I was sitting in a cafe last week when I overheard the pair sitting beside me. It was one of those pigeon-hole coffee houses where patrons are elbow-to-elbow rendering eavesdropping a requirement.
As best I could gather, the woman – in her mid-thirties – was a biology lecturer at one of the many nearby universities. The young Asian man was a foreign student with near-perfect English and a calm demeanour. She was restless and became more so as the conversation dragged on until she reminded me of a toddler squirming around with a distinct air of immaturity.
The conversation appeared to be one of those ‘re-education’ chats common among Western universities when a student does something crazy – like refuse to bow and scrape at the feet of progressive propaganda.
In this case, the biology lecturer was interrogating this poor young man about the difference between biological sex and the post-modernist re-imagining of gender.
‘Sex and gender are the same thing,’ the young man shrugged. His crime was evident. How dare he see the world so clearly!
‘What it means to be a ‘man’ has changed. What it means to be a ‘woman’ has changed,’ she replied, as if that was some sort of answer to his statement. ‘That’s why you can change sexes.’
‘Means to be makes no sense. What does it ‘mean’ to be a woman?’ he replied, searching for a clarification.
That had her stumped. ‘Uh… It – through history – like – it changes.’
My faith in the youth of this world was immediately restored. This young man was not buying the half-arsed ramblings and nonsensical rebuttals that amounted to ‘because I say so’.
‘Why separate sex and gender?’ he pushed, no doubt sensing the woman’s fidgeting panic. ‘It is stupid. It makes no sense.’
The starkness of his ungilded words threw her off. ‘It – it was the same thing with racism. Like – we didn’t want to separate them.’
This time the man’s eyebrows furrowed. He took a sip of his coffee, bewildered by her pivot to ‘racism’. ‘What…?’ he eventually replied. ‘That – that’s not an argument.’
‘It needs to be forced. We have to force the separation of gender and sex.’
‘Why?’ he asked, still not following.
‘Because it is more inclusive!’ her voice rose in annoyance. ‘It – you know – it says what it means to be a woman because they identify as that.’
Keep in mind, at this point I’m transcribing word for word, pretending to drink my coffee. I couldn’t help it – they were fascinating. I’d found a wild case study on the demise of social justice propaganda.
The man took another sip of coffee. I don’t blame him. ‘None of that makes any sense…’
‘Sex is used for men,’ she declared. ‘Sex – sex is for like… If I’m a transwoman and I went to a hospital and they want to know my sex – that’s when I would say I was born male. That’s where it ends.’
He narrowed his eyes, not sure if the woman was aware of what she’d admitted to. ‘So, you’re a transwoman but you’re still a man when reality gets involved?’
‘No! No. Transwomen are real women. But a man.’
The male student’s face fell into a distinctive ‘I’ve wasted ten years of my life studying to get into this university’ look. Remember, he’s the kid – she’s the biology lecturer.
It was at this point that I required a quick coffee top-up, but when I came back, the woman had resumed her attempts to re-educate the student.
Her course of action was to start a debate about gender being an outward expression of appearance – the clothes, the makeup, the wigs etc. It’s the ‘womanhood is a performance’ argument we see propagated to validate the social media trend of men ‘experiencing womanhood’ through vacuous TikTok posts bankrolled by fashion labels.
‘If you want to wear a dress, wear a dress…’ he said, picking at the tangled net of her logic with a fishing knife. ‘It doesn’t make you a girl. It makes you a dude – in a dress – who wants to look feminine.’
‘That’s – no!’ Her argument shifted again. ‘Gender is influenced by more than just biology.’
His head tilted, like a bird of prey spying an injured bug on the lawn. ‘So… You wouldn’t separate sport based on gender?’
‘No… Sport segregation is based on sex.’
‘But you just said transwomen should be allowed to play women’s sport because they are real women. That’s a gender argument for sex division. You’ve confused the two.’
The student was correct. His biology lecturer was using two mutually exclusive arguments surrounding the definition of gender to suit different points. When viewed holistically, her comments became incoherent. If this was a debate on Twitter, she would have rage-quit by now, blocked the man, and put up some kind of ‘I’ve been bullied by toxic masculinity’ post. Trapped in a cafe with real people, all she could do was bang her spoon around the insides of her coffee cup in frustration.
He dug her deeper into that hole. ‘We don’t separate sports teams by race. There is no Asian football team. But we do separate by gender. That implies there is a real, biological difference.’
‘You’re really focused on the words,’ she complained. ‘Why does it matter so much?’
‘Because reality matters.’
The banging of her spoon grew louder. She changed the topic.
‘Gender has something to do with what you look like,’ she re-attempted her point. I believe this is what transpeople call ‘passing’. The likes of Blaire White have explained this far better.
‘I’m a big guy. If you saw me in a dark alley, would you feel safer if I was wearing a dress?’
‘No…’ she replied quickly.
‘But according to you, I’m a woman when I’m wearing a dress.’
‘No… Uh, not exactly. Like, being a woman is – like – women wear bras. Bras are part of the female identity. It’s part of their gender expression as women.’
‘Are you wearing a bra?’
‘Um – not right now – actually – I don’t wear them very often.’
‘So, you’re not a woman?’
If there was a reply to that, I didn’t catch it.
‘What if someone was a menacing woman?’ he tried again. ‘A woman who looked blokey. Is their gender male?’
She was taken aback. ‘No – like – if you were a man in a dress – but – still looked manly – uh…’
That was a critical error on her part.
‘But you just said a few seconds ago that gender is all about how you feel, not your biology or looks…’
‘No – but…’
‘So, women are always women, even if they feel blokey, but men are only transwomen if they look the part of a woman – unless they are feeling female, because self-id is always valid.’
She was stumped. ‘What?’
Finally, the poor boy lost it. ‘EXACTLY! IT MAKES NO SENSE. YOU MAKE NO SENSE!’
It was at this point the assumed biology lecturer was interrupted by the Harry Potter ringtone on her phone and I decided to leave before I did something embarrassing – like shake the guy’s hand and congratulate him on permanently traumatising his university ‘elder’.
Whether he passes his biology course is another matter.
Alexandra Marshall is an independent writer. If you would like to support her work, shout her a coffee over at donor-box.
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