example is the roughly equal proportion of men and women working in the social sciences and humanities. In science and engineering, however, there are more men. At the same time, there are more women in education and medicine. People working in scientific research are better paid because their work is more competitive in the market. Yet feminists, with their distorting statistics, want female professors to be paid more just because they are women.245 Feminists, who otherwise tend to disparage childbearing and see motherhood as a kind of slavery and self-abandonment, are usually upset about the wage disadvantage of women returning to work from maternity leave or its local version. This disadvantage, according to Joanna Williams’ research, does not exist in America either: in the United States, women returning from maternity leave earn the same as their male counterparts.246

244 245 246

Williams 2017 Loc. 1077 Grove 2016a Williams 2017 Loc. 1116 Costa–Elming–Joyce 2016 Wolf 2013, p. 49 163

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Again, the myth of this payment disadvantage comes from comparing inappropriate data. Women who have young children are understandably less likely to work overtime and are not working to advance their careers during these years. Obviously, women are not alone in this decision and often have to make trade-offs, but it is still the case that by personal choice, more women prefer childcare and being at home to work. Traditional family roles are also changing, with working-class men now doing much more housework than their high-earning counterparts in elite jobs. (And men are making compromises too.) We can add that feminists who believe that the pay gap is real respond by saying that it is structural differences that need to be looked at, not individual pay. In other words, they argue, we need to look at the fact that areas that typically employ more women, such as the social sector, are underpaid as a whole. There can indeed be large pay gaps between different sectors, but those who claim that this is specifically a difference between men and women, are wrong. Pay gaps exist for a variety of reasons, both at an individual and a structural level. It would indeed be welcome if some sectors were better paid. But this is not primarily based on discrimination between men and women.

FEMALE VICTIMHOOD Because statistics show that women are much better off than feminists imagine, feminist activists — to make their struggle meaningful — prefer to hear about individual experiences of hardship and sexism, which they believe says more than dry statistics. But they are not interested in the stories of happy and successful women who have not experienced sexism. Feminists fear that misogyny is not specific to men, that is, that women’s false consciousness has internalized misogyny, as shown by the 53 percent of women who voted for Donald Trump in 2016. 164

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Internalized misogyny was coined by Kate Millett, a feminist author with mental health problems and a conflicted nature,247 in her work Sexual Politics. It is tragicomic, however, when feminism, which seeks to increase the possibilities of free choice, ends up telling us who has chosen freely and who has not, and that only those who have chosen in accordance with feminist ideas have chosen freely. Contemporary feminism simply does not trust women. The stereotypical view of women as irrational, non-independent people is therefore more a feature of feminist thinking today than of men in general, Joanna Williams points out, adding that contemporary feminism conditions women to see themselves as passive victims, unable to stand up for themselves. Victimhood became a focus of academic interest in the 1960s and gained popularity over the following two decades. During this period, many forms of harassment were discovered in all walks of life and personal or social conditions became psychological problems. After the blurring of the boundaries between private and public life in the 1970s, problems that had previously been considered personal began to be treated as structural issues by feminism. Today, all women are victims, even if they are successful, because the whole women’s collective is a victim. Feminists see it as strong and superior because it is a survivor, so to speak, and therefore deserves the heroism of a survivor. Thus, women have been transformed from autonomous agents into victims in need of special protection. In the age of identity politics, mental problems define the human being, the author points out.

247

Tapson 2018 165

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FREE SEX – OR NOT? The era of the sexual revolution promoted by feminists was shortlived, Williams notes, because the new anti-sex feminism now seeks to re-regulate sexuality. What would that look like? “At a debate in London recently, a young woman related the experience of a friend who went off to a bedroom with a young man at a party. After a while, the young man cleared his throat and asked the friend if she was ‘consenting to sexual activity.’ The friend reported that she was immediately ‘weirded out.’ She got up and left,” writes Josie Appleton.248 What is the reason for this? It is that “Two pieces of received wisdom dominate the modern academic discussion about sexual consent. First, consent must be positive and explicit. Second, consent must be taught. According to the champions of the doctrine of ‘affirmative consent’ — lately gaining traction on college campuses in America and Europe — sexual consent isn’t something negotiated between two people or demonstrated by tacit gestures, glances, and movements. Rather, it must be stated explicitly, using specified terms. Consent occurs on terms only a lawyer would appreciate. In some cases, affirmative consent can be verbal: ‘I consent,’ or ‘Yes, we agree to have sex!’ Sometimes there are forms to sign. There is even a smartphone app into which you ‘say the name of the person with whom you want to have sexual relations.’ Add a clear ‘yes,’ and ‘consent is confirmed.’ How romantic! Affirmative consent provokes a host of strange human behaviors, which is why it needs to be taught in school. In the real world, prospective lovers are capable of communicating consent with their eyes; in the ‘weirded-out’ affirmative-consent world, an imaginary third party needs to hear it spoken out loud.”

248

Appleton 2017 166

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“We are living in a new sex bureaucracy,” announce two married Harvard law professors in a recent edition of the California Law Review. Jacob and Jennie Suk Gersen lament “the steady expansion of regulatory concepts of sex discrimination and sexual violence to the point that the regulated area comes also to encompass ordinary sex.” Some U. S. universities have gone so far as not only to define what constitutes affirmative consent but also make the parties enter into contracts that include the terms to be used. The University of Wyoming, for example, states that “anything less than voluntary, sober, enthusiastic, verbal, noncoerced, continual, active, and honest consent is sexual assault.” Since body language can be misinterpreted, the University states that consent can be expressed in words such as “yes!”, perhaps “yes, yes, oh, yes!” The university even suggests some phrases that students should use when making love.249 The old religious and social customs, which today are often thought of as too strict with or without reason and which were unwritten, at least recognized the complexity of human relationships. Today’s feminism, however, demands clear verbal and ongoing consent in a totally unrealistic way, as all men are seen as potential rapists. All this is utterly absurd. However, the anti-sex attitude among feminists did not start today. As new contraceptive techniques made sex less and less about having children, it became an expression of male dominance in the eyes of some feminists (while other feminists were fighting for free sex for this very reason.) As early as 1969, Kate Millett interpreted lovemaking as an acceptance of domination, and later Andrea Dworkin explained in her work Intercourse that sex is about controlling and owning women. Women are objectified and subordinated by patriarchal domination.

249

Gersen–Gersen 2016 167

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Domestic violence was less and less understood as having economic and power causes, and it was more and more women’s mental vulnerability and men’s aggressiveness that were seen as the root causes. At the same time, social issues also emerged as diagnosable syndromes, with individual problems existing less and less as they became structural issues. And “learned helplessness” sets in motion a “cycle of violence.” The theory was put forward by Lenore Walker in her 1979 book The Battered Woman. Later, feminists attributed the disadvantage of women in the workplace and many other problems to sexual harassment. In the wake of a 1976 court case, sexual harassment was declared a form of discrimination by the legislature, and this drew so much attention to the issue that suddenly sexual violence was looked for and found everywhere. Not for nothing did Daphne Patai write a book entitled Heterophobia, in which she also discusses “the industry of sexual violence.” Today, the definition of sexual harassment and violence is entirely subjective — it is whatever a woman feels is uncomfortable for her. A 2016 study by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) in the UK found that half of women experience sexual harassment in the workplace, 52 percent of the 800 people surveyed. A third of those surveyed mentioned inappropriate jokes and unwanted touching, while most generally described some male joke about women as sexual harassment. Even so, the TUC survey lamented the fact that respondents were reluctant to expand the definition of sexual harassment, because they did not understand what it was. So, the survey’s authors also classified as victims those who thought their own experiences were insignificant. This also shows that feminism is revisionist.250 As Joanna Williams points out: “Feminism has internalized the view of women as

250

Trades Union Congress 2016 168

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victims to such an extent it is no longer relevant whether an individual woman has had personal experience of violence, abuse or rape.”251 The same approach is responsible for the emphasis on “rape culture”, a view that sees sexual violence as a fully accepted, common phenomenon that is rarely exposed and is surrounded by myths. In this context, too, feminists often classify as victims those who do not see themselves as victims at all. For example, women are believed to be unable to consent freely to intercourse if they have consumed alcohol; the same cannot be said of course of men who have consumed alcohol. And then there is the claim that in a patriarchal society, women are not free to give their full consent to sex at all, according to contemporary feminism.252 A survey quoted by Williams, for example, found that there are 85,000 victims of sexual assault in Wales and England every year. However, only 15 percent of these are reported to the police and 1,000 cases are prosecuted. This actually means that the 85,000 cases are a guess. A 2010 UK survey found that 68 percent of female university students had experienced sexual harassment,253 but this figure is based on a voluntary 2000-sample survey. Today, any advances by men that are perceived as unpleasant by women, or subsequently declared unpleasant, are sexual harassment, Joanna Williams warns. The feminist author Rebecca Solnit, for example, says that violence is a primary characteristic of masculinity.254 This contemporary feminist approach demonizes masculinity and makes it impossible for intimate relationships based on trust to develop because it is this mistrust that is being instilled in girls.

251 252 253 254

Williams 2017 Loc. 2014 MacKinnon 1989, p. 245 National Union of Students 2011 Solnit 2014, p. 6 169

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The definition of violence has been broadened since the 1990s, first with the idea that it is possible to inflict a real psychological wound verbally, and that racist speech, for example, is outright “soul murder.”255 If I felt insulted, then what was said to me was inherently insulting. This view is a consequence of postmodern theories of personality, which hold that there is no essential self, that our whole personality is a social construct, created through interactions and language, and so the best way to abuse is with language. Thus, those who criticize us are trying to dismantle our personality. The question is, if someone defines themselves as a white, Western, heterosexual male, is their identity also entitled to protection or can they still be criticized for something (certainly for their alleged position of power and oppressiveness?) Mary Daly, in her 1978 work Gyn/Ecology, argues that violence, racism, genocides, and “biocides” are rooted in male evil.256 In the spirit of the theory of “toxic masculinity”, men are expected to catch up with the new ethos of therapeutic and emotional behavior, in line with the zeitgeist that promotes “feminine values.” Kate Millett interpreted intimate personal relationships saying that sex, for whose freedom so much had been fought, was really an exercise of male power over women, and it has to be changed by political means.257 Despite all of this insanity, David Goodhart points out that “most men, like most women, are not interested in ‘patriarchal domination’ but in finding the right kind of male-female mutual dependence in a more egalitarian age.”258

255 256 257 258

Matsuta et al. 1993, p. 1 Segal 1987, p. 18 Millett 1999, p. 23 Goodhart 2019 p. 309 (Location in the Hungarian edition) 170

Chapter 7

POSTMODERN UNIVERSITIES Intersectional feminism is the dominant and defining ideology in the American academic world. The values of talent, diligence, and success, which are seen as oppressive to minority students, are denied or at least relativized; the search for the most subtle signs of oppression, exclusion, and discrimination with an almost paranoid obsession is spreading. All this makes students hypersensitive and permeates the university administration, thereby creating a huge bureaucracy. says Heather Mac Donald, author of Diversity Delusion and a researcher at the Manhattan Institute in New York.259 This academic climate is in large part a product of gender theory, and especially of intersectional feminism, which links constructionism with Marxist class struggle. In this spirit, the various struggles against oppression, real or often rather perceived, are linked together in the coalition of the oppressed and assume a common interest. Thus, the idea is to link the struggles of women, blacks, Latinos (ultimately all non-white American men), gay men, lesbians, transgender people, all other sexual minorities and identities, and of course the poor. Those who are usually left out are white, working-class and rural, mostly he-

259

Mac Donald 2018

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terosexual men, even if they are otherwise economically and socially disadvantaged, because, according to the revolutionary vanguard of the coalition of the oppressed, they are serving a justifiable sentence for their unjustifiable privilege. The basic premise of this self-contradictory ideology is that people are defined by the color of their skin, their gender, and their sexual orientation; Western civilization, and America in particular, is fundamentally defined by discrimination against these. And that has to change — this will for change permeates the world of American higher education. American universities are so terrified of racism and sexual violence because they believe they have a history of these issues; as if they were not among the most privileged and safest places in the world. At the same time, “the academic obsession with identity is ironic, since its roots lie in a philosophy that denied the very existence of the self”, that is, in postmodern deconstruction.260 The central concepts of this movement are “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings.” Safe spaces are places where no one can be questioned, and where students can retreat and feel safe. Today, however, the safe space has become a symbol of the whole radical Marxist-leftist liberation movement seeking to make the whole university a safe space where any criticism is automatically seen as a manifestation of oppressive racism, patriarchy, and the heteronormative matrix. The first “safe spaces” in the United States were gay bars and “awareness-raising groups”, but the idea was invented by the feminist movement, originally for the opposite purpose to what we see today: to come together for the free exchange of ideas and strategy development.261

260 261

Mac Donald 2018 Loc. 83 See e.g., Kenney 2001, p. 24 172

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“Trigger warning” is a common practice in the academic world, in which students are warned in advance of topics, points of view, or comments in class or in readings that may trigger previous traumas (or cause new ones), so as not to cause mental distraught. At first sight, this may sound very compassionate, but we are now seeing the names of great philosophers and writers being slapped with a “trigger warning.” This is how the “snowflake” generation was born, characterized by a fictitious hypersensitivity, inspired and motivated by ideology. This postmodern, left-wing academic climate is often explained through psychological reasons, namely that the “snowflake generation” has grown up in an overly sheltered environment and is unprepared for the conflicts of everyday life. However, this is not true: “Campus intolerance is at root not a psychological phenomenon but an ideological one. At its center is a worldview that sees Western culture as endemically racist and sexist. The overriding goal of the educational establishment is to teach young people within the ever-growing list of official victim classifications to view themselves as existentially oppressed. One outcome of that teaching is the forceful silencing of contrarian speech.”262 The anti-free speech attitude and hatred of Western civilization that pervades across campuses is partly due to the failure of university policies that positively discriminate against minorities. However, they do not want to admit this, so they explain the failure by even more pervasive structural racism and sexism, leading to an even more radical victimhood ideology.

262

Mac Donald 2018 Loc. 495 173

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The other characteristic of this academical world is affirmative action: admitting students not based only on their performance but using a so called ‘holistic approach”, taking account of their racial, ethnic, family, and financial background. When Richard Sander, professor at University of California, found in his study that law students admitted with lower requirements were less likely to graduate, thus showing that positive discrimination does not work, he was immediately excommunicated from the scientific community and his research was declared unscientific despite his liberal views and his personal commitment to anti-racism and racial equality.263 The economics professor Peter Arcidiacono and his colleagues came up with the same results. 264 Classroom racism, according to those with radical views, manifests itself in “microaggressions.” Microaggressions can be anything, even when an instructor corrects a student’s pronunciation or spelling. Critical race theory departments are hotbeds of this view. Professor Anthony Esolen thinks that intersectional feminism is “a deterministic theory [that] reduces the immensely complex tangle and muddle of human relations to a formula, and it ignores the fact that human ingenuity is like intelligent water: If you try to dam it up here, it will spill out over there. If it is narrowed in scope, it will gain in force. The human mind is restless, and the human will is stubborn, and people will make a virtue of necessity.”265

263 264 265

Sander 2012 Arcidacono-Aujeco-Spenner 2012 Esolen 2022, Loc. 629-631. 174

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THE MYTH OF ‘CAMPUS RAPE CULTURE’ According to the feminist myth first appearing in Ms. magazine in 1985, between one-fifth and one-quarter of female students will be victims of rape or sexual harassment by the end of their university years. If this were true, it would be very drastic: no crime, especially one of this severity, has 20–25 percent of a given population as victims. In 2016, the most violent US city, Detroit, had a total of two percent of its population as victims of all types of crime.266 Moreover, women now outnumber men in universities. So, how did feminists come up with 20–25 percent? As Heather Mac Donald explains, during the 1980s they were not satisfied with the fact that when they asked women in their research whether they had been victims of rape, very few said yes. So, in the mid-1980s, Mary Koss, a professor of health at the University of Arizona, devised a different methodology: she asked her subjects what they had experienced and then she decided whether she thought it was rape or not. She did this despite the fact that 73 percent of the women she categorized as rape victims told her they had not been raped. Of Koss’s “victims”, 42 percent had had sex with their “attacker” again of their own free will.267 Since then, in all similar feminist research, this gap between the perceptions of the researchers and the research subjects has been evident in many studies conducted after the turn of the millennium or even in the most recent years. According to the authors of a 2006 study at the University of Virginia, “unfortunately” only 23 percent

266

Tanner 2017. The (black) police chief of Detroit, by the way, denied that Detroit was the most violent city. See: https://eu.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2017/09/26/fbi-crime-statistics-detroit-police-chief-james-craig/701889001/ 267 Koss 1987 Raphael 2013 175

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of the women who they believe have been victims of violence think themselves268 as victims of violence, and there are many more such studies. According to a 2015 Harvard survey, 16 percent of female students have been victims of non-consensual sexual intercourse and 40 percent of female students have been victims of non-consensual sexual contact.269 However, the alleged “victims” did not report it anywhere, not because they withheld it or were ashamed but because they did not think they had been victims of any kind of violence. Indeed, researchers are moving further and further away from what common sense would call violence. According to a survey, Stanford University had 33 sexual assaults in 2016;270 an unlikely number, yet the university did not report any of them to the police, even if there was a “suspect.” This is because such incidents are mostly not considered rape under the law. Of course, feminists and universities believe that both the law and the police are masculine and anti-women, so the circle of thought is closed. Universities have developed their own investigative apparatus and methodology, and suspects are summoned to appear in ethics courts in connection with “sexual violence” that sometimes occurs, and are even expelled from the university, when often nothing illegal has been committed by these people. For example, chat messages prove that women who cry sexual assault afterwards were often taken to bed by their “attackers” very much with their consent. In 2018, 79 US judges took action against universities’ own investigations and trials. Federal authorities have passed laws requiring all cases to be reported. Based on these reports, the number of incidents on university campuses fell by 43.5 percent between 2005 and 2016.

268 269 270

Mac Donald 2018 Loc. 2019 Cantor 2015. Stanford 2017 176

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But when the category to be reported was changed by the legislator from “sexual offences – non-forcible” to the rather broadly interpreted “fondling” (from “sexual offences – non-forcible” to something like “indecent behavior”), the number of reported cases increased by 6,000 (yes, 6,000) percent, from 59 cases in 2013 to 3,614 in 2016, and with all other relevant categories included, to 10,297.271 The data comes from 6,500 institutions of higher education, so that, with a little exaggeration, if a boy gave a girl a dirty look, it could be reported. However, if the myth about one in four to five female students experiencing sexual harassment were true, this number should not be around 10,000 but around 3-400,000. The American Association of University Women has complained that the figures are too low. For example, 73 percent of campuses with more than 250 students reported no sexual violence in 2015, well below “expectations.” The myth of “campus sexual violence” is not based on evidence but on political belief, which works like a conspiracy theory: unprovability is the proof. Feminists simply take it for granted that there is a “campus rape culture”, and the main proof of this, in their eyes, is that the alleged cases are not reported by the alleged victims. And they would like the burden of proof to be reversed: the accused men should be presumed guilty until proven otherwise.272 In real life, U. S. universities are among the safest places in the world also in this respect. Behind the whole myth of violence, feminists a generation ago were still fighting, in the name of liberation, for a lax, hedonistic, college high-life filled with one-night stands that today’s feminists perceive as oppressive. Behind this lies the aforementioned view that we live in a patriarchal, masculine culture where

271 272

Mac Donald 2018 Loc. p. 2069 See for example: Taylor–Johnson 2010 177

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women are not genuinely free to choose; what they do is the responsibility of men. In any case, according to Heather Mac Donald, if it were made mandatory for universities to report every single case to the police, the movement that puts campus sexual violence at the center of its struggle, whose epistemology has been taken over by the MeToo movement as well, would disappear the next day due to lack of interest; it would turn out that there are virtually no rapes on campus. In conclusion, the so called ‘rape culture’ is a feminist myth.273

THE POLITICALLY CORRECT UNIVERSITY In the name of diversity, the diversity of views and perspectives is disappearing as lecturers who reject the Marxist-postmodernist-critical theory approach are ostracized or such potential lecturers no longer even attempt to enter the academic world.274 As a result, since the 1960s, conservatives and right-wing libertarians have been increasingly outnumbered on university faculties: in relatively “conservative” fields such as economics, left-wing professors outnumber right-wing ones three to one; in “moderate” fields such as political science, the ratio is five to one; and in anthropology and sociology, the ratio of left-wing professors is twenty to one.275 This is partly due to the different priorities of potential professorial candidates of conservative, right-wing persuasion (private sector, business), partly to the alarming nature of the monolithically liberal professorial class hostile to them, and partly to the uniform political correctness of the liberal-dominated academic community.276

273 274 275 276

See more in: Gittos 2015 See also: Maranto 2009; Williams 2016 Maranto 2009, pp. 13-33 Ibid. pp. 41-73 178

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The world of social sciences, which includes gender theory, has never been neutral and apolitical. Its dominant ideology has always been egalitarianism, its driving force has always been the scientific equalization and “justification” of society and it is biased towards it. This is especially true of sociology and psychology.277 Sociology, for example, should overcome it’s biophobia278 and arrogance,279 beside its ideological bias. Especially because “gender construction” has strict biological limits.280 The University of California requires students to take a course on American minorities. These include “Gender, Race, Nation, and Health”, which looks at health care from a feminist perspective, or “Lives in Struggle: Minorities in Majority Culture”, but there is also a course on “Critical Perspectives on Trauma, Gender and Power” or even “Cross-Cultural Gender Variations from Third Gender to Transgenderism.” Until 2011, UCLA English students were required to take a course on Chaucer, two on Shakespeare, and one on Milton, all three of them seminal authors of English literature. But then a revolt against dead white authors broke out, and the curriculum was changed: these courses became optional, but students were required to choose three courses from a list that includes “Gender, Race, Ethnicity, Disability, and Sexuality Studies”; “Imperial, Transnational, and Postcolonial Studies”; “Critical Perspectives on Trauma, Gender, and Power” and “Anthropology of Gender Variance Across Cultures from Third Gender to Transgender”; genre studies, interdisciplinary studies, and critical theory; or creative writing.

277

Bloom 1987; Shields–Dunn 2016; Smith 2014; Maranto et al. 2022; Inbar–Lammers 2012; Honeycutt–Jussim 2020 278 Ellis 1996 279 Tittle 2004 280 Udry 2000 McCarthy 2016 179

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The result is that the ideology of tolerance has become, in the name of diversity, the dominant ideology in American academia, where freedom of speech is exclusively reserved for “oppressed groups.” However, there is in fact no pluralism of opinions, and the — in their own eyes — tolerant and open-minded professoriate is characterized by intolerance of dissent and of different worldviews, by groupthink and by conformity to the postmodern ideological regime, i.e., political correctness (so much for encouraging critical thinking).281 It would be worth a separate study to turn the critical theories of this dominant anti-establishment university elite against itself (this would be a critique of the position of power and intolerance of the critical intelligentsia that proclaims tolerance.)

281

Ibid. pp. 77-132 See also: Gross 2013; Shields–Dunn 2016 180

Chapter 8

GENDER THEORY AT THE INTERNATIONAL LEVEL There is no space here to present and analyze in a comprehensive manner the measures, practices and legal systems of the UN, the EU and other international institutions and international conventions related to gender theory and gender mainstreaming. We will, however, give four examples: the 1995 UN Beijing Conference, the Yogyakarta Principles, some aspects of gender mainstreaming in the EU and the Istanbul Convention. Just as in academia, the general atmosphere of international institutions and large corporations has also been infiltrated by gender theory (the latter is called woke-capitalism282 — so much for the claim that capitalism is the entrenchment of patriarchy.) As several Marxist and conservative authors have pointed out, capitalism can easily be the dismantler of tradition and stability, including gender roles.283 One important reason for this is not the attitude of visible leaders and regulations, but the fact that the relatively unknown people who occupy important background positions (éminence grise along with

282 283

See Soukup 2021 E.g., Bauman 2000; Kolozi; 2017 Dreher 2018b

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department heads, judges, lawyers, PR and marketing professionals) either genuinely embrace the ideas of gender theory or do not dare to contradict them. To use postmodern language, one could somewhat ironically say that in these circles gender theory and constructionism are the dominant structures that suppress and discriminate against dissent.

THE 1995 UN CONFERENCE IN BEIJING The UN conference was a turning point in my life, writes Sharon Slater, President of Family Watch International, in her book Stand for the Family about the 1995 UN Conference in Beijing. She adds that until she went to a follow-up meeting of the Beijing Conference, which focused on the status of women, she was an ordinary mother of several children, but the anti-family atmosphere at the Geneva meeting changed her life. In one of the meeting rooms at an event in Geneva related to the Conference where Slater was attending her first UN meeting, she described how many people were jostling to get around a small table to get a copy of the document being discussed. Many UN delegations were denied copies, even though they were theoretically discussing the very document. There were no translators or interpreters, so the Anglo-Saxon world and EU representatives dominated the discussion. Although the UN is an organization dedicated to its Member States, it was NGOs that took the lead. NGOs in this context meant mainly feminists, and here too a feminist activist had just presented her demands for the document to be amended. Slater tried to list those on the “pro-family” side in the room, but her paper came up empty: everyone was pushing the feminist bandwagon, except for one person who called for a declaration of respect for religious and cultural diversity in the document. Everyone laughed at him, and he was exposed to disdainful glances and gestures or resignation. It later emerged that 182

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the person was a representative of the Vatican; “religious diversity” is a “controversial” concept in UN jargon, since feminists see in fact all world religions as perpetuators of patriarchal oppression. Another participant, Dale O’Leary, also a mother of many, writes in her book The Gender Agenda that traveling from her accommodation to the conference venue in buses carrying participants, it became clear that the consensus among the predominantly lesbian, feminist activist group was that it would be better if there were no men in the world. The final declaration of the Beijing Conference on Women was intended to promote “equality, peace, and development.” The document sets out goals such as women’s “full participation on the basis of equality” in all sectors of society, including decision-making, and that they should have “full control” over their bodies and health, with particular regard to “their own fertility.” Of course, “local, national, regional, and global peace” is also unthinkable without an increase in women’s well-being. The Platform for Action, a document adopted by “global consensus” which listed a series of actions, calls on governments to do all they can to eliminate all forms of discrimination against women and remove all obstacles to “gender equality.” Point 28 of the document laments the fact that, unfortunately, in many countries the differences between women and men and the division of labor are still seen as biological in origin rather than social constructs. The “Beijing Platform” calls for an increase in the number of women in all areas of public administration, point 124 calls for a change in socio-cultural attitudes towards women and men and point 276 seeks to ensure that tradition and religion are not the basis for discrimination. The United ons holds world conferences on a regular basis to shape global policy and to define a kind of global action plan and is not to be confused with the General Assembly. The heyday of world conferences was the 1990s: twelve were held between 1990 and 1996, from the 1990 New York Conference on Children, the 1994 Cairo Conference on Population and the Beijing World Conference on Women, to 183

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the 1996 Rome Conference on Food. Of course, world conferences on each of these topics had been held before and after the 1990s: the Beijing Conference on Women, for example, was the fourth, the first having been held in 1975 and the third in 1985. Each was preceded by preparatory conferences (PrepComs) and accompanied by follow-up meetings to monitor the results. The decisions, resolutions, directives, and declarations of such conferences, like the resolutions of the UN General Assembly, are not binding on Member States. Instead, their power is political, as they can be used to exert political pressure by virtue of their consensual nature. Nevertheless, many do not shy away from referring to them as quasi-binding declarations. The 1990s saw a strange development in the UN as real power was increasingly shifting to unelected organizations (a process that had already begun with the Stockholm Conference in 1972). Under Secretary General Kofi Annan, democratically elected governments accountable to their constituents and the business sector were seen as the followers of short-term interests in the UN, but it was considered important to be in touch with civil society, so NGOs became the front-runners by representing societies in the eyes of the UN even when unelected. These NGOs, which were also relied on for expertise, were usually progressive organizations and included the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), which currently operates abortion clinics that also sell aborted fetal tissue and organs, the Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO), which works closely with the IPPF, Greenpeace, Amnesty International, and others. WEDO, for example, wanted to achieve 50 percent representation of women in the staff and management of various national and international institutions by 2005. A new UN jargon has emerged, with “consensual” decision-making at its center replacing traditional diplomacy. This can be communicated very effectively and is intended to result in a universal plan of action that can and have to be put into practice everywhere, regardless of lo184

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cal specificities, whether it is the United States, Germany, or a Central African country. The main slogans included sustainable development, reproductive rights, gender, and world governance. At the World Civil Society Conference in Montreal in 1999, for example, NGOs called for a world parliament and binding global mechanisms for which national governments can be held to account. In 1992, with the support of the UN Secretariat, Swedish Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson and former Commonwealth Secretary General Shridath Ramphal set up the now defunct World Governance Commission, which has been much criticized by defenders of state sovereignty. It is not difficult to see pantheistic tendencies in all this (pantheism is a pagan religion that sees God as identical with the world, possibly with Mother Earth); the insight may seem far-fetched at first, but nevertheless one of the events preparing the Beijing World Conference included not only workshops such as “Lesbian Flirting”, “Lesbian Activism from an Interfaith Perspective” and “Lesbian and Mother”, but also “Meditation for Mother Earth’s Healing.” At “Daughters of the Earth” day meetings, organized by WEDO, actual rituals took place. According to the recollections of a Brazilian participant, O’Leary, they declared in an ecstatic state that they no longer believed in the cross, but “in life... we are power!” Led by Bella Abzug, president of WEDO, the assembled crowd then shouted, “I am power, I am power!” in a euphoric state. In fact, we can say that the UN was taken over by feminists in the 1990s. O’Leary warns that this feminism is not the same as feminism fighting for supportable causes. It is not just about equal pay, empowering women, and combating domestic violence. In the UN, it was the radical feminists who took the lead, and their main aim was to ram through gender theory. The feminists gaining ground at the UN sought to interpret the jargon, which can be interpreted in many different ways, to suit their purposes. The term “gender”, for example, has been constantly redefined. At first it meant the same as biological sex, but later it became 185

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increasingly constructionist. The WEDO President, Bella Abzug, who chaired several conferences, tried to put an end to the debate in a speech by saying that the feminist interpretation was universally accepted, which was clearly a lie. In Beijing, it was not clear from the French and Spanish translations of the documents under negotiation which English term was being used and in what sense. This is illustrated by the fact that, while a Tibetan participant in the preparatory meetings for the Beijing conference believed that the term “reproductive and health rights”, a product of the Cairo Population Conference, was a term used to describe the right to have children, the feminist dictionary was using it as a cover for the right to abortion, despite the fact that other UN documents stated that abortion is not a desirable form of family planning. Honduran MP Marta Horunda Casco accused the UN of promoting a “hidden agenda” by writing “manipulated euphemisms” into texts “for which only they have the dictionary.” When she asked for a definition of gender, she was told that there was no definition of the word and that there was no need for one. She was accused of sabotaging women’s issues and was told that the mere raising of the matter undermined the aims of the conference. The pro-family side too had organized itself for the Beijing Conference, so there was no chance of a real consensus. There were heated debates on every word at the preparatory conferences and at the main world conference itself. The whole agenda of sexuality and gender was irrelevant to the third world delegates, but they were expected to support what they saw as European nonsense, as a lot of financial support was tied to it. Another prominent figure, Mercedes Wilson, described the process as follows: when the feminist-dominated position of the Western countries is in the majority in a meeting or a discussion, the chairperson who presides over the meeting closes the debate and sends a report to the main committee. When the traditional position of the developing countries is held by the majority of those present, they 186

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want to continue the debate into the night and through to dawn, in case the opponents of the feminist agenda get tired of waiting and of being awake. According to O’Leary, the picture that emerges from the UN conferences in Cairo and Beijing, dominated by radical lesbian feminists, seems to suggest that what the world needs is fewer people, more sexual pleasure, the abolition of differences between men and women, as well as of full-time motherhood, as it is a barrier to women’s 50 percent participation in decision-making. “Dale, they are all Marxists!”, laughingly answered Claire Driver, a Russian literature professor at the University of Rhode Island, when asked by O’Leary about what was behind radical feminism. It is perhaps symbolic that twenty years ago, the Women’s Conference tried to adopt these principles as a kind of global action plan at the foot of the huge statue of Mao in Beijing. To what extent do the decisions of the UN conferences of the 1990s affect our daily lives today, and has the influence of radical feminism been retained in the organization? Sharon Slater answered my question by saying that the impact of fine-sounding statements depends on how they are interpreted. The UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), for example, labels the concept of motherhood as a negative stereotype for women. The various UN committees, still dominated by radical feminists, constantly monitor Member States and make recommendations and criticisms by interpreting UN documents to suit their own tastes. The Committee on the Rights of the Child, for example, has published an explanation of how the “right to health” at the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child should be interpreted, which they say includes sex education and the right to “confidential” (without parental notification) school consultation, as well as the right to “medical treatment without parental consent” (which means abortion.) Moreover, it is desirable to abandon the traditional interpretation of childhood as a socialization period leading to adulthood and the taboo on adolescent sex. 187

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The new Hungarian constitution, adopted after 2010, has also come under scrutiny, with a number of human rights organizations including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch warning that the protection of life from conception guaranteed in the Fundamental Law and the definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman are in conflict with UN treaties and their aspirations of equality. The UN’s post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals, which have been spearheaded by a coalition of radical feminist organizations, also place emphasis on reproductive and health rights and the teaching of gender theory in schools.

THE YOGYAKARTA PRINCIPLES One of the most important documents on LGBTQ rights is the Yogyakarta Principles.284 The Principles were adopted in November 2006 in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, as a result of negotiations between 29 human rights organizations and UN experts and focus on the application of international human rights law on sexual orientation and gender identity. The Principles have been repeatedly rejected by the UN General Assembly and by various UN bodies, and therefore have no legal force. However, for their proponents, the Principles serve as a complementary interpretation of international human rights treaties. According to the Principles, “sexual orientation is understood to refer to each person’s capacity for profound emotional, affectional, and sexual attraction to, and intimate and sexual relations with, individuals

284

Háttér Társaság 2010 188

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of a different gender or the same gender or more than one gender”; and “gender identity is understood to refer to each person’s deeply felt internal and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond with the sex assigned at birth, including the personal sense of the body (which may involve, if freely chosen, modification of bodily appearance or function by medical, surgical, or other means) and other expressions of gender, including dress, speech, and mannerisms.” Accordingly, the Principles state that every effort should be made to “take all necessary legislative, administrative, and other measures to ensure that procedures exist whereby all State-issued identity papers which indicate a person’s gender/sex — including birth certificates, passports, electoral records, and other documents — reflect the person’s profound self-defined gender identity.” Along with this “any law that prohibits (…) or that denies to individuals the opportunity to change their bodies as a means of expressing their gender identity” should be repealed and laws should “facilitate access by those seeking body modifications related to gender reassignment to competent, non-discriminatory treatment, care, and support.” Of course, the issue of family is also raised in the Principles: “Everyone has the right to found a family, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. Families exist in diverse forms. No family may be subjected to discrimination on the basis of the sexual orientation or gender identity of any of its members.” What can we add to this? There are different forms of family, but they are not identical, and a family can only be formed by two people of different sexes, regardless of their sexual orientation. The Principles say that countries, of course, should do their utmost to “take all necessary legislative, administrative, and other measures to ensure the right to found a family, including through access to adoption or assisted procreation (including donor insemination), without discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity” and “ensure that laws and policies recognize the diversity of family forms, including those not defined by descent or marriage.” 189

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And to ensure the Principles are upheld, it is desirable that “the United Nations Human Rights Treaty Bodies vigorously integrate these Principles into the implementation of their respective mandates, including their case law and the examination of State reports” and that “regional human rights courts vigorously integrate those Principles that are relevant to the human rights treaties they interpret into their developing case law on sexual orientation and gender identity” and that they should be applied by regional and sub-regional intergovernmental organizations, civil society and public organizations of all kinds, as well as by businesses. Developed by experts, Yogyakarta Principles are typical examples of activist legal interpretation that must be implemented from the top to bottom. Some of the principles are supportable as they rightly stand up against discrimination on a number of issues, although this would not require a declaration of new principles. However, this interpretation of human rights, which effectively calls for the introduction of same-sex marriage and state support for sex change operations, is highly ideological and does not necessarily follow from any human rights convention. Although there is still no consensus about the Principles among the UN Member States, they can be used to exert political pressure. The Yogyakarta Principles are not merely a tool for the extension of rights to enhance equality and freedom. In fact, the whole text reflects a dualistic, constructionist view of man.

GENDER MAINSTREAMING IN THE EUROPEAN UNION In June 2015, the European Parliament adopted the Noichl report on gender mainstreaming and equality between men and women, which states that the EP “reiterates its call to the Commission and the World Health Organization to remove gender identity disorders from the list 190

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of mental and behavioral disorders and to ensure that, in the negotiations on version 11 of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), the manifestations of otherness and childhood gender diversity are not classified as pathological.”285 Therefore, the text is ultimately opposed to therapeutic assistance to help children with gender identity problems and to develop an identity that corresponds to their biological sex at the time when it is most needed and most effective. In 2006, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on homophobia, defining it as “an irrational fear of and aversion to homosexuality and to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people based on prejudice and similar to racism, xenophobia, anti-semitism, and sexism.” The resolution does not merely speak out against a kind of everyday homophobia but calls for the introduction of same-sex marriage: “same-sex partners in some Member States do not enjoy all of the rights and protections enjoyed by married opposite sex partners and consequently suffer discrimination and disadvantage”; and “urges Member States to enact legislation to end discrimination faced by same-sex partners in the areas of inheritance, property arrangements, tenancies, pensions, tax, social security etc.”286 The question is how the irrational fear of homosexuality has suddenly been extended to the opposition to same-sex marriage. The document also poses a threat to freedom of conscience and religion: “unreasonable limitations of rights, which are often hidden behind justifications based on public order, religious freedom, and the right to conscientious objection.”

285

See: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=TA&reference=P8TA-2015-0218&language=HU. On gender mainstreaming in the EU, see for example: Jacquot 2015 and Ahrens 2018 286 See: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+TA +P6-TA-2006-0018+0+DOC+XML+V0//HU. 191

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The regulation of marriage is a national competence in the European Union, as it is in the Council of Europe. However, former European Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans said after the U. S. Supreme Court ruling that introduced same-sex marriage in the U. S. that “the commission should go forward and try to get all member states in the EU to unreservedly accept same-sex marriage as other marriages.” But the Commission has no formal possibility to make a proposal on the issue. At the same time, one of the largest international LGBTQ rights organizations, ILGA Europe (International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association), would base the promotion of same-sex marriage on one of the EU’s fundamental principles, the free movement of persons, because, for example, if a company transfers an employee legally married to a same-sex partner from one Member State that recognizes the institution to another that does not, it will cause a problem if they are not recognized as married there.287 It is interesting to note that ILGA Europe, which acts as a lobbying organization in the EU, receives 60 percent of its budget from the European Commission.288 The European Commission adopted the first LGBTQI strategy for the European Union in fall 2020. The document aims to promote anti-discrimination, equality and inclusion, and safety for LGBTQ people. The need to recognize “rainbow families” is highlighted, as well as transgender, non-binary, and intersex identities.289 The European Parliament has declared the European Union a LGBTQ freedom zone.290

287

See: http://index.hu/kulfold/eurologus/2015/06/30/ismerjek_el_az_egesz_eu-b an_a_meleghazassagot/. 288 See: https://agendaeurope.wordpress.com/2015/01/17/the-european-commiss ions-funding-for-fake-civil-society-new-documents/. Documents cited: https://agendaeurope.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/ilga001.pdf; https://agendaeurope.files. wordpress.com/2015/01/ilga002.pdf. 289 European Commission 2020 290 See: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20210304IPR99219/ parliament-declares-the-european-union-an-lgbtiq-freedom-zone 192

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The Council of Europe positively refers to the Yogyakarta Principles in its “Thematic Report on Legal Gender Recognition in Europe”, pusblished in June 2022.291 It recommends full legal “recognition” of gender identities without age restrictions, the “de-pathologization” of transgenderism, and promotes medical assistance for them. However, the document stresses that full legal recognition should not require such medical changes which end in “irreversible identity change through operation” – which means that the Council of Europe implicitly acknowledges the possibility of regret and the existence of detransitioners. As a whole, however, the document is strikingly ideological and one-sided.

THE ISTANBUL CONVENTION One of the big debates of recent times has been about “The Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence”, better known the Istanbul Convention. Its supporters consider it an indispensable tool for more effective action against “domestic” violence and violence against women; many countries, including Hungary, have nevertheless refused to enact it into law. The Convention has been open for accession since May 11, 2011, and Hungary signed it in 2014 but ultimately failed to enact it into law. The European Union has approved the Convention.

291

CDADI 2022 193

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However, opponents of the convention, including the author of the present volume, point out that it not only reinforces the fight against violence “within the family” and against women but is also a document of ideological gender theory and anti-masculinity. The Convention states that “violence against women is a manifestation of historically unequal power relations between women and men, which have led to domination over, and discrimination against, women by men and to the prevention of the full advancement of women” and recognizes “the structural nature of violence against women as gender-based violence.” The text also embraces a constructionist understanding of gender roles.292 A minor culture war has broken out in Hungary over the Istanbul Convention.293 Hungarian Justice Minister Judit Varga, for example, pointed out that GREVIO, the body that oversees the implementation of the Convention, “is concerned that the traditional family model is being promoted instead of gender equality.”294 In addition, the measures called for by the Convention can be introduced without ratifying the Convention; exciting, for example, is the table listing Hungarian legislation that complies with the Convention’s provisions.295

292

See the text of the Convention in Hungarian at: https://nokert.hu/sze-201607200010/1466/1/az-isztambuli-egyezmeny-szovege-magyar-nyelven. 293 Kováts 2020 294 Varga 2020 295 See legal instruments to protect women and combat domestic violence: https:// www.kormany.hu/download/0/71/c1000/Isztambul%20%C3%A1ttekint%C5%91%20 t%C3%A1bl%C3%A1zat_200123.pdf?. 194

Chapter 9

THE MYTH OF “BORN THAT WAY” AND REINTEGRATIVE THERAPY While feminism was primarily concerned with gender roles, the LGBTQ movement has been more concerned with gender orientation. However, the feminists’ Gnostic and Cartesian dualism of the separation of body and soul worked well for them too, as it not only serves to disconnect gender roles from our biological realities of being male and female, but also to de-problematize gender orientations other than heterosexuality. In recent times, homosexuality has been discussed in the context of “gay therapy” in Hungary, as several of its defenders spoke out on public television in January 2019. This was followed by protests from LGBTQ organizations.296 When in fall 2019 the annual conference of reintegrative therapy organizations was held in Hungary and their representatives were interviewed by Hír TV, the result was again protests.

296

For the broadcasts, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIIBreyUlVc&featu re=emb_title; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNnc1YzvWe0&feature=emb_title. The author was also a participant in the second broadcast, but since Tamás Dombos, the head of the Háttér Társaság, had already appeared on the show, no scandal ensued. See: Mandiner 2019

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Robert Spitzer, who as a prominent psychiatrist was one of the pioneers of the 1973 decision to remove homosexuality from the list of mental illnesses and supported the movement fighting for it (so it would be hard to call him homophobic), said in an interview in 2000 that we humans are “built on a program of heterosexuality.”297 So, the main question about homosexuality is whether it is innate, and if not, whether it can be changed. If the answer to that question is positive, it may be asked whether it should be changed.

BORN THAT WAY?298 It is widely believed that homosexuals are “born that way”, therefore their sexual orientation is innate and immutable. That is why it was a shock to many when research was published in 2019299 that the “gay gene” or homosexual gene does not exist and that genetics only partially influences our sexual orientation. The study of nearly half a million people found that while there are genes that have some influence on a person’s sexuality, they all play a minor role, and social and environmental factors play a much bigger role. What is more, we should know that genetics has already shown that one gene is rarely responsible for one thing, the relationships are much more complex and groups of genes are more likely to be responsible for one trait, but the same groups of genes can also play a role in other traits.

297 298 299

Vonholdt 2000 Detailed presentation of the issue: Szilvay 2016a pp. 156-178 Ganna et al. 2019 Wetsman 2019 196

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“This is the largest and most comprehensive study to date on the genetics of same-sex sexual behavior,” says Ben Neale, a geneticist at the Broad Institute and associate professor at the Analytic and Translational Genetics Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital. The study highlights the both the small role of genetics and the complexity of biological factors. “This study puts to rest the notion that there is a ‘gay gene,” says Darren Whitfield, an adjunct professor at the University of Pittsburgh who has studied the health implications of alternative sexual attractions. The authors stressed that they also worked with LGBTQ advocacy groups during the process.300 There is no scientific consensus on such genes or on the innateness of homosexuality, or more precisely, no research has ever produced evidence of innateness. Twin studies were carried out as early as the 1950s; in the 1970s, hormonal correlations were in vogue, but no particular correlation between the effects of hormones and sexual orientation was found; and in the 1980s, studies of possible differences in brain structure and development between homosexuals and heterosexuals became widespread. The best-known researcher of the latter was Simon LeVay, a gay man who hypothesized that a small group of brain cells might contribute to the development of homosexuality, but eventually he came to a different conclusion.301 As he said at the time: “I did not prove that homosexuality is genetic, or find a genetic cause for being gay. I didn’t show that gay men are ‚born that way,’ the most common mistake people make in interpreting my work. Nor did I locate a gay center in the brain – INAH3 is less likely to be the sole gay

300 301

Ibid. LeVay 1991 See more: LeVay 1996, 2011 197

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nucleus of the brain than part of a chain of nuclei engaged in men and women’s sexual behavior. My work is just a hint in that direction – a spur, I hope, to future work.” Despite this, he believes that biology does have a contribution to the development of homosexuality. 302 In the summer of 1993, the headlines were again about the discovery of the gene responsible for homosexuality. The research team of Dean Hamer of the US National Cancer Institute announced that there was a link between homosexuality and the structure of the X chromosome.303 But the announcement was premature and the research turned out to be methodologically flawed. Hamer and his colleagues conducted similar studies in 2005. But they failed to find a statistically significant link between DNA structure and homosexuality. Hamer, who was gay himself, stressed that even if there is a genetic factor, it does not make people homosexual because the biology of personality is much more complex.304 According to him, genes do not influence brain chemistry, and the environment affects how genes “express themselves.” He also suggested that they do not really know how significant their results are in terms of the development of sexual orientation.305 William Byne and Bruce Parsons, researchers who are otherwise supportive of homosexuals, reviewed 135 relevant publications in 1993 and found that there was insufficient evidence for either a purely biological or a purely psychological explanation. They believe that the interest in biological causes in the early 1990s was due more to a dissatisfaction with psychological explanations.306

302 303 304 305 306

Nimmons 1994 Hamer et al. 1993 Nash 1998 Hamer et al. 1993 Byne–Parsons 1993 198

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Martin Dannecker, a professor at the Institute of Sexology at the University of Frankfurt and a major figure in the homosexual movement, admitted as much in a 2000 publication in which he took a stand on contemporary gene, brain, hormone, and twin research at the request of the German government that: “All past attempts to provide a biological explanation for homosexuality have failed. Recently, too, there has been considerable research to prove that exclusive sexual and erotic interest in one’s own sex is a biologically determined drive. [...] These are psychoendocrinological and genetic, brain, monozygotic, and polyzygotic twin studies [...], which have so far not led to reliable and consistent results. [...] However, the immanent critique of research into biologically oriented homosexuality needs to be complemented. This research, which aims to portray sexual orientation as a primary biological phenomenon, is based on a completely reductionist concept of sexual orientation [...] However, sexual orientation is an extremely complex issue that can only be properly understood from a biological, developmental, and interpersonal perspective, based on experience derived from life history and as a social construct.”307 In 2012, S. Marc Breedlove, a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said that although he believes there is also a biological cause for homosexuality, no gene has yet been found to cause it, adding that, like genes, sexual behavior can cause changes in the brain.308

307 308

Dannecker 2000 Besen 2012 199

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Richard Pillard, a professor best known for his highly publicized twin studies in 1991,309 and one of the first scientists to come out as homosexual, admitted in a 2010 interview that “It’s really hard to come up with any definite statement about the situation. I think some sort of genetic influence seems very likely, but beyond that, what really can we say? And the answer is: not a lot.”310 So, contrary to popular belief, there is no evidence that homosexuality is innate. This, however, does not mean that it is the result of free choice.

THE QUESTION OF FLUIDITY The much-voiced fluidity of gender is true for LGBTQ orientations, and in their case, malleability primarily means that they become more open to heterosexual relationships throughout their lives. There is also research that suggests that adolescent homosexuality disappears by adulthood in 80 percent of people affected.311 According to the authors of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health for short), which followed the lives of 20,000 people over four “waves” over decades, from 1994 to2018: “All attraction categories other than opposite-sex were associated with a lower likelihood of stability over time. That is, individuals reporting

309 310 311

Bailey–Pillard 1991 Cornuelle 2010 Add Health 1994-2018 200

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any same-sex attractions were more likely to report subsequent shifts in their attractions than were individuals without any same-sex attractions.”312 This notion is proved by many studies.313 Innate or not, the vast majority of homosexuals experience their homosexuality as if it were innate. With a few exceptions and taking into account that it is sometimes fashionable in some circles to be non-heterosexual, there is no question that sexual orientation is not freely chosen.314 The most influential and respected professional organization, the American Psychiatric Association (APA), removed homosexuality from the list of mental disorders in 1973, with a mere 58 percent of the vote. And four years later, when the journal Medical Aspects of Human Sexuality surveyed APA members about their views on homosexuality, it found that 69 percent of psychiatrists still considered it a mental disorder and disagreed with the 1973 decision.315 In 1974, the category of “sexual orientation disorder” was created, which was replaced in 1980 by the concept of “egodystonic sexual orientation” (egosyntonic are those behaviors and values that are in harmony with our personality, and egodystonic are those that we are not at peace with or that disturb our self-image). Eventually, however, in 1987, this definition too was disarded. There was no scientific debate about the decision, but LGBTQ lobby organizations put strong pressure on the American Psychiatric Association over the issue.

312

Savin–Williams–Ream 2007 For example: Diamon–Rosky 2016; Rosik 2016; Reback–Shoptaw 2014; Shoptaw et al. 2005; Shoptaw et al. 2008 Sullins–Rosik–Santero 2021 314 More on this topic: Szilvay 2016a pp. 179-206 315 Satinover 1996, p. 35 313

201

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Robert Spitzer, one of the initiators of the decision, who was a professor at Columbia University in New York in 1973, himself said in 2000 that the decision was a “compromise.” Spitzer said both sides thought science was on their side. The side that Spitzer supported “believed that it was prejudiced to classify homosexuality as a mental disorder”, while those who did not want to change the classification, especially clinical psychoanalysts, “were convinced that we were only acting under pressure from the gay movement.” Spitzer added that the movement felt that as long as homosexuality was considered a mental disorder, they would not get anywhere in the fight for their rights, so “it became part of their political agenda.”316 Jeffrey Weeks, sociologist, historian, prominent gay activist, one of the foremost authors of the literature on homosexuality and queer theory, and former Dean of South Bank University in London, writes in Sexuality and its Discontents: “The decision of the American Psychiatric Association to delete homosexuality from its published list of sexual disorders in 1973 was scarcely a cool, scientific decision. It was a response to a political campaign fuelled by the belief that its original inclusion as a disorder was a reflection of an oppressive politico-medical definition of homosexuality as a problem.”317 This observation is proved by scientific research into the related events.318

316 317 318

Vonholdt 2000 Weeks 1998, p. 213 Bayer 1987. 202

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THE QUESTION OF “GAY THERAPY” LGBTQ organizations usually argue against all the therapies they criticize, claiming that they can lead to suicide and do not serve the mental health of the patient; it is only served by affirmative therapy, which helps the patient to accept his/her homosexuality, attributing any feelings of aversion to society’s prejudices. However, this is stereotyping: there is no single “conversion” therapy. There are, in fact, many psychoanalytic approaches, one could say, as many methods as there are therapists. The term “conversion therapy” was invented by American psychologist Douglas Haldeman in 1991, who opposed it. It is not used by those to whom it is applied, and who prefer the term “reparative” or “reintegrative.” This psychoanalytic approach is not the same as religious prayer meetings, nor is it a form of coaching or lifestyle counseling and has nothing to do with the correctional boot camps that once existed in America. Today even the mid-20 century electroshock therapies used on gays are referred to as “conversion therapies” and blurred with contemporary psychoanalytic approaches, although the two have nothing in common. Today reintegrative therapists only undertake treatment on the basis of free and voluntary consent, and do not promise that they can “turn” a patient with homosexual feelings into a heterosexual if they are unhappy with those feelings. The starting point for therapies that deal with homosexuality as an unwanted urge is that at least a part of homosexual population become attracted to their own sex because of an inadequate parent-child relationship, childhood abuse, or other early attachment problems.319

319

See for example: Nicolosi 1991, 1993, 2009, 2017 203

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All of these are supported by surveys. The nonexclusive link between sexual abuse and homosexuality is confirmed by several studies: for example, a 1994 study found that 25 percent of the 1,925 lesbians surveyed had been sexually abused or outright raped as children and 31 percent of the perpetrators were relatives.320 Another study of 942 adults in 2001 found that 46 percent of gay men and 22 percent of lesbian women had been sexually abused. By comparison, the figure for heterosexual men was 7 percent and 1 percent for heterosexual women.321 86 percent of gay men and 38 percent of lesbian women did not consider themselves attracted to their own sex before the abuse. What then can be achieved with these therapies? When the British government intended to ban these therapies, the successor to the NARTH (National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality), the IFTCC (International Federation for Therapeutic and Counseling Choice), which is concerned with reintegrative therapies, published a report. The document, which also quotes testimonies from a number of former clients, states that the LGBTQ movement is fighting against a nightmarish caricature of these therapeutic methods. Reintegrative therapies, for example, have been banned by the British government, essentially without exactly defining them.322 The IFTCC report explains that while the LGBTQ movement claims that there is a professional consensus and scientific evidence to ban therapeutic approaches that shift unwanted homosexuality towards heterosexuality, the reality is that the research available in the field is methodologically problematic and there is much scientific uncertainty. In other words, everything is uncertain, there is no certain knowledge of the issue, and there is too little scientific data available. In such cases, it is not appropriate to ban anything or to declare it pseudo-scientific. 320 321 322

Bradford et al. 1994 Tomeo et al. 2001 Davidson–Moseley–Rosick 2018 204

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Those who do not achieve results in line with the LGBTQ movement’s wishes in their research and “in any way supportive of such therapy are denounced, professionally marginalized, investigated, cut off from future grant monies, and risk career threatening damage to their academic livelihoods.” As a result, the IFTCC says it is a miracle that research contrary to the dominant narrative can appear at all: “In such an environment, it is a minor miracle that research countering the preferred political narrative can even get published, though fortunately rare occurrences do happen.” Somes studies prove that therapy that shifted unwanted homosexuality towards heterosexuality had a positive effect for most participants even if there was little or no shift towards heterosexuality. For example, it improved self-esteem, and reduced depression and suicidal tendencies. And its harmful effects were no more significant than those of any other therapy.323 Nevertheless, LGBTQ organizations around the world have succeeded in getting reintegrative therapies banned in as many countries as possible, because one of the bases of their self-justification is that homosexuality is innate and immutable. They insist that sexuality is fluid and celebrate the fact that when one becomes homosexual, or rather “realizes” that one is homosexual, they like to present gender as fragile and unstable. But for them this instability is one-way: it points away from heterosexuality. If someone’s sexuality is so unstable and fluid that it points towards heterosexuality, then they are anathematized.

323

Santero–Whitehead–Ballesteros 2018; Sprigg 2021; Pela–Sutton 2021; Sullins 2021; Sullins 2022 205

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When the issue of reintegrative therapies is raised anywhere, the LGBTQ movement claims that they have been banned in many places because of their dangerousness, as if this ban had not been the result of their efforts. Amazon, for example, no longer sells the works of Joseph Nicolosi, one of the founding authors of reintegrative therapy.324 The LGBTQ movement claims that Nicolosi and reintegrative therapies are supposedly unscientific and refers to the scientific consensus on the issue. However, the scientific consensus was changed partly due to pressure from the LGBTQ movement. The LGBTQ movement is well aware of what it is like to be in the minority in terms of the “scientific consensus”, and also knows from its own practice that scientific consensus can be challenged. Previously, this movement saw the scientific consensus as a fallacy of oppressive heteronormativity, not as scientific; but now, when the scientific consensus it supports is challenged by those who take a position contrary to it, it starts canceling people.

HARDWARE OR SOFTWARE? As Douglas Murray, a conservative gay man who is editor of The Spectator and the author of a book on identity politics, points out, the homosexual movement has effectively become a victim of its own making by following in the footsteps of feminism, which has made gender roles a software issue but has made gender orientation a hardware issue for security reasons. As the increasingly radical constructionist doctrines began to have an impact on gender orientation after a while, the roof was suddenly ripped off the movement, which found refuge in innateness.325 324 325

Hamilton 2019 Murray 2019 206

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This did not start yesterday. Brown University developmental geneticist Anne Fausto-Sterling criticized Simon LeVay at the time for simplifying human sexuality to the homo-hetero dichotomy: “There are many gradations in sexual orientation. What do you call men who have sex with their wives while fantasizing about men? Or guys who are mostly straight who pick up male prostitutes, or transsexuals, or serial bisexuals who may switch between exclusively gay and exclusively straight relationships? How do you count sexual behavior that changes over time in different circumstances?”326 So, if we accept the postmodern argument that human sexuality, masculinity, and femininity are social constructs, or the radical notion, influential throughout the LGBTQ movement and among feminists, that human personality is entirely a product of interactions, then we have by definition ruled out the possibility that any sexual orientation is innate. But then if one does not want to be homosexual, why could he or she not be straight? It is not our job to do justice. The main difference is that otherwise accomplished reintegrative therapists have a different view of human sexuality than the LGBTQ movement. According to the latter, all sexual orientations are equal. The reintegrative therapists take the classic position: however tolerant and accepting we are, heterosexuality and homosexuality are asymmetrical, with heterosexuality as the basis which sets a norm. It is contradictory for the LGBTQ movement to proclaim freedom of sexuality and to advocate the widest possible individual autonomy, even to the point of advocating full body surgery, but if one wishes to become heterosexual in the name of this freedom, that is presented as a dangerous, unscientific, inhumane, and an impossible undertak-

326

Nimmons 1994 207

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ing. This self-contradiction is irresolvable. Another reason is that a significant proportion of homosexuals, as they grow older, spontaneously become heterosexual.327 In adolescence, for example, the proportion of boys who occasionally experience homoerotic attraction is quite high, while by their early twenties this proportion drops to a few percent without any particular external intervention.328 Reintegrative therapy and its eventual success troubles the LGBTQ movement because it challenges its fundamental claims. Therefore, while the rhetoric of the movement is built on the notion of freedom, as in the case of reintegrative therapy, it shows a paternalistic attitude that is so often criticized. What we are up against is at least inconsistency. Given the current uncertainties, there is no justification for banning any therapy. Reintegrative therapy does not restrict anyone’s freedom or rights; on the contrary, as an additional option it offers greater freedom and has no more harmful effects than any other therapy.

HOMOSEXUALITY AND PEDOPHILIA According to some studies, homosexuals are three times more prone to pedophilia and much more prone to repeat the offence than heterosexuals.329 Other studies disagree, and the possible link between the two is uncertain.

327 328 329

Whitehead–Whitehead 2013, pp. 224-260 Savin–Williams et al. 2007 Freund–Watson 1992 208

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However, Peter Tatchell, a leading U. K. activist, believes that not all child-adult sexual relationships are harmful and that there can be a positive side to them that Western culture refuses to acknowledge, even if pedophilia must be condemned.330 In 1990, the Journal of Homosexuality devoted a special issue to pedophilia, or more specifically “male intergenerational intimacy.”331 The tone of the articles was not condemnatory. Professor Theo Sandfort, editor of the issue, was also head of the Department of Gay and Lesbian Studies at Utrecht University. And in a 1999 issue of the journal, Harris Mirkin described how pedophiles have been as historically oppressed by society as blacks.332 There has always been an overlap between pedophilia and the homosexual movement according to a study in the pedophile special issue written by David Thorstad, founder of the North American Man/ Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), an organization that campaigns for the legalization of pedophilia.333 Thorstad himself, who describes himself as bisexual, was a member of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and was also president of the Gay Activists Alliance in New York, and in 1977 co-founded the Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Rights. A year later, in 1978, he founded NAMBLA, the aforementioned pedophile organization. When the most influential international LGBTQ organization, the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA), was granted consultative advisory status at the UN in 1993, it was heavily criticized because NAMBLA was one of its member organizations. In 1994, ILGA finally

330

Examiner 2015 The special issue was also published in book form: Sandfort et al. 1991 See a summary of this on the internet: http://www.narth.org/docs/arguecase.html 332 Mirkin 1999 333 Thorstad 1990 331

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agreed to show the door to Vereniging Martijn, a Dutch pedophile organization and member of NAMBLA, as well as the pedophile Project Truth, only after it had its consultative status suspended. The association only regained its status in 2006. A few years after its foundation, NAMBLA found itself on the periphery as it was clear to the movement that it had to distance itself from the promotion of pedophilia. Yet NAMBLA was a member of ILGA and its members were homosexual pedophiles. Interestingly, NAMBLA also included Allen Ginsberg, a celebrated poet of the Beat Generation, and another prominent American activist, the communist Henry Hay. Of course, homosexuality should not be judged in the same way as pedophilia. However, we judge the consensual sexual relationship between two adults morally because the former is not a criminal category. Taking a child to bed is a criminal category and serious abuse. In spite of this, it is true that when we hear about child molestation in the news, the children in question are predominantly boys who have been molested not by women, but by men. Pedophiles argue in the same way as homosexuals: that they are born with the tendency and cannot help it.334 And they use the same postmodernist approach that has been mentioned several times before because postmodernism can be used to challenge the age of consent (as it changes in space and time), just as it can be used to challenge the boy/adult male distinction, which is more of a gradual transition (like Kinsey’s scale), because according to them these are — and this is not intended to be a joke — arbitrary social constructs of Western civilization. The postmodern approach, if applied logically, certainly leads to the acceptance of pedophilia as a hitherto repressed form of sexual expression.

334

Alternet 2013 210

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THE QUESTION OF NATURALNESS The media usually use the example of “gay” penguins to try to prove that homosexuality or any other alternative sexual orientation or identity is innate and natural, and therefore should be accepted (and is not an ethical issue.) For example, in August 2019, the Hungarian news portal Index reported that “a pair of gay penguins immediately took the eggs they were given into their care.”335 But making an example of the animal world is dangerous territory. First of all, the fact that the two male penguins were looking after an egg does not mean that they are “gay”, nor that they are “attracted” to each other. Moreover, the stork kills off chicks that are deprived of food or too weak (the Taygetus effect.) With meerkats, the pregnant female chases the others away for a few weeks. According to Wikipedia, “terrorized, subordinate females often miscarry, and their chances of conception are reduced. The dominant female often kills the pups of the subordinate females, giving all the attention and food to her own pups. If the alpha male and alpha female are related, they will not mate, but will allow the subordinates to breed in order to survive as a group. The females then mate with stray males and kill each other’s young when they have the opportunity.”336 After mating, the female tarantula will devour the male if he cannot escape in time. Lions have a very strict “patriarchy.” Some species are monogamous for life, others change mates from time to time, and others are polygamous.

335 336

Pándi 2019 See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meerkat 211

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Can all examples found in nature be followed by humans? If not, on what basis do we choose? There is also the question of whether it matters that we are talking about reptiles, birds, or mammals. Because penguins are not even mammals like humans. And the frogs and uni cellular organisms that have been recently invoked as examples of organisms that change sex are a far cry from humans. Perhaps we could make an example of the head-biting locusts. “Nature”, or naturalness, must not be understood in a biological-naturalistic way. The notion that what is biologically possible cannot be considered wrong is the so-called naturalistic fallacy. Aggression is also natural, and the genes for alcoholism and infidelity have supposedly been found, but that does not give us a blessing for these behaviors. If someone has an innate, natural trait of excessive aggression, we do not just say that he was “born that way.” Rather, naturalness means that everything has an inherent purpose. A violin is meant to be played, not to be sat on. Naturalness in this sense means that something is used according to its nature, not contrary to it.

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Chapter 10

DOES “GAY PROPAGANDA” EXIST? The question often arises as to whether the LGBTQ movement is acting in a coordinated way, following a conscious strategy. There are no conspirators hiding in the dark, of course, but LGBTQ organizations and movements around the world have a dense network and, even if they do not move in complete unison, they can act in a relatively coordinated way. There is nothing surprising in this as this is the way to succeed, but at the same time, the movement’s representatives tend to deny at times that they are relatively well coordinated and act with awareness. There is evidence that there is at least a preconceived and articulated strategy for communication and action. I do not claim that the whole movement operates along these lines, but that its impact is observable and identifiable is certain. Let us look at one of the most famous. It shows that there clearly is a preconceived strategy for the acceptance of homosexuality and other non-heterosexual orientations and identities in its wake. In 1987, an interesting article was published in Guide magazine by a Harvard psychologist, Marshall Kirk, and a certain Hunter Madsen (the latter at the time going by the pseudonym Erastes Pill), entitled “The Overhauling of Straight America.” The article became a book two

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years later (After the Ball: How America Will Conquer its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the 90s).337 This book is seen by many organizations critical of the movement as evidence of a “gay lobby” or “homosexual agenda”, which of course the movement rejects. There is no need to overthink all this, but the book in any case is proof that there is a deep-rooted communication strategy within the diverse movement, which they have tried to implement with considerable success. The “homosexual agenda” and the “gay lobby” may be true in so far as the movement has goals and is systematically and consciously trying to achieve them, but that should not be surprising. Every movement has goals which it tries to achieve more or less consciously and in a largely premeditated way, even by lobbying for them. The two authors have, moreover, justified the writing of the book by the fact that, in the 1980s, they felt that the movement’s achievements were in danger and that they wanted to help in some way to consolidate them. According to the article, the main aim of the movement was to achieve the following: to make society indifferent to gay people, i.e., homosexuality should not cause antipathy and that it should be just one of the many options that people do not pay attention to (at least not negatively.) This is desensitization. This can be achieved in six steps: (1) Homosexuality should be talked about as much as possible, and as loudly as possible; (2) Homosexuals should not be portrayed as aggressive challengers but as victims; (3) Homosexual advocates must be given a defensible case; (4) Homosexuals must be portrayed as good people; (5) Critics of homosexuality must be portrayed as bad; (6) Financial and moral responsibility must be taken.

337

Kirk–Pill 1987 Kirk–Madsen 1989 See about these in Hungarian: Pogrányi 2017 214

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The first point is that homosexuality should be talked about loudly and constantly until it becomes tiresome and boring. And since the media is the vehicle for normality, the “Trojan horse” of the movement should be used and put on TV. Specifically, the article says that the “Trojan horse” must be put into the media and through the media into the private lives of heterosexuals.338 In fact, as the authors explain, “so far, gay Hollywood has provided our best covert weapon in the battle to desensitize the mainstream”, with more and more “gay characters and gay themes have been introduced into TV programs and films”, but “this should be just the beginning.” However, since another source of public morale, according to the authors, is religion and the teachings of churches, those churches that are permissive towards homosexuality should be given wide publicity, the traditional interpretation of the Bible should be theologically challenged,339 and “homophobic” churches should be labelled as outdated remnants of the past, ignorant of the signs of the times and unaware of the latest findings in psychology. Against institutional religion, “Science & Public Opinion”, the “the shield and sword of that accursed ‘secular humanism’” must be used, because “such an unholy alliance has worked well against churches before”.

338

“We’ll discuss specific media tactics shortly. It suffices here to recall that the visual media-television, films, magazines-are the most powerful image makers in Western civilization. For example, in the average American household, the TV screen radiates its embracing bluish glow for more than fifty hours every week, bringing films, sitcoms, talk shows, and news reports right into the living room. These hours are a gateway into the private world of straights, through which a Trojan horse might be passed.” Kirk-Madsen 1989 pp. 179 339 On “gay theology” and the homosexual interpretation of the Bible and its untenability, see Szilvay 2016a pp. 356-375; Gagnon 2002 215

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The second point, that homosexuals should be presented as oppressed victims, means that the Gay Victim should be used as a symbol in the media, and likeable young people, the elderly, and women should be pushed to the fore instead of bulky, masculine men. It also means keeping (actually existing) groups that support pedophilia like the aforementioned North American Man/Boy Love Association as far away as possible from these efforts, since “suspected child-molesters will never look like victims.” In addition, it must be communicated that homosexuality is marked by fate, that homosexuals never chose their orientation, that they were born that way and therefore are not morally reprehensible, and that this can easily happen to anyone else. In any case, the characters in the media campaign must look like the average heterosexual, like “one of us.” Because “the gay community is weak and must manipulate the powers of the weak, including the play for sympathy”, and portray people attracted to their own sex as victims of society; it must use dramatic images to show violence against homosexuals, the precariousness of their lives, including jobs, housing, childcare, and the list goes on. The third point is about providing a defensible and just cause for the heterosexual protectors who stand with the movement. Firstly, the overt aim of the media campaign should not be to promote acceptance of homosexuality but to emphasize general non-discrimination: the campaign should focus on “the right to free speech, freedom of beliefs, freedom of association, due process and equal protection of laws”, equal treatment and so on, and it is important that the movement’s advocates and the campaign adhere to “accepted standards of law and justice.” The fourth point is that homosexuals should be presented as everyday people, but also as more than that: as “pillars of society.” And when it comes to historical celebrities who are recognized by society and who were homosexuals, the latter fact should be emphasized: “Did you know that he was gay?” With all this, “a skillful and clever media campaign could have the gay community looking like the verita216

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ble fairy godmother to Western Civilization.” And, of course, we must not forget celebrities, whether gay or straight: as many celebrities as possible should be publicly on board. Oppressive critics must be made to look bad, warns the fifth point. That is, in the late stages of the campaign, “when gay ads have become commonplace”, “it will be time to get tough with remaining opponents.” How? “To be blunt, they must be vilified.” The aim is to make proud homophobes feel not pride but “shame and guilt”, and to make ordinary Americans see these critics of the movement as so unacceptable and “nasty” that they will not want to identify with them. This can be achieved if the attributes, views, and other characteristics of these “homophobes” are seen by the public as hateful and unacceptable. The article says that it is necessary to bring up with the images of “the Ku Klux Klan demanding that gays be burned alive or castrated”, dubious elements who talk with complete calm about how they have or how they will kill “fags”, and to stress that homosexuals were tortured and gassed in Nazi concentration camps. But this requires a lot of money, point five reminds us, which, at the same time says that it is enough if the 10-15 million homosexuals in the country give two dollars each to the cause. And since most homosexuals do not have families and therefore have a higher-than-average income, they can afford to give more. The article then outlines how to conquer the newspapers and the screen. Since the media at the time, in the 1980s was difficult for the movement to penetrate according to the authors, they had to come up with topics that could not be objected to, such as: “In Russia they tell you what to be. In America, we have the freedom to be ourselves... and to be the best.” Or: “People helping instead of hating – that’s what America is all about.” That is, you have to look patriotic and appear as if the message were a “public service message.” However, since print media even back then was read more by the more educated, it is imperative to conquer the screen, where likeable homosexual personalities must be displayed. 217

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Then you have to run 50-250 gay politicians in the elections, who talk a lot on TV, not about LGBTQ issues of course, and the viewers must be let known that by the way they are homosexuals. After that, these politicians step back and support a straight candidate. Such a move would legitimize the movement and even make homosexuality a celebrated cause. Once this is over, and “the gay community has its foot in the door”, the movement can ask for more advertising. They then need to join forces with other human rights movements and constantly emphasize that America is a “Melting Pot” where there is room for everyone, and then ask for money for sympathetic causes such as AIDS research. The authors call what has been done so far “salami tactics” as they cut ever larger slices out of the media. After all this, several things are possible. Familiarization is necessary: self-confessions with homosexuals who are like our neighbors or grandparents need to be recorded. They need to emphasize that there is a special person in their lives, by which the monogamy of gay couples and the stability of their relationships would be communicated (which, it should be noted, is contradicted by the real data, since stable and monogamous homosexual relationships are the exception rather than the rule.340) They also need to emphasize that their family, which is very important to them, is supportive of them. The point is to break down the anti-family perceptions of the LGBTQ movement and point out that being a family does not have to be antithetical to homosexuality. Also, interviewees should emphasize that they have been this way for as long as they can remember and that they have not chosen their sexual orientation.

340

Szilvay 2016a pp. 235-241 218

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It is important to present homosexual celebrities, and if you cannot use contemporary figures, you should use historical ones. You should also present stories that help heterosexuals feel what homosexuals are going through. With short films, you should also aim to create sympathy for the victims. For example, homosexual boys who say that they are different, and that one in ten boys in America feel the same way, should be interviewed in dramatic circumstances. The boy has to say that he is being made fun of, humiliated, and it is very difficult for him: “it would portray gays as innocent and vulnerable, victimized and misunderstood, surprisingly numerous, yet not menacing.” Furthermore, “we have already indicated some of the images which might be damaging to the homophobic vendetta: ranting and hateful religious extremists neo-Nazis, and Ku Klux Klansmen made to look evil and ridiculous (hardly a difficult task),” and to show their homosexual victims. Finally, sometimes you have to try to raise money for all this through advertising. According to the authors, “we have sketched out here a blueprint for transforming the social values of straight America.” Needless to say, the whole thing looks as if it had been developed by a professional communications agency. But it was just an article which two years later became a book. The book is more mature, more sophisticated, of course more detailed, and more honest. It says that to transform society’s attitudes and values towards homosexuals, three things are needed: the aforementioned desensitization, jamming, and conversion.341

341

Kirk–Madsen 1989, pp. 148-155 219

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The authors also point out that for “propaganda purposes” the Kinsey estimate that 10 percent of American society is gay, as opposed to the 1-2 percent figure, should be accepted as a conservative estimate.342 However, this supposedly conservative estimate is grossly exaggerated, since, as we wrote in the chapter on Kinsey’s scale, the proportion of non-heterosexuals in Western societies ranges from 1.2 to 5.6 percent. And with regards to these figures, a leader of an LGBTQ organization told the Washington Post in 2014 (as quoted) that political influence matters and half the rate means half the influence.343 As Kirk and Madsen say about desensitization: if straight people cannot turn off the shower, which is constantly running with homosexual themes, then “they may at least eventually get used to being wet.”344 Fact and reality: nowadays not a day goes by without more news about the LGBTQ movement in the American media. Jamming or disturbing is “more active and aggressive”, but also “more enjoyable and heartening.” Part of disturbing is associative conditioning: if something is constantly shown, mentioned, paired with a positive, sympathetic thing, then that thing will be imbued with the aura of the sympathetic, positive thing. By this and other methods, internal emotional disturbance and emotional dissonance must be created in the “bigots”, the solution to which must be, if possible, the abandonment of their previous beliefs. One way of achieving this emotional disturbance is to disturb the self-image of the “bigots” and to seek self-contradictions in their worldview, for example by presenting homosexuals as a minority to be accepted alongside blacks, Jews, and others, and by emphasizing that using the “N-word” and the word “faggot” are equivalent and that anyone who does not accept homosexuality is “not Christian.” It is also necessary to ensure that as many

342 343 344

Ibid. p. 15 Somasekhar 2014b Kirk–Madsen 1989, p. 149 220

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of those from whom “bigots” and “homophobes” seek affirmation do not give it to them, i.e., to reduce their acceptance. And what do they mean by conversion? “We mean conversion of the average American’s emotions, mind, and will, through a planned psychological attack, in the form of propaganda fed to the nation via the media.”345 There is nothing wrong if a movement has a conscious communication plan to achieve its goals. It is also understandable if a movement that feels marginalized places great emphasis on this. There is no doubt that the strategy outlined above highlights a number of truths, such as the fact that the vast majority of homosexuals are ordinary people who love their families, or that sexual orientation is not something that is freely chosen. Indeed, no one should be judged by their sexual orientation, but instead by their character, their humanity, and their actions. Also, it is important that criticism of homosexual acts (and of lobbying efforts for any non-heterosexual orientation or identity) is not the same as discrimination or exclusion of homosexual people, especially not their “dehumanization.” It is possible to accept them in their full humanity even if the gay lifestyle is treated with reservations and criticism. However, many of the ideas outlined above have already been implemented, and the LGBTQ movement is clearly communicating in a way that is consistent with this strategy. There is also no doubt that we are bombarded every day with hundreds of communication campaigns, some of which have manipulative elements. Nevertheless, some elements of the above strategy (such as slander, obfuscation, and image association) remain manipulative. Whether the above constitutes an acceptable strategy of communication and action, or whether it can be called “propaganda”, I leave to

345

Ibid. p. 153 221

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the reader to decide. It remains a fact that the communication strategy described above outlines a a “planned psychological attack” to change the values of a complete society. So, to pretend that there is no conscious communication strategy for the LGBTQ movement is not in line with reality.

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TRANSGENDERISM “Dress however you please. Call yourself whatever you like. Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you. Live your best life in peace and security. But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real?” – wrote J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, on Twitter in December 2019. The post caused the internet to explode, and Rowling, who is otherwise a champion of progressive causes, was labelled a “transphobe.” In her post, Rowling stood up for Maya Forstater who was fired from her research job at the Centre for Global Development for claiming that people cannot change their biological sex. Forstater lost her case upon appeal. The court’s reasoning included: she is “absolutist in her view of sex and it is a core component of her belief that she will refer to a person by the sex she considered appropriate even if it violates their dignity and/or creates an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment. The approach is not worthy of respect in a democratic society.” Commenting on the case on the website of the British weekly The Spectator, James Kirkup said, “I’ve written quite a lot about the politicians, of all parties, who have private worries and criticisms about policies and laws intended to benefit transgender people which, however inadvertently, might have implications for women and their legal rights. I’ve also written about the failure of some media outlets, including some (but not all) parts of the BBC, to cover this issue properly. I am also aware of lots of women in lots of different walks of life

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who worry about this stuff but do not say so. Many are fearful of the backlash, the accusations of transphobia that could follow. Some of these women are prominent and famous and rich and powerful. The fact that such people keep quiet gives you some idea of the power of fear here.”346 In 2016, when North Carolina’s legislature made it mandatory for everyone to use the bathroom of their biological sex, a huge boycott involving 130 companies erupted. Bruce Springsteen cancelled his concerts there, PayPal cancelled plans to open its new headquarters there, and Apple, Google, American Airlines, and Deutsche Bank protested.347 The proportion of teenage girls in the UK seeking “sex change” surgery increased by as much as 4,400 percent in 2018. In the US, the number of such surgeries performed on women quadrupled between 2016-17, accounting for 70 percent of all such surgeries.348 Gender identity disorder refers to a person’s severe and persistent lack of reconciliation with the sex of their own body, typically beginning in early childhood. In the vast majority of cases, childhood gender identity disorder resolves itself. Historically, it affects 0.01 percent of the population, almost exclusively boys. Until 2012, there was no scientific evidence that teenage girls could suddenly develop gender identity disorder. This “trans epidemic”, as The Wall Street Journal journalist Abigail Shrier calls it, has two characteristics: first, the vast majority of girls who identify as transgender in their teenage years (65 percent) “find out” they are transgender after becoming intensely involved in the world of online platforms; and second, this identification has become fashionable among high school students, meaning that everyone has

346 347 348

Kirkup 2019 Szilvay 2016b Shrier 2020, p. 26 224

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more transgender friends, the rate of which has increased by 70 percent.349 In the United States, transgenderism has become the new frontline in the culture war after the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling to make the acceptance of same-sex marriage mandatory. But what is the transgender moment? According to a feminist cry for help in England: “It’s already happening in the states, it’s already happening in Canada, and despite self ID not being law in the UK, it’s already happening here, we have male rapists in female prisons, men taking jobs and places from women, men taking women’s sporting prizes, and men going into schools and teaching this balderdash to kids, and everyone is too afraid to tell them ‘no’.”350 So this moment is everywhere: in prisons, at work, in sport, and at school. After taking office, U. S. President Joe Biden allowed male athletes who imagine themselves as women to compete in women’s sports at the federal level and banned “discrimination” against them.351 Interestingly, when his predecessor, President Donald Trump, ordered transgender people not to serve in the military, one of the first known transgender Americans, Jamie Shupe, explained at length that he believed it was discriminatory against women to employ transgender men in the military as women, who after all have male characteristics: “The American public has been sold on the ideology that simply switching the hormone operating fuels in the two sexes makes them equal when it comes to sports, fitness, or biology. This is false. (…) Because of my male biology, throughout my entire military career no female soldier ever finished before me in the two-mile run in our physical fitness tests.”352

349 350 351 352

Ibid. Dreher 2018a Kohán 2021 Shupe 2017 225

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The trans movement expects schools and parents to accommodate every single wish of potential “trans students” in order to protect their identity and privacy without caring about anyone else’s identity and privacy. As one U. S. guide puts it, “respect for transgender students should be the starting point.” The problems of others are treated as mere “inconvenience.” If, for example, a girl is uncomfortable with a biological boy pretending to be a girl being in the same locker room with her, the guide says, she should have the situation explained to her, meaning that she should be fed trans ideology.353 There is a growing trend across the Western world to portray parents as backward, narrow-minded enemies, and the practice that parents are not told by the school because of a “lack of supportive home environment” if their child is about to have an abortion or announce that they are homosexual or transgender is spreading. In Canada, an 11-year-old girl with gender role dysphoria, who is moderately autistic, was encouraged by her school to act like a boy without informing her parents. The girl was a boy at school and a girl at home, and her parents were only informed after the girl developed suicidal tendencies.354 According to one of the bills (Bill 24, An Act to Support Gay-Straight Alliances), proposed by Alberta Education Minister Dave Eggen, it is necessary to prevent schools from informing parents if their children consider themselves to be attracted to their own sex or want to join a “gay-straight alliance.” In fact, in March 2017, the minister ordered two Christian private schools to allow such student alliances.

353

See: https://www.hrc.org/resources/schools-in-transition-a-guide-for-supportingtransgender-students-in-k-12-s. 354 Szilvay 2018 226

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In the abortion debate, the transgender movement raises its hands and says that it believes that not only biological women can have abortions, just as it believes that not only biological women menstruate.355 All these are not isolated phenomena, but current and growing trends.356 In the Canadian Parliament, Justin Trudeau’s majority government passed Bill C-16, which requires everyone to be referred to by their gender identity, regardless of their biological sex — one of the questions that arises is how do we know if we cannot tell? It was his opposition to this law that made psychology professor Jordan Peterson internationally famous.357 In New York, you can be fined a quarter of a million dollars if you knowingly address someone in a way that does not match their identity, and in California, healthcare workers can be sent to jail if they are unable to guess the right way to address you.358 In 2020, 19 states in the United States had already banned “conversion therapy” for minors,359 meaning that if gender dysphoria is detected, even in young children, therapy that would reinforce a gender identity in harmony with the child’s biological sex is prohibited. In 2018, the Hungarian leftist weekly Magyar Narancs provided a forum for a feminist debate on transgenderism: feminists who consider the transgender movement a threat and those who support it debated.360 Left-leaning portals regularly publish heartbreaking stories about transgender people’s calvary and struggles, and the Hungarian advocate group Háttér Társaság a Melegekért (Association for the

355 356 357 358 359 360

Vagianos 2019 See for example: GLSEN 2016 Szilvay 2018 Anderson 2018, p. 38 Shrier 2020, 120 Betlen–Feró 2018; Antoni–Szabó 2018 227

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Help of Gays) has published two research papers on discrimination against transgender people.361 Many of you may also remember the cover of National Geographic’s first issue of 2017, “Gender Revolution”, which featured a 9-year-old “transgender” person. In 2021, the year of writing, a more serious tension erupted over the Women’s Day broadcast by the popular Hungarian leftist YouTube channel Partizán, which criticized the trans movement from a feminist perspective.362 Some authors have already written about the disruptive effect of trans ideology by distinguishing transgender people from it and pointing out that, according to this ideology, a person’s anatomy has nothing to do with their identity.363

CONTRADICTIONS OF TRANSGENDERISM How many transgender people are there that they have become so dominant in public life today? According to various surveys, they account for 0.3 percent of the population in the European Union364 and 0.3-0.6 percent in the United States, depending on the survey: 1.5 million transgender people out of 512 million in the EU and 1.4 million out of 326 million people in the U. S.365 However, this figure was obtained after the definition had been broadened. There is a survey that shows that this type of gender identity disorder affects 0.001 percent of women and 0.033 percent of men.366 According to Anderson,

361 362 363 364 365 366

Háttér Társaság 2015, 2017 Partizán 2021; See also: Betlen 2020 Williams 2020 This is an estimate by Amnesty International: Economist 2017 Miller 2015; Steinmetz 2016 Anderson 2018, p. 94 228

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the rather large difference between the statistics is due to the definition they use: in recent years, clinical guidelines have, under political pressure, moved away from a view that considered a harmonious relationship with physical reality, in other words our biological body, as healthy.367 According to some studies, 355 out of 100,000 people consider themselves transgender, but only 9.2 undergo hormone therapy and surgery.368 Being transgender is not the same as being a transvestite who dresses in the clothes of the opposite sex, nor is it the same as being intersexual; the latter term is used to describe fellow human beings who are born with some mixture of male and female primary and secondary sexual characteristics. The best-known variant of this is hermaphroditism, i.e., being born with abnormally developed sexual organs. The LGBTQ movement seeks to use intersexuality to transcend male-female gender binaries and traditional gender roles, for example, to justify transgenderism. However, it is not the same to be born with abnormal sex organs as it is to be born with normally developed ones and then feel like the opposite sex. And, of course, the LGBTQ movement challenges the notion of “normal” and “abnormal development”, but more on that later. Ray Blanchard is a scientific authority on sexology who has conducted a lot of research on pedophilia and transsexuality. He distinguishes between two types of transsexuals: homosexual transsexuals and autogynephilic transsexuals. The former group includes those who feel themselves to be of the opposite sex and are attracted to the same sex as their own biological sex (a man who feels himself to be a woman and is attracted to men, and a woman who feels herself to be a man and is attracted to women), whereas the latter includes those

367 368

Ibid. pp. 95-96 Collin et al. 2016 229

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who feel sexual stimulation, for example, by looking at themselves in a mirror while dressed in women’s clothes. Only men are included in this latter category.369 Not from a medical point of view, but from a self-image point of view, Rogers Brubaker distinguishes three types of transgenderism. The “trans of migration” is the clearest group and includes those who feel themselves to be the opposite sex, and who seek to support this through hormone therapy and surgery. The “trans of between” are those who, although they feel on the male-female scale, fall somewhere between male and female. Finally, the “trans of beyond” is a group of trans people who do not classify themselves in existing categories.370 Transsexuality is not the same as transgenderism, although the two overlap. There is a distinction between social, legal, and medical transitions, and the majority of transgender and transsexual people do not go through all three: they present themselves to society as the opposite sex; they become the opposite sex legally; and finally they undergo hormone treatment or surgery.371 So, the umbrella term of transgender includes transvestites, cross-dressers, transsexuals, non-binary people, and drags, and its meaning is constantly changing. The transgender ontology assumes that it is possible to be born into the wrong body, that is, that the sex of our person can be the opposite of the – notice the twisted notion – “sex assigned at birth.” The primary evidence of this, they say, is simply that one feels this way. This feeling must be accepted and affirmed. At first glance, this is consistent with the claim from second-wave feminism that gender roles, masculinity, and femininity are primarily “social constructs” and have

369 370 371

Shrier 2020, pp. 127-128 Brubaker 2016, pp. 71-153 Betlen 2020 230

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little to do with our biological sex. However, feminists more or less tend to acknowledge the reality of biological sex but they recognize our personality, and with it the categories of masculinity and femininity, as primarily social constructs. Transgender dogmatism thinks the other way round: in this case our gender identity is given at birth, and it is our biological sex that they are trying to adjust to it. As an activist called Mey Rude wrote: “it’s time for people to stop using the social construct of ‘biological sex’ to defend their transmisogyny.”372 What it feels like to be transgender is perhaps best described in the 1974 book Conundrum by British writer James (later “Jan”) Morris, in which the author gives a visceral account of what it is like to be born a boy but feel like a woman and to feel “dirty” as a boy, until after transgender surgery he can finally feel “pure.”373 The book gives us a sense of and helps us to understand what it is like to think of ourselves as the opposite sex of our true (innate) sex, but this does not mean that we have to agree with the anthropology of the transgender movement and its goals. It is no surprise that a conflict erupted between some schools of feminism and transgender lobby. Some feminist authors have accused the trans movement of reinforcing patriarchal gender stereotypes.374 However, there are similarities between the two, since, as already mentioned, the radical feminists who founded gender theory in the 1960s were responsible for the radical separation of biological sex from gender roles and gender identity, and for questioning the “dualism” of male and female. Not to mention Judith Butler, who, as quoted earlier, sees biological sex as an oppressive linguistic construct. Children are caught up in the battle as if the are civilians because if our gender identity can be innately opposite to our biological sex (and

372 373 374

Rude 2014 Morris 1974 Raymond 1979 231

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also unchangeable), then obviously the sooner help arrives the better. It is certainly easier for those who are raised according to their own conceptions from an early age to cope with their transgenderism and start the “transition” at the age of 4 or 5 years old, rather than aged 30. While critics of the trans movement argue that we should wait until we know whether the children concerned really have a gender identity disorder and not just a temporary uncertainty because too early an intervention could be fatal or the operation may not be desirable at all, the transgender movement claims that it is the delay of the immediately required intervention that is fatal. There is a difference in perspective between the two antagonistic approaches: according to critics of the trans movement, there is a normal, purposeful sexual development, i.e., there is a standard against which we measure, a point of reference or a healthy norm according to which our body and soul, our sexual orientation, and our gender identity must be in harmony with each other; likewise, heterosexuality as a basis can also be a starting point. The transgender movement believes that this standard is arbitrary and oppressive, that there is no need for a standard, that all options are of equal value, and that the point of reference should be how somebody feels. According to Ryan T. Anderson, feminists and members of the trans movement who sharply separate gender identity from biological sex fall equally into the error of Gnostic dualism. However, he also points out – before refuting the claims of the trans movement point by point that it is not really a movement that can be argued with. Indeed, the tactic of the trans movement is to constantly change its position and demand more and more, yet it is completely deaf to counter-arguments, and because it is so dogmatic, it is prone to coercion.375 As he writes, while the trans activists are uncompromising, their position is full of contradictions: “the activists promote a highly sub-

375

Anderson 2018, pp. 46-47 232

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jective and incoherent worldview. On the one hand, they claim that the real self is something other than the physical body, in a new form of Gnostic dualism, yet at the same time they embrace a materialist philosophy in which only the material world exists. They say that gender is purely a social construct, while asserting that a person can be ‘trapped1 in the wrong body. They say there are no meaningful differences between man and woman, yet they rely on rigid sex stereotypes to argue that ‘gender identity’ is real while human embodiment is not. They claim that truth is whatever a person says it is, yet they believe there’s a real self to be discovered inside that person. They promote a radical expressive individualism in which people are free to do whatever they want and define the truth however they wish, yet they try to enforce acceptance of transgender ideology in a paternalistic way.”376 So, a few questions arise: “If gender is a social construct, how can gender identity be innate and immutable? How can one’s identity with respect to a social construct be determined by biology in the womb? How can one’s identity be unchangeable (be immutable) with respect to an ever-changing social construct? And if gender identity is innate, how can it be ‘fluid’? Is there a gender binary or not? Somehow, it both does and does not exist, according to transgender activists. If the categories of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ are objective enough that people can identify as, and be, men and women, how can gender also be a spectrum, where people can identify as, and be, both or neither or somewhere in between? What about people who identify as animals, or able-bodied people who identify as disabled? Do all of these self-professed identities determine reality? If not, why not? And should these people receive medical treatment to transform their bodies to accord with their minds? Why accept transgender ‘reality,’ but not trans-racial, trans-species, and trans-abled reality?”377

376 377

Ibid. Ibid. 233

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TRANSGENDERISM AND TRANSRACIALISM This is precisely the question that Rogers Brubaker tries to tackle, not to justify the transgender position but to understand why the American public accepts transgenderism and rejects transracialism. What was the occasion? The fact that it is not just a theoretical issue. When the “black” activist and university lecturer Rachel Dolezal was revealed in 2015 to be the white child of white parents, a national scandal erupted in America. Dolezal’s parents adopted many black children, and she grew up among them and identified with them. She also served as president of the local chapter of the NAACP black advocacy alliance but was eventually forced to resign because she was deemed ineligible for black benefits by the public and the courts. Dolezal could not be “transracial” even though she identifies culturally with blacks. Conversely, when the well-known TV personality Bruce Jenner announced also in 2015 that he felt female and transgender and then “transitioned” into Caitlyn Jenner, a country celebrated his “bravery.” Why is it that while gender is more biologically defined than race or nationality (although it also has biological characteristics and is not completely a social construct378), the American public rejects “transracialism” and accepts “transgenderism”? Brubaker points out that the idea of being “born that way”, or innateness, is meant to justify “gender selection” or even the possibility of transgenderism, while the language of genetics is meant to exclude the idea of “transracialism.” Moreover, the issue of race is associated with historical sensitivities, as opposed to the issue of gender.379

378 379

Murray 2020, pp. 133-207 Brubaker 2016 234

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But we have to notice that the racial perspective is specifically American because of the historical presence of racial slavery and segregation. It also could have resemblences in countries which once had colonies. But it does not really work where racial conflicts are lacking both historically and in the present – for example in Central and Eastern Europe, the edge of the Western world. But on the same way we can raise the possibility of trans-age, trans-altitude, trans-ethnicity and other curiosities.

SEX REASSIGNMENT SURGERY AND HORMONE THERAPY Transgender dogmatism promotes the success of sex reassignment surgery, exposing to the world the difficulties transgender people face and how they have overcome them through surgery and the treatments that precede it, which is also known as transition. In the name of the ontology explained above, the movement objects violently to anyone who considers whether someone was a woman or a man before transitioning. If, for example, a woman you are dating turns out to be a man who has undergone trans surgery, it is considered transphobia to break off the relationship because, deep down in his soul, he is a woman. He is also, the trans movement claims, a woman in body. Sex reassignment surgery, which was first called “sex change surgery” and now known under the politically correct term “gender affirmation surgery”, only appears to turn the patient into the opposite sex, but it is a very aggressive, dangerous, time-consuming and expensive procedure.380 It is interesting that while the LGBTQ movement is so against psychological intervention, i.e., “adapting” a person’s feel-

380

This part of the chapter is a summary of Anderson 2018, pp. 97-103. 235

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ings to their body by saying it is dangerous, it propagates body modification, the (partial) adaptation of the body to mental desires and feelings. Feelings are sacred, but biological reality can be violated. By no chance the other way round. Hormone treatments to masculinize female patients deepen the voice, enlarge the clitoris, grow, thicken, and strengthen body hair, stop menstruation, atrophy the breast tissue, increase sex drive, and increase muscle mass at the expense of body fat. During testosterone therapy, the amount of testosterone required is determined by the patient’s desired appearance — an aesthetic, not a medical, consideration. Testosterone therapy increases the risk of high blood pressure and heart attacks (the woman’s body receives 40 times the amount of testosterone it is used to). Infertility is almost guaranteed, and the chances of orgasm are very low. Anyone who regrets the therapy and the sex change and decides to live as a woman after all is in an impossible situation, as most of the consequences of testosterone treatment are irreversible.381 And there are many people who regret having started treatment. Hormone treatments to feminize male patients can lead to enlargement of the breasts, reduced sex drive and erections, reduced testicle size and increased body fat at the expense of muscle mass.382 Hormone treatment can cause severe mood swings, lethargy, and depression. And those who have male-to-female surgery, can expect the following interventions: gonadectomy (removal of the gonads), penectomy (removal of the penis), and the “creation” of a vagina. The skin of the penis is often used to create the wall of the imitation vagina. The scrotum is used to create imitations of the external labia. Cosmetic surgery is used to create an imitation clitoris, where the most

381 382

Shrier pp. 161-184 WPATH 2012 236

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sensitive parts of the head of the penis become the sensitive surfaces of the imitation clitoris. More recently, it has also become possible to imitate the inner labia. After the operation, the depth and dilatation of the “neovagina” must be maintained artificially (e.g. with a tampon.) Male hair is removed by electrolysis or laser, and techniques are now available to feminize the face.383 For women who want to become men, the available technologies are “less satisfactory.”384 The appearance of “neopenis” is “very good”, but the surgery is “complex and expensive.” Moreover, erection of the “neopenis” (fake penis) can only be achieved with built-in mechanical assistance, such as a rod or some inflatable device. In other words, the fake penis cannot even perform its basic sexual functions. Tissue for the penis is obtained during phalloplasty from other parts of the patient’s body (for example, the arm). There is another method that uses tissue from the genitalia to produce an erectile penis, called metoidioplasty, which has four different forms and which are not described here. The fake penis created in this way is usually three to five centimeters long, much smaller than the real penis and not necessarily suitable for penetration.385 In any case, not all operations remove the clitoris and eliminate the vagina. An imitation scrotum is created from the external labia and imitation testicles can also be implanted in the resulting “scrotum.” In comparison, removing the ovaries, the uterus, and the vagina is “child’s play”; removing something is easier, even if dangerous, and really possible, unlike creating an organ that is not there. These quite aggressive procedures are recommended to be started after a few years of androgen therapy. And of course, the removal of breasts is part of the surgical procedure.386

383 384 385 386

Ibid. Ibid. See: https://www.healthline.com/health/transgender/metoidioplasty. WPATH 2012 237

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Breast removal cannot be undone either, because although breasts can be sewn back onto the chest, the tissues cannot be properly connected, and the sewn-back breast will not function. In such cases, trans activists argue that this is a misconception of organs, but as Dr. Patrick Lappert puts it, “to completely forget about natural capacity would be like removing the eyes of a person who wants blue eyes and putting blue glass eyes in their place. Now he has blue eyes, but they just don’t work.”387 That is, blue glass eyes are not eyes and they cannot be used to see. And to change the functionality of organs or the body for aesthetic or cosmetic reasons is seriously unethical. All of this has of course spawned a huge money-making “trans industry.” Factories working for the health sector invest millions, influential billionaires pour huge sums into retraining doctors and psychologists in therapy, setting up gender clinics, and influencing society and legislation.388

ILLUSION ONLY What is the result of this long series of painful and expensive hormone therapies and surgeries? The answer is that the patients will be of the opposite sex, in appearance. But in reality, they will not be. Sex reassignment surgery does not change biological realities, not even hormone therapies, because our biological sex begins through fetal devel-

387

Shrier 2020, pp. 172-173 Bilek 2018. According to his research, philanthropic billionaires who have invested heavily in the trans movement include Jennifer Pritzker (a transgender man); George Soros; Martine Rothblatt (a transgender and transhumanist man); Tim Gill (a gay man); Drummond Pike; Warren and Peter Buffett; Jon Stryker (who is gay); Mark Bonham (also gay); and Ric Weiland (now deceased, he donated heavily to LGBTQ causes.)

388

238

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opment and genetics and permeates all our cells. People who undergo sex reassignment surgery do not change their sex because they cannot change the functions of their organs — a penis converted into a vagina does not take on the organ functions of a vagina, and vice versa. As Robert P. George, one of the foremost legal philosophers of our time, puts it, “changing sexes is a metaphysical impossibility because it is a biological impossibility.”389 It may well be that surgical techniques are improving, that the procedure can better mimic appearance and even achieve sexual stimulation for the people who have undergone surgery, but their biological reality will not be changed; at most, it will be distorted. All this is mere imitation. Our sexual organs can necessarily be defined as playing a particular role in overall biological reality, the biological functioning of a sexually predetermined person, and all this has its root and beginning at conception, writes the philosopher Christopher Tollefsen.390 He adds, “The penis typically penetrates the vagina but then also deposits sperm, which is in turn capable of procession towards and penetration of the female oocyte; the vagina is typically a receptacle and conduit of sperm to the oocyte, and so on. And both organs’ identities are linked not only forward in these ways to the functions they might eventually perform, but are also linked backward to previous events and functions. For example, the origin of male gametes is to be found in the production of primordial germ cells that occurs many years before sexual intercourse is even possible, but this production occurs in order that sperm will eventually be produced which the penis will eventually deposit. An organ lacking this historical role in the biological economy is not a penis. One cannot therefore make a vagina, say, simply by creating an orifice in a particular place. Absent some relationship to

389 390

George 2016 Tollefsen 2015 239

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a vagina’s larger biological functionality in the organism, no orifice is a vagina. Nor can one create a penis by creating something that will become enlarged on stimulation. One could only genuinely make a penis or vagina by re-creating the entire biological context within which those realities are what they are. But those larger biological contexts are themselves not freestanding in the organism: The organism is primordially sexed from its very first moment, and its biological development involves the working out through time of capacities that were present at the beginning for the development of those organs in their appropriate contexts.”391 Imitating genitalia by surgery does not create an individual of the opposite sex, nor does it create new genitalia, however successful the imitation may appear to be. The question arises as to whether, if it were possible to transplant genital organs, this would make any difference. Not very much: transplanting an organ that both sexes have, a heart or a kidney, for example, is not the same as transplanting an organ of the opposite sex. If you transplant a heart or a kidney and the body does not reject it, they can perform their function and they can function well, as you would expect a heart or a kidney to do. If we were able to transplant female genital organs into women and male genital organs into men, the same could be said. However, a female sex organ transplanted into a male body (even if hormone-treated) or a male sex organ transplanted into a female body (even if hormone-treated) is simply placed in an alien environment that does not serve the proper functioning of these organs; a male sex organ “can integrate a male sex organ into the biological life of a being whose root capacities are female, or vice versa.”392

391 392

Ibid. Ibid. 240

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That is why Tollefsen says: “every surgical attempt to change sex must involve a mutilation of the bodily capacity that identifies one’s true sex (such attempts must be distinguished, of course, from attempts to repair a damaged sexual capacity, and from attempts to resolve sex ambiguity).”393 This is why the epidemiologist and biostatistician Lawrence Mayer argues that “scientifically speaking, transgender men are not biological men and transgender women are not biological women.”394 As Professor Paul McHugh puts it, “transgendered men do not become women, nor do transgendered women become men”, but all of them “become feminized men or masculinized women.”395 The mental state of people who have undergone surgery reflects the hard truth that no matter what gender you feel you are, it is difficult to face up to our biological realities, especially when we have tried to distort our biological reality. Even in “trans-friendly”, inclusive, and tolerant societies, people who have undergone sex reassignment surgery still have a lot of mental health problems.396 And not because they are not accepted. The University of Birmingham has failed to demonstrate the mental health benefits of surgery even by manipulating its own research in this direction — and The Guardian, which would have liked to see results on positive mental outcomes, has been forced to admit this. Yet the conclusion was that “none of the studies provides conclusive evidence that gender reassignment is beneficial for patients. It found that most research was poorly designed, which skewed the results in favour of physically changing sex. There was no evaluation of whether other treatments, such as long-term counselling, might help trans-

393 394 395 396

Ibid. In: Anderson 2018, p. 101 McHugh 2015 Mayer–McHugh 2016 241

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sexuals, or whether their gender confusion might lessen over time.” Chris Hyde, a professor at the University, said there was “there is huge uncertainty over whether changing someone’s sex is a good or a bad thing.”397 In 2004, when Hayes Inc., a health research and consulting firm that specializes in the safety and effectiveness of medical procedures looked at sex change surgery, it found that no conclusions should be drawn from the existing results.398 A study by the University and University Hospital of Bern that assessed the well-being of those who had undergone sex change surgery fifteen years after the procedure, found that overall satisfaction and general well-being were low.399 Despite this, in the Western world, there is less and less psychiatric treatment of gender role and identity disorder. Instead, it is seen as something reactionary and fascist, and it is seen less and less appropriate to even consider it as an alternative to reconstructive surgery. For example, Dr. Joanna Olson-Kennedy, director of the Center for Transyouth Health and Development, a clinic in Los Angeles, completely dismisses any consideration of whether a child can make a mature, irreversible decision about sex reassignment surgery. She believes that the child’s decision should not be interfered with. And what does it look like when a child is so-called “transgender”? One of Olson-Kennedy’s ways of making parents and children “realize” that the latter might be “transgender” is to ask them if a box of cinnamon sweets has strawberry sweets in it, whether those are cinnamon or strawberry sweets.400

397 398 399 400

Batty 2004 In: Anderson 2018, p. 102 Ibid. p. 103 In: Murray 2019 Loc. pp. 3970-4039 242

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THE TRANS MOVEMENT’S FAKE INCOMPREHENSION The position that surgery only appears to make someone the opposite sex and that our biological sex immutably defines us is not accepted by the transgender movement, which believes it is the consequence of a patriarchal, heteronormative, gender-binary matrix. Let us unfold the transgender movement’s thought process. They claim that genital organs can be converted through surgery, i.e., one can be made into the other. Common sense tells us that not all sex organs are what they seem; it is not only appearance on the surface that matters, but functionality. They then go on to deny function too and say that we have so far been repressively too narrow in our definition of a given organ. They then argue that not everyone’s genitals function in the same way. For example, what about infertile women? And even if they admit that this is how organs basically work, they refuse to conclude from how the vast majority of people throughout history have functioned that this is the normal way of functioning. They reject the basic experience that things, including the human body and human sexuality, have a proper function which can be learned through experience. However, if the common, established, familiar, and self-evident explanation that our organs have a correct way of functioning, and if they fail to function that way they are sick or disabled, is not rooted in our material-physical-biological reality, which is outside of us, then the transgender movement owes us two explanations. The first is when and why this “heteronormative”, “binary”, “patriarchal”, and “oppressive” position came into being, and why not at another time and for another reason. This remains obscure, even if we take into account the prehistoric explanations that are common among feminists, which are, however, largely conjectures. Second, it fails to provide an alternative explanation of what is the normal function of things. Since it has broken the link between our biological reality and its function, thereby invalidating the established, millennia-old view that we know 243

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what is for what and why something is not for just anything, it cannot provide any explanation of how things function normally in the world, because, according to the movement, there is no one or maybe more normal ways of functioning. But this effectively eliminates the possibility of any rational explanation. It is like making a paper elevator and saying that it is an elevator, and then when our critics point out that it is only an elevator in appearance because it does not perform the function of an elevator, we say that we think it is wrong to infer from the physical appearance of the elevatorand the way it is been used, that the elevartor is only a means of transporting people between floors. We would argue that there are broken elevators and pretend that broken elevators are of the same nature as our paper elevatrors. Or we could point out that the elevator’s sole function is not to transport people between floors but that it can be enjoyed, for example, for its aesthetic appearance if it is beautifully designed, and we could point out that our paper elevatoris delightful. But does the fact that we have found a common possible functio, and that you can marvel at both a real elevator and a paper one, make our paper elevator a real elevator? The problem with this is that it removes the possibility of defining things, and in doing so it pulls the rug out from under itself. Of course, the function of the genitals is not just to reproduce, but also, for example, to give pleasure, but that does not make an imitation penis or vagina a real penis or vagina. This is also felt by the trans movement when it demands in a self-contradicting way not only that we call the imitation vagina a vagina but also that we “inclusively” call it a “front hole” — the explanation being that only those who are born female have vaginas, but “front holes” can be possessed also by those who have undergone surgery and feel like women but are not. It is like asking to use the term “elevator-looking object” for all elevator from now on, just to include our paper model in the definition. And those who are most

244

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humiliated by this are the real women who dare not speak out against this linguistic tyranny. The transgender movement, for its own interests, wants to invalidate the entirety of reality as we have understood it until today and our experience about it, and to eliminate the roughly one possible explanation of things that has been accepted until now. If, in the name of freedom, we deny the categories that constitute and create us, we are not increasing our freedom from some arbitrary notion but taking a great step towards our own destruction.

IF IT DOESN’T WORK The surgery does not solve mental health problems on the long run.401Among transgender people, the suicide rate is 41 percent; the average for the overall U.S. population is 1.6 percent.402 And we haven’t even talked about the high rates of alcoholism and drug abuse among transgender people and those who regret their sex change surgery; it is very common that serious mental problems return after a relatively peaceful decade.403 Of course, according to the trans movement, all this is the result of social oppression and exclusion, not the psychological problems of transgender people. But this is a misconception. The frequent comorbidity of transgenderism with other mental problems makes the question more difficult.404

401

Kuhn 2009. Correction to Bränström and Pachankis 2020; Mol 2020 Grant et al. 2011 403 Dhejne et al. 2011. Some studies are optimistic for the reason that the periods they examine are too short: Olson et al. 2022. Its correction: SEGM 2022. 404 Dhejne et al 2016; Heylens et al 2014; Vanderlaan et al 2015; Vries et al 2010; Kaltiala-Heino et al 2018; Thrower et al 2020 402

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John Hoopes, a former head of the Gender Identity Clinic at Johns Hopkins Hospital founded by John Money, an advocate of sex change surgery and who originally supported sex change surgery and hormone therapy, said he had never seen a successful operation, and most patients’ problems were not resolved. This was confirmed by his successor, Jon Meyer, who also found that transgender people’s psychological problems were not resolved by surgery.405 Andrea Long Chu, the founder of the “second wave of the trans movement”, explains in The New York Times that he knows that hormone treatment will increase suicidal tendencies, that his body will forever feel the “front hole” created from his male genital organ which looks like a vagina, as a wound, and that there is no guarantee that he will be happier, nevertheless he believes he has the right to have the health care system help him to feel bad if he wants to feel bad.406 The article is entitled: “My new vagina won’t make me happy.” Subtitle: “And it shouldn’t have to.” Chu has been attacked by the trans movement for deviating from the chorus of cheerleading optimism,407 even though he is not detransitioning, but rather, he is having sex reassignment surgery. Anderson devotes an entire chapter to the stories of people who regret sex change surgery. They felt that the trans movement had forced surgery on them as their only option without informing them of other options. Cari Stella posted videos on YouTube in 2016 telling her own story. In them, she explains that her family was very supportive and that she lives in one of the most trans-accepting parts of America without any sense of social exclusion. She started taking hormones at the age of 17 and “transitioned” at 22. But then she decided to change

405 406 407

McHugh 2004 Chu 2018 In: Dreher 2018c 246

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back into a woman, because she realized that she was running away from herself by being trans.408 In 2017, Jade, a transgender person who regretted her sex change, created a Reddit forum for people like her. Soon after, there were 7,000 of them. In 2019, four young women created the Pique Resilience Project, a forum for people who regret sex change and for people who are considering sex change, to warn about the dangers of sex change and to outline other options. And those who regret it were before, without exception, 100 percent sure that they were trans. Although the number and percentage of detransitioners is ignored or said to be very small, clinical experience suggest that it is bigger than supposed,409 and it will be certainly growing in the future because of the reckless contemporary practice to declare anybody to be transgender and pushing these people into this direction without real consideration. Even detransitioners themselved demand more attention, tolerance, and care.410

FORBIDDEN TO QUESTION If a teenage girl looks online for a solution – as Abigail Shrier shows us –, she will quickly find websites, videos, influencers, and groups that come to her “rescue”, and which create an environment that hates the world of outsiders and where being anorexic and trans is a matter of pride, even a heroic act. Trans influencers believe that you are who you feel you are and that your doubts about your biological sex should

408 409 410

Anderson 2018, pp. 52-56 Vandenbussche 2022; Hall–Mitchell–Sachdeva 2021; Marchiano 2020, 2021 Genderhq 2021 247

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be taken seriously, but your doubts about being transgender should not be taken seriously and that no one should stand in the way of your sex change. According to trans gurus on YouTube, the “transition” is harmless and testosterone therapy solves all the problems. They believe that truly loving parents should support their children in everything, including gender transition. And they warn that teenagers who are not supported by their parents, or who are even questioned by their parents, can commit suicide. But this is no more than emotional blackmail. The LGBTQ movement likes to prove its narrative about the vast number of suicidal trans youth caused by nonaffirmation, citing studies which deal with adults.411 The number of suicides among children with gender dysphoria (without transitioning) is not bigger than among those who suffer from other mental problems.412 Transition does not improve it.413 Amid reports recommending parental support for trans identities, it can useful to recall a warning that the core of problem is often an inadequate child-parent relationship (often one of the parents is narcistic), in which the opposite-sex parent (usually the mother) does not accept the biological sex of his child (usually a boy); and if the child is transitioning but finally returns to his or her biological sex, many times this opposite-sex parent collapses emotionally.414 Schools in California, for example, have long toed the line of providing support to students in all aspects of their lives, LGBTQ students are celebrated as heroes, and even kindergartens have educational programs that ask children about gender identity. California has the most comprehensive gender programs in schools and is seen as a model

411

Stock 2021, pp. 186-195. Some studies cited improperly: Haas–Rodgers–Herman 2014 Scheim–Perez-Brumer–Bauer 2020. Improper citation for example: Neuberger 2022 (Hungarian) – Ironically, the article was published on Lakmusz, a self-declared fact-checking portal. 412 Graff 2022 413 Correction to Bränström and Pachankis 2020 414 Kosky 1987. 248

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by other U. S. states. Children are taught from kindergarten onwards that their biological sex is not necessarily related to their gender identity, and “gender identity is discussed” long before they reach sexual maturity. Individual personalities are contrasted with the proverbial stereotypes of masculinity and femininity, and anyone who slightly deviates from these, and we all deviate to some extent, is no longer a boy or a girl but “genderfluid” or transgender. A publication entitled Who Are You? The Kid’s Guide to Gender Identity, funded by the California Department of Education, mentions transgender, as well as genderqueer, non-binary, genderfluid, transgender, gender neutral, agender, and neutrois identities, and “two-spirit” identity, the latter originating in Native American culture. Children are encouraged to be “gender creative.”415 The result has been that students have started to identify themselves as bisexual, lesbian, transgender, or gender non-conforming in droves. Accordingly, there is enormous pressure on young people to “discover” that they are neither cis nor heterosexual to be in line with the new fashion. The new ideology is that the student is who he or she feels he or she is. And the secondary school versions of gender education materials already detail the habits of a wide range of sexual orientations for students. Students who are “waking up” to their LGBTQ identity are not just treated as equals but celebrated. There is a Pride month and many other LGBTQ holidays, and teachers who do not wear rainbow-colored clothes are excluded. They try to explain it all away as anti-bullying.416 And what about the parents? In the eyes of the new ideologues, they are the barbarians to be converted, who in good cases educate themselves and support their children in an accepting way. But in bad cases, for example, if they question whether their teenage daughter is really a boy, they are transphobic. Therefore, school guidelines and

415 416

Pessin-Whedbee 2016 Shrier 2020, pp. 59-78 249

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policies increasingly state that doubting parents do not need to be informed of their child’s gender and can even be circumvented. Parents are considered outsider barbarians even if they have progressive political beliefs and are otherwise LGBTQ friendly.417 According to the American Psychological Association’s guidelines, therapists should also accept without question the self-image of people who identify as transgender.418 This is absurd because it is like accepting that someone wants to be overweight and reinforcing that or imagining themselves as a different nationality or race and putting a big stamp on it. The most prominent of these therapists is Randi Kaufman, who, when asked by Abigail Shrier, said that the most important thing for trans teenagers is unconditional family support. At the very least, he says, parents should call their children by their new names and buy them new clothes of the opposite sex. But it is not enough to accept what their child thinks, instead they must also believe it. According to Kaufman, “we can’t change the mind and so we have to change the body.”419 He says it is a “journey” and you cannot predict who will not turn out to be trans or “genderfluid.” But there is nothing to lose with all this, he adds, even though he should know he’ is wrong. This is absurd, because a therapist’s job is not to accept a teenage girl’s, or anyone else’s, claims and feelings without question but to raise doubts, ask questions and guide her as he sees fit. To accept something “on somebody’s say so” and to confirm it to a patient is simply not therapy. Nor because, as Shrier shows, teenage girls are lying to doctors and therapists, which is something that influencers and trans groups thoroughly train them to do.420

417 418 419 420

Ibid. pp. 79-98 APA 2015 Shrier 2020, p. 107 Ibid. pp. 41-58 250

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THE TRANS MOVEMENT MAKES THE LIFE OF LISA LITTMAN IMPOSSIBLE Lisa Littman, a mother of two and a health professor at Boston University, noticed in 2016 that a number of teenage girls in her town all from the same group of friends were identifying as trans. She then started researching the issue and found that therapists and doctors were not looking carefully at the phenomenon, not trying to find the causes, but were instead immediately sending the girls concerned for hormone therapy. After her research was published in the online peer-reviewed journal PLOS One,421 her Twitter account was flooded with trans activists accusing her of being transphobic, saying she was interviewing conservative, anti-trans parents, when in fact, 85 percent of the parents were supporters of LGBT rights. At her university, her research was called unscientific by one transgender student and dangerous for transgender people by others. In the end, PLOS One publicly apologized for not putting the study in a better context and criticizing its methodology. Child psychologist Diane Ehrensaft told The Economist that asking parents is like asking the Ku Klux Klan and users of alt-right sites about black inferiority. But the parents were not “anti-trans” in general, they just had serious doubts about believing a teenage girl who had no gender identity issues at all before and now suddenly claimed to be transgender. Littman herself is a liberal, has worked for the Planned Parenthood abortion clinic and has written several articles for the left-wing Huffington Post. Activists demanded that Littman’s employer, the Rhode Island Department of Health, fire her. In 2019, PLOS One published Littman’s methodological corrections and the new results, which were the same.422 421 422

Littman 2018, 2020 Shrier 2020, p. 25-39 251

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DISSIDENT PROFESSIONALS The exclusivity of affirmative therapy is questioned by several world-renowned psychiatrists. They were all attacked by the trans lobby who falsely branded them as unscientific and transphobic. Abigail Shrier reached out to them. According to one, Kenneth Zucker, there is more than one cause of gender identity disorder. Zucker says affirmative therapy is simply not therapy. In Ray Blanchard’s view, trans activists are lobbying more and more violently and the patients are saying their piece, because that is what patients have always done. The problem is that doctors and psychologists believe them uncritically, which is totally unprofessional. According to him, teenage girls who imagine themselves as the opposite sex do not suffer from gender identity disorder and that their transgenderism is “a mistaken identity.” Jungian psychologist Lisa Marchiano also refuses to believe there are as many transgender teenage girls in America as mentioned earlier; she says sometimes there are fashionable mental illnesses and culturally accepted self-diagnoses. She believes that suicide statistics are being used unethically by trans activists and that it is simply “emotional blackmail” to silence parents and therapists who disagree. According to Paul McHugh, the former head of the psychiatry department at Johns Hopkins Hospital who closed the gender clinic of Johns Hopkins in 1979 (it has since reopened), it is impossible to say who will regret the sex-change operation. He says that the psychiatric profession’s acceptance of patients’ gender identities on a say-so basis is nothing more than a fashionable fad.423

423

Their stories: Ibid. pp. 123-142 252

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WALT HEYER: TRANSGENDERISM DOES NOT EXIST One of the best-known “detransitioners” is Walt Heyer, who was contacted by the author of this book by letter. Heyer underwent sexchange surgery in 1983, later regretted it, and tried to undo it as soon as he could. Since then, he has been a fierce critic of the transgender movement.424 As he explains in his reply to me, his grandmother dressed him as a girl and tried to raise him as a girl from the age of four, and “this was the beginning of my gender dysphoria. But the treatment of gender dysphoria does not require affirmation, hormones, or surgery; quite the opposite. Gender dysphoria is best treated through psychotherapy. If used properly, therapists can find the answer to the question ‘when did it happen’. In most cases the reason is an imposition of the opposite sex, trauma, some tragic loss, deep disillusionment, or some kind of abuse.” Heyer, a psychology graduate, explained to me that during his studies at the University of California, he found “evidence in the literature that gender/sex changes are always indicative of psychological, emotional, social, or sexual disorders, and have never been a medical issue.” Thus, Walt Heyer also warns that the real number of transgender people is zero, because “from a medical point of view, transgenderism does not exist”, but only as a “concept” or “feeling.” Heyer devoted an entire book to “detransitioners”, the stories of people regretful of gender reassignment surgery who are not welcome to be heard by the transgender movement,425 and he has also written about the undesirable consequences of surgery.426

424 425 426

Heyer 2011, 2013, 2015, 2018, 2020 Heyer 2018 Heyer 2020 253

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JAMIE SHUPE, THE EMBODIMENT OF UNCERTAINTY “Four years ago, I wrote about my decision to live as a woman in The New York Times, writing that I had wanted to live ‘authentically as the woman that I have always been,’ and had ‘effectively traded my white male privilege to become one of America’s most hated minorities.’ Three years ago, I decided that I was neither male nor female, but nonbinary — and made headlines after an Oregon judge agreed to let me identify as a third sex, not male or female. Now, I want to live again as the man that I am,” wrote Jamie Shupe, “America’s first nonbinary personality,” in The Daily Signal.427 According to Shupe, in 2013, he threatened a nurse that if she did not prescribe hormone medication, he would get it another way. “The nurse practitioner ignored that I have chronic post-traumatic stress disorder, having previously served in the military for almost 18 years. All of my doctors agree on that. Others believe that I have bipolar disorder and possibly borderline personality disorder. I should have been stopped, but out-of-control, transgender activism had made the nurse practitioner too scared to say no.” Shupe explains that according to the trans movement, all that was needed was hormone therapy and surgery to turn his penis into a vagina. “All I needed to do was switch over my hormone operating fuel and get my penis turned into a vagina. Then I’d be the same as any other woman. That’s the fantasy the transgender community sold me. It’s the lie I bought into and believed.” Only one therapist tried to object, but Shupe sued him. According to the trans movement, the woman was in a “gatekeeper” position. And “professional stigmatisms against ‘conversion therapy’ had made it impossible for the therapist to question my motives for wanting to change my sex.”

427

Shupe 2019 254

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According to Shupe, he needed intensive therapy, but “the medical community is so afraid of the trans community that they’re now afraid to give someone Blanchard’s diagnosis. Trans men are winning in medicine, and they’ve won the battle for language.” Shupe adds, “the truth is that my sex change to nonbinary was a medical and scientific fraud.” Because he does “not have any disorders of sexual development. All of my sexual confusion was in my head. I should have been treated. Instead, at every step, doctors, judges, and advocacy groups indulged my fiction.” Jamie Shupe concludes, “In January 2019, unable to advance the fraud for another single day, I reclaimed my male birth sex. The weight of the lie on my conscience was heavier than the value of the fame I’d gained from participating in this elaborate swindle. Two fake gender identities couldn’t hide the truth of my biological reality. There is no third gender or third sex. Like me, intersex people are either male or female. Their condition is the result of a disorder of sexual development, and they need help and compassion.” In January 2019, Jamie Shupe received his new military ID card, in which he is once again male. But later in 2021 he has again become a trans and started to use again the “she” pronoun, officially became Elisa Rae Shupe, and in 2022 condemned the “antri-trans movement”. Elisa Shupe is a pansexual. I think Shupe is the example of uncertainties surrounding the issue, and a proof of why irreversible medical treatments and surgeries are dangerous. What is the guarantee that Shupe’s gender identity will not change again? Is it possible to locate an inborn transness in his story? I don’t think so.

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WHAT DOES SCIENCE SAY? There are many other issues that could be explored, but the problem of strengthening gender identity in childhood is the worthiest of discussion. Suffice it to say that the trans movement, which would prescribe puberty blockers for boys playing with dolls and girls riding tractors, ignores the fact that 80-95 percent of children later forget the problematic periods of sexual maturation and identify with their biological sex;428 that there are good terapeutical solutions for those who still have dysphoria in his teenage years;429 and that preventing puberty from occurring has many dangers.430 Puberty blockers may prevent the development of normal bone density, increase the risk of osteoporosis, risk loss of sexual function, have a negative impact on brain development, and may also hinder the full development of IQ.431 Also it is questionable if is has positive psychological outcomes.432 Hormonal threatments are also dangerous, for example it easily can cause cardiovascular problems and bone mass disorders.433 It is not a surprise that Sweden’s Karolinska Institute, which has been a pioneering force in this filed, ended all use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors outside of clinical studies.434 Also, it is notable that children with gender dysphoria who went through social transition are not better off mentally than those who not.435 Even the famous “Dutch Protocol” opposed the social transition of children.436

428 429 430 431 432 433 434 435 436

McHugh–Hruz–Mayer 2017a; Zucker 2018; Ristori–Steensma 2016 See for example: Clarke–Spiliadis 2019 McHugh–Hruz–Mayer 2017b; Anderson 2018, pp. 117-145 Schneider et al. 2017 Vries et al 2011; Carmichael 2011 Klink et al 2015; Nota et al 2019 SEGM 2021. Wong et al 2019 Vries–Cohen-Kettenis 2012 256

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Dr. Paul McHugh and Dr. Lawrence Mayer reviewed the literature on gender and transgenderism and concluded that masculinity and femininity are indeed binary and fixed, and that the structural differences between men and women are for reproduction. This has been accepted throughout history and is true across species. It is only in relation to human beings and only recently that it has been questioned.437 The two authors were, of course, labelled transphobes immediately after the publication of their paper. (I will summarize the work of the two authors in a later chapter.) They write that while there may be children who, if their convictions are strong and stable over a long period of time, may benefit from having their convictions supported, it is still the case that “some children may have improved psychological well-being if they are encouraged and supported in their cross-gender identification, particularly if the identification is strong and persistent over time. But nearly all children ultimately identify with their biological sex. The notion that a two-year-old, having expressed thoughts or behaviors identified with the opposite sex, can be labeled for life as transgender has absolutely no support in science. Indeed, it is iniquitous to believe that all children who have gender-atypical thoughts or behavior at some point in their development, particularly before puberty, should be encouraged to become transgender.”438 In any case, according to Andrew T. Walker and Denny Burk of the Witherspoon Institute’s journal Public Discourse, the trans movement is “based not on evidence, but on the ideology of expressive individualism — the idea that one’s identity is self-determined, that one should live out that identity, and that everyone else must respect

437 438

McHugh–Mayer 2016 Ibid. 257

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and affirm that identity, no matter what it is. Expressive individualism requires no moral argument or empirical justification for its claims, no matter how absurd or controverted they may be. Transgenderism is not a scientific discovery but a prior ideological commitment about the pliability of gender.”439 Transgenderism is the Jacobin party of the anthropological revolution, turning the philosophical background of the revolution upside down and devouring the instigators and children of the revolution. We have to note that the fifth, 2013 edition of the Diagnostic of Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the prestigious, official diagnostic handbook of the American Psychiatric Association still lists gender dysphoria as a mental disorder.440

439 440

Walker–Burk 2017 American Psychiatric Association 2013 (DSM-5), pp. 451-459 258

Chapter 12

THE QUESTION OF INTERSEXUALITY “There are nearly 10 million people living in Hungary. According to known data, at least 1 percent of the population is intersex, which is 100,000 people. People who cannot be clearly classified as either female or male on the basis of their biological sex characteristics are called intersex. For example, they also have a uterus and a penis,” said the sex education website Yelon of the Hintalovon Child Rights Foundation.441 The “I” in LGBTQI, an expanded version of the LGBTQ acronym, stands for intersex. Intersex is the term used for people born with a sex organ disorder. Intersex is the polite term for hermaphroditism, but it also includes people born with other abnormalities, whether related to sexual organs, chromosomes, primary or secondary sexual characteristics, such as Klinefelter and Turner syndromes, but also roughly fifteen other conditions.

441

Heltai 2020

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Klinefelter syndrome is a chromosomal disorder where low levels of testosterone delay the development of male sexual characteristics. It can result in a feminine physique, possibly with stunted development of the testicles and penis, and may be associated with psychological disorders. The cause of the disorder is a chromosomal abnormality: the male sex chromosome (XY) is complemented by a female chromosome (XXY; but also, XXXY and even XXXXY); the supernumerary chromosomes are however neutralized by the body, but some genes that are also found on the Y chromosome remain active.442 Turner syndrome is only found in women and is also a chromosomal disorder. It is caused by the partial or complete absence of one of the two female sex chromosomes (XX). Possible consequences include underdevelopment of the ovaries, failure to reach sexual maturity and to menstruate, and infertility.443 The transgender movement, as we discussed in the context of heteronormativity, prefers to use the phenomenon of intersexuality to justify itself, as it sees this as a way to challenge the “binary gender matrix”, the idea of the normality of biological sex and innateness, and it also considers intersex people to be similar to transgender people. However, as I have pointed out, this is a misconception for several reasons. On the one hand, transgender people don’t have the same problems as intersex people, specifically, it’s not the same to be born with a sexual disorder and therefore struggle with our sex as it is to be born clearly male or female and still consider ourselves to be the opposite sex. On the other hand, as I have pointed out, innateness alone does not prove everything, because we are healthy when our organs

442

See: https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klinefelter-szindr%C3%B3ma; https://gendiagnosztika.hu/klinefelter-szindroma/. 443 See: https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turner-szindr%C3%B3ma, https://gendiagnosztika.hu/turner-szindroma/. 260

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and our bodies as a whole are functioning properly; the eyes of those born blind and the ears of those born deaf do not function properly, even though they are innately blind and deaf. It’s another matter that, despite of this, it is still possible to live a full life; but the function of the eye is for seeing and the function of the ear is for hearing. This is why the postmodern notion of the LGBTQ movement and gender theory is wrong by framing intersex as “abnormal”, because a “birth defect” is a kind of “stigmatizing medicalization” whereby the medical profession imposes the expectations of the majority, heteronormative society on intersex people (see the position of the Transvanilla Association cited below).444 As the number of intersex people is not statistically measured in Hungary by, it is very difficult to know their true proportion. Hintalovon bases its claim on materials from the WHO and the United Nations for LGBT Equality.445 The 1.7 percent estimate of Anne Fausto-Sterling, considered as one of the authors of gender theory, and her colleagues is even more exaggerated, but this is considered correct only in few places beyond LGBTQ circles.446 The Intersex Society of North America (ISNA), which ceased to exist in 2008, itself estimated that one in every 1,500 to 2,000 people are born intersex, which is 0.05 to 0.07 percent, which would be five to seven thousand people in Hungary. ISNA also adds that many abnormalities do not appear until after puberty, which increases the number; however the estimate of hundreds of thousands is still a gross overestimate.447

444 445 446 447

On intersex people’s own experiences, see: Karkazis 2001 See: www.who.int/genomics/gender/en/index1.html. Fausto-Sterling 2000, p. 53. Ibid. See: https://isna.org/faq/frequency/. 261

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According to the Transvanilla Association website, “the most common estimate is that at one in every 1,500 to 2,000 live births, a specialist is called to determine the sex of the newborn. An unknown number of other intersex conditions are not detected in the newborn until much later. From a broader perspective, it appears that one in 100 newborns have a physical appearance that differs from the typical male or female, and one in a thousand babies have surgery to ‘normalize’ their genitals.”448 According to a scientific answer given to Fausto-Sterling, the real rate is actually 1.8 in 10,000, which would mean that in Hungary there are about 1,800 people with a similar problem.449 According to a German national survey, the proportion of intersex people is even lower, with 0.7 out of 10,000 people in this category.450 When I approached Dr. Laura Haynes, a clinical psychologist with 40 years of experience, and a leader of the US National Task Force for Therapy Equality and the International Federation for Therapeutic and Counseling Choice, to help me clear the air, she replied: “The reality is that 99.98 percent of people are clearly male or female. Only 0.02 percent of society falls into what the public calls the intersex category. This condition is rightly referred to as a Disorder of Sexual Development by the American Psychiatric Association. Intersex people are not a third gender. There is no third type of reproductive system that is capable of passing on life. There are only two reproductive systems, and therefore only two sexes.”451

448

See: https://transvanilla.hu/interszex. Sax 2002 450 See: dipbt.bundestag.de/doc/btd/19/075/1907586.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0CRLC-RR1hFmc4c_uZBvl0UgTCQDQgc5mHHDG4gD4T0PJ7Ayxr_DbPPlg. 451 See Szilvay 2020a 449

262

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Dr. Paul Hruz is a physician, chemist and biochemist who specializes in pediatric endocrinology, holds a doctorate in philosophy and is a member of the University of Washington’s Multidisciplinary Follow-up Program in Sexual Disorders at St. Louis. In response to my question, he pointed out that the 1 percent calculation included conditions “that do not involve uncertainty about sexual identity, about biological sex: people with Klinefelter and Turner syndromes are clearly female or male, despite their abnormal chromosome composition.”452 People who suffer from such syndromes should not really be classified as intersex. The number of people with intersex problems tends to be exaggerated by the LGBTQ movement, which tends to conflate the different problems that fall into the intersex category, exaggerate their weight (Klinefelter syndrome is a disorder of men, Turner syndrome is a disorder of women, and there is generally no problem with their “gender categorization”) and uses them as an ideological basis for its rhetoric.

452

Ibid. See also: Lee et al. 2016 263

Chapter 13

ON POLYAMORY In 2018, the Tech-Science column of Index published an essay entitled “Az önző Én” (The Selfish Me), which discussed how good group relationships (polyamory) are as opposed to the outdated, rigid, traditional male-female marriage, said to be full of lies.453 The author appeared to be a regular contributor o the subject. In this article, for example, he had, on the basis of a somewhat one-sided selection of the literature, interpreted the previous thousands of years in terms of psychology, history, and relationships. Considering that the text commences with statements dating back to 2004 by the author of a book454 published in 1990455, the intentions behind the article are unclear.

453 454 455

Hegyeshalmi 2018 Whyte 1990 Hodder 2004

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The article then goes on to contrast bad traditional marriage with good polyamory. The argument is the usual one: traditional monogamous marriage is not at all universal, it is not natural, there are many divorces, and many people cheat on their spouses. All because at some point in time (Christian) society imposed these expectations on us, we dare not think otherwise. Therefore, the argument goes, we are full of hypocritical marriages, and adultery was only made a sin by the Bible. In fact, “polygamy is still accepted in 83 percent of societies of the world.” Experimentalists who go beyond the old forms are not socially recognized, while they represent a new, mentally superior honesty, in contrast to the old hypocrites. But even in traditional marriages, more and more people are opening up to expecting only emotional, and not sexual, exclusivity. “Infidelity is due to biological causes, which religion has declared a sin.” (This is not true: it was not “religion” that declared infidelity a sin; fidelity is a basic human expectation.) Because of its civilizational role, monogamous marriage was important at one time, but today there are new circumstances into which it does not fit. This is the same kind of argument as Marx’s view of capitalism: it was a stage of development that has to be surpassed. So, “the idea of marriage for life has been pieced together from two hundred, ten thousand and two thousand year-old socio-cultural memes and customs. This is the construct that we expect to apply to the lives of people today. The shortcomings of its functioning are doubtless uncoincidental.” According to Robert P. George, after the introduction of same-sex marriage, the next step besides the dictatorship of transgenderism will be the legalization of polyamory and incest, because it follows from the logic of things.456 You always have to go somewhere to progress — movement is everything, as Stalin said.

456

George 2015 266

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BAD LAWS? However, underdeveloped legislation (in a few cases) refuses to extend the definition of marriage and family to “heterosexual couples who just live together, purely sexual partnerships, asexual partnerships, or lesbians raising their adopted daughter.” We can also list a few forms of human relationships that have been denied the right to marry by narrow-minded legislators: monastic communities, class communities, flatmates, siblings, and the like. And we would be happy if the inheritance rights of others by direct descent were extended to us, if we received a widow’s pension for the death of our grandparents, and even for the death of our friends’ grandparents, and if we were able to exercise the rights of employer in the company where we work. Why are we denied all this? It is time to broaden the definition of these rights! The author is right that today’s monogamous form of marriage has been by no means exclusive throughout history and that it is experienced rather imperfectly by many. However, it is not only change that can be emphasized, but also permanence. Edward Westermarck also notes in his work on the history of marriage that “the great majority of peoples are monogamous as a rule, and other forms of marriage are also regularly modified in the monogamous direction.”457 Much more could be said about the historical forms of marriage, but let us move on.458

457

Westermarck 2015 On the historical forms of marriage, see: Szilvay 2016a pp. 131-155. Another useful book on this subject: Coontz 2005 458

267

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MENTAL SUPERIORITY? This is where polyamory comes in. “Monogamous couples can also learn a lot from well-functioning multi-actor love relationships because running such a relationship requires understanding, conflict management skills, and openness. That the relationship can be multi-actor may seem strange only out of habit,” says Index. According to an article in the psychology portal Mindset, “polyamorous relationships are based on honesty”, “polyamory is a challenging form of relationship that not only tests the relationship but also has a strong character-forming and personality-developing effect” and “the polyamorous does not try to limit the other person and respects him or her as an individual. The polyamorous does not possess or appropriate but gives freedom.”459 But are traditional relationships not based on honesty? Do we not respect each other as individuals? And where is the limitation? Rather, are monogamous relationships not also experienced as fulfilling? Does participating a monogamous relationship not require the same understanding, conflict management skills, and openness? Of course it does. The rub, of course, is that “for most polyamorous people, jealousy is not an emotion to be suppressed or, if unsuppressed, an emotion that poisons relationships, but an emotion worth working with.” Translated: polyamorous people feel the same jealousy and see the same infidelity in giving up exclusivity, but they try to make themselves believe that it is not the party(ies) who want a looser relationship framework that is at fault, but they have been badly conditioned by their lying monogamous socialization.

459

Sas 2018 268

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The journalist at Index also mocks traditional marriages for their evident shortcomings, such as infidelity, and then comes up with polyamory, suggesting that it involves the exercise of higher mental skills. However, either polyamorous people are superior (as the article suggests), which means they can certainly practice not only understanding, conflict management skills and openness without interruption, but also, for example, fidelity in a monogamous relationship, because their self-control skills are also certainly superior; or the curious situation arises that the author believes fidelity cannot be expected in the long term from the same people who are expected to exercise the supposedly highest forms of emotional intelligence all the time. But you can either expect both, or neither. Is accepting infidelity “worth working with” but overcoming the urge to be unfaithful not? Or in polyamory, the question of infidelity does not arise anyway, because as soon as they get bored of someone, they dump them? By the way, this is also the case in traditional monogamous marriages, only the article is written as if divorce were illegal and socially unaccepted. For many people at this moment in time, lifelong marriage may unfortunately remain an unattainable ideal, but many others are still living this ideal without feeling imprisoned or deprived of their freedom; instead, they are happy and living a full life. In any case, if we can get bored of one person sexually — but, of course, also emotionally — is the same not true for another person or two? (According to the literature, polyamorous relationships usually consist of three people, plus or minus one — but minus one is, of course, not even a polyamorous relationship.) What happens when someone peeks out of their current polyamorous relationship? Is it infidelity or not? Are polyamorous relationships open or closed? Are the others offended, or do they just wave the whole thing off according to their superior conflict management/understanding/openness skills?

269

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MORE FREEDOM? One of the main arguments by the proponents of polyamorous relationships in favor of their point of view is that this form of relationship is not exclusive and increases freedom. But to what extent? If those in the relationship are heterosexual or homosexual, it may not even mean a single additional regular sexual partner. Maybe one more in the case of a four-person arrangement. By default, the sex that has more “opportunities” in such a polyamorous group love is the one that has one member, since the other sex has two. We are ready to believe that bisexuals indulge in polyamory. But what if you suddenly fancy someone else who is not part of the party? Does everyone suppress the pain caused by the group member’s infidelity, because this pain is only implanted in us by society, because this pain of infidelity is unnatural and infidelity is natural? Is this what mental superiority means? Is it possible that there is exclusivity in polyamory, but it is not exclusive to one person, but to two or three? When a polyamorous group has had enough of each other, when it runs out of emotional charge, its members break up and leave each other because that is how they feel honest and free — but the proponents of monogamous, lifelong marriage often prefer to “work” on it when they feel this way. Why are such efforts by monogamists not considered to be something that develops personality and enhances emotional intelligence, and why are these considered lies according to those who promote polyamory? You see: if there are problems in a monogamous relationship, they are due to the lies of the institution; but if there are problems with polyamory, they just need to be “worked on.” And what about the idea that the polyamorous do not own anyone and give each other freedom? Is it because they can be with two or three people instead of one, and when they get “cheated” on, they just suppress their anger and comfort the other person asking, “It was good, wasn’t it”? Is freedom a question of quantity? Or is it not the 270

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exclusivity of the relationship that gives us such an emotional charge that allows us to feel so free? Is it not beneficial to our mental health? But in any case, why should we expect a relationship to increase our freedom?

THE ISSUE OF CHILDREN The Index article then goes on to reiterate the usual belief in feminist circles that before the modern spread of the nuclear family, the extended family was the norm and this extended family raised the children, so why should not more people raise them now? “Polyamorous relationships relieve the burden on parents in a similar way extended families did.” Yes, but extended families still exist, even if they do not live together. These extended families, however, are usually seen by those promoting postmodern aberrations as some kind of a reactionary thing. By the way, anyone who knows how extended families work will know exactly what disruption can result from, for example, people trying to raise each other’s children during holidays. The “nuclear family” is not an exclusively modern phenomenon. Premodern extended families had several major advantages over polyamorous relationships. First of all, they had a hierarchy which determined who was responsible for what (for example, it’s interesting to read the work of János Manga on the life of extended families in the Palóc region of Hungary)460 This is a hierarchy that progressives do

460

Manga 1979, pp. 35-62 271

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not like. Secondly, as a consequence, they had patriarchy; specifically, an older male would be head of household with rather broad powers. Thirdly, unlike polyamorous relationships, these extended families were permanent. In a polyamorous relationship, the members can change relatively often, people can be included and excluded, without which, if I understand it correctly, polyamory would also be a life sentence, just like the bogeyman of traditional marriage. Try to raise your children in an environment where your life is like an open-access building where the children never know how many mothers and fathers there are at any given moment and what happened to their old mothers and fathers. They have also tried to explain same-sex marriage as being very good for the children raised in it, although this is controversial to say the least.461 Polyamory does not develop the child’s psyche, but instead destroys it, and children are best off living in a stable family with their biological mother and father.462 As Joseph Henrich, Robert Boyd, and Peter J. Richerson conclude in their study, polyamorious households have “elevated risks of intra-household abuse, neglect, and homicide because such households have lower average relatedness” due to “unrelated dyads.” So “living in the same household with genetically unrelated adults is the single biggest risk factor for abuse, neglect, and homicide of children.”463

461 462 463

See Szilvay 2016a pp. 242-267 Ibid. Heincrich–Boyd–Richerson 2012. 272

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EXPLAINING AWAY POLYAMORY Advocates of polyamory simply reverse the expectations: the expectation is not that you exercise self-discipline but that anyone who disapproves of you looking outside of the relationship should “work on it.” They make it seem as if the sadness and anger over infidelity is just a social convention that can be overcome by accepting infidelity. In other words, fidelity cannot be expected of anyone because we are not good enough for it, but the suppression or processing of jealousy and loss of trust resulting from infidelity can be expected because we are certainly capable of it (because infidelity does not exist, it is only the result of false conditioning.) It is also remarkable that they are practically making an evolutionary argument (infidelity is natural: it’s how we are born, and we desire it in certain cases), while gender theorists are otherwise not fond of evolutionary biology and arguments. In contrast to the Index and Mindset articles, even Deborah Anapol, one of the pioneers of polyamory, writes about the disadvantages of polyamory by not presenting it as superior at all. Most of all, she emphasizes the emotional complexity and the time factor, namely the difficulty of simultaneously managing several relationships that are all declared to be love affairs.464 Other times, critics argue that the ethical justifications for polyamory are wrong, that all the disadvantages of a monogamous relationship can be equally apparent in polyamory, and that it also raises several practical problems.465

464 465

Anapol 2010 Medium.com 2016 273

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Polyamory is said to eliminate many of the problems of monogamous relationships. But this is not true. The problems of monogamous relationships arise from the fact that we are imperfect people, and polyamorous group love also involves imperfect people. Polyamory may eliminate some of the expectations of monogamous relationships, such as exclusivity and fidelity, but replaces them with other expectations. All of this is on the basis that these expectations of monogamous relationships are unnatural expectations. But the fact that advocates of polyamory stress so much the extent to which it enhances certain virtues of emotional intelligence (openness, conflict resolution, acceptance, etc.) actually shows that this is necessary because of the constant occurrence of unpleasant and humiliating situations in polyamory. The expectation of polyamory is that you “work”, so to speak, on natural human emotions because they have been inbred into you only from the outside, without reason. In reality, it is still easier to process that the other person is an imperfect, flawed human being who cheated than to convince ourselves that cheating does not exist and that everything is fine with the misadventure. It is a mistake to assume that relationship problems can only be caused by unnatural and wrong expectations, and that if we correct the wrong social expectations, everything will be fine. The main problem is not with social expectations (which do not really exist anymore) but with people. There is no relationship that can be lived without hurt and pain. Even if we “work” on it. Generally, you cannot fix the human being psychologically. It may be somewhat “natural”, or at least easily explained, that many people cheat on each other (although this could be called a “naturalistic fallacy”), but it is also perfectly natural and understandable to feel sorrow and anger at this on the part of the other person, and equally natural to expect exclusivity. It is pointless to triumphantly claim that monogamous, lifelong marriage is not universal throughout history, and that there have been 274

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societies that functioned differently, given that the emotional expectations that characterize modern monogamous relationships were not only not characteristic of the old monogamous marriages but neither of polygamy and all other forms of cohabitation. There has always been less emotional expectation in multi-actor cohabitation than in monogamy. Peter W. Wood, professor of anthropology at Boston University, points to other problems with polyamory: “Eliminate the one-manone-wife rule and, yes, the polyamorists could openly do their thing but so could a lot of other people. Should the polyamorists have their way, plural marriage would, almost of a certainty, emerge in its classic form of rich older males dominating much younger vulnerable females. This is not a ‘slippery slope’ forecast. It is more definite than that, since we know for a fact that everywhere and at every time human societies have made plural marriage an option, this is what happens. Given a free market and no rules against plural marriage, human beings will find themselves in a hierarchy dominated by older men with multiple younger wives. But why? Why wouldn’t the polyamorist utopia of coupling, tripling, and quadrupling emerge instead? Or at least some tame version where most people are monogamists, but a fringe avails itself of the new option? The answer lies in something anthropologists don’t like to talk about: human nature. The human sexes accommodate fairly easily to a dominant male hierarchy; human males are biologically primed to seek sexual variety; and the systems of reciprocity on which all human societies are based lend themselves very easily to dominant males consolidating their status by taking young wives.”466

466

Wood 2003 275

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The proponents of monogamous couples and marriage have never claimed that it is problem-free. But even with all its pitfalls, cheating, infidelity and jealousy, it is still more problem-free and human than polyamory. This does not mean that polyamory should be banned. Whoever wants to live like this, let them do so. But that it should be legally recognized or even put on the same level as traditional marriage and the family is an absurd idea.

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ARE DIFFERENT FAMILY MODELS REALLY EQUAL? “Dad, mom, children... 1 apartment, 2 children, 4 wheels... We have grown up or been brought up hearing countless engrained clichés like these, the essence of which is that a family can consist only of a father, a mother and their children. Only and exclusively. But in 2020, we know and can safely say that there is no ‘classic’ family model. There are families. Single-parent families. Families with one child. Extended families. Divorced families. Mosaic families. Families left without parents. Families without children. Families with children with special needs. Multilingual families. Adoptive families. Rainbow families. FAMILIES” - wrote Éva magazine.467 We could ask some questions: is the lady next door and her cat a family? Is a monastic community a family? Is a workplace community a family? The kindergarten group? The school class? A camp community? Are the three tenants living in the same apartment a family? Is a community of jail inmates a family?

467

Zubor 2020

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We are beginning to stretch the concept of family so far that it will end up meaning nothing. Everyone has the right to call themselves family because we think it is heartless to deny them that. But if any community that suddenly wants to call itself a family is a family, nothing is; if anything can be called a family, the term itself becomes hollowed out. It is of course possible to call many different communities a family in a metaphorical sense (“we are one big family!”), but this only makes sense if the term “family” has a strict and concrete meaning as well, and is not only used in a metaphorical, figurative sense. And metaphorical interpretations should not be confused with concrete ones. There is a “classic family model.” Something is classic not because it is exclusive but because it is familiar, established, original; a benchmark, if you like. And probably not by accident. So even though there are other kinds of families, there is still a classic family model, and it looks like this: father, mother, child(ren). “One-child families” are fully part of the “classical family model.” “Multilingual families” do not stand out from the category of classic family. It also makes no sense to remove “families which include children with special needs” from the “classic family model.” Why would they not belong there? The extended family is as classic as the family with one or two children, the multilingual family or the family with children with special needs. What makes the classic family a classic family is not the number of children, the nationality of the parents, or the special needs of the children, but the fact that it consists of a father, mother, and children. The rest is irrelevant. From this point of view, the case of the adoptive family is disputed. However, it also “fits” the classic category, although the trauma and psychological scars of separation from biological parents are not easy to deal with. But here too, there is mostly a dad, a mum, and of course children. Adopted children, on the other hand, have significantly more emotional, behavioral and learning problems than their counterparts

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who are raised by their biological parents.468 So, this is a borderline case. What is not at all clear is why “families without children” would be families at all? By definition, a family includes children. It may be that some tragic event separates parents and their children, but they still exist. “Family without children” is like saying “family without family.” You have a family when you have your first child. However, the mosaic family (the family of divorced parents), the single-parent family (which is in fact the same in practice as the previous) and, of course, the rainbow family are not really classic families. Why not? Because they are not of the same value. The current slogan “all family models are equal” is simply not true. Of course, what we mean by “equivalence” or “equality” is a question, but perhaps it does not really need to be argued that the main concern is the mental-psychological-spiritual development and health of children. Progressives and the LGBTQ lobby tend to overemphasize how much human frailty, possibly violence and other defects can blight the lives of complete families in an attempt to undermine the obvious truth that the best form of family is when the biological father, the biological mother and their children live together. However, these defects can also occur in other family models, and this does not make life any easier for divorced parents and single parents. Moreover, those who have reservations about the traditional family underestimate the proportion of well-functioning classic families, and underestimate problems inside nontraditional families.

468

Keyes et al. 2008; Wierzbicki 1993; Brodzinsky–Schechter 1990; Frisk 1964 279

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BIOLOGY MATTERS: DIVORCE, COHABITATION, AND THIRD-PARTY REPRODUCTION A common argument is that a divorce, rainbow family, or mosaic family is better than an abusive traditional home, which is true; but this kind of divorces of high-conflict marriages constitute only the onethird of all (American) separations.469 The other two-third of divorces are end of low-conflict marriages470 and unfounded from the perspective of children. Unhappy, but relatively peaceful marriages of parents and their home is still a better environment for their child, and they are better off mentally taen those whose parents had chosen divorce. Furthermore, second (etc.) marriages tend to be more fragile and end in divorce by a bigger chance.471 Divorce is definitely traumatic for a child,472 even if one of the parents is abusive. Although sometimes divorce is better, the consequences cannot be escaped. Moreover, divorce often does not occur because of relationship violence and the like but because of other weaknesses in the relationship. It may be clear to the couple how their relationship has deteriorated or flattened, but very often all their child sees is that their mother and father, whom they love the same way, suddenly start to quarrel and then one of them disappears. Divorced parents who often raise their children alone — usually the mother, but there are also plenty of dads — have twice the workload. Financial support from a former spouse or the state is helpful, of course, but it does notr help with the tasks, nor does it make up for the emotional deficit caused by the absence of the other parent. In fact, neither visitation rights nor even a cool stepparent ca make up

469 470 471 472

Amato–Booth 1997, p. 220. Amato–Booth 2001 DivorceStatistics.info Sullins 2015b 280

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for it; at most, these only mitigate the loss.473 Divorce is definitely hard for children as they lose stability.474 Even the best-managed divorce results in a divided life and has psychological consequences.475 Single parenthood is hard, and despite their heroism, single parents cannot substitute for the missing other.476 The claim suggesting that what matters only is love and care, and biology can be ignored is false. Biology matters a lot.477 Relatives by blood are more attached to each other emotionally and they do more for one another. Stepparents and stepchildren frequently do not have a genuine urge to help each other andy do much less for one another than biological relatives.478 Adopted children are often caught in a constant identity crisis.479 And stepchildren experience harassment at the hands of their stepparent more often. Stepfathers are far more likely to molest their partner’s child than biological fathers are likely to prey on their own offspring: “Stepmothers are 2.4 times more likely to kill their stepchildren than birthmothers, and children living with an unrelated parent are between 15 and 77 times more likely to die ‘accidentally.’”480 So much about the overemphasized presence of domestic violence in traditional families’ homes. It is more common in the homes of those who try another “model.”

473

D’Onofrio–Emery 2019; Laumann–Billings–Emery 2000 See more: Moore–Jekielek–Emig 2002; Gruber 2004; Amato–Loomis–Booth 1995 475 Huurre–Junkkari–Aro 2006; Bohman et al. 2017; Schaana et al. 2019; Ahrons 2007; Wolfinger 2005; Wolfinger 2003 476 Poponoe 1996 477 Moschella 2014; McLanahan–Sandefur 1997; McLanahan–Sawhill 2015; Manning–Lamb 2003; Mariani–Özcan–Goisis 2017 478 Coleman et al. 2015; Case–Paxson 2001; Houdt–Kalmjin–Ivanova 2019; Zvoch 1999; Tilse et al. 2015 479 Frisk 1964 Faust–Manning 2021, pp. 64-67. 480 Heincrich–Boyd–Richerson 2012. See more: Wilcox 2011 Radhakrishna et al. 2001 Stiffman et al. 2002. Schnitzer–Ewigman 2005 474

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Artificial insemination and surrogacy cause similar problems. Children fathered by a donor or who were carried out by surrogate mother have a constant identity crisis and they experience deep traumas because they are partly products of paid service.481 Professor Renate Klein even calls surrogacy a human rights violation. 482 It also matters whether biological parents of the children are married or only cohabiting (possibly in a civil partnership.) Cohabitation tendsto be more fragile; children, however, need stability and predictability. As a result, children whose biological mother and father are married are better off mentally, than those whose biological mother and father are only cohabiting (cohabitation ends significantly more frequently in the couple splitting up.)483 Kathy Faust believes that adoption is a correctional move by which adults try to heal wounds and respect the rights of children. However, in her view, articifial insemination and surrogacy violate those rights because their bare existence means that children born out of the process are separated from their biological parents, which causes emotional harm and scars. Adoption is sometimes necessary, but third-party reproduction is never. She adds that a lesbian woman can be a wonderful mother but cannot be a father, and a gay man can be a wonderful father but not a mother; and because children require a mother and a father, she does not support the “adoption rights” of same-sex couples.484

481

Clark–Glenn–Marquardt 2010; Golombok et al 2013; Faust–Manning 2021, pp. 64-67, 145-182 482 Klein 2017 483 Rhoades–Owen–Stanley 2013; ElHage 2015 484 Faust-Manning 2021, pp. 191-201. 282

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FATHERS AND MOTHERS: DIFFERENT ROLES Swedish researchers who looked at 24 studies published between 1987 and 2007, involving a total of 22,300 subjects, found that children who lived with their parents, their mother and father, had fewer behavioral problems. Fathers in particular have an active role in overcoming and reducing their daughters’ psychological and their sons’ behavioral disorders. Constant contact with the father reduces the chances of the child running afoul of the law, strengthens cognitive skills such as intelligence and logic, and this also benefits language development. Anna Sarkadi, a professor at the University of Uppsala in Sweden who teaches in the Department of Women and Child Welfare, points out that children who have a positive father figure do better at school and develop better relationships with both sexes. For women, a good father leads to better partnerships and better mental-psychological wellbeing.485 Sons can learn what it means to be a man from their fathers, and daughters can learn how to relate to men from their fathers. Fathers are more successful than mothers at controlling their sons’ violent and antisocial tendencies, are better able to teach their children to persevere and achieve their goals, regardless of gender, and play differently with their children: their shared fun is more physical, free, and challenging. Fathers emphasize autonomy, agency, risk-taking, and rule-following in parenting. But of course, mothers cannot be absent either and are just as irreplaceable. The absence of a mother can lead to behavioral problems later on just as much as the absence of

485

Sarkadi et al. 2008 283

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a father- can. Mothers raise children for connection, attachment, and security, and their love is more expressive and unconditional than that of fathers. It has also been shown that in the absence of a father, a grandfather can successfully mitigate the father deficit, but a grandmother raising the child alongside the mother does not have such positive effects.486 The differences between fathers and mothers described above are confirmed by a number of other studies, and this is not surprising given the differences between male and female genes, hormones, brain, and psyche that go far beyond mere anatomy.487 Those who disparage the role of fathers (and the traditional family) believe that it is not who the family is made up of, but what the parents provide that is most important. But they are wrong. For example, analysis of 172 studies found significant differences in the roles of mothers and fathers.488

SAME-SEX MARRIAGE: AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ABSURDITY Although same-sex parenting is not the same as same-sex marriage, the battle for the possibility of marriage and adoption “rights” goes hand in hand. While one can accept one of them without the other or both, I will argue against both. I intend to be concise on same-sex marriage because there are good books available on the subject.489

486

Pedersen 1980; Radin–Oyserman–Benn 1991 Wilcox–Kline 2013 488 Lytton–Romney 1991 489 Girgis–Anderson–George 2012; Lee–George 2014; and mine: Szilvay 2016a (only in Hungarian) 487

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It is usually argued that marriage has changed so much over history490 that it can be changed again in the name of equality, love, and inclusion. But we can also say that many things remained constant and various changes rook place on different “ontological levels.” The question of which sexes can enter into marriage affects the deepest ontological level, which is untouched by changes on other levels (customs, rights, the number of wives, etc.) Elizabeth Abbot, in her 2010 book on the history of marriage, says: “I was constantly struck by how much has changed over the years – and even more so how much remains unchanged.”491 In any case, it can be proved that marriage was an association of males and a females almost in every culture, and those which were more tolerant toward same-sex relationships or accepted other kinds of relationships did so due to ritual causes or as a result of their belief system (for example, the ancient Greeks or Indian and oter trubal cultures.) The tautological marketing slogan of “love is love” makes no sense: if the only basis for marriage is so-called “love”, then anybody can marry anybody and any kind of human relationship could be called “marriage”, including parent-child relationships, polyamory, etc. It broadens the meaning of marriage to the extent that it becomes groundless and meaningless. “Love is love” represents an anthropological revolution in which only feelings count. It is a shift from the conjugal view of marriage to a revisionist one. The conjugal view saw marriage as a comprehensive union objectively based on reproduction and the union of spouses by mind and body. According to this approach, marriage is a qualitatively different kind of relationship. The revisionist approach bases marriage solely on subjective feelings, distinguished from other forms of relationship only by its intensity.492

490 491 492

Coontz 2005 Abbott 2010, p. 260 Girgis–Anderson–George 2012, pp. 1-4 285

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It is manipulative to argue with the anti-miscegenation laws prohibiting interracial marriage of the segregationist periods of the American South, Germany, and South Africa, to name a few examples. Such laws prohibited something that was theoretically possible. Lawmakers did not think that people from different races are unable to marry; they merely did not want them to marry.493 Opponents of same-sex marriage believe that it is an anthropological absurdity, so even officially “married” same-sex couples are not married in the ontological sense. To speak about gay marriage being “forbidden” in earlier times is similarly manipulative because it was not even contemplated in the past: people simply did not think about it. Since nobody is punished by law for private laws and many countries – such as Hungary – provide the option of civil union to same-sex couples, the same applies to same-sex marriages in countries where the institution in nonexistent. There is also the “conservative argument” suggesting that advocates of traditional marriage should encourage and support samesex marriage in order to stabilize these relationships and give them the value of marriage. But this argument is groundless: why promote something which is an anthropological absurdity?494 The case of infertile heterosexual couples is disparate: their infertility is accidental, namely the structure of their being is suitable for childbearing. The relationship of same-sex couples is, however, structurally infertile; i.e., they are unable to have children, not because of some problem but because of the opposite nature of their relationship.495 The Orthodox philosopher and theologian Bertrand Vergely put it as follows: adoption for infertile heterosexual couples “alleviates

493

See more on anti-miscegenation laws and the fight against them: Wallenstein 2004; Botham 2009 494 Girgis–Anderson–George 2012, pp. 66-73. 495 See for example: Rhonheimer 2012 286

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the problem of infertility”, while for homosexual couples it is “a way of circumventing the impossible.”496 Opponents of same-sex marriage are usually portrayed as bigoted, irrational people; but as (the otherwise gay) Lee Harris says, “How do you explain what you have against what had never crossed your mind as something anyone on Earth would ever think of doing? This invitation to reason calmly about the hitherto unthinkable is the source of the uneasy visceral response. To ask someone to reason calmly about something that he regards as simply beyond the pale is to ask him to concede precisely what he must not concede — the mere admissibility of the question.”497 This question has, of course, been raised for decades now. If, however, you argue not simply like Lee Harris or by referring to tradition but instead give a rational account based on, for example, natural law, it will be called “rationalization”. You are either irrational or you rationalize homophobia. Lee Harris says: “Marriage was the most liberal institution known to man. It opened its arms to the ugly and the homely as well as to the beautiful and the stunning. Was it defined as between a man and a woman? Well, yes, but only in the sense that a cheese omelet is defined as an egg and some cheese — without the least intention of insulting either orange juice or toast by their omission from this definition. Orange juice and toast are fine things in themselves — you just can’t make an omelet out of them.”498 The fight against discrimination is a noble one, but it cannot be absolutized. Different kinds of human relationships are not equal by nature.

496 497 498

Vergely 2013 Harris 2005 Ibid. 287

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SAME-SEX PARENTING The multiple potential difficulties faced by children raised in rainbow families have been illustrated in several studies (and the main reason for is not some kind of social stigma, which plays at most an additional role.) The Australian researcher Sotirios Sarantakos, for example, tested the abilities of 174 schoolchildren in 20 areas. Children raised by married heterosexual couples fared best and children raised by homosexual couples performed worst.499 Moreover, according to numerous studies and meta-analyses, same-sex couples experience higher rates of domestic partner violence, whether physical, sexual or psychological.500 Many studies confirm that children being raised by same-sex couples is more problematic than traditional parenthood.501 While the APA asserts the position that same-sex parenting is unproblematic, Professor Loren Marks showed in his meta-analysis that its position is based on studies with serious methodological flaws.502 This position is echoed by Walter Schumm, who concludes after a meta-analysis that “studies that show ‘no difference’ often used poor methodology (non-random samples, parental (self) reporting vs. actual child outcomes, short duration, etc.) to reach their conclusions.”503

499

Sarantakos 1996 An overview of this topic: McHugh–Mayer 2016; Chapter entitled Sexuality and Intimate Partner Violence. 501 Studies collected: Samuel 2015. 502 Marks 2012 503 Schumm 2016 500

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Paul Sullins, the author of a major research study, points out that children who do not live with both biological parents, even if they are raised by two people, do worse on average, regardless of the education and ethnicity of the foster parents or whether or not they are married.504 The Texan sociologist professor Mark Regnerus has identified more than 40 problems regarding people raised at least partly by same-sex couples.505 His study was subject to intense criticism and was even declared “unscientific”: two hundred scholars signed a criticizing letter and another 27 supported him. Critics questioned not only its methodology – despite the fact that he used the largest sample – but also the peer review method of its publishing journal (Social Science Research), which finally hired a “supervisor”, the editorial board member and sociologist Darren Sherkat. Sherkat concluded that Regnerus’ paper was unfit for publication, argued that the peer review board was not balanced ideologically, and even called the paper “bullshit.”506 But this whole process was seriously problematic: Sherkat is a vociferous and vulgar opponent of “conservative” scholars with a personal dislike for Regnerus, and his assertion that the peer review board was ideologically too imbalanced is untrue: it consisted of three conservatives and three liberals, all of them “superstars” of their profession. And all of them, plus Professor Paul Amato,507 unanimously, declared that the work of Regnerus is of exceptionally high quality. But their statement was “supervised” by the lone, intemperate Sherkat, who dismissed it as inferior.508

504 505 506 507 508

Sullins 2015a; Sullins 2015c. See more on this: Szilvay 2016a pp. 242-267 Regnerus 2012. Bartlett 2012. Amato 2012 Sherkat 2012. 289

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And the scientific community, alongside the LMBTQ movement, popularized the conclusions of Sherkat, spreading the false narrative that Regnerus is engaged in pseudoscience and he is a fake scholar, Despite all this, Regnerus remains a professor of sociology and has published four books at the prestigious Oxford University Press, two of them years after the made-up “scandal.”509 One of his defenders, Christian Smith, thinks that American sociology has a sacred project: the promotion of the case of equality. So, sociology’s metanarrative is egalitarian as is serves the political program of egalitarianism and liberation.510 Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning assert that Regnerus’ sin was that he implicitly violated the sacred values of the sociologist tribe.511 I would conclude that despite his manipulative critics, Mark Regnerus is a good sociologist with valuable work. A child can be conceived and best raised by the union of two adults, a man and a woman, because men and women contribute differently to raising a child and cannot replace each other. Nature has worked this out well: the union of those who created the child physically is needed for his or her healthy upbringing; no more, no less. This is not changed by the fact that it may in time be possible to implant an artificial uterus into men who think they are women and are desperate to give birth, or that it is technically possible to implant eggs. These are violations of the natural order. That a child needs a father and a mother is confirmed by research beyond natural common sense and everyday experience; but in any case, no one has ever been able to disprove it beyond any doubt, and many studies and meta-researches confirm this.512

509

About the Regnerus debate: Allen 2012ö; Wood 2013; Shields–Dunn 2016, pp. 130-135. His books at Oxford University Press: Regnerus 2007, 2011, 2017, 2020 510 Smith 2014 511 Campbell-Manning 2018, 193-196. 512 Biller 1993; Rohner–Veneziano 2001; Regnerus 2012. See also: Samuel 2015 290

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CONCLUSION In short, the different family models are not at all equal, biological relationships are not fully substitutable, and the emotional connection with biological parents cannot be fully replaced by either financial and material goods or surrogate parents. Even if they were bad parents. It is sentimental fashion nowadays to apply the term “family” to every form of cohabitation, which perhaps shows the deep emotional attachment we crave to experience, even outside the family. That does not mean, though, that everything that appears to be a family is a family. The traditionaé family has not disappeared, and especially the single-parent and patchwork forms are not on a par with it. In general, it is a mistake to talk about model because it implies that there are a variety of interchangeable designs that can be pulled out of a drawer or taken off of a shelf. But this is not the case. There is the traditional family, which is the benchmark and the ideal even if it is imperfect because of human frailty, and there are solutions brought about by life and necessity; there are also some models which are not a solution for exigency but an innecessity and cause more harm than good, inflicting wounds instead of healing them.

ON THE HISTORICAL CHANGE IN FAMILY MODELS It is often claimed by the LGBTQ movement and rainbow family advocates that the traditional family is in fact a modern development and that many family forms have emerged throughout history. For example, the Hungarian human rights activist Péter Sárosi makes a typical argument when he points out that today’s small family or nuclear family is a modern development, before which the extended family

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was dominant.513 He only forgets that the nuclear family was already typical before modernity in many places — for example, as mentioned earlier, in the Hungarian region of Nagykunság514 — and that the nuclear family is not a different form of family than the extended family but instead a remnant of it.515 So, the question is: can we consider these family forms as equal? Carle C. Zimmerman, a Harvard sociologist in the mid-twentieth century, explained that three family forms have defined the history of Western civilization from the Greeks onwards.516 All three included a father, mother, and children. While they were not exactly equal, the traditional family in the modern sense was part of all of them. (This is why it is a mistake for some rights activists to contrast the extended family with today’s nuclear families.) Zimmerman was one of the most important sociologists in America during the Twenties and Thirties, and he consciously defied the dominant thinking of sociologists then (and since) in vogue and the service of progress by showing that progress is in fact decline. The literature on family, marriage, sexuality, and gender that has been produced on an industrial scale since then has not been able to override his findings. Zimmerman debates the Marxist Chicago School and Marxist or Darwinist sociologists fashionable at his time, such as Herbert Spencer, Henry Sumner Maine, J. J. Bachofen, J. K. Folsom, and others. He also describes the self-image of social scientists as being in the service of progress for the sake of a better and more prosperous future society.

513

Sárosi 2020. His main reference point is an American book on the American situation, which is hardly applicable to Hungarian history: Coontz 2016 514 Bellon 1979, pp. 192-205. 515 The answer to Sárosi: Szilvay 2020b 516 Zimmerman 2008 292

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Zimmerman’s main finding is that in the history of Greek, Roman, and European civilization, three periods can be distinguished in which the (though not exclusive) dominance of one family form was determinant: the clan-like trustee family, the extended or domestic family, and the nuclear family. In the first, the living members of the family are only the earthly representatives (trustees) of the past members of the eternal family. The custodian of the law is the family council, which is the master of life and death, and the family resembles a small state in determining the whole framework of life. In an extended family (or “domestic” family), members have more individual freedom, and a balance is struck between individual freedom and family life. The family is not omnipotent; religious authority (e.g., the church) or the state also enters the picture as a regulator and legislator but does not take over all the functions of the family. Finally, in the era of the atomistic family, the state becomes increasingly dominant, the family loses more and more of its functions, and individual fulfilment takes precedence. Zimmerman’s fascinating insight is that during the early Roman period, the absolute rule of the Roman head of the family (patria potestas) did not mean absolute rule over the wife and children, but the power of the head of the family as the trustee of the eternal family, by which the head of the family represented the interests of the family to the outside world, and which was also necessary for taking social responsibility. Zimmerman refers to mafia families as a modern-day form of the trustee family (see The Godfather). Zimmerman points out: during the ascending era of civilizations and cultures, in the centuries of emergence, the trustee family is dominant; during the “creative era of a civilization”, in the centuries of flourishing, the domestic family, which achieves balance; and during the decline, the atomistic family. One of his important findings is that in the declining period of the Roman Empire, the atomistic family became dominant, which rulers tried to strengthen in various ways, but it was also the time when the 293

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two models of marriage (dignitas and concubinatus) became fashionable. Dignitas was a fully-fledged, traditional marriage, whereas concubinatus meant fewer rights and less obligations and was equivalent to a modern civil partnership (the Greek term for this was hetaera). What happens when the atomistic family becomes dominant? According to Zimmerman, the individual will usually become sacred, marriage will be perceived as an individual contract, divorce will become widespread and easy, and non-institutional forms of marriage and family life will become more popular. The family is only seen as a community of people living in a household. The sociologist cites Theodor Mommsen’s The History of Rome, which at this point shows a deterioration in the morale of upper-middle class families, a proliferation and acceptance of alternative sexual lifestyles, a purely romantic perception of love, a softening of the judgment of adultery, the popularity of birth control, and the addition of immigrants to the indigenous population. Class and social group antagonisms are on the rise, and disintegration processes are observed throughout society in general. This was also observed in post-Pericles Greece and in Europe since the 18th century. After the fall of Rome, however, two forms of family coexisted on the European continent after the emergence of the barbarian peoples (later European nations): the trustee family was dominant among the barbarians and the atomistic family among the Romanized population. Zimmerman points out that none of these seemed ideal to the church, and it was only over centuries, by the High Middle Ages, that the extended family came to dominate and was characterized by holiness, fidelity, and childbearing. The intellectual drivers of this new Renaissance were the church fathers, the landlords, and various ecclesiastical and secular authorities. The decline beganin the modern era, thanks to “anti-family” thinkers such as Erasmus, Rousseau, Hume, and others. The slowly unfolding crisis was also fueled by the French Revolution, Marxism, Hegelianism, and the economic approach. 294

ARE DIFFERENT FAMILY MODELS REALLY EQUAL?

According to Zimmerman, the Western world has long been in a period of decline marked by the atomistic family, which he predicted in 1947 would peak at the end of the 20th century. But Zimmerman is not moralizing: he does not attribute the decline to some kind of immorality, nor does he see the decline as being caused solely by the atomization of the family and the absolutization of individual freedom. These are signs and consequences of social disintegration and, of course, until the trends are reversed, also facilitators of it. Rather, he argues that in a healthy society, during the creative age of civilizations, pro-family thinking permeates the whole of society, family is taken for granted if you like, and is facilitated by structural factors. In times of decline and disintegration, however, the absolutization of individual freedom is dominant, and intellectuals become anti-family, cynical, and their thinking is determined by cultural determinism — here Zimmerman is clearly referring to modern intellectuals, but this is even more true for postmodern intellectuals. But anti-family people cannot understand familism, which is why, according to Zimmerman, sociologists who study the family but are skeptical about it are completely wrong. The most important factor in holding society together is the family. The birth rate is also of central importance, Zimmerman warns. Familism is based on the number of children, and even in the most vital societies it is the minority of the population that has children. Societies with many children are pro-family; societies with few are anti-family. That is, “children are the most fundamental basis of familism. A decay in familism is a decay in the social system of biological reproduction. Consequently, those societies in which familism has decayed are those that are themselves decaying – and very rapidly”, or at least after two generations of preparation.517

517

Ibid. p. 198 295

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While anti-familism is based on an emphasis on individual freedom, dictatorships are more typical of such self-proclaimed libertarian eras, points out Zimmerman, who argues that the dominance of atomistic families can be exploited by states that take over family functions. Religious and moral constraints no longer play a role. Why? Zimmerman argues that this is because family-oriented societies are characterized by a belief in infinity, in foundations beyond us that we do not question, and religions provide just such a thing. Anti-familism challenges this, and during eras of decline, people fail to do what they have to do just because “it’s the right thing” but instead question everything. In the final stages, Zimmerman observes that divorces without cause increase; the number of children and the population decreases, and parents are no longer respected; the true meaning of the wedding disappears; pessimistic ideas about the old heroes come into fashion; the idea that marriage of equals or some looser form of cohabitation will solve the problem becomes popular; those who marry in the old-fashioned way do not wish to maintain their traditions, others flee from their responsibilities; anti-family attitudes among urban and intellectual groups spread to the periphery; adultery becomes more acceptable; young people rebel against parents and therefore fewer want to be parents; juvenile delinquency spreads; and “sexual perversions” become acceptable. According to Zimmerman, being pro-family is an important basis of civilization, and being anti-family is a sign of decline. Individual freedom in its fullness is not the peak of civilization but the end of it. This decline, however, is not unstoppable, as it has been followed by the opposite trend several times throughout history. New forces are coming that represent old ideals (what feminists would call a backlash), in other words “the family reappears by counterrevolutions.”518

518

Ibid. p. 20 296

Chapter 15

IS GENDER THEORY AN IDEOLOGY? Gender researchers and feminist activists usually protest against the labeling of gender theory as ideology. However, they themselves are very quick to throw around the label of ideology: patriarchy, sexism, heterosexism, neoliberalism, capitalism, conservatism are ideologies, but also the critique of feminism and gender theory is an ideology. As much as they demand conceptual purity for themselves, they do not give it to others, and for them, in fact, everything they do not like is an ideology because it is difficult to discern from their manifestations what exactly they consider to be an ideology. We must therefore examine what ideology is and whether, on this basis, we can consider gender theory to be an ideology or at least ideological. For this, we draw on the thinking of perhaps the most respected ideological scholar of our time, Michael Freeden. In everyday language, ideology is often used to mean some kind of explanation, an a posteriori explanation or rationalization of our actions or of a government action, an “explaining away” of self-interest. Another common meaning of the word ideology is dogmatism: when one approaches a subject “ideologically”, one ignores the reality of life and focuses only on some principles and on maintaining their internal coherence and their logical structure. Finally, the word ideology is

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also, perhaps most often, used simply as a synonym for “worldview”, though the term has a rather negative connotation. In academia, however, ideology means something different. Ideology as a term was “invented” by Antoine Destutt de Tracy (17541836), a French aristocratic philosopher who coined it after the French Revolution and who wanted to create a discipline for examining ideas on an empirically verifiable basis. Tracy is credited with five volumes of Eléments d’idéologie (1817-1818).

IS THE PAST OR FUTURE IDEOLOGICAL? Perhaps the best-known theory of ideology is the conception of ideology by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, as expounded in their work The German Ideology. In their view, the economic basis of society is complemented by the intellectual superstructure, the latter being the tool of the ruling class to oppress the other classes, which is also expressed in language. The oppressed classes embrace the ruling classes’ explanation of their oppression, what Marx and Engels call “false consciousness.” According to them, truth and reality can be known if ideological bias is removed, and therefore the latter is not worth investigating. For Marxists, philosophers and priests were alienated fabricators of false consciousness. Conservatives define ideology in the exact opposite way. They understand ideology as “secular eschatology”, i.e., efforts to create heaven on earth by means of “social engineering.” For them, then, ideology is the hubris, the arrogance of human reason and of human rationalism which leads the enlightened man. about to free himself from the shackles of the past to the conviction that he must build from scratch a supposedly free, equal and just, and therefore perfect society. This is done by denying the past, traditions, customs, established beliefs, accumulated knowledge, millennia of experience, and authority. Con298

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servatives argue that everything that social engineers want to deny, erase or transform may be imperfect, but if we interfere too deeply with society while our knowledge of it is fragmented, we may do more harm than good, so it is better to keep the perhaps imperfect but proven order and traditions. According to conservative thinkers, the world and man are imperfect and cannot be fixed. Because of their complexity, we understand neither man nor the world so well that it is worth “intervening”; this is the “epistemological skepticism” that conservative political though starts from. They believe that the world is worth preserving together with its imperfections — hence the name “politics of imperfection.”519 From this point of view, therefore, the “perfectionists” are the ones characterized by “ideology.” It is worth pointing out the interesting contrast between Marx’s definition of ideology and that of the conservatives. Marxists look to the future, towards the realization of the ideal society, and see the past as ideological; conservatives see the past as worth preserving, and the ideas of those who want to realize heaven on earth in the future as ideological. While Marxists want to change the ideological past and present, conservatives defend the non-ideological past and possibly present from an ideologized future. According to Michael Freeden, Marx and Engels’ ideological vision is one-dimensional and too uniform. There are, however, some things that he believes can be appreciated from a Marxist approach to ideology: the emphasis on the importance of the historical and social context; that ideas matter; that ideologies have an important political role, especially that “what you see is not always what you get”; and the insight that ideologies have layers of meaning, structure, context and motivation hidden from their consumers, which can be decoded and identified.

519

Quinton 1978 299

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While Marx blamed the social conditions of capitalism for ideological illusions, Karl Mannheim realized that every historical context could create illusions and has its own ideologies, and every social context influences thinking. Mannheim stressed the unconscious assumptions and irrational bases of knowledge, and that social groups have rituals, prejudices, stories, and histories that the ideologies incorporate in themselves. And Mannheim’s free-floating intellectuals are able to detach themselves from the historical perspectives of their own society.520 However, there is a “Mannheim paradox”: we cannot point out that a worldview position is ideological without also adopting an ideological (worldview) position. According to the Italian Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, ideology is not the sole responsibility of the state and a ruling class. Rather, it is created by civil society, and the consensus that emerges is not the same as domination; at the same time, ideology is more conscious for its creators and less conscious for its consumers. For Gramsci, therefore, ideologies are not imposed on people but are voluntarily accepted. According to the Italian author, ideologies manifest themselves in practical things and do not exist in a vacuum. Gramsci questions the dichotomy of thought and action, distinguishing individual philosophical systems of philosophers from the broader philosophical cultures articulated by leading groups, and from popular religions and beliefs. The Frenchman Louis Althusser, on the other hand, saw ideologies as representing a new reality, not as distortions of reality. The ideology has developed its own life as a symbolic supervisor, and the ideological state apparatus is manifested in religious, legal, and cultural structures such as the mass media, the family, and especially the educational system. Althusser, in Freeden’s assessment, recognized the diversity of institutional forms and ideological apparatus in contrast to the Marx-

520

Mannheim 1985 300

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ian monolithic approach. Freeden, following Althusser, concludes that ideology is an eternal phenomenon, that is, it has characteristics independent of the particular ideologies that appear in history, as man inevitably thinks about the conditions of his existence.

IDEOLOGY AS AN INEVITABLE WORLDVIEW In Michael Freeden’s own view,521 however, ideology is a relatively structured, roughly logical worldview — everyone has a worldview, and there is no such thing as an “objective” or “neutral” approach or position without a worldview. Freeden distinguishes ideologies from more elaborate, detailed, and definitive political philosophies which place great emphasis on moral justification and logical coherence. Political philosophers, Freeden writes, want first and foremost to persuade their own colleagues, as they write for them; ideologies, on the other hand, must persuade the masses. It is perhaps worth mentioning here a concept advanced by Charles Taylor: he calls “social imaginary” the phenomenon when philosophically elaborated concepts are present in society without much thought, and act intuitively, i.e. they are self-evident without us knowing who they come from. While well-developed theories are the property of an elite minority, social imaginary is based on the interpretation of the majority, or at least of large groups in society. That is, “the social imaginary is that common understanding which makes possible common practices, and a widely shared sense of legitimacy.”522 Today, it is the key concepts of modernity and postmodernity that intuitively determine public discourse, the “social imaginary.” 521

Explained: Freeden 2003. The chapter builds on the thinking behind this work. Read more: Freeden 2015a 522 Taylor 2007, pp. 171-172 301

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Freeden is convinced that there is no politics without ideology: “We produce, disseminate, and consume ideologies all our lives, whether we are aware of it or not. So, yes, we are all ideologists in that we have understandings of the political environment of which we are part and have views about the merits and failings of that environment.” Indeed, “ideologies, as we shall see, map the political and social worlds for us. We simply cannot do without them because we cannot act without making sense of the worlds we inhabit.”523 Freeden’s ambition is to point out the unity and identity of ideologies by “allowing” them to change: to have multiple schools of thought and to shift their focus over time. Thus, ideologies value logical coherence, but treat their fundamental beliefs as self-evident (unlike political philosophies, which place great emphasis on justifying their starting points). In addition, ideologies and worldviews are culturally and ethically determined. Is this in contrast to the situation outlined in Chapter 2, that we have access to reality and can interpret it correctly? No, because the two lines of thought are not exactly about the same thing; one is primarily about the perception of the world, the other about the interpretation of society and politics. The first is necessary for the second, or if the first is not possible, it is questionable how much scope there is for dialogue. Freeden does not ask which worldview or ideology is true, he merely says that there is no neutral position outside of them. Even if there is a truth that corresponds to reality, or some kind of “true” ideology, it is still just a contestant in the competition with other ideologies.

523

Freeden 2003 Loc. 203 302

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In this book we critique gender theory, including its wider theoretical context and background. However, it is questionable whether this is convincing to anyone with a radically different worldview from the author’s. It is a common experience that our debates become a dialogue of the deaf. The reason is that we often think in terms of narratives, and within these narratives or interpretative frameworks the important concepts are different, or even the same term can mean different things. According to Alasdair MacIntyre, this is because rational debate can only take place within a tradition or a narrative. Contemporary debates (on gender, for example) are, in his view, unsolvable because each conviction starts from a different premise. In other words, we have no common narrative.524 To continue Freeden’s line of thought, there are important concepts and aspirations for ideologies: freedom, equality, dignity, order, tradition, justice, achievement, and so on. There is much to philosophize about these concepts and their meaning. An ideology, however, is never merely the result of a logical decipherment of such a concept in a vacuum. These concepts mean different things depending on the culture, but at least they have different limits. And while they may play a role within many ideologies, their place within them also gives them a specific meaning. All of these concepts can be included in the vocabulary of liberalism, conservatism, and socialism, but their importance and their limits will be different. So, there can be plenty of overlap between ideologies, but there is also often an internal reordering within an ideology, for example depending on what its adherents and shapers consider more important.

524

MacIntyre 1988, 2007 303

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The main component of Freeden’s morphological theory of ideology is the “four Ps”: proximity, priority, permeability and proportionality. Proximity means that the political concepts themselves are unintelligible. Ideologies constitute the necessary space in which political concepts take concrete form as we know them. Priority means which elements of the political concept and ideological arguments embedded in the ideology are central to the ideology and which are peripheral. The ideologies can be imagined as a room in which these central and peripheral elements change their position and relationship over time, in other words, the room is rearranged. Freeden’s example shows, for example, that the concept of private property has gone from central to peripheral within liberal ideology over the last two hundred years. The peripheral and adjacent concepts surrounding the central concepts limit the interpretation of the central concepts. Peripheral concepts are more specific and detailed. Somewhere between consciousness and action, concepts lose their abstraction for good, because that is when they become concrete practices, when they are converted into “small change.” According to Freeden, the two central concepts of liberalism are freedom and progress, and the practical realization of freedom can be, for example, “the free entry of refugees into a country.” Peripheral concepts are also context-dependent and may be even more subject to changes in meaning within a given framework than central concepts: “Ideological morphology is neither fixed nor shapeless; it is fluid.”525 Permeability means that ideologies are not mutually exclusive in terms of principles and concepts. In fact, they are often in contact at several points (i.e., they overlap.) People with different worldviews can agree on an issue without giving up their value system. Ideologies are therefore not hermetically sealed but have porous borders,

525

Ibid. p. 63 304

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so there is an overlap between them. That is why feminists are wrong when they claim that those who agree with some of their beliefs and goals (e.g., the usefulness of part-time work, women’s equality, etc.) are automatically feminists, but just don’t know it or don’t want to admit it, are wrong. The notion of proportionality refers to the fact that in each ideology a certain space is assigned to a topic, or a set of concepts apply to it, and it also refers to the way an ideology presents itself. For example, says Freeden, even within liberalism, libertarians overemphasize individual freedom at the expense of sociability, rationality, and progress. On the other hand, the question of proportionality also means how detailed we are in our ideas. For if the representatives of an ideology get too bogged down in details, they will only reach professional political scientists and philosophers, but they will not be able to convince too many people among the electorate. On the other hand, if the representation of an ideology is too general, it will not serve as an adequate guide to political action. Freeden points out that “simplification, and occasionally more dangerously oversimplification, is what ideologies do best.”526 However, he adds that maneuvering between generality and concreteness is important for political systems served by ideologies. Ideologies bring order to our overly complex and disordered reality.

MACRO- AND MICRO-IDEOLOGIES Let’s see what this means in practice: Freeden analyses macro- and micro-ideologies. He presents his method on liberalism, socialism and conservatism as macro-ideologies.

526

Freeden 2003, p. 65 On liberalism, see also: Freeden 2005, 2015b 305

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The core concepts central to liberalism, according to Freeden, are: the assumption that man is rational; the importance of freedom of thought and action; faith in the development of man and society; the individual as the basic unit of society; the assumption of sociability; the public interest; and skepticism of power. As a tradition, important tenets of liberalism include the open-ended development of man towards a highly civilized state; that this development is based on unhindered freedom and facilitated by the formalization of human rights; equality of opportunity in the economic and then gender fields; respect for diversity within and across nations; and prosperity. The central concepts of socialism, according to Freeden, include the idea of the group as the basic unit of society; that man is created by his relationship with society and his environment; the emphasis on social classes; equality and, in this context, the opposition to hierarchies and the promotion of redistribution; work as a fundamental component of human nature; welfare; the abolition of poverty and, in its wake, the sharing for all of the material and spiritual goods of humanity; and the emphasis on historical processes towards a promising future. Socialism is therefore future-oriented and critical of both the past and the present. Freeden notes that socialism has so many tendencies that it would be reasonable to speak of socialisms in plural. Some of these were messianistic and utopian, others more moderate. Socialism, born in the 19th century, often converged with liberal progressive ideologies in the second half of the 20th century, and even merged with them. Welfare states are the work of liberals, but they were also supported by socialists, and most of the ideologues of the welfare state are social liberals. Freeden identifies as a central concept of conservatism a concern with change, and in its wake a distinction between natural and unnatural change; a related emphasis on organic growth; and the idea that social order has origins outside the control of man, whether in nature, God, history (tradition), biology, or economics. Conservatism is a reactive ideology that is dormant until it is confronted with other ideol306

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ogies. Confrontation is therefore an intrinsic feature of conservatism, which rejects both revolution and utopias. When activated, conservatism likes to emphasize its position and to place into the foreground concepts that it has in common with other ideologies, but never those that its current opponent emphasizes, and which conservatism considers dangerous at that moment. So, according to Freeden, what is often seen as opportunism is very much a consistent stance in conservatism. Let us add that this is also because conservatism does not think that a universal and eternal hierarchy can be established between the values of our societies; that is, it does not think that, for example, freedom or equality should always take precedence over other values, or that in conflicts between the individual and the community one should always be preferred over the other. It seeks to balance values and always tries to prioritize what is more important in a given society. This is the pluralism of conservatism.527 Speaking about totalitarian ideologies (fascism, Nazism, communism), Michael Freeden points out that in their case there is no distinction between private and public, legal and illegal, i.e., in regimes governed by totalitarian ideologies you never know which side of the law you will end up on. Freeden then turns to micro-ideologies. For example, the “third way” persuasion represents a new system of social democratic, conservative and liberal elements as a political program: it combines liberal ideas of human rights with the duties emphasized by conservatives and socialists and supports the welfare state and traditional family values.

527

Kekes 2001, pp. 53-88 307

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THIN IDEOLOGIES Finally, Freeden discusses the so-called “thin ideologies.” These, such as feminism, green ideology, and nationalism, are not all-encompassing, but focus on a single issue in particular. At the same time, we can examine whether these are not merely ideological modules belonging to a macro-ideology, or whether we can introduce a new morphological category for them, and this would be the concept of “thin ideology”: “A thin ideology is one that, like mainstream ideologies, has an identifiable morphology but, unlike mainstream ideologies, a restricted one. It severs itself from wider ideational contexts by deliberately removing or replacing many concepts we would expect an ideology to include. It does not embrace the full range of questions that the macro-ideologies do and is limited in its ambitions and scope.”528 Freeden then turns to feminism, a key issue for us. As he points out, feminism sees gender as a key element in ideological debates, and patriarchal power relations are as central to it as class conflicts are to Marxists. Many 20th-century feminists saw their ideas as an “extension” of liberal or socialist ideology, but many radical feminists, like the advocates of the third way, see the current ideological map as not covering reality. Political power is in fact patriarchal power, and dichotomies such as universal/individual, culture/nature, mind/body, reason/ emotion, too often reflect the male/female dichotomy by presenting the first of these opposites as positive and the second as negative. Thus, “a reordering of political language, and through it of social practices, is the aim of that feminism.”529

528 529

Freeden 2003, p. 98 Freeden 2003, p. 100 308

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GENDER IDEOLOGY What does all this mean for us? In Freeden’s theory, gender theory can safely be identified with feminism. Gender theory reflects the feminists’ view of the world, often mixed with other approaches. Freeden’s analysis of feminism is perfectly applicable to gender theory as well. From a Marxist point of view, feminism, together with gender theory, is precisely an attempt to shed the ideological past, so it is probably not an ideology in the Marxist sense. However, according to both the normative conservative and the descriptive Freedenian interpretations, gender theory is either ideological (insofar as it is part of liberalism or Marxism) or an ideology (“thin ideology”). For our part, we prefer to combine the Freedenian and the conservative interpretations. The Marxist conception wrongly declares the whole past as ideological. Freeden’s theory of ideology has a great explanatory power and provides important insights, but the concept of ideology does not really have any distinguishing power for him since all political worldviews are necessarily ideological. In contrast to Freeden’s descriptive conception, the conservative conception of ideology is normative, in which case there is a distinguishing power in calling something an ideology. You could say that the lower-case ideologies of the Freedenian conception are supplemented by the upper-case Ideologies of the conservative conception (which have been turned from lower-case to upper-case). In this way, we retain the dynamic explanatory power of the Freedenian conception and the distinguishing power of the conservative conception. At present, the main preoccupation of gender theorists is to try to interpret all existing phenomena in the world according to their own particular point of view. Gender theory shows at a particular refraction angle anything it is applied to: it reveals the heteronormative matrix, toxic masculinity, the oppressive gender binary, and of course the patriarchal power relations behind everything, whether in politics, art, everyday speech, and language, or even gastronomy. That is, it ab309

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solutizes one aspect and subordinates all other aspects to it. This is not a pluralism of values, instead it is an absolutization of one aspect, and what is more, of an approach which, as we saw in the chapter on gender mainstreaming, aims at the total transformation of society. This is no longer just a methodology of inquiry, but a complete, albeit one-sided, worldview. Absolutizing equality and egalitarianism amounts to ideological utopism: it is groundless as far as its proponents fail to establish equality as a fundational value and simply take it as evident. It is impossible to prioritize equality everytime over other values; and even the asserted equality of human beings is immoral from many aspects.530 So, the current target of gender theory is the entirety of human society, which it says is tragically ill-constructed. So, it needs to be restructured. This fully exhausts conservatives’ views on social engineers. Gender theory is a secular eschatology that seeks to correct man, society, and the world. Whether it does so in a liberal, Marxist, or postmodern way is a tactical difference. Thus, as the conclusion of our chapter, we can state that gender theory is a worldview that is ideological, or even an ideology itself, and therefore it can be called gender ideology. And then let us see how a small change can lead to a complete transformation. Let us look at a story about folk tales.

530

See Kekes 2003 310

Chapter 16

LGBTQ FOLK TALES? “Do you like classic tales? Do you think it’s important to protect human rights?”, asks the Labrisz Lesbian Association in one of its 2019 calls for proposals, which looked for authors for its storybook for kindergarteners and schoolchildren who would create “rewritten versions of wellknown tales in contemporary settings” with “characters who belong to a stigmatized or minority group. For example, those non-compliant with traditional gender roles, LGBTQ people, non-whites, non-Christians, refugees, people living in extreme poverty, people with physical disabilities or mental health problems, the elderly, people from other countries, alcoholics, children of parents who have been in jail, and so on: it is up to the applicant’s sensitivity to decide how they interpret the term.” The tales can be up to 15,000 characters long, and the winners will receive HUF 40,000 (approx. USD 110 as of May 2022.) The book was published in 2020 under the title Meseország mindenkié (Fairytale Land Is for All).531

531

Nagy 2020

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The Labrisz Association is not the first to have written or publish “gay tales.” For years, storybooks about two princes who love each other have been in the news from time to time. Jeffrey Miles’ storybook The Princes and the Treasure is also available in Hungarian. The story goes: “In the kingdom of Evergreen live King Rufus and his daughter Princess Elena. One day Elena is kidnapped by an evil, witchlike woman. A grieving Rufus proclaims that the kingdom will go to the man who frees and marries his daughter. The champion Gallant and the bookworm Ernest set out to rescue the princess. But during their short but dangerous adventures, they discover that they don’t need Elena, they are in love with each other. The tale ends with a happy ending.”532 As the author states: “Princess Elena is a lesbian. She says in the book that she does not want to marry any prince. She is a princess who really doesn’t need saving.”533 And what about the protagonists? “The characters in the book are a combination of people I know and my friends, and each of my heroes has the personality traits of several of my friends.”534 Jeffrey Miles also says: “I never wanted to do a children’s book until one day I came across a show at one of the big amusement parks. I sat in front of the model castle and watched grown princes and princesses singing and dancing hand in hand. And I wondered why there are no gay princes and lesbian princesses? Why can’t two gay princes get married? Why can’t a beautiful princess save a damsel in distress? When I got home, I made up my own story, where two princes go on an adventure, fall in love, get married and live happily ever after.”535

532

Kustánczi 2014 In spring 2019, the author completed an accredited 60-hour course in folk storytelling at Hagyományok Háza (Heritage House). 533 Ibid. 534 Ibid. 535 Ibid. 312

LGBTQ FOLK TALES?

As it turns out, one of the main aims of the booklet is to promote tolerance. For example, the reporter asks the professor: “I have a three-month-old daughter. Do you think if she gets a little bigger and I read the book to her, will that make her more tolerant?”536 Part of the response was that “if all parents did that, the next generation would be much more educated about difference, and perhaps homophobia would slowly die out. I want princes and treasure for everyone, all ages, all sexual orientations. Many parents told me that their children did not distinguish between my tale and other fairy tales. The story seems perfectly normal to them.”537 It’s supposed to be “half a fairy tale about royalty, magic, homosexual love, same-sex marriage, from a university professor.”538 Let us take things one step at a time. Above all, it is not the same whether such a story is literary fiction or a folk tale. A fairy tale is by definition a type of folk tale (other folk tale genres are animal tales, short stories, joke tales, tall tales, formula tales). Thus, literary fiction cannot be a folk tale (and thus not a fairy tale either), since folk tales have been shaped by the people for centuries, there is no one known author, and not only because we do not know who it was but because it was shaped by many people and many small communities. Besides, there are some characteristics that cannot be changed, because from then on, we are no longer talking about a folk tale. As a result of the end of folklorization, namely the disappearance of the agrarian way of life and with it traditional folk culture due to modernization, new folk tales are no longer being created in the Western world as the environment for creating and sustaining folk tales has disappeared, as has their transmission. The skeletons of the folk tales

536 537 538

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. 313

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“in circulation” in the world are universally known; they are called storylines, and they have local versions. These story-skeletons have been collected both internationally (by the Finns: Aarne-ThompsonUther’s typology and Propp’s famous book on the morphology of folk tales),539 and in relation to Hungary.540 Folk tales were born as an oral tradition, even if they were later written down by collectors of these tales outside the communities that sustained them. Literary fiction is born as the written word. Folk tale researcher Ágnes Kovács points out that even the folk tales of a small village, for example Ketesd in the region of Kalotaszeg, are local versions of the storylines that have spread throughout the world: “the storyteller brings this skeleton to life, puts it into words”;541 “the tale is more than the skeleton itself, it needs flesh and skin, it needs to be brought to life.”542 The Labrisz Association is not rewriting literary fiction, such as Andersen’s stories or familiar cartoon stories like Bambi or Beauty and the Beast, but instead, as the call’s “traditional tale setting” suggests, folk tales, myths, and other classic stories (as mentioned in the introduction to the book.) A noble objective or not, these tales will be as much folk tales as folk music is the music that has been used and rearranged by a composer; i.e., not at all. We call the latter “world music”, so perhaps we could also call tales rewritten using the “traditional tale setting” world tales. Jeffrey Miles’ tales are at best “world tales”, but they are certainly not fairy tales. To achieve this, it might make more sense to write completely new tales, but for both Labrisz and Miles it was important to have a familiar setting, a familiar story; they just did not want completely new tales.

539

Aarne–Thompson 1961; Uter 2004 Benedek 1984, 2001; Bernát 1982; Berze Nagy 1957; Dömötör 1988; Kovács–Benedek 1987, 1989, 1989a, b Süvegh 1985; Marja–Benedek 1988, 1989, 1986 541 Kovács 2019, p. 68 542 Ibid. p. 69 540

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Let us now see what a folk tale was originally. In its traditional context, the folk tale was told by adults primarily to adults. Every village had one or two good storytellers who entertained the community. Fall and winter with, their long evenings were the best time for storytelling. The spinning mill was an excellent place, but so were places of monotonous work, such as cornhusking and feather-plucking, as well as during a post-funeral wake, and for men, during the time of military service. Listeners had a say in how the story was told and could even correct the storyteller. This meant that the community polished the storyteller’s tale, so it was not a folk tale without their approval: “So the link between the tale’s skeleton and decorative elements is very loose. It is up to the storyteller to combine and group them. But this freedom is only apparent. The storyteller is limited by the community in which he lives.”543 And one of the basic principles of the peasant community that carries the folk tale is that there should be no surprises in the tale because “the path traveled should not be abandoned for the path not travelled, neither should be the certain good for the uncertain better.”544 As traditional communities began to disintegrate, storytelling opportunities ceased to exist from the mid-20th century. The process is well described by the remark from 1860 that “fairy tales have disappeared in the Tisza region because the steamships have arrived.” However, the erosion of the folk tale began much earlier with the publication of the 1815 edition of the Grimm Brothers’ collection. From the beginning of the 20th century, as the interest of adults in folk tales in traditional communities diminished, village storytellers increasingly told their stories to children. Then came the next steps (not in isolation): first the folk tale was read from a book, which practically “froze” the folk tale, at the same time silent reading spread, then the tale was shortened, then illustrated and finally it moved to the screen. 543 544

Kovács 2019, p. 72 Ibid. p. 73 315

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The folk tale can be shaped by the storyteller within the framework of tradition. Therefore, it is not about reciting a memorized text. There were reproductive and creative storytellers within the tradition, the former sticking more to the familiar story lines, while the latter tended to shape and connect the tales.545 But this could not be done in any way. The language of the folk tale is archaic, eloquent, preferably vernacular. It begins with a long introductory formula (“Once upon a time…”) and ends with a concluding formula. The descriptive and dialogic parts alternate in roughly equal proportions. The performance is mostly unpretentious. In a folk tale, we paint pictures with words instead of simply reciting text. In the eternal words of Ágnes Kovács: “A tale is only a series of letters written down and printed out, in reality it is a chain of images.”546 An important feature of the fairy tale is its tripartite nature; at the beginning of the fairy tale there is a gap in the world, and the hero restores order to the world by the end of the tale. According to Propp, one of the most respected Russian folk tale researchers, “all fairy tales are of one type in regard to their structure.”547 He adds that “The number of functions known to the fairy tale is limited.” 548 Functions of characters serve as stable, constant elements in a tale, independent of how and by whom they are fulfilled. They constitute the fundamental components of a tale. Propp himself has identified thirty-one such functions in the same order of occurrence. But more importantly for our analysis here, the characters can have a total of seven roles: the donor (provider); the villain (the harm-doer); the helper; the princess

545

On the question of authorship, see: Kovács 2019, p. 107-120 (“Is the folk tale an individual or collective creation?”) 546 Kovács 2019, p. 68 547 Propp 2009, p. 23 548 Ibid. p. 21 316

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(the person sought) and her father (the king, the father of the person sought); the dispatcher (the person sending the hero on his way); the hero; and the false hero.549 The character portrayals in folk tales are schematic, black and white, and not individualized. There is no such thing as a character with a little flaw, but who is otherwise cute. There are good and evil characters, and there is no character development. The entire world of folk tales is built on this. Apart from the fact that they are poor, that they are royal, that they are male or female, that they are gypsy or not, we know nothing about the protagonists: we don’t know what their favorite food is (at most, that their favorite horse is an old jade of a horse, which turns out to be a magic horse), whether their parents have been in prison or not, and whether or not someone is from “beyond the border” is irrelevant in folk tales, if only because folk tales (or more precisely, heroic-magic fairy tales) take place in the distance, not “on this side the Ipoly river” but “beyond the seven seas.” They may have “an abundance of Hungary” in them, and the king may fight with the ruler of a foreign country, but the concept of those within and beyond the borders is not only alien to the folk tale, but simply irrelevant to it. Thus, the kind of characterization that is typical to Miles’ story, namely that he has woven the characters together from the personalities of his friends, is completely at odds with the logic of the folk tale.550 Imagine that the protagonist of a tale is a down-and-out alcoholic. “The poor alcoholic man went to see the world and to try his luck…” is rather unrealistic. And could it stand the three tests? We have our doubts. Ex-convict parents? This is completely irrelevant to the folk tale.

549

Ibid. pp. 79-80 On the definition and aesthetics of folk tales, see: Raffai 2004, pp. 13-58; Nagy 1978; Kovács 2019; Honti 1962. For the present analysis, I have mainly used Raffai’s 2004 volume.

550

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This is also the problem in the case of people with mental disorders: the whole traditional tale setting and characterization, as it is and as it has been handed down from generation to generation, is not about making the characters, who are probably not very politely labelled as “foolish” or “simple-minded”, succeed. Folk tales, by the way, are full of “underprivileged” heroes, be it the poor lad, the gypsy lad or someone else. In a traditional tale, two princes don’t fall in love, but let’s try to frame the story this way anyway: unless you completely feminize one of the parties, the story simply fails. Does each prince go to the other’s father to rescue the other and miss each other? Or is one so much of a momma’s little boy that he sits at home while the other performs trials for him? What was Jeffrey Miles’ story? “A grieving Rufus proclaims that the kingdom will go to the man who frees and marries his daughter. The champion Gallant and the bookworm Ernest set out to rescue the princess. However, during their short but dangerous adventures, they discover that they don’t need Elena, they are in love with each other.” Miles’s idea is understandable, and at first glance it does not seem like a major change, but we can ask a few questions: why do the two main characters only realize they are in love with each other at the end of the tale when they rescue the princess? Or at least that they are attracted to their own sex? But then why are they going to rescue the princess? Out of sheer philanthropy? This is nice but it does not fit into the world of folk tales: the well-intentioned hero is motivated by the promise of reward which he always knows about before the trials begin. Even if the hero himself is unaware of the possibility of trials at the very beginning of the fairy tale, and only “comes across” them later, he is motivated by the reward, and at the very least he wants to see the world and try himself, unless he is being sent. There are never two heroes, or if at the beginning of a fairy tale there are two heroes, one of them turns out to be a fake hero and turns against the hero. (This is true even when there are apparently two heroes: in the story of the 318

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two golden-haired brothers, the two heroes are a pair of siblings, a boy and a girl, where the real hero is the boy.551) Folk tale stories largely operate according to the traditional division of roles and tasks. Even a minimal modification, such as having two heroic princes who end up falling in love, sets off an avalanche, and has consequences for the storytelling that completely collapse the world of the folk tale, the cosmos of the folk tale. But if you completely rewrite the story, completely rewrite everything, you lose the familiar tale setting. Of course, Labrisz can claim that it has merely used the classic characters, and that here we are dealing with literary fictions, which is also clear from the book. However, it is still the case that these tales are like folk tales. And if children are familiar with the world of folk tales and then encounter the same characters in stories that upset the order of folk tales, they will not be able to distinguish between the two. If we look at the psychological role of folk tales from a Jungian perspective, the proposed rewriting of folk tales shows a lack of understanding of archetypes, or even, if you will pardon the expression, the “castration” of archetypes.552 From the perspective of gender theory and LGBTQ ideology, of course, this statement today would be automatically and without any consideration declared to be an outdated and homophobic statement that reflects the prejudices of the time, and defined by the heteronormative matrix. We still do give it credit. The folk tale is by definition “heteronormative” and this cannot be changed: it was created in a “heteronormative” world which is what has sustained and shaped it, and determined its characteristics and aesthetics. It is inseparable from this.

551

E.g., Ortutay 1978, pp. 109-129 On the relationship between folk tales and archetypes, see: Franz 1997. About archetypes: Jung 2014

552

319

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On the other hand, the folk tale is sustained by a local community whose members, unless they were soldiers, mostly visited only the nearest market town. The experiences and cultural treasures in the tale are local and the story is set within a specific cultural context. So, to place “non-Christian” or non-white characters into a Hungarian folk tale is absurd (although the distant king of the Saracens’ may have a role.) The tale does not think in such categories, although religion is irrelevant to most fairy tales, and the story-skeletons are, as mentioned, universal. So, you can take a story from one culture to another but mixing cultures and religions in one story is not possible, because again, this is a step completely alien to the nature of folk tales. As Lajos Géczi writes, “Surprisingly, however, I have not found a single reference in the collected tales that makes the slightest allusion to the disabilities, let alone the intellectual inferiority, of other peoples. In general, the folk tale is not interested in nationality or race; it is completely immune to the human nonsense that causes so much trouble. The tale is absolutely cosmopolitan in this sense. It is another thing, of course, that the realm of tales is saturated with the trees, animals, customs and, of course, people of the native landscape. If we were to tell these tales further south, the wicked witch would surely be lurking from some citrus tree, not from the willow tree leaning over the road...”553 The call for proposals by the Labrisz Lesbian Association and the story of Jeffrey Miles break almost all the rules of folk tales, more specifically, fairy tales. Thus, Miles’ tale can in no way be called a fairy tale, and the entries to Labrisz’s competition will also be literary fiction. Or, to use a parallel with the concept of world music, world tales are private tales which use folk tales as their basis. But just as world music is not folk music, neither is the “world tale” a folk tale. This does not mean, however, that LGBTQ tales cannot be written; they can be, but only as individual literary works. 553

Géczi 1989, p. 44 320

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And then it could be added that the dragon is the symbol of the enemy, so the way to write a tolerant tale is to eliminate the dragon, for example, in the fight against racism. Moreover, for contemporary progressive thought in which the LGBTQ movement and gender theory are embedded, the notions of personal effort, free will, and responsibility are increasingly suspect, and voices are increasingly being raised that, in the name of the struggle for equality, even the concept of the “hero” is a fascist phenomenon. Without heroes and enemies, without free will and individual responsibility, there are no folk tales. We could also consider rewriting folk tales because their world is hierarchical, agrarian, and monarchical; why not “modernize” them to be egalitarian, industrial or postindustrial, and democratic? The answer: because it would not be folk tale anymore. The proponents of “LGBTQ folk tales” would probably try to convince us that if folk tales have evolved so much over the past centuries, then the changes criticized above can be included in folk tales. They would likely add that if we refer to the framework, definition, aesthetics, and characteristics of the folk tale, they will take the initiative to reinterpret, “problematize”, or even “deconstruct” the folk tale (so that it is not just “heteronormative.”) It is clear that if you deconstruct the folk tale, then there is no folk tale, and so you have pulled the rug out from under yourself. However, if we completely reinterpret it so that the new definition is “inclusive”, then practically anything can be a folk tale, and folk tales can be interpretated in any way, therefore we have broadened the definition to the point where the concept is once again meaningless. If anything is a folk tale, then nothing is. And progression has once again pulled the rug out from under not only its opponents and debate partners but also itself. The adherents of such positions cannot cope with the phenomenon that just because something exists in variants and its boundaries cannot be defined with absolute precision, it cannot be shaped in any way because it has its rules. This is their problem with the folk tale, but even more so with masculinity, femininity, and gender roles. 321

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It is particularly problematic that these stories, along with the LGBTQ rewriting of various cartoons and storybooks, are written with a strong indoctrination bias, thus endangering children’s mental health and development. What is the lesson of all this? The goals set by gender ideology, even if they are supposedly only small changes in society and in the world, will eventually lead as a domino effect to a radical social transformation, a radical reinterpretation of the world and the dismantling of society and order whether they want it or not.

322

Chapter 17

ORWELLIAN NEWSPEAK: ON POLITICAL CORRECTNESS Political correctness is an oft-mentioned phenomenon in contemporary public discourse. An example of political correctness that can be linked to gender theory is when the transgender movement wants to replace the term “vagina” with “front hole.” HealthLine, a San Francisco-based health advocacy organization, advises that in order to promote acceptance of LGBTQIA and non-binary people, the word “vagina” should no longer be used in sex education publications. HealthLine recommends the term front hole instead of the incriminated expression. The terms “penis” and “vulva” are also considered by the organization to be exclusionary: they believe in the view that “the penis is an exclusively male and the vulva an exclusively female body part is inaccurate. By referring to genitalia as ‘body parts’ and by no longer associating anatomical terms with a particular gender, we will be better able to talk about safe sex in a clear and inclusive way.”554

554

Rothstein 2018

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Although transgender people who have tried to undergo male-tofemale surgery have a more or less feminine appearance, they cannot have a real vagina with any plastic surgery. Although their groin is modified to look like female genitalia from the outside, everyone is aware that in reality they have neither anatomically nor functionally female genitalia. However, because they want to be recognized as women, they want everyone to talk about the “front hole” rather than the vagina in an “inclusive” fashion, which is a denial of reality. The ideology of tolerance therefore tries to ignore reality as we have explained in the chapter on the trans movement. On January 1, 2019, there were more than 3.8 billion women living on Earth.555 The number of transgender people must have been around 705,000 at the time, and they may not all agree with the above demand.556 And it is in the name of this minuscule group of people that the trans movement wants to make women, who make up just over half of the world’s population, deny their own reality. Yet progressivism often pretends that political correctness does not exist and is an invention of the political right, of conservatives and reactionaries, to stigmatize opponents.557 As if it were merely about fighting for the oppressed and preferring polite language.

555

Reference 2020 The article of Reference states that, as of January 1, 2019, the world’s population was 7 billion 669 million 109 thousand. If, as mentioned earlier, 9.2 out of 100,000 people are transgender who undergo hormone therapy and surgery, then dividing the total population of the world by 100,000 and multiplying the result by 9.2 gives 705,000. 557 See for example: Weigel 2016 Wilson 1995 556

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Meanwhile, progressives often denounce political incorrectness. For example, Bath Spa University in England rejected the thesis of one of its students, James Caspian, on the grounds that it was potentially “politically incorrect” and therefore a threat to the institution’s reputation.558 The 58-year-old student, who worked as a psychotherapist, would have written his thesis about transgender people who regretted their surgery. It seems that their personal tragedy is not worthy of tolerance. According to Andrea Pető, head of CEU’s gender department, it is also worth considering “that social mobilization inciting against ‘gender ideology’ and political correctness not only demonizes the worldview of its opponents and rejects the human rights paradigm that has long been the basis of relative consensus in Europe and North America, but also offers a viable and feasible alternative that focuses on family, nation, religious values and freedom of expression.”559 Wonder who started it? The Nobel Prize-winning British writer Doris Lessing, who was a communist in her youth, considered “PC” to be a direct continuation of communism,560 while others believe that the term political correctness is used by the Right to discredit those who question power relations. According to the linguistic historian Geoffrey Hughes, “what was increasingly called ‘PC’ seemed to be the kind of social engineering which springs from the best of intentions but can bring out less healthy Puritanical impulses.”561 We can easily cite countless examples of political correctness, as we have done above, but if we want to define what it really is and how it works, we have a more difficult job.

558 559 560 561

Hurst 2017 Grzebalska–Kováts–Pető 2017 Lessing 2004, pp. 72-78 Hughes 2009 VIII-IX 325

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LINGUISTICS AGAINST OPPRESSION This view, which seeks repression in language, holds that language reveals unconscious, repressive structures. At the same time, whether or not these are apparent, it considers language to be too logical a system. As if there is an undeclared interest behind every linguistic phenomenon. But language is far from being a purely logical system. If it were, there would be no need to learn grammar. Language evolves like a gnarled, centuries-old tree — it has a system, but it is not rational. You cannot cut it back to the roots over and over again. At the same time, the enforcers of politically correct language do not take into account that even if a term that is considered stigmatizing is successfully “taken out of circulation”, the new term, which is considered acceptable, may also be imbued with negative connotations in the future. In other words, permanent language policing, language cleansing, and language control would be required. Political correctness is not just about language policy: oppression must also be fought in other forums, so more and more often, people who use politically incorrect language and express politically incorrect views are banned from Facebook and university campuses. In recent years, posts by American and Hungarian right-wing, conservative authors have been increasingly taken down by the largest social networking site. And certainly not just because of the language but also because of their approach.562 It is not for nothing that Milo Yiannopoulis said in an interview: “The fact that so many of us think hurting people’s feelings is the greatest evil says all you need to know about the decline of our civilization.”563 We might add that this attitude, this approach, is one of the foundations of political correctness.

562 563

See for example: Megadja 2019; Fischer 2019; Wong 2019 Yiannopoulis 2017 326

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BACK TO MAO The term “politically correct” was used by Mao in the Chinese Communist Party and its meaning was to follow the party line. This is where the American Left of the 1960s took it from. According to the militant British atheist author Christopher Hitchens, the reason behind political correctness is that those who want to expand rights are also calling for restrictions on free speech.564 Political correctness is analyzed in an entire book by the British linguist Geoffrey Hughes, Professor Emeritus of English History at Harvard and quoted above.565 As Hughes writes: political correctness is certainly difficult to define, as it is “hydra-headed”, it is not just one thing. “Linguistically it started as a basically idealistic, decent-minded, but slightly Puritanical intervention to sanitize the language by suppressing some of its uglier prejudicial features.”566 According to Hughes’ analysis, political correctness mainly concerns six themes: politics, literature, education, gender, culture and behavior. Linguistically, “PC” is about changing words and concepts in what we might call an Orwellian way. Thus, thanks mainly to the efforts of feminists, not only are new words born, but also Orwellian Newspeak. Political correctness, according to Hughes, has three linguistic characteristics: it does not have a recognized, visible authority behind it (such as the papacy, the crown, or the politburo of the Communist Party); it does not have a specific ideology, although it does focus on inequalities and prejudices (i.e., it can be liberal or even Marxist, let us add); finally, it is not a spontaneous “development” by the linguistic community but is imposed by a militant minority and this militant minority remains invisible.

564 565 566

Dunant 1994, 137-8 Hughes 2009 Ibid. p. 3 327

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Using non-offensive language and focusing on marginalized minorities is central to political correctness. It mostly prefers to avoid terms that contain judgment (except, of course, in relation to oppressors) and therefore prefers abstract, euphemistic, and artificial terms. Although some simpler, more successful terms have been made part of the language used, most of the politically correct terms are too contrived and long for everyday use (see for example “sex assigned at birth”, “cishetero”, etc.). Politically correct language is idealistic, egalitarian, favors gender and ethnic representation, and all this leads to social engineering. The most problematic aspect of political correctness, however, is its demand for a new conformity: political correctness would impose new norms and would want to suppress old “prejudices.” The PATENT Association, for example, calls for the use of the words “mother”, “father”, “parent” to be avoided because these words “may denote roles that the woman or the man may not want to accept.” Instead, we should prefer to use the terms “pregnant woman” and “pregnant woman’s partner.”567 It is a total denial and a subversion of the functioning of society and of man, a denial of the established and habitual use of language, a progressive brainwashing attempt in the name of a kind of absolute neutrality, and a total denial of context and of the categories of the world.

567 See: https://www.facebook.com/patent.egyesulet.ngo/photos/a.471664736296 443/3085800618216162/?type=3.

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TOTALITARIAN CORRECTNESS The boundaries of political correctness are blurred. Originally, however, it had a clear meaning: the orthodox line of the Communist Party. Besides, the term “political correctness” is inherently problematic because in everyday life, politics is largely about negotiation and compromise. But the politically correct approach refuses to do just that. Moreover, it is a child of the Marxist heritage that sees everything as political and that politicizes everything. “Outside the confines of totalitarian societies, no political system or party can claim to be ‘correct’”, writes Geoffrey Hughes.568 To speak in a “PC” manner would be to use a twisted, artificial, and cumbersome bureaucratic language that is neutral in the worst sense. Namely, politically correct aspirations are linked to progressive aspirations which always find new groups to liberate. If that were not the case, there would be no work for professional revolutionaries. So, political correctness is not just about tightening a few screws and tweaking public discourse or even society. In fact, it would mean a perpetual language war if we allowed it; its warriors would aim at the constant replacement of our words and the administratively imposed achievement of progressive perfection. Even though the boundaries of political correctness are not clear, the underlying attitude and its consequences in language, politics, and in the rearrangement of everyday human relations are. The term “political correctness” is a term that aims to name this clear, if sometimes hard-to-define, phenomenon succinctly and aptly.

568

Ibid. p. 17 329

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One step in making our world a home is by naming things and phenomena. Part of every mythology, part of every creation story, is the naming of the world by which we take possession of it. The biblical book of Genesis, for example, says: “Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So, the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds in the sky and all the wild animals.”569 Of course, this does not mean that man could have divided up the world in any way, because he gave names to existing things. Political correctness therefore exists, and it is a constant cleansing of language and of our actions in the name of a progressive approach to the fight against perceived or real oppression. It is not mere politeness but the redefinition of the world and even the denial of reality, if ideologically interpreted tolerance so requires. Political correctness is the linguistic dictatorship of progress.

STIGMATIZATION BY GENDER SCHOLARS While feminists and the LGBTQ movement fight against what they see as stigmatizing terms, they themselves use stigmatizing practices such as the scientific-looking labeling with “isms.”

569

Gen 2:20 330

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As critics of gender theory attacked constructionism with scientific arguments, pointing not only to the obvious physical-biological differences between men and women, and primary and secondary sexual characteristics, but also to neurobiology to show differences in brain function. For example, the term “biologism” was born, and Cordelia Fine even invented the term “neurosexism.”570 It is of course an old method to declare something a myth, so the results of neurobiology are already considered myths by some authors. This labeling, stigmatization, and the production of obscure terms is an indication of intellectual laziness; specifically, it delays confrontation and prevents the development of more elaborate, decent responses and criticisms. If you dislike someone’s argument when they use biology, instead of a substantive response you accuse them of “biologism” and declare that this “ism” has long permeated society and is merely a tool of oppression. What is more, all this also serves to render gender theory resistant to criticism, in other words to create a closed system from which all external standards and external points of reference bounce off because the author of any criticism is very creatively labeled with something like the above and as someone who wants to explain away patriarchy. If you take a look at the RationalWiki article on “trans-exclusionary radical feminism”,571 for example, you will see that it is full of l newly-created linguistic terms: essentialism; transcritics; transphobes; dogmatism; or even “whorephobes”, invented for those who reject all forms of “sex work.” In addition to intellectual laziness and a closed system, a third characteristic of the growing inability to debate is

570 571

Fine 2011 See: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Trans-exclusionary_radical_feminism. 331

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added: psychologizing, accusing critics of non-existent psychological defects (homophobia, transphobia, whorephobia, etc). Thus, while gender theorists accuse the anti-gender movements and their critics of constructing meanings against them, and even criticize the “demonization” of gender theory by their interlocutors,572 they themselves employ methods of meaning construction and stigmatization. Suffice it to say that if we were to shape the use of language according to political correctness, we would end up speaking a language that is watered down, endlessly bureaucratic, cumbersome, and soulless.

572

Pető 2017 332

Chapter 18

BINARY BIOLOGICAL SEXES REINFORCED After discussing those problems of gender theory, sexual orientations, homosexuality, transgenderism, intersexuality, polyamory, and other LGBTQ issues, we can return to the question of the binarity of sexes. As we represented, gender theory and the LGBT movement questions the binarity of human sexual orientation (Kinsey, etc.), the binarity of masculinity and femininity, and even the binarity of biological sex. As we concluded, the binarity of sexual orientation is indeed questionable; although Kinsey’s theory may describe a phenomenon, but it says nothing about what is or is not consistent with one’s nature and function, so it does not have necessary normative consequences. Let us investigate the other questions: if biological sexes are binary; if the current, emerging diversity of sexual orientations and gender diversities really “problematize” and “deconsctruct” it. Kathleen Stock, a lesbian feminist professor of philosophy, outlines three approaches to biological sex: the gamete account, the chromosome account, and – based on the concept of philosopher Richard Boyd573 – the cluster account.574 The first two maybe do not need an

573 574

Boyd 1991 Stock 2021.

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explanation here. The third one, the cluster account, says that just as species, also the human male and female can be defined by certain morphological characteristics and those underlying mechanisms which produce them. Nobody has to possess all of these characteristics and mechanisms, so none of them is essential to be human male of female. So “effectively, there’s one cluster of morphological characteristics relevant to counting as male, and another cluster relevant to counting as female”575, and a certain variation is possible within these clusters. Although the author does not really discuss small details regarding the cluster account, it can be really useful. This means that we can avoid the problem of too rigid definitions, while we can keep the certainly existing, binary, and stable categories of male and female with some practical elasticity. By this move Stock undermines one of the beloved tactics of postmodern gender theory, which presupposes the necessity of so rigid definitions that it can easily point out some particular “exeptions”, and based on these exeptions, it tries to “problematize” and “deconstruct” the entire category – in this case the binary categories of male and female. But Stock shows us that this is unnecessary and these natural categories can be kept: we do not have to forget them just because of some undoubtedly existing exceptions, borderline cases, and definitional problems; and at the same time, we can allow some variations within them. Male and female are certainly existing categories “out there.” But what about femininity, masculinity; non-heterosexual orientations, gender, and transgender identities? Could they fit this approach, or still challenge it?

575

Ibid. Loc. 732. 334

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Paul McHugh, Lawrence Mayer, and their colleagues reviewed the literature on gender and transgenderism in 2016 and concluded, as discussed in detail in this chapter, that masculinity and femininity are indeed binary and fixed, and that structural differences between men and women serve reproduction. This has been accepted throughout history and is true across species. It has been questioned only in relation to human beings and only recently.576 Paul McHugh was the head of the Department of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Hospital and is one of the world’s most respected psychiatrists, and Lawrence Mayer is a biostatistician, epidemiologist, psychiatrist, and physician who was a professor at some of the world’s leading universities. McHugh and his colleagues note that some of the authors who contributed to their report “feared an angry response from the more militant elements of the LGBT community”, others feared the disapproval of “religiously conservative communities”, while others feared “reprisals” from their own universities for engaging such “controversial topics”, regardless of the report’s content. They point out that this is “a sad statement about academic freedom.” However, the report is still dedicated to LGBTQ people who suffer disproportionately from mental health problems within the population, and to children who have problems with their gender and sexuality. The first part of the report looks at sexual orientation; the second at sexuality, mental health and social stress; the third at gender identity; and the fourth summarizes the conclusions.

576

McHugh–Mayer 2016 335

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WHAT IS THEIR CONCLUSION? After a comprehensive review of the literature of the previous decades, McHugh and his colleagues concluded that the theory of the innateness and the biologically fixed nature of sexual orientation (especially homosexuality and transgenderism) is not justified. While many biological factors such as hormones and genes also influence sexual orientation, sexual behavior, and attractions, they cannot be explained by purely biological reasons, including neurobiological causes. However, they point out that this does not mean that our sexual orientation and identity is literally a free and voluntary choice. Also, as we mentioned earlier, scientific studies even prove that nonheterosexual orientations are fluid, therefore not fixed, and in many cases, they change during one’s lifetime. Heterosexual orientation is on average much more stable than non-heterosexual orientation. We also discussed that, compared to heterosexuals, non-heterosexuals are two to three times more likely to have experienced sexual abuse in childhood, and this abuse may contribute to the development of non-heterosexual orientation. Non-heterosexuals are at increased risk of psychological problems, such as being one and a half times more likely to suffer from anxiety and substance abuse, and two and a half times more likely to commit suicide compared to heterosexuals. Within the non-heterosexual group, transgender people are even more vulnerable to mental health problems than others; most worryingly, there is a huge number of suicides among transgender people. While there is some evidence that this increased vulnerability to mental health problems among LGBTQ people is partly due to social causes such as discrimination and stigma, this evidence is limited. The report’s authors argue that more research is needed: “The social stress model probably accounts for some of the poor mental health

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outcomes experienced by sexual minorities, though the evidence supporting the model is limited, inconsistent, and incomplete.”577 The report states: “The hypothesis that gender identity is an innate, fixed property of human beings that is independent of biological sex — that a person might be ‘a man trapped in a woman’s body’ or ‘a woman trapped in a man’s body’ — is not supported by scientific evidence.” Relevant brain research has found only a weak correlation between brain structure and identification with the opposite sex, and this does not provide any neurobiological evidence for transgenderism. People who have undergone sex change surgery remain at high risk of mental health problems. The vast majority of children with opposite-sex identification grow up to identify with their biological sex, and only a very small percentage of them retain opposite-sex identification. The very definition of the relevant terms, whether homosexuality, heterosexuality, or bisexuality is problematic (especially because of the borderline cases), as are the terms “sexual desire”, “sexual attraction”, and “sexual arousal”, which are terms for which there is no consensus on the exact definition (which does not mean that they cannot be useful terms in everyday life.) All three dimensions of sexuality (sexual behavior, attraction, and identity) can change over time. However, the sexuality of women works differently to that of men; for example, a lesbian relationship is more likely to develop from an ever-deepening friendship. McHugh and his colleagues make it clear that unlike gender, the concept of biological sex is well defined and unambiguous. It is true that gender roles are not exactly the same in all cultures and it would be an oversimplification to say that they are entirely determined by biological sex. At the same time, the authors also point out that defining gender roles entirely as social constructs is also a mistake.

577

The model is challenged, for example, by Hatzenbuehler 2009, 2010. 337

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As gender identity terms proliferate and their meanings become more individualized, the scientists note, “we are increasingly losing the commonly agreed criteria for defining gender distinctions. If gender is completely divorced from the binary of biological sex, then gender can refer to anything related to behavior, biological characteristics, or psychological factors, and everyone can have a gender that is defined by their own characteristics.” And this reductio ad absurdum can lead to gender definitions that are so broad that they end up meaning nothing. An alternative solution could be to define masculinity and femininity according to sex-typical behavior. This, however, goes against feminists’ aspirations and the social constructionist view of sex-typical behaviors. It also lists the exceptions to the opposite sex. It also poses a definitional difficulty, since sex-typical behavior cannot be defined with complete precision. The only well-defined origin of masculinity and femininity, the researchers conclude, is thus to be found in the reproductive roles of the sexes: thus, “this conceptual basis for sex roles is binary and stable, and allows us to distinguish males from females on the grounds of their reproductive systems, even when these individuals exhibit behaviors that are not typical of males or females.” McHugh and his colleagues add: “In biology, an organism is male or female if it is structured to perform one of the respective roles in reproduction. This definition does not require any arbitrary measurable or quantifiable physical characteristics or behaviors; it requires understanding the reproductive system and the reproduction process.” As for the infertility objection, although the system may not be able to perform the function of reproduction at the moment because of its defect, it is still structured to do so and biological sex can still be clearly determined by the reproductive system. Adults who have undergone a sex change operation in infancy and grew up in a gender-affirming environment often did not identify with their assigned gender role and turn out to have reverted to their bio338

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logical sex; of fourteen boys born genetically male who did not develop a sex organ and were operated on and raised as girls, five remained female, two identified as boys when they were young but their parents ignored this and raised them as girls, six later identified as boys and one refused to talk about his sexual identity.578 So, there are limits to the flexibility and influenceability of gender. And it is clear from all this that biological sex is not reducible to the sex organs themselves: “The scientific definition of biological sex is, for almost all human beings, clear, binary, and stable, reflecting an underlying biological reality that is not contradicted by exceptions to sex-typical behavior, and cannot be altered by surgery or social conditioning.” Furthermore, “human sexual identity is mostly built into our constitution by the genes we inherit and the embryogenesis we undergo. Male hormones sexualize the brain and the mind.” Gender identity disorder occurs, among others, in men who have been raised as women because of their imperfectly developed genitals. There is no scientific evidence that masculinity is defined by playing with boy’s toys and femininity by playing with girl’s toys, and on this basis alone a boy playing with girls’ toys should be considered a girl, since he may not have a gender role disorder at all. A child can exhibit this behavior without identifying with the opposite sex. As mentioned above, transgender people’s mental health problems do not go away after sex change surgery. These problems are even more serious when someone is treated with hormones from childhood and prepared for surgery (although transgender ideology would suggest that such cases should be less problematic).579

578 579

Reiner 2004 Zucker 2003, 2008; Drummond et al. 2008; Singal 201 339

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A study of 45 such transgender persons (women who think of themselves as transgender men), found that 60 percent had experienced some form of abuse as children: 31 percent had experienced sexual harassment, 29 percent emotional harassment and 38 percent physical abuse. However, this study had no control group and the sample was quite small, so it is not worth drawing any definitive conclusions.580 The research evidence is also insufficient to suggest that a biological man who thinks of himself as a woman would do so because he has a female brain. There are some studies that suggest that such men may have more feminine brains but they have not come to any definitive conclusions because their samples were small and their conclusions are mixed and often contradictory. In conclusion, they prove nothing. In addition, these types of brain examinations have considerable limitations for biological and methodological reasons, making them impractical to conduct proper studies.581 It is therefore clear that it is not scientifically proven that someone can be born into the wrong sex. The authors of the summary conclude that, while people with a non-heterosexual orientation and identity are indeed vulnerable to socially induced mental health problems (exclusion, stigma, etc.), not all of their psychological problems can be blamed on external factors; in fact, not even most of them. The biological sexes play complementary roles in human reproduction, and there are physiological and psychological differences between the two sexes. Biological sex is a clear, permanent, and intrinsic property, but the idea of gender identities is elu-

580

Bearman– Brückner 2002 Those studies are: Rametti et al. 2011a, 2011b; Hsaio–Lun–Ku 2013; Hans Berglund 2008; Bostwick–Martin 2007; Santarnecchie et al 2012 581

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sive. For people who do not identify with their biological sex, there is no evidence that their feelings can be explained by a biological origin. The framework for thinking about the sexes and sexuality, which can be clearly defined and used without contradictions, is provided by the gender binary based on biological sex, the male-female dichotomy. So now we can turn to the question of femininity and masculinity, along with so-called gender roles.

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MAN AND WOMAN, NATURE AND NURTURE A strange scandal erupted in January 2005 involving the economist Larry Summers, President of Harvard University and former Vice President of the World Bank, who worked in senior positions in the leftwing administrations of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Summers noted at a conference that the under-representation of women in science and engineering may be partly due to biological reasons. One hundred and twenty Harvard professors signed a letter criticizing Summers’ comment. The case of the engineer fired from Google is memorable. In 2017, James Damore wrote an internal memo on the company’s diversity policy, which he says is ineffective because, among other things, it fails to recognize the real biological-psychological differences between men and women. Damore’s first sin was to suggest in his memo that meritocracy might be healthier for a company than obsessing about race, ethnicity, and gender. His second sin was to point out that diversity of ideology also matters. The third and most serious thought crime was to point out that men and women in general are very different, both physically and psychologically, and therefore stand out in different ways: “on average, men and women are biologically different in many ways.” Damore boldly accused women of being “generally more interested in people than in things”, of being “more empathetic” and

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“open” to “feelings and beauty”, of being less assertive than men, and of having less interest in leadership roles. Women, he says, are “more cooperative” than men and pay more attention to “work-life balance.” The portal Gizmodo called Damore’s memo an “anti-diversity letter”, Recode said it was “sexist”, and most news sites used similar epithets. Google eventually fired the author for “perpetuating gender stereotypes.”582 As the American sociologist Charles Murray explains, the reason for all of this is that social sciences start from human equality. But this equality does not mean equality before the law and equality of human dignity. Instead, it is the assumption that if human societies functioned well, then everyone’s life would be the same. This equality is therefore not equality of opportunity but equality of outcome. The dominant idea in contemporary social science is that everyone should have the same income, be healthy, and achieve the same life outcomes. If this is not the case, it is evidence of injustice that needs to be addressed by appropriate policy measures. For example, we need to achieve a 50/50 gender balance in all university departments and in all jobs (and then what about the other gender identities!, because anything that deviates from this is evidence of injustice. This claim is rooted in the Enlightenment idea that man is a blank slate at birth, a tabula rasa. This assumption became established in social sciences in the late 19th century thanks to the sociologist Émile Durkheim, the anthropologist Franz Boas, and the psychologist John Watson. And from the 1960s onwards, there is a widespread belief, thanks to feminism and gender theory, that gender roles, masculinity, and femininity are purely social constructs. This view was reinforced by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckman’s The Social Construction of Reality. The essence of this line of reasoning, presented at the beginning of this book and argued on a postmodern basis, is that since ev-

582

For the full text of the memo, see: Gizmodo 2017 344

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eryone has a different perception of reality, a different idea of reality, and a different idea of truth, reality and truth are unknowable if they exist at all, due to being human constructs. Thus, the differences between people are in fact oppressive human constructs, which must be remedied by anti-discrimination and equal opportunity laws and quotas. A comprehensive critique of the idea of tabula rasa, based on evolutionary psychology, has been advanced by Steven Pinker. According to Pinker, three false assumptions about human nature are prevalent in the social sciences today: tabula rasa, the idea of being born as a blank slate; the noble savage assumption, suggesting that people are born good and corrupted by society; and finally, that we can disconnect ourselves from biology. According to Pinker, these false beliefs are driven by fear of the consequences of admitting their falsity: fear of inequality, imperfection, determinism, and nihilism. 583 While gender theorists would like to portray differences as an unjustifiable social construct and see them as a self-fulfilling prophecy burned into us by an oppressive patriarchy, evolutionary psychology, and neurobiology, for example, which are otherwise rightly open to criticism. Many others alsogender differences as largely biologically determined. But it is important to point out that the debate is not between constructionists and biologists; there are not many scientists who consider gender differences to be entirely biologically determined. Rather, we can say that feminists, LGBTQ activists, and postmodern philosophers who want to eliminate biology, or at least negate it as much as possible, are opposed to scientists, sociologists, psychologists, and others who warn realistically that there are biological explanations, to a significant extent if not entirely, for gender differences.584

583 584

Pinker 2002 Browne 2007, pp. 40-46 345

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Of course, gender differences can also be interpreted in different ways, for example by focusing on similarities. The similarities are not surprising, however, as both men and women belong to the human race. In any case, one of the main theorists of this emphasis on similarities is Janer Shibley Hyde, who in 1985, in the prestigious journal American Psychologist (the journal of the American Psychological Association), formulated the theory that whatever the differences between girls and boys, and women and men are, the two sexes are much more alike. At the same time, Charles Murray strongly criticizes Hyde’s methodology as the latter often labelled even moderate differences as insignificant and did not take into account the cumulative effect of differences. Murray warns that these differences should not be treated in isolation, nor should they be averaged, because in real life their effects add up. Therefore, even small differences can have a big impact.585 In any case, while Hyde was still worried that scientific findings on male-female differences would be magnified and turned into self-fulfilling prophecies and social expectations, Murray says: today (in 2020), given the prevailing public opinion, we should be afraid of the opposite, that is, of underestimating gender differences and thus causing more harm; for example, in Western armies, we are less and less taking gender differences into account.586

585 586

Murray 2020 Loc. 414-462 Ibid. Loc. 394 346

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WHAT DIFFERENCES ARE WE TALKING ABOUT? Gender differences between men and women include personality traits, risk-taking, social behavior, sexuality and mating preferences, interests, intelligence, and cognitive abilities, as well as physical characteristics. But there are also differences in which mental illnesses are more common in men and women, differences in the way they experience emotions, self-image, the way they have personal relationships in childhood, and the way they relate to others.587 There is a big debate about how clear the differences are, whether they are born with us, how they can be measured, and whether our everyday experiences and our everyday truths are real. The nature-nurture debate is a very complicated and complex phenomenon that touches upon the disciplines of molecular and behavioral genetics, evolutionary biology, endocrinology, neuroanatomy, ethology, anthropology, sociology, and psychology.588 In a scientific synthesis published in 2020, American sociologist Charles Murray proves six theories about the biological components of the origins of gender differences: 1. Sex differences in personality are consistent worldwide and tend to widen in more gender-egalitarian cultures. 2. On average, females worldwide have advantages in verbal ability and social cognition while males have advantages in visuospatial abilities and the extremes of mathematical ability. 3. On average, women worldwide are more attracted to vocations centered on people and men to vocations centered on things. 4. Many sex differences in the brain are coordinate with sex differences in personality, abilities, and social behavior.

587 588

Lippa 2005, p. 12 Ibid. XIX 347

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5. Outside interventions are inherently constrained in the effects they can have on personality, abilities, and social behavior.589 In summary, Charles Murray argues that, contrary to the belief common among social scientists, it is not true that gender roles are exclusively social constructs, neither is the view that biology plays some small, negligible role; biology is very much a determinant. At the same time, Murray makes it clear that he rejects the idea that people can be classified into higher and lower groups on the basis of the biological differences he outlines. As for the differences between men and women, he points out that these do not mean that one side is better than the other; these are simply differences. Murray notes that the scientific results he summarizes, which cover decades of scientific research, are mostly the work of lesser-known scientists, published in peer-reviewed journals unknown to the general public. In addition, he omitted the results of evolutionary psychology from his book, as this field is so controversial (it is essentially accused of vulgar Darwinism) that he thought it better not to enter into this debate. By contrast, among the better-known figures in academia are feminists who do not concern themselves with nuanced differences, complex “on the one hand/on the other hand arguments”, the interrelationship of biology and environment, but unilaterally declare that gender is a social construct, period. Eric Turkheimer, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia, has also formulated three laws that have been supported by decades of research conducted in several countries. According to this research, on the one hand, all human behavioral patterns can be inherited. On the other hand, the effect of being brought up in the same family is

589

Murray 2020 Loc. 142-150 348

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smaller than the effect of genes. Thirdly, for a significant proportion of complex human behavioral patterns, we cannot determine whether they are genetic or familial.590 Richard Lippa, Professor at the University of California and one of the leading authorities on the subject, provided the most comprehensive summary of the scientific literature on the debate in his 2005 work. In fact, Lippa presents biological, psychological, neurobiological, educational, and sociological research on the concept of masculinity and femininity, covering all the important areas including conceptual analyses. Lippa summarizes research on the usual reference areas with regards to the behavior of men and women and its origins, analyses the nature of masculinity and femininity, and then outlines theories of sex by dividing them into biological and social. He then goes on to discuss the arguments and scientific research in favor of the principle of innateness, biological determination, and then does the same with the environmental concept. Subsequently, he compares the two trends and finally discusses the possible political and public policy implications of each. Since social scientists think that one study is no study, Lippa relies mainly on meta-analysis and draws his conclusions from many studies.591 The neuroscientist Louann Brizendine, author of The Male Brain and The Female Brain, emphasizes that the female brain has a different “architecture” to the male brain and is affected by different hormones.592 Of course, in the debate about the brain, there is also the

590

Pinker 2002 Loc. 7294 Lippa 2005 592 Brizendine studied neuropsychology at Berkeley and went on to study at the Yale School of Medicine and Harvard Medical School. He has also taught at Harvard and is currently a professor at San Francisco University. As a neuropsychologist, he is both a clinical practitioner and a researcher. Brizendine’s bestsellers: The Female Brain, 2006 and its sequel, The Male Brain, 2010. 591

349

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view that there are far more similarities than differences between male and female brains, and that the latter are negligible. But the fact remains that neurobiologists can tell with 70-95 percent accuracy, depending on the methodology, whether a brain belongs to a man or a woman.593 In addition, many of the sex characteristics of our brains develop in fetal life and continue to develop in prematurity. Sex hormones play a close role in this, and overall, the male brain has a greater lateralization, meaning it has a greater hemispheric separation of different mental functions.594 Hormones are also responsible for a range of traits, with androgens (including testosterone) shaping male characteristics and estrogens shaping female characteristics. Thus, hormones are responsible for women having an advantage in prosocial behavior, being more riskaverse and more emotional.595 Brizendine puts it this way: “More than 99 percent of male and female genetic coding is exactly the same. Out of the thirty thousand genes in the human genome, the less than one percent variation between the sexes is small. But that percentage difference influences every single cell in our bodies.”596 Many sex differences are already established before birth. The sex of the fetus is already clear and defined from the moment of conception, by its DNA and chromosomes. By the eighth week after conception, the basis of the structure of the fetus’s brain and nervous system is already largely formed. And before the twenty-sixth week, sex is already a factor, with the ovaries or testes of the fetus having been developing for two weeks by the end of the embryonic period.

593 594 595 596

Murray 2020 Loc. 1619 Ibid. Loc. 1630 Ibid. Loc. 1651-1670 Brizendine 2006, p. 1 350

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By the twelfth week, the genitals are already developing, and the brain begins to differentiate sexually. A significant part of the sex differences is caused by the appearance of testosterone, which largely determines the development of the fetus between weeks 12-18 and 34-41. Testosterone promotes male characteristics and prevents the development of female characteristics. Testosterone affects spatial vision, autism, the ability to empathize, human relationships, and interest in children.597 Of course, the scientific findings on brain sex differences have been challenged by many, including Rebecca Jordan-Young, Cordelia Fine, and Gina Rippon.598 Their books, which have become very popular in some circles, have not received much attention from neurobiologists. These authors, despite pointing out some of existing problems (for example, the small sample size of many studies), have cherrypicked the literature: they singled out the problematic studies but failed to mention those they cannot argue with. As Fine’s 2017 book Testosterone Rex was described by a scientist in response to a question from Charles Murray: it is “absolutely clearly nonsense” from a scientific point of view.599 Brizendine points out that the differences between male and female brains are structural, chemical, genetic, hormonal, and functional. Ultimately, the female and male brain hear, see, “feel’” process stimuli and evaluate the feelings of others differently. “Our distinct female and male brain operating systems are mostly compatible and adept, but they perform and accomplish the same goals and tasks using different circuits.”600

597

Murray 2020 Loc. 1680-1742 Jordan-Young, R.: Brain Strom, 2010; Fine, C.: Delusions of Gender, 2011; Testosterone Rex, 2018; Rippon, G.: The Gendered Brain, 2020 599 Murray 2020 Loc. 1742-1768 600 Brizendine 2006, p. 4-5 598

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He adds, “But if in the name of free will — and political correctness — we try to deny the influence of biology on the brain, we begin fighting our own nature.”601 Furthermore: “There are still those who believe that for women to become equal, unisex must be the norm. The biological reality, however, is that there is no unisex brain.” And if we try to create the impression that there is no difference, we will harm both women and men.602

INFANT AND CHILDHOOD DIFFERENCES Sex differences are already evident in day-old babies, with day-old girls looking at faces and day-old boys looking at things.603 On average, baby girls cry more than baby boys, baby girls make eye contact for longer and show more joy when their mother appears. Infant girls also respond better to their mother’s voice, but they also become more stressed out when their mother looks at them angrily. And in almost every respect, baby girls are more interested in people, or things that show people, than boys.604 One of the most studied areas in terms of differences in childhood is the question of activity. Research shows that boys are significantly more active than girls. The difference in activity rates increases throughout childhood and is probably related to personality differences in adulthood. Differences in activity can be observed in infancy and even after birth; i.e., they cannot be attributed to the gender stereo-

601 602 603 604

Ibid. p. 6 Ibid. p. 160-161 Conellan et al. 2001 Summarized in: Murray 2020 Loc. 554-565 352

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types that parents instill in their children. This is supported by the fact that infants observed for a short period of time show the same difference as those observed for a lengthier period, again contradicting the constructionist notion that the watchful eye of parents with gender stereotypes is responsible for these differences.605 Differences in activity also contribute to the fact that in childhood boys are more likely to associate with boys and girls with girls.606 Boys get into trouble more often and find it harder to control themselves; boys’ groups are larger and less supervised; girls tend to play in pairs. Boys’ group life revolves around dominance, hierarchy, and competition. Boys are more prone to testing and breaking the rules of adults. Girls’ aggression is more verbal. Boys’ fantasies revolve more around playing heroes and girls’ around reciprocal roles. Boys tend to play with mechanical things, girls with dolls and domestic toys. Girls are more interested in art and music, boys in construction toys.607 In many cultures, girls take on more housework outright.608 (Which of course may be because they are being given more chores by their parents.) The most dramatic and consequential difference in children, however, is that gender segregation becomes more exclusive from the age of three, which is then broken by a romantic-sexual interest in the opposite sex towards the end of adolescence. Most children can correctly identify their sex by the age of two or three, and by the age of six or seven they know that it cannot be changed and that it is strongly linked to differences between the sexual organs.609

605 606 607 608 609

Campbell–Eaton 1999 Pellegrini 2004 Maccoby 1990 Power 2000 Edwards 2002 Gesell et al. 1940 353

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DIFFERENCES IN ADULTHOOD Scientists have distinguished five broad groups of personality traits: extroversion, friendliness or agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability (with a bit of a misnomer: neuroticism) and openness to experience. Is there a detectable male-female difference beyond these individual differences? Alan Feingold, a psychologist at Yale University, found by conducting meta-analysis that the biggest difference between the two sexes was in the areas of extroversion and agreeableness, with women, for example, on average being much more assertive and soft-hearted than men. There was a slightly smaller difference in terms of worrying, which is also more typical for women. However, there was very little difference in conscientiousness and openness to novelty, as well as in self-esteem, with men being marginally better at the latter.610 Another study of 23,000 people from 26 different cultures found the same results as Feingold. Very interestingly, it found that personality differences between the sexes were greater in economically more developed countries where people are more liberal about gender roles (USA, Europe), compared to less economically developed countries where traditional gender roles are stronger. One possible explanation for this is that in societies that emphasize more traditional gender roles, people attribute these differences to their society, while in more liberal societies they attribute them to internal factors.611 A New Zealand study of 18-year-old boys and girls that lasted over a year also confirmed the above, and even showed that these differences will have broadly predictable consequences,612 namely that the

610 611 612

Feingold 1994 Costa–Terraciano–McCrae 2001 Moffit et al. 2001 354

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scientists did not show these differences simply because they put stereotypical questionnaires in front of the respondents. However, there are two other characteristics worth mentioning: attitudes towards authority and perceptions of socially dominant groups. There is no substantive difference between men and women with the first,613 but there is with the second, meaning that the social status of different groups is more important for men than for women.614 So, in general, men are slightly more prejudiced than women.615 There is also a difference in risk-taking, according to various meta-analyses: in general, men are only slightly more risk-taking, but there are some areas where the difference is more pronounced, such as men being more inclined to drive dangerously, more willing to expose themselves to dangerous situations, mental risks, and higher stakes in games that require physical strength. However, as we get older, these differences diminish.616 Women are much better at avoiding harm and are moderately stronger than men in stress reactivity, social closeness, and self-discipline. Men are much more aggressive and somewhat more prone to alienation and fulfilment. Most forms of aggression are more common in men than in women, but young men are more aggressive than older men.617 There is, however, one type of aggression that women are “better” at: indirect or relational aggression, specifically the ostracization of others through malicious gossip.618

613 614 615 616 617 618

Altemeyer 1988 Lippa–Arad 1999; Sidanius–Pratto–Bobo 1994 Altemeyer 1998 Byrnes–Miller–Schaffer 1999 Bettencourt–Miller 1996; Archer–Mehdikhani 2004 Crick–Nelson 2002; Simmons 2002 355

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Public perception tends to be that women are more helpful and compassionate.619 However, different studies have come to very different conclusions in this respect, although the type of help we are looking at does matter. In general, the meta-analyses show that men are slightly more helpful, but they are more likely to seize public opportunities to help and are more helpful towards women. Some explanations suggest that men are in competition with each other in this way too or want to be seen as heroes.620 Women, on the other hand, are better at raising children and more likely to provide personal support within their circle of friends and care for sick friends and family.621 In terms of everyday helpfulness and social skills, women are clearly better at providing emotional support, caring for the sick, bringing up children, and paying attention to proper eating, sleeping, and health care.622 It is also interesting that the male argument is based more on abstract principles of justice than the female argument, which is based more on relational concepts and care. Women are more inclined to give greater weight to the issue of care in their moral positions. As Lippa points out, these are small differences, but in real life they can add up and become more significant.623 Women are better at resisting temptation to do forbidden things and are on average more conformist than men, but the differences are greater in face-to-face situations.624 Within the group, men are more issue-oriented, while women are more socially and emotionally oriented.625

619 620 621 622 623 624 625

Eagly–Mladinic–Otto 1991 Eisenberg–Lennon 1983; Eagly–Crowley 1986; Taylor 2002 Eagly–Crowley 1986 Taylor 2002; Berkman–Syme 1979; Litwak–Messeri 1989 Gilligan 1982 Jafee–Hyde 2000 Becker 1986; Eagly–Carli 1981 Anderson–Blanchard 1982; Carli 1982 356

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Women are more democratic leaders, better at rewarding, better at guiding and motivating, while men prefer a laissez-faire leadership style. For these reasons, some believe that women are on average more effective leaders because the qualities of a good leader coincide with the leadership characteristics of women.626 Men, on the other hand, have slightly better negotiation scores; and while the gender differences in this area are small, the cumulative effect can be larger.627 67 percent of women are better at decoding non-verbal signals than men, and they are better at showing their emotions on their faces. Women use more eye contact, while men maintain more personal space (keep more distance.) Men are more nervous in their body movements and their body movements are greater. Women show their emotions more on their faces. Men make more mistakes in their speech and use more “um.”628

FEMALE SEXUALITY, MALE SEXUALITY A meta-analysis of 177 studies on sexual behavior shows that men are generally more permissive about sexuality, more positive about casual sex than women, masturbate much more (83 percent masturbate more than the average woman), and even within couples and marriages, men have a more positive view of sexual relationships. Women are more prone to fear and guilt about sex. Men report having more sexual relationships than women, their sexual debut happens at a younger age, and they have more partners. In addition, significantly more men are homosexual than women are lesbian.629

626 627 628 629

Eagly–Johanessen-Schmidt–van Engen 2003 Stuhlmacher–Walters 1999 Hall 1984 LaFrance–Hecht–Paluck 2003 Oliver–Hyde 1993 357

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Around the world, in the short and long term, men want more sexual partners in their lifetime than women. For 77 percent of men, commitment is less important, but this varies more by country. There are differences by level of development, but ultimately everywhere men are less likely to be interested in relationships with regards to sex, and the gender gap was more than twice as large as the gap between nations in all cases.630 Women’s sexuality is more fluid, flexible, and dependent on social norms than men’s. The average woman will experience more changes in her life, both in terms of intensity of sexual activity and even orientation, than the average man. Women are a little more influenced by culture and society in this area.631 Men tend to see sex as recreation and pleasure and focus more on the body; women are more concerned about the person and the relationship.632 Men have a stronger sexual instinct than women.633 Several studies have shown that men fantasize more about sex, they are more likely to want more partners, less likely to postpone sex, more likely to want variety, and more likely to take risks for sex, even at the risk of social status and criminalization. They are much more likely to be consumers of erotic and porn magazines, videos, films and the like; and of course, they are also more likely to turn to prostitutes.634 When it comes to choosing a mate, women (75 percent of them) rate ambition and social class as more important than men, plus they rate personality, intelligence, humor and character as more important than the opposite sex.635 Physical attraction and beauty are more important for men than for women, and this is evident across cultures.636 630 631 632 633 634 635 636

Schmitt et al. 2003 Baumeister 2000; Baumeister–Tice 2001 Peplau 2001 Baumeister–Catanese–Vohs 2001 Ibid. Feingold 1992a Buss–Schmitt 1993 358

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It is also culture-independent that men prefer women younger than they are, and increasingly so as they get older, while women increasingly prefer partners their own age as they get older.637 Intelligence, as mentioned above, is important for both sexes when choosing a mate.

VOCATION AND INTERESTS John Holland distinguished between six types of vocation, which is still a very accepted division: the realistic, the investigative, the artistic, the social, the enterprising, and the conventional. Realistic professions involve working with machines, tools, and animals. Investigative professions involve the study of behavioral, biological, and cultural phenomena. Artistic needs no explanation: it includes musicians, painters, writers, poets, and the like. Social professions involve working with people, whether they are teachers, priests, psychologists, or social workers. Entrepreneurial professions cover not only entrepreneurs but also the management of large organizations for some purpose, such as a career in politics. Conventional professions are not meant to be mundane or boring: they include managing caseloads, working with data such as payroll, bookkeeping, bureaucratic and administrative work, and clerical work.638 Well, according to various studies, men are much more interested in realistic professions (86 percent), women in artistic and social professions (73 percent); men are slightly more interested in investigative professions and women slightly more interested in entrepreneurial professions. But there is not much difference in terms of conventional professions.639 637 638 639

Kenrick–Keefe 1992 Holland 1992 Lippa 2001 359

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However, the six areas can be divided into two dimensions: the people-things dimension and the ideas-data dimension. There is a significant difference between men and women in the first (men prefer things, women prefer people), but no difference in the second.640 Women are more sympathetic, men more systematic. Women are more demanding of interpersonal relationships (human relationships), give and ask for more personal support, and are more cooperative and reciprocal in their interactions.641 Lippa notes that 90 percent of women are more people-oriented than the average man, and 90 percent of men are more things-oriented than the average woman, and these gender differences are already evident in children aged 2-4 years.642 Boys are more interested in mechanical things, they like things better, as well as collecting and organizing hobbies. The most extreme organizers in the world are autistic people, and autism is more common among men. The average man does slightly better on math tests, while women do better on verbal ability tests.643 Men do better on tests of spatial vision.644 On average, boys and men have higher general knowledge than girls and women.645 For example, men tend to have a better knowledge of day-to-day issues (history, economics, politics, geography), physical health and recreation, and science. Women have an advantage in knowledge about medicines, gastronomy, food, and cooking. There is no significant difference in terms of skills in literature, business, art, and psychology.646 These phenomena are also inde-

640

Lippa 1998 Baron–Cohen 2003 642 Goodenough 1957 643 Rosenthal–Rubin 1982; Becker–Hegdes 1984; Hyde 1981; Hyde–Linn 1988 644 Linn–Peterson 1986 645 Lynn–Irwing–Cammock 2001 646 Halpern 1981, 1992, 1997, 2000; Jensen 1998; Hyde–Linn 1988; Linn–Peterson 1986; Voye–Voyer–Bryden 1995 Eals–Silverman 1994; Ackerman et al. 2001 641

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pendent of culture.647 These differences may be partly social in origin, but they may also be biologically influenced; it is also possible that this biological disposition is recognized and reinforced by society. In terms of physical ability, men are generally more active, but women are better at hand-eye coordination.648 And homicidal aggression is much higher in men.649 Interestingly, when looking behind the averages, there is more standard deviation for men than for women; i.e., more men than women are outliers in both directions and to a greater extent than women, and this is most evident for math and spatial skills, but also for intelligence and everything else in general (meaning that there are more highly intelligent men, and men with very low intelligence, than in the case of women.)650 Charles Murray also draws attention to other exciting things. First, that even among women from upper-middle-class families who are self-confident, critical, and supported by their parents in their talents, and who excel in math or science, far fewer choose it as a career than men. This is partly because they are more comfortable in people-related fields (and many prefer to work less but have children.) So what matters is not just talent but also what the personal preference of the talented person. It is important to point out that if someone is exceptionally talented in math, but even more talented in, for example, speaking, they will choose a speaking-related profession.651 This phenomenon was also explored in a 2008 book by Susan Pinker, who introduces women who are exceptionally talented in something but still do not work in that area.652 647

Evans–Schweingruber–Stevenson 2002 Eaton–Enns 1986; Thomas–French 1985 649 Daly–Wilson 1990 650 DeLisi–McGillicuddy-De Lisi 2002; Feingold 1992b; Hedges–Nowell 1995; Deary et al. 2003; Archer–Mehdikhani 2003 651 Murray 2020 Loc. 1206-1256 652 Pinker 2008 648

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On the other hand, it is very interesting that in the United States, when women suddenly could find employment in many more areas thanks to the feminist movement of the 1960s, to technology (for example, the birth control pill) and to other reasons, it was only for a short time that many more of them went into what had traditionally been male-dominated fields. While in 1960, only 41 percent of women aged 25-54 were working, today (2018) 75 percent are. Between 1971 and 1986, the number of science degrees awarded to women doubled; but in percentage terms, this meant that women’s share of the field increased only from 4 to 10 percent, meaning that men still held 90 percent of these degrees. The number of science degrees earned by women in the more people-oriented sciences also doubled between 1971 and 1979, increasing from 9 to 18 percent, and in 2017 to 27 percent. In 1979, 30 percent of women worked in people-oriented fields; in 2018, 39 percent. According to Murray, the feminist turnaround has made a real difference for women with tertiary qualifications, but it has not happened for those with only a degree.653 As for the cross-cultural situation: it’s a global phenomenon that girls are better at reading, while boys excel in math and science. The greater the gender equality in a country, the greater the gap in favor of men in science. According to Gijsbert Stoet and David Geary, in some developing countries, women with talent in both verbal and science fields are driven by labor market opportunities and salaries towards science jobs, but in developed welfare countries women may be able to orient themselves towards verbal fields. Murray therefore argues that overall, gender differences in occupation cannot be attributed solely to social influences, as the mixed model offers a more plausible explanation, and that these differences are partly social and partly biological.654

653 654

Murray 2020 Loc. 1302-1466 Ibid. Loc. 1492-1531 362

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EMOTIONAL AND BEHAVIORAL PROBLEMS, SELF-IMAGE Men are more likely to suffer from mental decline and have more reading difficulties, as well as more sexual dysfunction and gender identity disorders. Men are more likely to have anti-social problems, obsessive, schizoid, and narcissistic behavior, and are more prone to drug and alcohol abuse. Personality disorders also generally affect men more. Depression, phobias, anxiety disorders, conversion disorders, personality splits, eating disorders, borderline problems, and histrionics are the most common mental health problems in women, as clinical depression too is more than twice as common in women. While depression is more common among women, antisocial behavior (lying, cheating, stealing, physical violence, truancy, drugs and other crimes) is more common among men.655 Women are more outgoing, they share more information about their personal lives, and most people, men and women alike, are more outgoing with a woman than with a man.656 Women are more likely to report negative emotions than men, who are more likely to express anger.657 Women also express their emotions in different ways. And not only do the sexes express emotions differently, but they also experience them differently: men tend to derive them more from within, while women tend to derive them from outside, from their environment. Men tend to internalize their emotions and women tend to externalize them. In stressful situations, men tend to fight and women tend to retreat. And women are much more willing to look for emotional support than men.658 655

Lippa 2005, pp. 36-39; Nolen–Hoeksema 2002 Hartung–Widiger 1998; Hankin– Abramson 2001; Moffit et al. 2001 656 Dindia–Allen 1992 657 Zeman–Garber 1996 Clark–Reis 1988 658 Pennebaker–Watson 1988; Pennebaker–Roberts 1995; Buck et al. 1972; Brody 1999; Brody–Hall 2002; Levenson–Carstensen–Gottman 1994; Taylor et al. 2000; Taylor 2002; Tamres–Janicki–Helgeson 2002 363

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Men have a more independent image of themselves, and are more defined by their own success, values and abilities than women. Women’s self-image is more interdependent, they tend to see themselves in a network of relationships, and their self-image is determined by their relationships with others and their social roles and responsibilities.659 Of course, the independent self-image is more common in more individualistic societies, and the interdependent self-image in more traditional ones. but this does not refute the above, since the above difference is present in all societies.660 Men’s self-esteem is more linked to their achievements and women’s is more attached to their personal relationships. Men’s self-esteem is more challenged when their achievements are questioned and women’s is more challenged when their caring skills and sensitivity are called into doubt.661

CROSS-CULTURAL DIFFERENCES, GENDER EQUALITY One of the most interesting aspects of the female-male distribution of personality differences (and their consequences) is that they are culture-independent and are as observable in sub-Saharan tribes that take male dominance as divine ordination as they are in the Scandinavian states that have done most to promote gender equality. Consequently, it is not really dependent on vast cultural differences, i.e., it is primarily biological and not a social construct.662

659 660 661 662

Cross–Madson 1997 Markus–Kitayama 1991 Josephs–Markus–Tafarodi 1992 Costa–Terraciano–McCrae 2001 364

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On the other hand, it is also interesting to note that, contrary to what we might think, gender differences in personality and work are greater in states that are considered freer and more gender equal. In Norway, it is called a paradox of gender equality that, although the country regularly ranks among the world leaders in gender equality, it is impossible for any government campaign to get a higher proportion of men and women to choose a profession traditionally associated with the opposite sex. According to Richard Lippa’s research, this is the same for 200,000 respondents in 53 countries on four continents.663 However, he was not the only one to investigate this. The Costa study also concluded that “sex differences in personality tended to be stronger in economically advanced countries with liberal gender ideologies (e.g. the United States and European countries) than they were in less economically advanced countries with more traditional gender roles (Asian, African, and Latin American countries.)”664 The same conclusion was reached by the McCare study, and in 2008 by the international team of US researcher David Schmitt (the largest study ever on the subject) and in 2017 by Erik Mac Giolla and Petri J. Kajonius, who looked at many more variables; and by two economists in a slightly different field, Armin Falk and Johannes Hermle, in 2018, who looked at 76 countries.665 So five different studies, covering many different countries and using different methodologies, came to the same conclusion: “All of the sex differences on these traits became larger as countries became more economically developed and more egalitarian in their social policies.”666 The explanation, Murray suggests, may be that more tradi-

663 664 665 666

Lippa 2005 Especially pp. 31-33 Costa–Terraciano–McCrae 2001 McCrae 2013 ;Giolla–Kajonius 2017 Falk–Hermle 2018 Murray 2020 Loc. 649 365

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tional societies often tend to suppress our innate personality traits, while more egalitarian but also freer societies make it easier to freely express what we are naturally inclined to do. It is also possible that in developing societies people are often forced to take jobs they would not otherwise choose, whereas in developed welfare societies they can afford not to do so. The lesson is that the changes since the 1960s and the feminist revolution’s drive to ensure opportunities for all have been legitimate and useful. However, this does not necessarily mean that we should continue to impose equality administratively, particularly that we should push for a 50/50 gender balance in different jobs and sectors at all costs. In addition, the expansion of the possibilities of free individual choice will not necessarily mean the dissolution of role concepts and career choices based on our natural drives on a social scale. What can cause problems is when we suppress these natural drives, by trying to override or deny them for ideological purposes.667

FEMININITY AND MASCULINITY: DIFFERENCES WITHIN THE SEXES668 While in everyday life we have a pretty clear idea of what is masculine and feminine, as well as what these notions mean, not all women are equally feminine and not all men are equally masculine, so we do not correspond to the ideal (or, if you like, stereotypical) representative of our own sex. This means that beyond the general trends described

667

In this case, we cannot speak about naturalistic fallacy, since all these drives do not contradict our anthropology as men and women, they are in accordance with the causa finis. 668 The section is a summary of Lippa 2005, pp. 46-80. 366

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above, there is a great diversity of people’s personalities within both sexes. Ideas of femininity and masculinity vary somewhat across time and space, although there are some similarities, especially in terms of personality traits; but ideas of femininity and masculinity in appearance, build, and clothing do vary. Until the middle of the 20th century, the consensus in psychology was that masculinity was good for men and femininity was good for women. During the 1950s and 1960s, however, this was challenged as extremes were seen to be destructive: extreme femininity was associated with depression, anger, low self-esteem, excessive meekness, and extreme masculinity with excessive aggression, lack of emotion, with even autism seen as a manifestation of extreme masculinity. In 1973, during the second wave of feminism, Anne Constantinople described the idea of femininity and masculinity as vague, noting that masculinity-femininity tests were based on cultural stereotypes rather than real differences. In the Eighties and Nineties, respect for the concept of femininity and masculinity was on the decline among scientists as a stereotype with no basis in reality. The binary view, which thought in terms of masculinity and femininity, was ridiculed, but the androgynous standard was also criticized. At the time, a consensus was emerging that gender characteristics were not attributes of individuals but social constructs, shaped and maintained by stereotypes and social customs. They believed that ideas about gender were self-fulfilling prophecies enforced by the patriarchal social order. What was the evidence for this? The fact that a lot of research has concluded that sex-dependent characteristics and behaviors are only weakly correlated and very situationally dependent: for example, how much someone likes to cook does not say much about how good they are at math. “The feminist prescription, then, is not that the individual be androgynous, but rather that the society be gender aschematic,” wrote Sandra Bern in 1985, who tried to raise her children in a gender-neu367

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tral way. According to Bern, feminist values and masculinity and femininity are completely independent variables that are not mutually exclusive, whereas it was once held that no one could be both masculine and feminine, only one or the other (and common sense still holds much of the same today). She developed the Bern Sex-Role Inventory, which used a four-way division rather than a two-way division: stereotypically masculine, stereotypically feminine, undifferentiated (who is neither feminine nor masculine) and androgynous (who is both masculine and feminine.) According to Bern, androgynous people could represent a new normative benchmark in psychology, as stereotypically masculine and feminine people are constrained by their gender roles, while androgynous people are situationally masculine or feminine. Of course, in everyday life we tend to take as a positive quality that someone who is male also possesses certain qualities that are more characteristic of women (e.g., macho but sensitive), and vice versa. It is worth noting though that, contrary to Bern’s division, androgyny does not mean that someone is both masculine and feminine but rather that they are undecided, neither masculine nor feminine (i.e., the category Bern calls undifferentiated.) Moreover, other research has not shown that androgyny is psychologically desirable669 and the world has not yet had a normless society; Bern was not advocating normlessness but rather a new norm. And research shows that our ideas about femininity and masculinity are strongly linked to what we said about the gender distribution of the five big personality traits, and that this is strongly influenced by biology, regardless of culture and upbringing.670 Lippa said that in a binary world, men only had to worry about being masculine enough, and women only had to worry about being

669 670

Bassoff–Glass 1982; Whitley 1983, 1984 Lippa 1991, 1995, 2005 368

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feminine enough; in the brave new world of androgyny, both should worry about being masculine enough and feminine enough at the same time; or not being too masculine or too feminine. Bern believed that the male-female scales were guilty of trying to make something real out of something that was really just a mental concept because gender schemas are the result of the effort to conceptualize the world and gender stereotypes are supported by society, in other words; this is how we are socialized. She classified gender-typical people as gender-schematic, gender-atypical people as gender-aschematic, and considered the latter to be better, but she was wrong. Lippa himself was not satisfied with the existing approaches and sympathized with the constructionist approach in the Nineties, as femininity and masculinity seemed to him to be very malleable concepts, but as a layman he found the two concepts meaningful. So, he asked the question: how can these concepts be consequential as well as historically and culturally variant? And why are they so useful in everyday life? Lippa explains that although the concepts of masculinity and femininity are scientifically vague, they are intuitively attractive ideas that work very well in everyday life and we would find it hard to live without them. The question then arises: how could such concepts, used since the beginning of humanity’s existence, be complete fabrications? Would they be non-existent only because it is not possible to give a completely precise, mechanical definition of them, independent of space and time, and to show with one hundred percent certainty that they have a biological basis and are unquestionably related to it? Lippa asks the question: what makes a fruit a fruit? A fruit is a part of a plant that has many characteristics (it grows from a flower, has seeds, flesh, skin, hangs on a stem, is sweet, etc.) But not all fruits have all the characteristics of fruit. Are tomatoes fruits? We prefer to think of them as vegetables, although they could be called fruits. Avocados are not sweet. Nuts are also fruits; and there are many other fruits 369

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that do not quite fit the definition of a fruit. That is, we prefer to categorize vague concepts by prototypes as ideal examples. For example, the prototype fruit is the apple. And the fact that there are borderline cases of dubious classification does not mean that a concept is meaningless. Research has shown that appearance, non-verbal gestures, social roles, occupation and work, hobbies, interests, sexuality and sexual behavior, biological characteristics, and personality traits play an important role in defining femininity and masculinity. Some people are therefore better examples to be used as prototypes than others (and there are prototypes not only of masculinity and femininity but also of masculine woman and feminine man). Are some characteristics more important, or more central to the definition of femininity and masculinity than others? Lippa makes it clear that just because masculinity and femininity are diverse concepts, this does not necessarily mean that they do not exist or are meaningless. But is there a “core” of femininity and masculinity? According to Lippa, there is, and this can be captured in gender-dependent interests (occupational preferences, hobbies, daily activities), as well as gender-dependent appearance (dress, non-verbal gestures, grooming) and sexuality. But it also raises the question: how can psychologists measure something that is so obvious in everyday life but so scientifically elusive? Lippa tried to describe a middle ground between essentialist and constructionist positions, which he called “gender diagnosticity.” According to this, feminity and masculinity are both existent and measurable but their meaning and content vary in time and space, depending on the group and culture. In other words, masculinity and femininity have partly local cultural standards. However these standards may change, they exist in virtually all cultures and at all historical times, so the distinction between men and women transcends time and space – it is universal. This distinction is based on biology and the differences that arise from it. 370

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NATURE AND NURTURE: UNTANGLEABLE KNOTS671 There is considerable evidence that our gender roles and our thinking about masculinity and femininity are strongly influenced by biology. This covers factors independent of culture, environment, and upbringing that are innate in us and influence both gender differences and differences between people within the sexes. These include differences between genes and patterns of behavior influenced by hormones. Because of genetic or hormonal developmental disorders, we also know how hormones affect our sexuality and personality. Testosterone, for example, is responsible for many traits that have significant consequences such as aggression, criminality, sexual activity, dominance, occupational success, or even spatial vision. Scientists have shown that sex differences begin to form in utero and continue their biologically determined formation after birth and during infancy. Also, the strong biological influences on gender roles are supported by the findings that many sex differences are the same across cultures and time, and that they coincide with the differences between males and females observed in different animal species. It is also important that there are empirically demonstrable links between biological factors and gender-related behavioral patterns. Behavioral genetic research has also shown that differences between masculinity and femininity are heritable. In other words, scientific evidence supports the idea that biological factors have a significant influence on gender, gender roles, masculinity, and femininity.

671

This section is a summary of Lippa 2005, pp. 119-218. 371

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Theories that emphasize the determining role of the environment (feminist gender theory in particular), on the other hand, absolutize the differences between, or even within, cultures in terms of gender roles. These theories point to the important role of parents, family, the immediate environment, and the media in the transmission and internalization of socially accepted patterns of behavior. The fear of the restrictive role of these patterns is understandable. These theories hold that the behavior of women and men is more (or entirely) the result of these socially defined gender roles. Many of these theorists argue that even if there is a biological factor, it is marginal, or that the patterns of behavior determined by biology do not justify those determined by society (for example, they do not justify the former practice of not allowing women to go to university.) In any case, there is no “justification” for, as an example, making traditional gender roles the norm, which have unfairly restricted the individual fulfilment of women (and non-heterosexuals) in particular. And social science research shows that environmental factors, upbringing, social norms, and cultural habits do indeed strongly shape our perceptions of gender and gender roles. Where is the truth then? According to Richard Lippa, representatives on both sides are biased, simplistic, and unwilling to take into account the truth of the other side. Both positions hold some of the truth, but, for example, biological theorists are often at a loss to explain how exactly biological factors influence gender roles. Advocates of environmentalist theories, however, forget, among other things, that it is not only the environment that influences sexual behavior but also genetic factors that influence the environment. And their explanations are often so over-complicated, relativistic, and hermeneutic that they are difficult to take seriously from a scientific point of view. The nature-nurture debate is not simply about whether biology or society determines gender roles, masculinity and femininity. Even if we accept the mixed model, seemingly obvious to common sense without any scientific knowledge, that both nature and the environ372

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ment contribute, we still have not answered all the questions. Because then new questions arise: which factor in what percentage is responsible for our gender roles, which factor is responsible for what, and can they be separated? In fact, believers in the social constructionist approach (namely gender theory) wonder deep down to what extent social factors can be “corrected” by political intervention. There are endless debates among activists and theorists about the percentage of nature and environment in the evolution of our gender roles. In this book, we have emphasized biological, natural factors to balance the bias of constructionist theories but we have never denied their truths. That said, it must be understood that the percentage debate is artificial and misleading. Even with extensive and accurate scientific data, it would be difficult to determine exact percentages, and we are far from having a clear scientific answer to all the questions. Suffice it to say that both environment and nature have a significant and decisive influence on our gender roles, and if we were to put it into percentages, we could say that 80 percent of the influence is nature and 80 percent of the influence is the environment. True, this is 160 percent in numerical terms, but it is a good description of how things look in real life: the various social and environmental factors do not occupy a specific part of a given “package of influences” at the expense of the others, but whatever their amount is, they add up and cumulate. A more practical and useful question is one that asks which factors are responsible for what, rather than asking about their percentages. But the difficulty here is that the millions of different factors are so intricately intertwined and interrelated that in practice there is little chance of untangling them. If they can be untangled at all; for they are not only intertwined but also fused, which means that they are often not only practically but perhaps even theoretically inseparable. Of course, the primacy in time belongs to biology, since it makes a person sexually determined before birth. Together, the various en-

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vironmental and biological influences form “causal thickets”,672 which are “hard-to-analyze tangles of influences” with many feedback loops. For example, shared genes between parents and children influence how parents treat their children and how children treat their parents. There is also a significant biological reason for childhood sexual segregation. The biological determination of the people-things dimension influences the socialization and further education of men and women, but the resulting stereotypes also reinforce the choice of occupation. This is not merely the result of stereotypes; it also has a significant hormonal – in other words, biological – cause. As Lippa puts it, “the list of possible interactions goes on without end, with feedback loops swirling in all direction, all of them inextricably intertwined.”673 That is, in practice it is difficult to divide up all elements of gender roles as natural or as environmental influences, and the whole of the formation of gender roles is more than the sum of its parts. In addition, if we change one element because we think it is an environmental impact, for example, it can only have a moderate effect if all other coefficients remain unchanged. And even if it is possible to achieve modest changes, they are not necessarily predictable, as the complex causal tangle with many contingencies can produce unexpected results. If we identify a component as an environmental impact and then take policy action to eliminate it, we may not get a result at all; or the outcome may be different from what we expect, because of the interaction of a million other environmental and natural factors that influence gender roles. In addition, it is not only small environmental factors that have a cumulative (snowball) effect; i.e., they are not the only ones that add up. The same is true for biological factors.

672 673

Lippa’s choice of words. Lippa 2005, p. 221 374

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Turkheimer’s third law, for example, means that in many cases it simply cannot be decided whether genetics or environment is responsible: identical twins who grow up in the same family, share the same environment, and have the same genes, will not be identical in intellect and personality. This is neither environment nor genetics. What is it then? Turkheimer says we simply do not know.674 It is fashionable today to talk about epigenetics, the idea that genes “express themselves differently.” However, this is relatively minor and does not change the genes themselves.675 Women’s gender role-associated behavior is likely to be more susceptible to environmental influences, while men’s is more biologically determined. So, Lippa writes, it is perhaps no coincidence that female theorists tend to emphasize environmental influences, the importance of socialization and social roles, while male authors emphasize biological influences, like genes, hormones, and brain structure.676

THE ISSUE OF THE ENVIRONMENT In the Israeli kibbutzim of the 1930s and 1940s, they tried to raise girls and boys from birth in a completely equal, unisex way. Children shared household chores, girls were included in boy activities and boys in girl activities, learning interchangeable roles. It was hoped that in a few generations, the gender differences in what to do around the kibbutz would disappear. However, after three or four generations, those raised in this way still cling to their innate gender roles: women want to give birth and be mothers and are not interested in the economic

674 675 676

Pinker 2002 Loc. 8121 Ibid. 9452-9473 Lippa 2005, pp. 225-226 375

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affairs of the kibbutz; 90 percent of women return to “women’s work” and the nuclear family reasserts itself.677 This also shows the limited role of the environment. But what do we mean by environment? Murray classifies environmental factors in several ways. According to one classification, environmental forces can be divided into three categories: legal compulsion, hard custom, and soft custom. Legal compulsion is any legal regulation that obliges you to comply with something, even under the threat of physical coercion. The purpose of hard custom is the same, though not enshrined in law. There is no hidden violence or pressure in soft custom, but rather a social stigma when they are negative. According to Murray, once the first two are over for some reason, soft custom change pretty quickly. And in the United States, for example, but also in the entire Western world, there is no serious legal constraint and no strong custom against women and LGBTQ people. In other words, the remaining injustices will disappear quite quickly on their own. On the other hand, Murray also distinguishes between happenstance (nonshared environment), the milieu, and the manipulable environment (shared environment.) For example, it is up to chance (happenstance) whether you meet your future spouse. It has to be admitted that environmental factors are very much coincidences that we have no control over. They are not predictable, their probability cannot be calculated and theory cannot be built on them, let alone practical measures. At the same time, Murray points out that our personalities are less affected by them, except at the extremes of being subjected to severe mental trauma or growing up in a highly abusive family. Normally, regardless of whether life goes one way or the other, our personality remains the same. The milieu is the cultural, social, and economic environment into which we are born — “the water in which we swim in.” The milieu is

677

Moir–Jessel 2015, pp. 141-153. Murray 2020, 4916-4925. 376

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“pervasively causal”, meaning that it does not merely influence our behavior, but excludes, for example, a myriad of possibilities. According to Murray, you can try to influence the family environment in many ways, but you cannot influence the milieu. The government can, of course, try to influence the milieu if it really wants to, but the governments that have done so successfully were those of Mao, Hitler, and Stalin. In the case of democratic countries, as has traditionally been the case at any time in history, it is not governments that tend to influence the milieu but changes in the milieu that influence the government and the people. So, a lot of progress and change will happen only when the milieu is right for them, when their moment comes, when their time comes. Finally, the manipulable environment refers to those aspects that can be influenced, at least in principle, such as the parenting practices of parents, the school environment, and so on. Having said that, Murray points out that experience and research shows that most external influences and attempts at change are quite weak and fragile. Programs in which people voluntarily participate may be somewhat successful, but for those who do not want to change themselves, for example in a school setting, any positive effects will be temporary and will fade very quickly. Murray also reflects on the fact that when we could change, and we have the opportunity and the will to do so, we often only achieve temporary change and then fall back to the status quo. A great example of this is dieting: very few dieters are able to maintain the results of their diets over the long term, many achieve only temporary success, and many fail at the start. It is as if there is a kind of “inevitable gravitational force” that pushes us back to our “genetic baseline”, over which we have no real control even if otherwise, in principle, change would depend only on our free will.678

678

Murray 2020 Loc. 4965-5170 377

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WHAT CAN BE DONE? If we want a less gendered society, or a society that is not gendered at all, what can we do about it? Can we change the supposedly patriarchal, sexist, heteronormative, and unjust social order? Beyond legal action, can we put in place policies and programs to help those who are disadvantaged for environmental reasons? Charles Murray points out that the Western social science elite are extreme deniers of biology because they want to make the world “fairer” and “more equal”, to feel morally good about themselves, and so they make themselves believe that everything has only environmental causes, that is, that it can be changed. Richard Lippa takes a look at some of the cases that are popular among the pro-interventionists and examines whether environmental change would have the results that its advocates hope for. The aforementioned Sandra Bern raised her children with her husband in a completely gender-neutral way, paying attention to the smallest details. Bern had the feminist commitment (drive, if you like), the awareness, and the determination to do this. At the same time, her son and daughter showed a strong gender-specific interest. According to Lippa, the two children’s personalities were still influenced by biological factors in addition to their gender-neutral upbringing. One of the sources of gender differences and related perceptions is the early gender segregation of children, i.e., that they only mix with members of their own sex, which has far-reaching consequences for later life. Could this be changed? Lippa points out that ending early sex segregation has not been very successful in American schools, and that allowing children to choose their own friends outside school makes the strongest efforts of teachers futile. Because, if children can choose their own friends, communities, games, and hobbies, the result is gender segregation. It is possible that this could be reduced by very tough and close, almost militaristic surveillance, but this would go against not only the convictions of the majority but would also be 378

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almost impossible to implement. In other words, it would not only be unethical but also unfeasible by any realistic human reckoning. Many people believe that if we were to raise children in a gender-neutral way, the amount of male violence in the world would be greatly reduced. However, Lippa argues that this overlaps strongly with the issue of early sexual segregation, and that male aggression is largely biological (hormonal) in origin. What about relationships and marriages and the division of labor within them? Men and women do not look for exactly the same things in each other: for men, youth and beauty are more important in women, and for women, good earnings and good social status are more important in men; of course, they also look for many of the same things, such as intimacy, intelligence, honesty, and so on. The two sexes also have slightly different attitudes to sexuality: men are more visual and generally less attached to a person, while women are “gatekeepers” in sexuality and are relatively more interested in emotions and intimacy. If sexuality were a purely social construct, we should be able to break down this difference. However, there are also strong biological components to this difference, so conflicts between men and women on this issue will not disappear. As far as child-rearing is concerned, however much men try to be involved in early parenting, women inevitably spend more time with their children, have a more intimate relationship with them, and are more willing to devote more energy to them later on, thanks to childbirth and breastfeeding. To put it simply, even if the two parents spend the same amount of time and energy with their children, which is unlikely, the nature of the mother-child and father-child relationship is different, and the parenting styles of the mothers and fathers are different. This can largely be explained by biological reasons. Fathers tend to play a lot with their children and are the ones that discipline, while mothers tend to be the caring and understanding ones. In fact, men are more powerful and effective than women at teaching their children gender-specific skills. 379

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Zsuzsanna Vajda and Éva Kósa also discuss at length the differences between fathers’ and mothers’ parenting styles and the reasons for them, stating that “in mothers the supportive and affirming attitude dominates, while fathers play a more stimulating role.”679 Analysis of 172 studies found significant differences in the roles of mothers and fathers.680 This is also true for the division of labor within the family: it is possible to strive for a more equal division of labor, but it is unlikely that the fundamental differences between women and men will disappear as a result of the changed environment, given, for example, the people-things division of interest, which has a biological origin. This also affects working life and careers. For biological reasons, women are more likely than men to decide to stay at home and later against working overtime, and it is more important for them to be with their children than for their husbands to do so. In terms of choice of occupation, we can add to this the people-things divide and the unanimous scientific finding that more gender-equal societies voluntarily reproduce the traditional division of labor. The fact that women have not historically played as big a role in the world of politics and government also has environmental contributing factors, such as their exclusion from higher education, or the “old boys’ club” nature of politics, and male prejudice against women. However, there are also biological reasons for this phenomenon, for example that men are hormonally more predisposed to the pursuit of dominance and status. At the same time, it is clear that women’s leadership style is different, partly for biological reasons, as is their consideration of issues important to them when they go to vote.681

679 680 681

Vajda–Kósa 2005, p. 245 Lytton–Romney 1991 Lippa 2005, pp. 233-260 380

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It follows that the opportunities for intervention and change are limited. But the question is not only what is an environmental impact and what is not, but also if something is an environmental impact and leads to gender differences; why is that a problem? If everyone has the legal opportunity to choose the life and the career they want and there are no significant social constraints, what is wrong with not being able to choose from any options in a vacuum? Is it possible that even limited opportunities offer enough room for personal development? And what is the point of changing environmental factors in a way that would require a humanly impossible effort and lead to a significant transformation of society? To give an example, some feminists argue that the gender roles of the fetus are influenced by what the mother does, says, and how she behaves during pregnancy. Would it follow that parents should be obliged to behave in a gender-neutral way during pregnancy, when by any human reckoning this is simply impossible? Or to take another example: the phenomenon of the inheritance of a profession in the family is well known. But is it wrong for generations in a family to take over the family trade? If fathers in Transylvanian Gypsy musicians’ dynasties pass on the musical vocation to their children and they have few other options? If a child becomes a writer because his father is one, or becomes a historian because his father is one? If someone becomes a farmer because that is what he learned at home, that is what he knows, and that is what he chooses despite the other options theoretically available to him, how is that any different from someone who grows up with a library of thousands of books and follows his parents by becoming a professor of philosophy? Not only is the farmer determined, but also the latter, and unlike the former, we do not usually see the latter as a problem. Charles Murray’s conclusion is that what is needed is not a policy of social transformation, nor raising wages and artificially increasing the number of graduates but helping people to live meaningful and fulfilling lives in their own communities. What is needed is not material 381

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equality, but the real sources of human fulfillment: family, community, vocation and faith. In other words, what both intellectuals and governments should respect, and support is marriage, small local communities, productive, valued work and, finally, religious communities. All this is equivalent to what the 18th -century Anglo-Irish thinker Edmund Burke calls “little platoons” (intermediate communities),682 and in sum what Aristotle calls eudaimonia, or happiness, whose primary source is not found in material things, nor in human rights, but in the service of society, in human relationships, and in spiritual certainties.683

THE FINAL REFUGE Those who take the constructionist position always hide behind the assumption that the study is methodologically flawed if they dislike the results of a study. Or, if the methodology cannot be clearly challenged, they come up with the claim that the researcher’s identity has been deeply influenced by the fact that he himself is white, a heterosexual man, possibly a woman, possibly a homosexual, but white; in any case, he is in a privileged position and his whole approach and the conceptual-methodological framework of his research are unconsciously determined by the patriarchal and heteronormative matrix.

682

Burke 2003 On the decline since the Enlightenment of the small communities that matter most for human fulfillment, see: Nisbet 2010.

683

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It follows that if this heteronormative, sexist matrix could be overcome, we would certainly get different results, but this is no more than wishful thinking. Another name for the heteronormative, sexist matrix is reality. So far, history has been defined by this “matrix”, so however much they try to prove that it is only a human construct dependent on history, they should admit that instead of twisted explanations, it is more expedient to acknowledge that this “matrix” is a biologically-psychologically determined matrix inseparable from our humanity. That we are defined and influenced by such a “matrix”, however sci-filike it may sound, is not the result of some deep insight, but is in fact a superficial truism and is roughly equivalent in explanatory power to statements such as that we are defined by the fact that we live on Earth or that we are defined by the fact that our lives are structured by days and nights. One can imagine what would happen if this was not the case, but this is simply completely irrelevant. So, in fact, to interpret such twisted excuses as genuine scientific arguments is completely unnecessary. But they are not even thought experiments to play with or to exercise our minds. What is at stake is that constructionists, dissatisfied with the heteronormative matrix, take refuge in these explanations in their final desparation, thus blocking the way to questioning their position. Critics can always be said to be white, straight, male, sexist, or simply defined by the heteronormative patriarchal matrix and their position in society. Thus, at conferences on such topics, it has become almost a ritual for researchers to begin their presentations by making a statement about the social position from which they view their subject. I myself witnessed at a gender conference that a female psychologist speaker, who emphasized the importance of fathers, was vehemently criticized by the audience and fellow speakers for the fact that her position was certainly determined by her own life situation, her worldview, and the results of the researchers she presented were also determined by their patriarchal, heteronormative position. Although the speakers said that they were merely missing the recognition of 383

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this, in fact, by such a “recognition” the speaker would have implied that her presentation was irrelevant.684 It is also worth noting that an imagined non-heteronormative matrix could define research in its medium in the same way as a heteronormative matrix, so an imagined non-patriarchal, non-heteronormative medium could be as biased as the existing reality. Moreover, the excuse of patriarchal, heteronormative bias is always and everywhere easy to use, because it is so general and abstract that it is almost uncontrollable. Furthermore, we cannot produce the opposite, specifically a control group of non-heteronormative and non-patriarchal research. Such excuses can thus be seen more as an escape from reality and an avoidance of real debate. If one does not want to face the futility of one’s efforts to overthrow the heteronormative matrix, one flees to this last refuge, this twisted, unquestionable, entrenched pile of excuses. One could say: this person does not reflect on his own position, his own conceptual framework, and expectations. If patriarchy, the heteronormative gender matrix and the “privileged position” define research, then the feminist worldview and the questioning of these matrices also define the position and work of a researcher, hence the frequent research results influenced by different schools of feminist ideology.

684

The conference proceedings: Kováts 2015. The presentation concerned: Portik– Bakai M.: Attachment and love. 384

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BIOLOGIST CONCLUSIONS “Every typical difference between the behaviors of boys and girls can be seen as the natural expression of the forms of their bodies”, writes Anthony Esolen. He adds that “The boys have muscles that are destined to grow stronger than their sisters’ muscles, but how do muscles grow strong? By exercise — in other words, by action.” Boys’ play grows out from this psysical reality. So “for until our own sad and child-poor time, the games of children were invented by children, supervised by children, and passed along by children from one age to the next without the interference of their parents. When feminists say that boys are socialized to behave in these ways, they make three errors at once. First, they posit a dichotomy between nature and society that does violence to the creatures they are observing, since man is by nature a social animal, and the societies he forms without ideological deliberation are but his nature writ large.” Then they “ignore or deny the biological and physical imperatives, and indeed they show little desire to imagine what it might be like to inhabit a male body, with its vast array of differences from their own. They do not even bother to ask why men seem less bothered by extremes of temperature than they are. Third, they betray their own desire to compel boys and girls to act against their natures, to force them, like hothouse plants. Imagine girls left to do what best pleases them, without any ideological compulsion, and without the boys to imitate. Give them a thousand years, and they would not invent football or baseball.”685

685

Esolen 2022, Loc. 216-236. 385

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To put it another way, “We will not change the essential boyness of boys or girlness of girls. Each is exercising the sexual muscles of mental aptitude. They will enter a world which is designed not in accordance with some elaborate, political, social theory, but out of the history and experience of generations of people who were men and women before them. If the world is a sexist world, it is because the men and women who created it before us behaved in what we would call a sexist way. To reconstruct the world on non-sexist lines takes a positive effort, because it is an unnatural act; it is a social and political precept, but political and social precepts do not organise brains. Only hormones do that,” warn the authors of Brain Sex.686 So if we want to eliminate gender differences, there is only one way: we must “change the biological cocktail of Creation.”687 In conclusion, our personality, our femininity, and masculinity is to a large extent biological and born with us. It is literally in our cells, in our genes, in our hormones, and in our brains, and cannot be separated from our biological limitations, from our innate characteristics, from our femininity and masculinity as nature intended us to be; from the fact that we are creatures incarnate.

686 687

Moir–Jessel 2015, p. 66. Ibid. 183. 386

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THE UNITY OF BODY AND SOUL Gender theory, as mentioned earlier, stems from the Cartesian-Kantian conception of the person, which sharply separates our physicality from our personhood, and this is true even if contemporary feminism is not fond of Enlightenment thinkers. Marie-Louise von Franz, a great Jungian disciple, assesses this position as follows: “materialism, so-called, among whose founders Descartes must be numbered, really has its roots, as in an extreme form of spirituality”; Descartes thus “completely ‘dematerialized’ matter”688 by making our physicality completely irrelevant and denying the existence of the causa finis, the purpose of things and of man.689 Gender theory does not share Descartes’ belief in the soul, but it makes our bodily determination and the sexuality of the body as irrelevant to our personality as Descartes does. And by denying purpose, the whole Enlightenment project achieved the “demystification” of the world that has been talked about since Max Weber’s time.690

688 689 690

Franz 1991, pp. 176-177 Ibid, pp.  107-193 Gilson 2002, pp. 74-145

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Immanuel Kant developed the concept of the transcendental person in order to establish human dignity. According to this, what I ultimately am to myself and others is a person. Although I am embodied, my existence is merely a means of realizing myself, that is, my personality is separable from my body, and this personality, personhood, is the real bearer of my rights, privileges, values, choices, and freedom. The distinction between persons is merely a distinction between possible attributes belonging to persons, but these attributes do not belong essentially to a given person, since there is only one kind of person. It follows from this that there is no real masculinity and femininity, and that the distinction between the sexes cannot be according to the nature of things. There can be two human bodies — female and male — but there cannot be two corresponding human persons. According to contemporary feminism, it is absurd to assume that persons are essentially male and female; these differences are merely physical contingencies, as are racial or national differences. All these differences of personality are the result of social conditions, which, as they are consequences of choices and decisions, can be freely changed. The transcendental person is ultimately independent of all concrete realizations and goals, of all environmental factors, and all forms of its manifestation are contingent. It would be difficult to deny the moral claim inherent in the Kantian approach, which can be summarized briefly as: the person is an end in itself, and if we use the other person as a means to our ends, i.e. we do not see him as a person, and we are acting immorally. Feminism is, of course, right that it is wrong to treat women as inferior, the idea that has often appeared in different cultures throughout history that women are merely and exclusively the servants and subordinates of men, or that they should only be concerned with the household. What feminism dislikes about the Enlightenment authors is not that they separated body and soul but that they believe we have a core of personality, an essence (the soul and inborn characteristics), 388

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whereas feminism teaches that our personality is created through social interaction and there is no such essence as the soul. At the same time, the postmodern school of gender theory strongly criticizes Descartes and Kant (the Enlightenment) for much the same reason that conservative and communitarian thinkers do: that they interpret human personhood too much out of context. At the same time, the postmodern school of gender theory does not restore the unity of body and personality. Instead, it deconstructs personality (individuality, the individual) by considering it as a product of structures and interactions. So rather than healing the fissure started by the Enlightenment, it deepens it. (And, paradoxically, in the process of deconstructing personhood, it demands more and more individual rights.) The fact that our personality is influenced by our environment is of course a truism that everyone is aware of, because it makes a difference, for example, whether we grow up in a harmonious and loving, accepting environment or in a violent, traumatizing family environment; whether we grow up in peace or war; in poverty or prosperity; what worldview is represented by the environment in which we grow up; and so on. However, the idea that our personality is entirely a product of “social interactions”, as mentioned in the chapter on the conceptual background of gender theory, cannot answer the question of how such a personality becomes self-conscious. How then does this person have the need for liberation from the structures that created him, since the structures probably have no interest in implanting this need for liberation in the personality they have created? And if these structures transmit and implant gender binaries, traditional male and female patterns, as well as cisnormativity and heteronormativity, into the personalities they create, how can they assume a sexuality different from these? And where is the free will (often denied by gender theorists) to rebel against structures coming from? What seems more realistic is the quite commonplace notion that we have innate qualities, that we are not tabula rasa, but that our 389

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personality is shaped by our upbringing, our socialization and our environment, rather than by mystical interactions and structures. Man is not an autonomous individual independent of the world but a social being; he can reflect on the world, and although his free will is limited, it still exists.691

OUR BODY IS AN INSEPARABLE PART OF US692 Roger Scruton describes Beauvoir’s thinking as Kantian feminism, which is nonetheless flawed: it does not take our physicality seriously, i.e. it is “at war” with the truth that we are our bodies, and as a result it completely separates personal freedom from our biological destiny for the sake of an illusion. In man and woman, everything that is relevant to the reproductive function, to the transmission of life, is also optimally and harmoniously adapted to it. This view of biological sex is so natural that it would not be surprising if this experience would also permeate our view of gender. Much more important than the scale-like notion of masculine and feminine characteristics is the sexual distinction itself: men and women differ in their bodies, their appearance, and their physical characteristics. But perhaps what most differentiates men and women is the way they understand and experience their sexuality: “Gender is an elaborate social prelude; when the curtain rises, what is disclosed is not gender, but sex.”693

691 692 693

See for example: Scruton 2013, pp. 42-61 This section is a summary of Scruton 2006, pp. 253-283. Scruton 2006, p. 265 390

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There is no doubt that nowhere else does the physical nature of human beings emerge (this time not in a negative sense) as much as in sexuality, where the body is the object of curiosity and discovery, and it is precisely the characteristics that most define the differences between the sexes that become the most important. The so-called biological side of our being thus fully determines our knowledge of sexual differences. The very nature of our physicality is most evident in the physiological differences that separate men and women; “as embodied creatures, we are inseparable from our sex.”694 The division of labor between men and women in society is, of course, “culturally determined” as expressed by gender theory, and it has many different historical manifestations. At the same time, the division of labor itself and the differentiation of genders is a universal phenomenon. What is more important, Scruton points out, is not whether this fundamental differentiation changes historically, but whether it exists universally, and whether it is not therefore necessary that we experience the world in some way along this fracture, this differentiation. Different creatures see colors differently, just as men and women see them a little differently, not to mention the color blind. But the distinction between yellow and red is not entirely arbitrary; it is rooted in reality. And if the concepts of yellow and red are artificial, so is color. Scruton adds to this thatwe cannot imagine our person as sexless; inevitably, we think about ourselves as a person of a certain sex. Of course, we can try to imagine ourselves as the opposite sex, but we can also try to imagine ourselves as an elephant. None of this changes things. Gender is the concept through which the biological sex enters our lives. It is difficult to avoid identifying ourselves in this way. My

694

Ibid. p. 266 391

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sexual desires do not come from some possible quality of mine, but from myself, and it is not only my body but myself that is sexual in nature. Inverting constructionism, it is impossible to construct our personhood without constructing our gender, in other words, there is no “person construction” without “gender construction.”695 According to the Kantian conception, the essential, constitutive, inseparable components of the person are reason, autonomy, and freedom. However, Kant negates the fourth constitutive element of the person, the physicality, even though it is not only a contingent or accidental property. Constructivist feminism makes the same mistake when it treats our physical-biological determinations as secondary or denies them outright.

ON MODERN CONCEPTIONS OF PERSONALITY In contemporary public thought, there are several conceptions “in circulation” of what a person is. According to the traditional Christian view, we have a soul (Descartes was a Christian in this respect, since he was a devout Catholic.) At the same time, Christianity proclaims the unity of body and soul, not the contempt of the body (unlike the Greeks.) As Joseph Ratzinger puts it, “the Greek conception is based on the idea that man is composed of two mutually foreign substances, one of which (the body) perishes, while the other (the soul) is in itself imperishable and therefore goes on existing in its own right independent of any other beings. Indeed, it was only in the separation from the body, which is essentially foreign to it, so they thought, that the soul came fully into its own. The biblical train of thought, on the other hand, presupposes the undivided unity of man; for example, Scripture

695

Ibid. pp. 257-58 392

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contains no word denoting only the body (separated and distinguished from the soul), while conversely in the vast majority of cases the word soul, too, means the whole corporeally existing man.”696 Contemporary naturalistic-mechanistic-materialistic theories are concerned with explaining consciousness in terms of evolution and neuronal functioning, so that our consciousness and our actions are explained by our brain processes. We are animals, controlled by genes, hormones, biology, and neurons (evolutionary psychology), and these can also explain morality, consciousness, symbols, everything that separates us from animals rather than connecting us to them. The result of this theory is what some English authors call “nothing-butism”, that history or man is driven by “nothing but...” (nothing but the selfish gene, power, money, or any other such instinct.)697 But this materialistic approach is a misconception: it only answers the question of “how”, of how things work, not what creates consciousness, symbols, moralityz, and personal free will. According to Brague, modern man has fallen into Catch-22, or even -44, because we interpret ourselves as we interpret nature. As a result, the ideological interpretation of modern science has concluded that man is, as quoted at the beginning of this book, no more than a “lucky monkey”, but we still demand inalienable human dignity, intrinsic worth, and human rights for this “lucky monkey.” But if man understands himself as an animal, as a monkey, then why is he entitled to human rights understood as sacred?698 At the same time, the French thinker states that “he can’t possibly deny his biological basis, let alone cast it away.”699 Unfortunately, as we have seen, he is wrong.

696

Ratzinger 2010, p. 312 E.g., Dalrymple 2015 Scruton 2016, 2017. Argues for the soul (but defends Descartes): Swinburne 2019 698 Brague 2019, p. 51 699 Ibid. p. 41 697

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The feminist view is opposed to the biologist-determinist conceptions of personality, but as we have shown earlier, it is no less problematic. It denies free will in the same way, since if our personality is determined not by biology but by social interactions and structures, it is no less deterministic. In fact, the “determinist” discourse used by feminism is wrong. Advocates of biological limits do not claim that everything is one hundred percent is innate and determined by biology. In the case of the latter, as mentioned, we are talking more about trends. Determinism means one hundred percent determination, and human behavior, however much it may be influenced by innate qualities, cannot be called deterministic. In other words, Steven Pinker points out, feminists use the concept of “determination” in an essentially erroneous and even arbitrary way, contrary to its true meaning.700 Both ideas that explain things in a too spiritualistic manner and those that explain things in a too materialistic way are one-sided. Rather, it is worth returning to the classical concept: man is a unity of body and soul, which ensures the constancy of his personal identity, even though our personality changes throughout our lives (as do the cells of our body.) As Ryan T. Anderson puts it, “Gender is socially shaped, but it is not a mere social construct. It originates in biology, but in turn it directs our bodily nature to higher human goods.”701 In the classical view, all things and living beings in the world have an inherent purpose, that is, their existence is purposeful. This means that they are meant for something, they cannot be used for just anything, and some ways of working are better suited to them than others. All existence is meaningful existence and must fulfil its potential, and everything and everyone has an “intended” use. The instrument is used to make music, not to mow the lawn; it is also an excellent ornament, but it was designed to be used for music, that is its purpose, its intended use. 700 701

Pinker 2002 Loc. 2550 Anderson 2018, p. 149 394

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We humans do not function in a haphazard way; we have a purpose for being, and this is influenced by our bodies and how they function. If we fail to “use” ourselves as intended, we do not live well, and that will backfire; we will get sick, have mental problems, or lose our esteem, and so on. But it is up to us to fulfil our potential. Enlightenment thinkers also “eliminated” this causa finis, the meaningful and purposeful existence from the world. Specifically, they denied and ignored it.

RETURN TO REALISM As mentioned above, postmodern radical skepticism is fueled not only by practical difficulties but also by a theoretical (philosophical) premise that (see poststructuralism) we do not really have access to reality and the outside world except through the already distorting language that is the product of our minds. When we learn Descartes’ famous saying in high school from a side chapter of a history textbook (cogito ergo sum), we are not really learning that enlightened man thinks (that is another Latin saying: sapere aude, dare to know.) Instead, we become aware that the starting point of philosophical inquiry is not the world and things, as before, but the mind, or consciousness, since only its existence is certain, nothing else. This is the origin of postmodern radical skepticism, even if its proponents hate Descartes who formulated it. Starting from consciousness instead of things directly leads to the problem of bridge-building: how do we get from consciousness to things? Many people have tried to solve this, usually not very convincingly (Descartes himself, for example.) According to the postmodernists, as we have seen, we become lost when we take the next step which is language that does not reflect reality, but rather distorts or creates it. And memory does not remember our past, the past, but 395

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selects, distorts, and constructs. The postmodern position was made possible by the fact that the authors of the Enlightenment eliminated from the world and from beings the inherent meaning and purpose, and the previous, meaningful, organic view of the cosmos and of man was replaced by a mechanical view of the world. Thia cannot explain why we exist at all and separates man from both the world and the order of existence in which he lives. The French philosopher Étienne Gilson argues that the gap dug by Descartes is unbridgeable. We must believe our eyes: it is no more legitimate to start from consciousness than from the cognizability of things. After all, man is part of this world, so why should he not know things? “Res sunt, ergo cognosco, ergo sum res cognoscent”; which means that things are, I am, therefore I think, and I can think about things. Instead of Descartes, the Enlightenment, Marxism, and postmodernism, we must join Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, and their classical approach, which has never disappeared and which is in fact an everyday realism: a philosophy of common sense.702 We must reunite the body with the soul, the mind with things, and restore the fragmented world. In addition, as Rémi Brague suggests, we must return to an organic view of the world and admit that it is meaningful, and that everything has a purpose. And human rights, too, need to be redefined, and many of the demands of the LGBTQ movement and feminism no longer fit in.703 When Simone de Beauvoir says that “one is not born, but rather becomes, woman” and that “no biological, psychic, or economic destiny defines the figure that the human female takes on in society”, she is right only in the sense that she is not born an adult woman; but she is born female, just as men are born male and develop their gender

702 703

Gilson 2011; Gilson 2012 Manent 2020 396

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over time. But they have to become men and women, because that is their potential, that is their destiny, and that is what it means to be human. Becoming a man and a woman is a task. Anyone is free to contradict this, or to deny it, but it will backfire. Our masculine and feminine selves are not the enemy of our freedom, but its foundation and framework. It is not true, then, what the constructionist view says: that “our biology, our bodies and our bodily functions have no inherent, intrinsic meaning.” Our biology, our bodies and our bodily functions have an inherent meaning, a purpose, and therefore a purposeful interpretation. Any opposite interpretation backfires. Gender theory ignores the fundamental truth that we are naturally free to do something specific and that we must be in harmony with our human, female or male nature. Perhaps the radical dissatisfaction and despair of its representatives is born from this ignorance, this failed rebellion against the very nature of human beings, men and women. The cosmos, the world and man, have an inner order and purpose, which cannot be violated with impunity. Harmony can be restored and truth sets free.

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Chapter 21

ON THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL REVOLUTION The question is often asked in circles skeptical and critical of gender theory, feminism, and the efforts of the LGBTQ movement: why is society not resisting? Why do people, institutions, politicians, and companies surrender? Why do we believe that it is possible to be born a woman in a man’s body, when for our grandfathers this would have been a patently absurd idea? There is no clear answer. Perhaps we could say that this is the zeitgeist, or in Western affluent societies we are less and less inclined to criticize each other, or we have become indifferent and we think that if by criticizing others we are hindering their happiness. For centuries, it has been fashionable to believe that truth and reality cannot really be known, if they exist at all. Therefore, everyone can live according to their private convictions. In the first chapters, we mentioned the difference between the mimetic and poetic worldviews, and between the realistic and idealistic view of man. Let us explore the transformation!704

704

I heavily used in this chapter Trueman 2020. More on the topic: Trueman 2022.

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The American sociologist and Freudian expert Philip Rieff distinguishes three types of society (first, second, and third world, but not in the sense used today.) In the first (e.g., the Greeks), fate is seen as the guiding factor and moral codes are based on myths. In the second, the determining factor is faith, as a result of which society is permeated by a sacred order. Both concepts of society count on an external source of morality (the cosmos or God) and take order as a given. That is, they have an external legitimizing factor, i.e., an unquestionable foundation. In the third world, or in the third conception of society, however, these disappear, because the external source of morality and order is perceived as oppressive and restrictive. Society’s morality and its culture become immanent, loses its grounding, and becomes characterized by malleability and free floating, and everything becomes a matter of agreement.705 Rieff also distinguishes four different periods in man’s self-image. In ancient Greek culture, man was a political man, that is, he felt fulfilled when he participated in the life of the polis. In the Middle Ages, we can speak of a religious man who was fulfilled by religious life, rituals, and in a relationship with God. Modern man was an economic man who found the meaning of life in production, trade, and commerce. Today’s postmodern man, on the other hand, is a psychologizing, therapeutic man who seeks inner happiness, his authentic self, and self-actualization.706 Rieff’s concept is rather simplistic, since, as Carl R. Trueman points out, St. Paul also speaks of the inner development of the will, and the first great Western psychological autobiography is St. Augustine’s Confessions from the first centuries, on the cusp between antiquity and the Middle Ages,707 but it is nevertheless expressive.

705 706 707

Rieff 2008 Rieff 1966 Trueman 2020 Loc. 589 400

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Carl Schmitt’s insight reflects this: in his view, during the theology-centered era, everything is theological; everything else is a given. In the humanitarian-moral age, we only need to remember morality, and everything is seen as a matter of education (because according to this view, man can be reformed; if he knows what is right, he will do it.) In the economic age, everything is seen as a matter of production and distribution, and moral and social issues are seen as superficial. Technological thinking considers everything, including production and distribution, to be technically solvable, i.e., everything is a question of the development of technology.708 There is a big difference between the first three types outlined by Rieff and the fourth type. While in the first three periods man finds himself and his happiness in the external, communal, social life and adapts to its norms, in the fourth he lives in the inner self and expects society and the community to recognize this, because if it does not, society is seen as oppressive. The fact that today self-expression and self-realization are seen as the pinnacle of authentic life is, as Carl R. Trueman argues,709 the net result of the changes from Rousseau to the Romantics, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, the Frankfurt School, and postmodernism. Charles Taylor calls today’s conception of man “expressive individualism” and “the culture of authenticity”: a conception of life that stems from 18th-century Romantic expressivism, which focuses on the experience and fulfillment of the self, in contrast to the environment, social norms, previous generations, ecclesiastical and political authorities, and social hierarchies.710

708

Schmitt 2007, p. 86 Schmidt is not referred to by Trueman, this is the author’s insertion into the thought process. 709 Trueman 2020 710 Taylor 2007, p. 475 Taylor 1992 401

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As Carl R. Trueman points out, Rieff’s three worlds can exist simultaneously in one society. Most Western societies are secular, theoretically neutral democracies, with Christian denominations and, in many places, Islamic congregations of immigrant communities. That is, in the third type of society, there are second type of sub-societies. They think quite differently about the origins of the world, the source and nature of morality, the nature and vocation of man, and authority. Thus, the supporters of the secular LGBTQ movement can hardly argue from common starting points with, for example, religions, churches, and denominations that consider the world, morality, marriage, and sexuality to be derived from God and defined by Him. A common response to this is that the LGBTQ movement can have what they want, and religious communities can have what they want, but they should not interfere with each other, and then there will be peace and everyone can flourish. But this is ultimately an abandonment of the religious communities’ understanding of the world and of the human being. By taking this step, they automatically, necessarily, accept that a “godless” world and image of man prevails, which tolerates them. While it seems to be the case that the third type of world (the enlightened-liberal-secular world), which seeks to expand free choice and its possibilities, allows self-fulfilment for all, while the “religious” would “impose” their ideas on others, this is a misjudgment of the situation. For if we apply to the situation a central tenet of sovereignty theory, that it is the sovereign who makes the final decision, we find that in the name of ensuring choice and self-fulfilment, it is always the third type of world that decides over the second. And this will have surprising consequences, for example, as to who can be tolerated and who cannot, because tolerance is only granted to those who themselves tolerate others.

402

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THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE VIEW OF THE WORLD AND OF MAN Let us briefly look at by whom and how the worldview, the view of society and man, and the self-conception of the present age have been defined.711 At the dawn of modernity and the Enlightenment, the Christian view of the world, society, and man was dominant, imbued with Greek philosophy; it was mimetic, the category of human nature and the world were fixed and stable, and man was considered essentially imperfect and sinful. This was well expressed in St. Augustine’s Confessions and his entire oeuvre which is a memento of human frailty.712 However, Rousseau wrote his own Confessions in the 18th century,713 clearly arguing with St. Augustine,714 by expressing his view that man is inherently good and only corrupted by competition between men and by society. For St. Augustine, theft is the sin of man; for Rousseau, it is the sin of society which forces man to steal, because he believes that man is born free and yet everywhere he lives in chains. The writers and poets of Romanticism topped this idea by claiming that morality is a matter of taste and aesthetics. Rousseau still believed that there was a universal human nature, and this was his hope for how to live together. In the 19th century, Hegel explained in his Phenomenology of Spirit that human identity exists in a dialectical relationship: we are somebody when we are recognized, when we are treated like human beings. But this only happens when we adapt to society’s expectations.715

711 712 713 714 715

This section is a brief summary of the line of thought of Carl R. Trueman. St. Augustine 1998, 2008 Rousseau 1962 Hartle 1983 Hegel 1979 403

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Marx and Engels conceived history as a struggle between oppressors and oppressed, and also threw human nature out of the window, or rather, saw it as a historical product. Both, like Rousseau and the Romantics, saw the traditional family as oppressive, even as the fundamental unit of oppression. According to Marx, there is nothing in the world that precedes politics, that is pre-political, that politics gets ready, that is “natural”, and that it must respect. In addition to the philosophical theories of Bacon and Descartes, Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution has eliminated from common thought the idea of the world as ordered, i.e., that the existence of everything is directed towards something. After all this, Friedrich Nietzsche declared God dead and man a product of himself. If God is dead, then the world has no internal laws (no purpose for the world or for beings), and the same is true of logic and morality. Man has a biological reality, but nothing follows from that about the good life. In fact, Nietzsche warns that there is no humanity, no humankind, and no human dignity. That is why Nietzsche cannot be spat out or swallowed by the postmodernists, while they all emerged from under his wing. So, according to our philosopher, the good life means personal satisfaction.716 In any case, at this point “the world imagined in terms of poiesis rather than mimesis. Darwin strips the world of intrinsic meaning through natural selection; Nietzsche, through his polemic against metaphysics; Marx, through his rejection of Hegel’s idealism in favor of a radical and consistent materialism. But the net result is the same: the world in itself has no meaning; meaning and significance can thus be given to it only by the actions of human beings, whether through the Nietzschean notion of self-creation and eternal recurrence or through the Marxist notion of dialectical materialism and class struggle. In both cases, meaning is created, not given.”717 716 717

See for example: Nietzsche 2001 Trueman 2020, 3337 404

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At the end of the 19th century, constant human nature was also questioned — there was nothing left but a “free-floating, subjective sentiment”718 as the basis of identity. No wonder some people today think (sorry, feel) that if a free-floating, subjective feeling is the basis of their identity, it can be easily destroyed with a little criticism. Although Sigmund Freud’s ideas are not scientifically valid as far as we know today (at least not in their original form), they still play a major role in social ideas and beliefs. The key to understanding the human condition, he explains, is sexual satisfaction; this is the origin of happiness. According to Freud, who reflects on this in his 1930 work Civilization and Its Discontents, sexuality lived to the full leads to chaos, civilization grows out of the restriction of sexuality and is a response to sexual unhappiness. No final reconciliation is possible, and Freud’s vision is therefore pessimistic.719 Religion (and the church) in Marx’s, Nietzsche’s, and Freud’s understanding is the perpetuator of false consciousness, and is inhuman, childish, and irrational. In the 1930s, Wilhelm Reich sought to understand the psychology of fascism. According to him, the main problem is the authoritarian family. Reich’s 1936 book Sexual Revolution focuses on the importance of childhood sexuality and is prophetic of the events of the 1960s. The goal, according to Reich, is to achieve sexual freedom through sex education, which the state must impose on resistant families and parents. The family is the enemy of liberation and therefore the state can intervene in its affairs.720

718 719 720

Ibid. 3498 Freud 1992 Reich 2006 405

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Herbert Marcuse, one of the best-known authors of the Frankfurt School, also argued that monogamy and the patriarchal family are merely a servant of capitalism and as such are no longer necessary. Free love and sexual experimentation are important tools of the revolution. Sex is central to the human condition. The political transformation of society requires a transformation of society in terms of its sexuality and psychology. The traditional concept of tolerance is part of the false consciousness of the bourgeoisie (the bourgeois elite.)721 From there, it was only a step to the feminist separation of body and soul, body and personality, biological sex and gender, masculinity and femininity. The body is a tyrant to be conquered, and technology is the main tool by which to do so, and of course so is the transformation of the ideas about femininity. The central concepts of these authors’ thinking, from Rousseau to Marcuse, are part of today’s social ideas, and that is why they are presented here. Or, to see how it has suddenly become so acceptable to be the opposite sex of your body is the result of changes over the last few hundred years. As French classic liberal philosopher Pierre Manent notes: the whole project of modernity and democracy has a tendency to somehow spiritualize the society and ignore our embodiment, by threating people as angels without body, and tends to diminish “natural” differences, because those seem to be “unjustified”.722 That’s why is very hard to defend “roles” and “norms”.

721 722

Marcuse 1974, 1991, 2020 Manent 2001, especially chapters 12-13. 406

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THE THERAPEUTIC SELF-IMAGE AND COUNTERCULTURE It is easy to see what the consequences are if, in the age of the therapeutic view of man, the fulfilment of the inner self is the point, the world is merely malleable matter, human nature is non-existent or amorphous, history is the struggle of the oppressed and the oppressors, morality is a matter of taste and consensus, human dignity depends on social recognition, and the essence of man is his sexuality and gender. Then individual feelings are unquestionable, and our fulfilment and humanity depend on living and acknowledging our sexuality and gender, which must be asserted against external constraints, whether social norms or even our own biological bodies. Thus, “the era of psychological man therefore requires changes in the culture and its institutions, practices, and beliefs that affect everyone. They all need to adapt to reflect a therapeutic mentality that focuses on the psychological well-being of the individual.”723 However, individual identity is then characterized by a kind of plasticity: we are encouraged by our time to create ourselves in any way we want and to recreate ourselves at any time. But if society does not recognize this, it denies us our humanity. Freud recognized the pervasive power of sexuality in human life. And “once identity was understood to be sexual, then it was only a matter of time before sex became political. And in the hands of Wilhelm Reich and Herbert Marcuse, that is exactly what happened.”724 Following Nietzsche and Freud and their predecessors, morality is understood as a culturally conditioned aesthetic phenomenon, which in turn opens the door to emotivism: the objection to homosexuality is

723 724

Trueman 2020 Loc. 741 Ibid. Loc. 4825 407

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thus an irrational aversion generated by previous social norms. The New Left has added a Marxian twist: these “feelings”, declared irrational, serve the oppressive interests of bourgeois society. If someone has a rational point, they are just “rationalizing.”725 And then any criticism will effectively be a phobia: homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, and so on. This is the reversal of pathologization. In the modern era, the moral language of sexuality has been replaced, or has caught up with, medical-psychological language, which understood orientations other than heterosexuality as a kind of pathology instead of a moral aberration. Once the LGBTQ movement had convinced the medical and psychological professions that there was no pathology involved and that these orientations could not be “medicalized”, it directed the language of pathology at its former critics, citing phobias as a way of silencing criticism rather than engaging in long and complex philosophical-anthropological-moral debates. External restraint and criticism are not possible at this point, and even mere tolerance is not acceptable. For mere tolerance denies affirmative recognition, so for a cake shop to refuse to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding is not merely a clash of ethical concepts and worldviews, or a criticism of same-sex “marriage”, but a psychological damage, and even a denial of identity, of humanity, of being human — it is “dehumanization.” Because language can also cause psychological problems, it needs to be monitored and changed if necessary, and “offensive” language needs to be banned — the result is political correctness and hate speech laws. As I said, this conception is typical of the third of Rieff’s three worlds, and it clashes with the second world — the world of the sacred order. The third world, on the other hand, says that tolerance is only for

725

Ibid. Loc. 4860-4871 408

ON THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL REVOLUTION

those who are tolerant themselves. Tolerance, on the other hand, has an ever-broader meaning, demanding more and more: since criticizing the other’s feelings and self-concept is effectively dehumanizing, it is not possible to criticize them (for example, non-straight people, and especially transgender people.) They are not only demanding tolerance but also positive reinforcement; that is what tolerance means today. Those who refuse to do so cannot claim tolerance and recognition for themselves, as this is considered hypocrisy and selfishness; moreover, the sacred order of the second world promoted social norms that need to be destroyed for self-fulfilment. Anyone who belongs to such a group is therefore an advocate of oppression and deserves no credit; he should be erased from history. This is “cancel culture”, the politics of identity, and the politics of the “snowflake generation.” And the “snowflake generation” is the ultimate manifestation of the therapeutic conception of man and the subjective ethics that follow from it: what offends is wrong. The same therapeutic attitude is represented by feminism, the theory of perspective, and the absolutization of minority individual experiences in feminist methodology, as well as the subjective understanding of violence in the MeToo movement: violence is what one feels it is. And who would dare make cold, rational criticisms of the feelings of someone who has allegedly been traumatized by violence? In the age of the therapeutic man, rational criticisms do not have the same persuasive power as before, whether in antiquity, the Middle Ages, or even the early Enlightenment. Criticism of gender theory may be valid and rational, but anyone who takes a fundamentally different approach will see this criticism as an excuse for oppression, bigotry, and exclusion. Alasdair MacIntyre may be right: meaningful debate can only take place within a framework, a tradition if you like. Whereas in Rieff’s second world institutions, universities and elites were interested in the transmission of customs, traditions, and knowledge, today’s intellectuals do the opposite by they seeing everything before them as oppressive; for, in their view, thousands of years of 409

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Western culture have been spent in first and second worlds that have limited self-expression and the experience of identity. That is why their aim is destabilization, their slogan is problematization, deconstruction, and transgression, and that is why they are anti-history and ahistorical. This is what postmodern universities do today. But the essence of culture is transmission, not subversion. This is why Rieff calls it anti-culture. And as Carl C. Trueman writes: the history and nature of the LGBTQ movement exemplifies the “cultural pathologies” that emerged from Rousseau to the second half of the 20th century; the Yogyakarta principles are manifestations of expressive individualism; the LGBTQ movement is the latest expression of anti-culture, of the rejection of nature, and is very much characterized by the emotional-aesthetic ethics of the therapeutic age.726 He adds that “transgenderism is a symptom, not a cause. It is not the reason why gender categories are now so confused; it is rather a function of a world in which the collapse of metaphysics and of stable discourse has created such chaos that not even the most basic of binaries, that between male and female, can any longer lay claim to meaningful objective status. And the roots of this pathology lie deep within the intellectual traditions of the West.”727 Transgenderism is not simply a question of individual sexual orientation and gender identity: everything that has enabled it and everything that lies behind it, and everything that is necessary to accept it, has far-reaching political consequences, These are the final consequences of denying the essences and foundations of society from outside ourselves, the further dilution of a Western society, and total denial.

726 727

Ibid. Loc. 6216 Trueman 2020 Loc. 6779 410

ON THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL REVOLUTION

What is the problem with expressive individualism and the therapeutic view of man? It causes existential problems such as the one experienced by the lesbian woman quoted at the beginning of this book after her “partner” had a sex change operation. It causes cultural amnesia when it considers the old epochs to be unacceptable. By speaking the language of emotional blackmail, it also renders debate impossible. Fourth, it promotes the disintegration and atomization of society. All in all, and echoing Zimmerman’s insights, it is the decline of civilization. Although it may not be visible from the inside, however from a historical perspective we are not just in decline but we are free-falling. The possibility of self-expression is a good thing, but it should not be unlimited and should not demand automatic recognition.728 Is the rejection of a subjective, dualistic and sexuality-based, malleable view of man, detached from biology, embodiment, purpose, and stable foundations, and paradoxically, due to the fragility of this view of man, of the hysterically expressed identity needs, also a rejection of sexuality and gender? Of course not. Sexuality is indeed a powerful force and an important factor, but there is no need to absolutize it and make it a basis for identity in order to recognize its important role in our lives. Healthy eroticism and sexuality are not at all at odds with the traditional view of man; while acknowledging that the absence or conscious renunciation of it does not make a man less.729 However, profaning sexuality and making it completely commonplace can also lead to it losing its charm because it is no longer interesting. An over-eroticized culture can easily lead to burnout.730

728 729 730

See this in more detail: Taylor 1992 A really excellent book on sexuality: Berne 1973 Similar thoughts e.g.: Llosa 2012, p. 99 411

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Discussions about gender, sexual orientations, gender roles, and criticism of certain concepts are not “dehumanization.” Judging someone not by their sexuality or gender just opens the door to criticism. And understanding is not the same as agreement. If we judge the other person by their character and actions, and form an image of them on that basis, then their gender and sexuality are not beyond criticism. In the same way, it is not a rejection of psychology, psychiatry, and self-expression; it is rather their absolutization that is the problem. As we have seen, the debate is not just about sexuality, gender, and the origins of masculinity and femininity. Entire worlds are colliding behind the gender theory frontline; rival and conflicting conceptions of the universe, society and man, and the origins and foundations of all these, are at war. The solution is unlikely to be mere tolerance: “There is no compromise that can really be reached here because there is no way that the one can be assimilated to the other. They rest on completely different premises and are aimed at antithetical outcomes.”731 Fundamental identities are in conflict, and that means a struggle for existence. For example, “to allow religious conservatives to be religious conservatives is to deny that people are defined by their sexual orientation, and to allow that people are defined by their sexual orientation is to assert that religious conservatism is irrational bigotry and dangerous to the unity of the commonwealth.”732 In the therapeutic age of the expressive self, as Trueman points out, religious conservatives are no longer seen as members of the religion and its institution (the church) that provides stability and foundation to the world, but are seen as the lapdogs of the hypocritical and oppressive church. It is the same with non-religious conservatives or old-fash-

731 732

Trueman 2020 Loc. 7382 Ibid. 412

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ioned liberals, only without the church. They therefore deserve less tolerance, if they deserve any at all. It is not without reason that the American author Rod Dreher believes that Christians will have to live in the coming period as if they were the underground opposition to communist dictatorships.733 All these are not equal narratives, nor are they narratives of unverifiable validity, since it does matter whether our narrative, our worldview, our view of society, our view of man, our ideology, corresponds to the nature of man, whether it accepts the world and promotes the survival of society. We can recognize that this is the case, that perhaps the narrative and self-image of our own society is wrong, because we are self-aware, reflective beings. The culture war of today is the battle between St. Augustine in the 4th and 5th centuries and Rousseau in the 18th century, as well as between Sartre and Cardinal Ottavani in the 20th century. Sartre, who was Beauvoir’s partner, believed that man is what he makes himself into. Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, a contemporary of Sartre, was at the center of the Catholic Church’s struggle with the modern world in the milieu of the counterculture symbolized by the latter. The struggle between the second world of the sacred order represented by the Church and Ottaviani and the third world represented by Sartre, Beauvoir, and their philosophy. The blind Ottaviani’s episcopal motto was semper idem: “always the same.”

733

Dreher 2017, 2020 413

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CONCLUSION Gender theory, then, is the idea put forward by feminists from the mid-20th century onwards. It sharply separates the soul and personality of man from his physicality, denies the close connection between body and personality, as well as the proper functioning and purpose of this organic unity. We have not touched on religious or sexual ethical issues in this book. In its deepest sense, gender theory is not about sexuality and not about human rights; nor is it about equality and freedom. Instead, it is about the questions that arise from all of these: what man is and what human nature is. The rest is just a consequence. Gender theory represents an anthropological revolution whose spirit is identical with the doctrinaire spirit and practice of the French Revolution. It disrespects in mentality and practice the established traditions, practices, and the diversity of society by launching the concept of tabula rasa and being intolerant of human fallibility and other conceptions.734 Gender theory radically redefines the human being and the nature of man, if not denying human nature entirely, in order to transform society. If human nature stands in the way of the transformation of society, woe betide man: he is made to conform to the ideas of gender theory, his biology, psychology, and abilities are denied, his healthy functioning is denied, and he is separated from his body, which is even subjected to violent intervention.

734

On the French Revolution and its interpretation, see: Furet 1970, 1981; Carlyle 2020; Burke 2003; Maistre 1995 414

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The symbolic date of the triumph of the Enlightenment and modernity is 1789. Proponents of gender theory usually position themselves in the revolutionary “tradition” by identifying with it. The promise of the Enlightenment and the revolution was that man could construct his society and himself as he pleased. The roots of the doctrine of “social constructions” can be traced back to this, and even the leading bodies of the revolution thought that not only the state and society but also man himself, human nature, could be transformed. But human nature exists and is immutable; just as the cosmos is something outside of us and ultimately so is society. Gender theory is on the side of rebellion and carries the torch of rebellion. It represents the order of rebellion; but rebellion, as one of the first critics of the French Revolution, Joseph de Maistre pointed out, cannot create a lasting order because the order of rebellion is a self-liquidating one. How can an idea that makes rebellion legitimate and logical break down a rebellion against itself? And you cannot stop halfway or at the edge of the abyss; you will roll down to the bottom.735 If that is the case, why would a person with a classical view of man and a classical view of the world accept some of the achievements of feminism? Because it is in line with your worldview. For, as we have pointed out before, there can be debates within a “narrative” or a worldview, and even meaningful debates; on the other hand, the boundaries of ideologies and worldviews are porous and they can have points in common.

735

Maistre 1841, p. 370 415

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According to Patrick Deneen, the failure of liberalism and of the Enlightenment lies precisely in its success. It has succeeded in promoting the freedom and well-being of the individual, but in so doing it has eliminated, or if not eliminated, then infinitely weakened the bearer of that freedom and well-being, and even of the individual: the community. Community and individual needs cannot be reconciled indefinitely. The permanent victory of the individual, consistently executed, necessarily weakens the community that sustains him, and not only renders it defenseless against external attacks but also disintegrates it from within. And since this failing, self-cancelling success is a feature of the entirety of Western civilization, we can be said to be in decline, despite all our prosperity.736 Rémi Brague argues in his book, quoted several times over the previous pages, that modernity is a successful project but also a failure; it has been successful in increasing man’s well-being, both materially and in terms of his freedom and scope for action. However, in doing so, it seeks to derive everything from man and fails to establish the meaning of human existence.737 Gender theory represents and carries forward the logic criticized by Deneen and Brague. Everything that the theorists, activists, and advocates of gender theory are right about could have been achieved without the radical transformation of man and society and without gender theory: women’s freedom, the decriminalization of homosexuality, greater freedom and a more natural understanding of sexuality, the fight against the glass ceiling, equal pay for equal work, the fair sharing of domestic work, and so on. All these are fully compatible with a correct and realistic classical understanding of man.

736 737

Deneen 2018 Brague 2019 416

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It is not possible to “repair” man as the Jacobin Committee of Public Safety imagined and as gender theory imagines. You can keep the bad side of human nature in check, even temper its aggression, but you cannot eliminate it. If the ideas of gender theory were to be implemented by its advocates, it would end up in an intolerant and doctrinaire Jacobin dictatorship. Those who believe that man can be repaired are usually disappointed, which leads to despair and frustration. Often this frustration manifests itself in the anti-social, impatient anger of gender theorists. They could find solace in a generous, serene acceptance of human frailty. Gender theory is not simply kind-hearted but unrealistic, utopian ideal. Gender theory is wrong, and its underlying radical ideas are explicitly undesirable. It is time for the wrong gender theory to give way to a real, correct gender theory that does not attempt the impossible and which is grounded in reality, helping us to fulfil ourselves as men, women, and human beings in general, acknowledging the impermanence and imperfection of human nature, and being content with the limits and possibilities of our humanity. In other words, of being female and male. The classical, true, correct, and realistic view of man and society must be defended, and the anthropological revolution must be put to an end. What is needed is an anthropological counter-revolution, a restoration of the somewhat neglected but still standing classical view of man.

417

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stroy women’s sports), Mandiner, (02/17/2021), URL: https:// mandiner.hu/cikk/20210217_joe_biden_sport_transznemuek. Kováts, Eszter, ‘The culture war over the Istanbul Convention in East Central Europe’, International Politics and Society (IPS), (11/27/2020), URL: https://www.ips-journal.eu/topics/democracy/the-culture-war-over-the-istanbul-convention-in-east-centraleurope-4826/. Kustánczi, Norbert, ‘Meleg hercegek házasodnak egy már magyarul is kapható gyerekkönyvben’ (Gay princes marry in a book published also in Hungarian), 24.hu, (09/19/2014), URL: https://24.hu/ kultura/2014/09/19/meleg-hercegek-hazasodnak-egy-mar-magyarul-is-kaphato-gyerekkonyvben/. Marchuano, Lisa, ’The Ranks of Gender Detransitioners Are Growing. We Need to Understand Why’, Quillette, (01/02/2020), URL: https://quillette.com/2020/01/02/the-ranks-of-gender-detransitioners-are-growing-we-need-to-understand-why/. Mandiner, ‘Ez itt a kérdés: megint a „melegterápiáról” vitatkoztak’ (This is the question: debate on “gay therapy” on the screen again), Mandiner, (09/12/2019), URL: https://mandiner.hu/ cikk/20190912_ez_itt_a_kerdes_megint_a_melegterapiarol_vitatkoztak. Maltby, Kate, ‘Damian Green probably has no idea how awkward I felt’, The Times, (11/01/2017), URL: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/kate-maltby-damian-green-you-probably-have-no-idea-howawkward-i-felt-j2kk88frj?. Maybin, Simon, ‘Four ways of gender gap isn’t all it seems’, BBC, (08/29/2015), URL: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-37198653. McHugh, Paul R., ‘Surgical Sex’, First Things, (November 2004), URL: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2004/11/surgical-sex. McHugh, Paul, ‘Transgenderism: A Pathogenic Meme’, Public Discourse, (06/10/2015), URL: https://www.thepublicdiscourse. com/2015/06/15145/. 474

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I thank all my university professors, fellow students, friends, and activist acquaintances (both men and women) who made suggestions, reviewed different versions of the manuscript, saved me from a mistake or two, or gave me general advice. Most of them asked me not to include their names in the acknowledgments because of the sensitive subject matter of the book. Exceptions are Zoltán Frenyó, a retired senior research fellow at the Institute of Philosophy of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and my fellow PhD student Miklós Pogrányi Lovas, a researcher at the XXI Century Institute, whom I also thank for their suggestions. I thank my Hungarian teacher mother for not only giving me stylistic suggestions but, as a result of what she has read, also for encouraging me in my work. Thanks are due to Blanka Kelemen, the linguistic editor of the first Hungarian edition; and to Sejla Almadi, the designer of the volume and editor of the second edition who helped make the text more accurate and free-flowing. Thanks are due to the publisher for both the first and second editions, especially for making the first edition such a success that a second was needed; and for being open to the idea of an extended version. Thanks are due to many family members, friends, acquaintances, colleagues, and strangers for their encouragement. I am solely responsible for any errors or mistakes in this book.

THE CENTER FOR FUNDAMENTAL RIGHTS It is among the primary aims of the Center for Fundamental Rights to re-discover books written from a conservative perspective that have previously been unjustly overlooked, or whose publication faced obstacles due to their courageous, straight language. Be they in Hungarian, or foreign languages, we consider it our duty to support the work of intellectually honest thinkers. For us, the most important task is to bring those books to the readers, that help expand the toolset of “common sense”. We hope you’ll enjoy our books.

BOOKS PUBLISHED IN HUNGARIAN Birgit Kelle

STILL NORMAL? THEN WE WILL GENDER YOU!

Who would have thought around the turn of the millennium, or even just a decade ago, that everything that has proven to be an unquestionable natural law since the existence of mankind would be called into question. That the progressive dogma’s breaking of norms not only launches a full-scale attack against common sense, but also wants to deconstruct the order of Creation and our biological endowments, folding things like “asexual gender fluidity” or “gender conforming nonbinarity”. Birgit Kelle’s book is an indispensable work, in which the German journalist holds up a crooked mirror to her country and to Western countries, showing how the increasingly radical gender ideology was allowed to take over the entire political agenda, but especially in the field of education and healthcare. She also pays a special attention to the gender propaganda that stalks children under the name of gender sensitization.

Jean Raspail

THE CAMP OF THE SAINTS

French writer and world traveler Jean Raspail’s 1973 masterpiece is one of the few literary masterpieces that has become a self-fulfilling prophecy over the years. The style of The Camp of the Saints is not subtle, it writes about a pressing issue with unvarnished honesty. The work, which suddenly rose in value at the dawn of modern-day migration, modeled the mechanism and course of the 2015 migration crisis perfectly, almost half a century before it actually happened. One of the basic experiences of the reader who picks up the book will be that he „gets suspicious”, turns the pages one after the other in disbelief, as the story contains many parallels with the events of the past 7 years.

Tilo Schabert

BOSTON POLITICS THE CREATIVITY OF POWER

The book, as its title suggests, deals with politics and creative strategies of using political power. Those who successfully deploy good political power need to display such intellectual and intuitive prowess, along with such mental and physical resilience, that “politics” could justifiably be identified as a form of art, in the old-fashioned, noble sense of the word. In Boston Politics, Tilo Schabert dissects the political operation of the American city of Boston, which works as a great model for understanding everything we need to know about using political power. Local politics revolves around a single person, the main character of the book, Kevin H. White, the city mayor. Mr. White is the originator of every political event, he is also where the buck stops, he is the sole actor capable of seeing the forest among all the myriad branches of the many trees. Boston Politics is much more a than foundational text on the history of modern politics. It’s a book for all those who want to understand what lies behind effective governance and the use of political power.

THE WOKE REPORT A DIGEST OF POLITICALLY CORRECT MADNESS

Though many believe political correctness is an amusing self-parody of itself, but the sad reality is that this process has gone far beyond liberals trying to erase a few insufficiently “tolerant” words or expressions from our shared vocabulary. The real aim of these dark knights of “open society” is to completely re-write our language word by word, and through this process to transform the entire system of interpersonal relationships. The barely hidden agenda is to restrict public discourse and our ability to understand and discuss concepts to the lexicon approved by liberals. Social phenomena that, as of now, have Hungarians laughing or merely disconcert us have become part and parcel of everyday life in the West. The Woke Report is a collection of the most bizarre pieces of news from the last year, and intends to display the most amusing and most upsetting changes in the world of political correctness.

József Horváth

HYBRID WAR FOR THE FUTURE

We have entered the age of hybrid warfare. Many people are yet to realize this, as Hungary has been an island of peace in recent years. That is still so today, but in a matter of weeks or months we could suddenly find ourselves surrounded by chaos. This is why we need to open our eyes to the real world. We must learn to distinguish good from evil, truth from lies. That is not an easy task amidst the information overload of the 21st century. The written and digital press, the internet, social media are among the most effective tools of our age, and they are often weaponized. This is the first frontline of hybrid warfare.

Marguerite A. Peeters

THE GENDER REVOLUTION A GLOBAL AGENDA: A TOOL FOR DISCERNMENT

The Gender Revolution offers a tool for those readers who seek clearer understanding of the maze of gender ideology. Peeters unmasks gender madness, the destructive effect it has on relationships between men and women, and serves as a warning against repeating mistakes of Western societies in institutionalizing practices and a legal framework that undermine marriage and the family. Peeters is an eloquent author who delivers her message with clarity and honesty in an approachable writing style, even as she brings practical examples as well as philosophical arguments.

Gergely Deli – Gábor Kemény – József Tóth

INTRODUCTION INTO THE BEHAVIOURAL ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF LAW

Our decisions are influenced by our values, the temptations of the ambitions we wish to achieve, our available competence and expected consequences. As a result, taking decisions and analyzing those decisions cannot rely exclusively on legal or economic considerations. There is a need for an approach that can include the full complexity of human interactions, and can become a useful tool of analysis. The Introduction into the Behavioural Economic Analysis of Law is a book that seeks to demonstrate the results of psychological studies alongside legal and economic ones in this field.

Béla Pokol

THE PARALLEL STATE AND THE DOUBLING OF LAW CONSTITUTIONAL LAW AND THE DOUBLING OF THE LEGAL SYSTEM

Global constitutional law, juristocracy, the doubling of law, legislating from the bench – these terms may seem mysterious, but understanding them is key to understanding the legal and political debates of our age. Béla Pokol explains these concepts in his The Parallel State and the Doubling of Law, which analyzes the creation of a new “ladder of law”. The author argues that constitutional courts around the world are engaged in the construction of a new, parallel framework. This leads to a doubling of law, which can cause state and political will to also double, which would institute parallel states, where the legislative and the judicial branch would find themselves competing against each other.