May 1, 2023
A famous line from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet”, meaning that things are what they are, regardless of what you choose to name them. This is why modern man uses language to precisely define people, places, and things, irrespective of how we might feel about said things.
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The same can be applied to men and women, or boys and girls. They are what they are, regardless of how we choose to name them. Such thinking was common sense for centuries, but now in our post-enlightenment culture, accepted descriptors are somehow verboten, requiring a new language with cumbersome verbosity replacing simple one or two syllable words.
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The first example is from Les Mills, an international fitness company founded in Auckland, New Zealand, providing on demand online workouts. When founded 50 years ago, their goal was fitness. Today they have additional goals, shared by most corporations around the world, of diversity, equity, and inclusion, as proclaimed on their website.
Last year they published a news release entitled, “Fit for menopause: Advice for anyone with ovaries.” In the subtitle, they drift back to normal language and common sense saying, “The hormonal turbulence many women face during mid-life is rarely discussed.”
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Yet the headline specified “anyone with ovaries” rather than “women”, as if the two are different species. Despite what the Democrat party or the corporate media claims, men do not have ovaries. Women do, unless removed surgically or (rarely) born without.
“Trans-women” from Caitlyn Jenner to Dylan Mulvaney to swimmer Lia Thomas do not have ovaries or a uterus. They will not go through menopause. Menopause, as defined by Johns Hopkins Medicine is, “When a woman permanently stops having menstrual periods.” No uterus, no menstruation. Pretty straightforward. Claims to the contrary are pure fantasy.
Cleveland Clinic is not so sure, hedging their definition, “A point in time when a person has gone 12 consecutive months without a menstrual period.” Sure, using the term “person” is more inclusive, but when referring to a physiologic condition affecting only women, “person” lacks precision, important in the medical world.
Would an admission note at the Cleveland Clinic for a woman in labor refer to a 30-year-old “female” or “person”, presenting with contractions? When I went to medical school, such a person would be referred to as a 30 yo WF/BF/etc, noting patient age, gender, and race. Not “person”. And certainly not “someone with ovaries”.
It’s not just the fitness industry, but schools as well. Start with an elementary school in Essex Junction, Vermont. They are teaching fifth graders about puberty, what was once called “the birds and the bees”, but now likely deemed offensive to animal rights activists.
The school sent a letter to students’ families saying, “In an effort to align our curriculum with our equity policy, teachers will be using gender inclusive language throughout this unit.” Common sense puberty instruction involves discussing the differences between girls and boys and how their bodies change due to the hormonal surges of early teenage years.
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Boys and girls by any other name are still boys and girls, to paraphrase Shakespeare. But not at this school:
Fifth graders at an elementary school in Vermont are being encouraged to avoid using terms like “boy,” “girl, “male” and “female,” and replace them with language like “person who produces sperm” and “person who produces eggs.”
Shakespeare also wrote in Hamlet, “Brevity is the soul of wit” and would be appalled at replacing “girl” with “person who produces eggs”. But wit may not apply as none of this is remotely amusing, instead more suggestive of mass psychosis sweeping the world.
Another example is Denver South High School where some teachers are promoting “gender-inclusive biology”. A transgender science teacher claims, “Not all egg producers are women.” Oh, really?
The Oxford Lerner’s Dictionary defines woman as “an adult female human”. As sex is, with only rare exceptions, binary, meaning XX chromosomes in females and XY chromosomes in males, and the fact that males do not have internal organs necessary for egg production, all egg producers are indeed women.
Simple and longstanding descriptors of girl, woman, and female should be sufficient, not expanding the description to include egg production or the presence of ovaries.
Yet state legislatures now must waste time defining male and female. The Kansas Senate recently passed a bill stating the obvious,
Under the bill, a person’s biological sex is determined at birth. “Female” is defined as someone “whose biological reproductive system is developed to produce ova,” and “male” refers to those “whose biological reproductive system is developed to fertilize the ova of a female.”
Instead of dealing with clear and present dangers of crime, homelessness, fentanyl, and inflation, legislatures are instead spending time redefining the obvious.
The last example, although there are enough to fill a book, is a national franchise chain called Waxing the City, providing grooming and waxing services to body parts that are quite clearly either male or female, hopefully apparent even to the gender inclusive crowd.
Waxing is different for men and women for obvious reasons based on the anatomy that is being waxed. Rather than providing services for men/women or males/females, they offer basic, modified, or full Brazilian waxing to either “clients with a vagina” or “clients with a penis”.
Again, brevity is the soul of wit and now having to define men and women as clients with a particular defining body part is neither brief nor witty. Regardless of how they name women, they are still women.
If Helen Reddy were still alive, she would have to sing, “I am a person who produces eggs, hear me roar.” Shania Twain could bellow, “Man, I feel like a person with an ovary.” Gary Puckett and the Union Gap would change their ballad to the not so catchy, “Person with a vagina, person with a vagina, have you got cheating on your mind?”
What was once a simple concept of distinguishing boys from girls or men from women has now turned women from “the fairer sex” into a repository of eggs, uterus, or vagina. How demeaning.
Where are the feminists and women’s groups? Where are the pink vagina hat-wearing brigades so worried that Donald Trump was turning America into the Handmaid’s Tale? Meanwhile the left, joined by woke Republicans, corporations and schools are presiding over transforming women into nothing more than repositories of particular sex organs?
What is unique and special about a woman if anyone can become one just by thinking it so? During the creation, God made man and woman, separate and unique. What’s changed?
Is this as dystopian as it gets? What happens when all humans are nothing more than organ repositories or a collection of tissues and atoms, demeaning the entire human race into a supply chain for the whims of a tyrannical government or some super AI?
If we don’t respect humanity and individuality now, why will those that follow us behave any differently? Brave new world indeed.
Brian C Joondeph, MD, is a physician and writer.
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