On Tuesday’s episode of “The Michael Knowles Show,” Knowles discusses how the Left’s radical gender identity movement is causing womanhood to be erased. Video and partial transcript below:
Gender identity, as a category, is essentially a misogynistic idea because it erases women. I think now this is taught in schools as though it’s just obvious, that there is biological sex and gender identity and that those are totally separate. No. There is no such thing as gender identity. This is a completely fictional concept that is invented by misogynistic ideologues who are erasing women. The Left talks about erasure, and usually they use it in a silly way. This is one example where it’s true, where it’s actually happening. Where gender identity is erasing women. Gender ideology erases women.
What is a woman? Just ask yourself that. I mean anybody who embraces the gender ideology, ask yourself, what is a woman?
“Well, I know that I’m a woman.” Ok, how do you know that you’re a woman? “I just know deep down.” Ok well, I don’t know that you’re a woman. If you’re a man who says you’re a woman, how can you convince me that you even know what it is to be a woman? What you’re really saying then is that men have the right to define what it is to be a woman. Now, I’ll give you a very basic answer of what is a woman: a person who isn’t a man. I’ll give you a definition of what a man is: it’s a person who isn’t a woman.
Sexual difference, the difference between men and women, is fundamental to who we are. That’s why it appears at the very beginning of every creation story. Within the first chapters of Genesis, you have sexual difference. Eve pulled from Adam’s rib, complimentary to him. Different, but she compliments him. Gilgamesh, sexual difference right in the beginning. There is a reason that this is essential to who we are. If there is no sexual difference, then there is no such thing as women. If there’s no biological, spiritual, or whatever kind of difference between the two types of human beings then there’s only one type. You can call that type man, or you can call that “type-woman,” or you can call it whatever, but there’s only one. There isn’t that difference. So, gender ideology seeks this kind of bizarre conformity.
You might say well it’s not just that it erases women, maybe it actually preserves women and it erases men. You ever think about that? It doesn’t. Because when you erase sexual difference this naturally, dare I say inevitably, redounds to the benefit of men. How do I know that? Because we started to see that in the 1960s and 70s with second-wave feminism which rejected all traditional ideas of femininity. It rejected all kind of traditional gender roles, but what did it do? In the name of women’s liberation, it said that women had to just start behaving like men.
Women couldn’t stay at home. Women couldn’t raise children. Women shouldn’t have children really at all in many cases. Women should go work 100 hours a week. Women should compete in physical sports all the time. Women should be drafted to join the military. Women should do things that for perfectly natural reasons men are more geared toward. When men and women compete physically, what happens? Men win, and women are erased. When men and women compete professionally, men often win. Not all the time, and not saying women can’t be perfectly, competent and expert professionals and extraordinarily ambitious and rise to the top of their fields. I’m saying that generally speaking, when men and women compete professionally men win, for natural reasons.
Because men tend to be more professionally inclined, more professionally focused. They want to spend more time at work. They want to dedicate more of their mental energy to their jobs. They’re more single-minded and they’re less able to keep track of lots of different things. They’re generally less organized. Men are generally less nurturing, and the biological fact is men are unable to conceive life. Women naturally can conceive life and, in most cases, they want to conceive life and they want to nurture and they want to raise children. So, there is a natural professional advantage to men.
Feminism set the stage for this gender ideology by exalting traditionally male attributes over female attributes. People look at transgenderism and feminism as completely opposed to one another and in many ways they are. Feminism seeks to allow women to define what it is to be a woman. Transgender ideology says there is no such thing as men and women and by the way, men can define what womanhood is.
They seem opposed except gender ideology is built on feminism. When feminism in the 1960s exalted every male attribute, male characteristics, male preferences over traditionally traditional ideas of femininity. Gender ideology came in as the sucker punch at the end and finished off the job.
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