A conservative commentator, who works with and on Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro's new media company, showed up for the Dr. Phil show with two transgenders (the term "non-binary" was used). This interaction has been big on the world wide web. I didn't hear about it until today, even as I write this. I know who Dr. Phil is, but I've never seen his show. I only heard of Matt Walsh, because I've seen him on the roster for Daily Wire.
I did know that Walsh had written a children's book, Johnny the Walrus, to help parents with the gender identity issue with their children. It became a bestseller at Amazon and in particular with LGBTQ, which became a kind of joke for Walsh, bragging that his book might show up in the LGBTQ category.
Walsh, I can see, has now become a unique target for leftists, because he wrote Johnny the Walrus and he showed up on Dr. Phil. Dr. Phil had on his show these two transgenders, who are "married," it seems, then a pro-transgender professor, two different parents, a mother and father, who both don't want this taught to their children in school, and finally Matt Walsh.
Everyone was "nice" to the transgenders except for Walsh. It's not that Walsh wasn't nice. He was just truthful in a matter-of-fact, unapologetic kind of way. Others insulted Walsh at will, while he insulted no one. Walsh took the position essentially everyone not long ago would have agreed.
(If you would prefer not to watch anything with a sexual subject, do not watch this video. If you do not want to watch transgenders, do not watch this video. I provided the video so you could hear what Matt Walsh said, which does give some good talking points on this issue.)
As good as Matt Walsh does, he misses something that should be more obvious. I agree with everything he at least says on the show. As for Dr. Phil, I get why he is popular and has stayed on TV for so long. He takes a neutral, non-judgmental role in his questions, but picks out guests with sharp disagreements with each other in order to facilitate a battle. Something like this then goes viral on the internet.
The transgenders provide a definition of "sex" and "gender," that is false on the gender side. I'm not going to say what they said. It relates to regions of the human body to distinguish what sex and gender are, including that gender is between the ears. Gender is not between the ears. The professor on the show said that sex is nature and gender is nurture. Gender is not nurture.
Sex is the biological component, what some might call "the science." Both sides of the gender issue will very often agree on a definition of sex, something related to unique physical traits of the male and the female. They do not agree on what a man and a woman are. A man is an adult biological male. A woman is an adult biological female. They can't say that.
In the discussion on Dr. Phil, the transgenders would not define a woman a biological female. They asked Walsh to define woman, and he said, "an adult human female." Then they asked what a female was, which he said, "Someone with female reproductive organs."
What about gender? Perhaps you have not felt the need to define gender in the past. Most people don't feel that need. For me, gender has mainly been about noun pronoun agreement, which is either English or Greek grammar.
If you try to find a historic definition of gender, you will see that it is not a controversy. It was cut and dry. No one was separating sex from gender, like we see today. Webster's 1830 Dictionary says that it comes from the Latin, genus, and means:
1. Properly; kind; sort; [obs.] 2. A sex, male or female.---3. In grammar, a difference in words to express distinction of sex; usually a difference of termination in nouns, adjectives, and participles, to express the distinction of male and female.
The Latin gives a big hint, because genus means, "birth, origin." In its root meaning, gender relates to how or what you're born. You trace gender back to what you were born, because you were born with your particular gender.
In 1839 Oliver Beale Peirce wrote The Grammar of the English Language. In it he point blank wrote: "Gender is the distinction of sex" (italics his). He continued:
Gender being "the distinction of sex," it follows, of course, that, as there are but two sexes, there can be but two genders. . . . Masculine means, not male, but pertaining to a male. Feminine means, not female, but pertaining to a female.
Peirce gives an example with names. He says that a masculine name is "John," and a feminine name is "Mary." This is the historical and traditional understanding of gender. Neuter is not gender, but the absence of gender. It is a grammatical category, but in definition, it is genderless, like an apple.
When the 1830 Webster's defines "feminine," it says, "soft, tender, delicate, effeminate, destitute of manly qualities." For masculine, it says, "strong, robust, resembling man, course, bold, brave." Since masculine gender pertains to a man, it would be what characterizes a man in contradistinction to a woman. Since feminine gender pertains to a woman, it would be what characterizes a woman in contradiction to a man. The existence of these genders assumes that we know what the distinctions are. We do.
Everything I'm describing about gender comes from a biblical understanding of the unique distinctions God created between a man and a woman. That is the truth. That is a truth that Matt Walsh won't say, because it isn't "scientific." It is scientific. It is a view of total truth, not the two stories that places gender in the top, subjective story, and sex in the bottom, scientific one. God created this universe. God created man and woman.
In 1994 Suzanne Williams, Janet Seed, and Adelina Mwau wrote The Oxfam Gender Training Manual. In it these three women started unpacking gender on page 99, starting by saying: "Gender is an old word which has taken on a new meaning." To begin the second paragraph, they say, "Sex is a fact of human biology." A few lines later, they write:
On this biological difference we construct an edifice of social attitudes and assumptions, behaviours and activities: these are our gender roles and identities. . . . Unlike sex, gender roles are variable.
At the root of gender fluidity today, indistinguishable gender, is gender role confusion or indistinguishable gender roles. There is not distinct masculine or feminine role. It started with dismantling the roles, saying those are not biological or scientific, and now the identities themselves cannot be distinguished. If the roles were "constructed," then so were the "identities." You can construct both your own role, but also your own identity.
I did not watch the whole Dr. Phil program with Matt Walsh, so I didn't hear if they questioned him on gender. What I did hear seems like Walsh connects gender with sex in an inseparable way. That's fine with me, but sex and gender, although related, are not identical. God distinguished gender more than reproductive organs distinguish between male and female sex.
In the whole discussion of sex and gender, sex is the lower story scientific aspect. This is very often conceded. However, leftists treat gender different. They disconnect gender from science, gender being that which pertains to masculinity and femininity. This is like disconnecting natural law from moral law.
People will agree on gravity and the consequences of violating that law. They won't agree on the consequences of violating moral laws. That is an upper story issue, that is relativistic and subjective, just like they treat religion and art of all types, calling them "values." Everyone can have his or her own value, and each is just as good as any other. Anyone can have their own religion, their own Jesus, with no basis of objective judgment.
Walsh surely would agree on objective moral criteria, at least personally, but very little would he and his colleagues speak to this in public. A kind of eclectic or ecumenical roster at Daily Wire must keep the peace between one another. In a practical way, this turns moral law relativistic and subjective. They review movies and music, acting like objective principles must apply at least to the content, yet without treating this as inviolable laws or rules. Someone can judge, so there must be a standard.
The real problem with the full gamut of the gender issue is not intellectual. It is volitional. The real problem is lust. The only real answer is a powerful one that can change hearts, which is the Word of God.
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