"Sex is Real": The Core of Gender-Conservative Anxiety

A tale of mantras, slogans and groupthink.

One of the most common refrains you will hear from those who are discomfited by the existence of transsexual people is “sex is real!”, or “biological sex is real!” if they’re attempting to sound particularly scientific in their blunt assertions. There is a lot encoded into this three-word shibboleth, imbuing a near-tautological statement with oodles of political baggage: that the reality of sex somehow stands in contradiction to the existence of transsexual people, that transsexual people are allegedly disputing and denying the existence of something so fundamental as (biological!) sex, that believing in transsexualism so flies in the face of “common sense” that sex-essentialism is by reductio ad absurdum the only reasonable, rational, natural position to take.

We’ve seen this all before.

As always, there is a response to this assertion that is trivial, that takes the claims of “sex is real” at face value and contradicts some of its basic inferences: that transsexual people, who pursue hormone replacement therapy and surgical affirmation, are painfully aware of the ‘reality’ of sex, are perhaps more aware of sex’s tangible impositions on one’s life and body than those who are not transsexual. One can even attempt to challenge some of the more overtly political implications of that oft-shouted exclamation and say that the ‘reality’ of sex does not contradict transsexual existence in the slightest, that these are not ideologically or politically antagonistic concepts. To do so is to miss the true philosophical undergirding of this slogan and other related ones (such as “sex matters!”). Despite there being so few words here, many people still somehow focus on the wrong ones. Crucially, the entire statement cannot be sufficiently unpacked without taking a close look at the many assumptions, worldviews and motivations behind the gender-conservative’s use of the word sex itself.

When a gender-conservative uses the term sex, they mean naturalized, patriarchal, essentialist ideas of sex. When they say “sex is real” or “sex matters”, what they actually mean is that sex is determined at birth and immutable.

To be clear, while the fevered repetition of these mantras in order to reinforce one’s belief and dispel any challenges to the Patriarchal Faith is unique to the most radicalized and bigotry-motivated, even putative ‘allies’ who style themselves as progressive or liberal in terms of social issues and ‘transgender politics’ struggle with these anxieties. Popular understandings and illustrations dichotomize sex and gender entirely, constructing a worldview where gender is social phenomenon and a malleable identity one can declare, claim or brand as one sees fit, while sex remains this biological reality observed at birth, untouchable and unchangeable, safely ensconced in a realm beyond the mere social. Clearly, it is not merely the ones who openly declare their opposition to transsexual existence who draw comfort from this idea of naturalized sex.

Social constructs are hardly divorced from tangibility, of course—readers may recall that meters measure actual distance, even if the choice of exactly what length to declare as a ‘meter’ was arbitrary and had to be agreed upon. Consensus rules human reality, often much more than even tangible observation—trans women would otherwise not be so often asked to take pregnancy tests during check-ups. Sexing is in fact far from a process limited to birth or confined to medical experts; it occurs constantly, regularly as a part of social dynamics and moving through the world. People do not in fact karyotype each other or perform genital inspections before deciding whether someone, based on their presentation and appearance, should be treated as a man, woman, or something rathere more ambiguous and queer. Most of us think that certain presentations and visible characteristics correspond to certain genital configurations, karyotypes, reproductive capacities, anatomical realities and even (if we’re attuned to patriarchal social norms) certain dispositions, attitudes, preferences, occupations, income levels, and so on and so forth. Sex is thus not simply socially constructed in this sense—where we have decided specific characteristics correspond to specific biological qualities about a person, an inference that might not even be true for non-transsexual people—but is socially constructed in an essentializing way, where it is fashioned as an intrinsic quality that is imbued with specific social meanings of autonomy, inferiority and social status.

That is, after all, what it means for gender and heterosexuality to be regimes—social sex becomes an indication of a certain social status.

Here, the true anxiety of the gender-conservative—whether spitting, frothing ideologue or unquestioning bystander—is laid bare. The rigid authoritarianism of conservatives does not simply enshrine certain social norms, but always seeks to naturalize them, to uphold them as truths that are beyond the reach of society’s capricious influences. There is no better mechanism by which one can validate traditional norms than by holding them to be unimpeachable, natural in some divine, ontological way that precedes politics, that precedes society. Gender can be made-up bunk now, since all the half-crazed transsexuals go around claiming it is—but sex, don’t you dare deny the reality of sex! Sex is real! Sex matters! There are two sexes, pee-pee and hoo-ha, and they determine everything important about you at birth!

Supremacist logics and conservative mindsets love rules, even when the rules aren’t clearly slanted in their favor (but of course, especially when they are). Whether through upholding society’s natural state or collaborating with the social regime’s beneficiaries, conservatives see ironclad rules as way to secure order—another euphemism which conceals a desire for society to be regular, predictable, deterministic and therefore comfortable in a way only something static and routine can be. The most terrifying prospect is that the rules are arbitrary, that they were set up in a particular way to benefit particular people and are subject to change, to disruption and destabilization.

The core of conservative existential terror is the idea that social norms, even deeply-held, highly-embedded ones, could be questioned, altered, transformed—transcended. Even if they are someone whom the rules don’t currently benefit, what if the changed rules benefit them even less? A cruel, tyrannical god may harm you, abuse you, but at least if you understand his rules, you can play them, you can attempt to curry favor. What could be more frightening than a world with no gods and no masters?

What is more terrifying than the idea that you could define what matters on your own, autonomous terms, without anyone telling you what is sacred and what is profane?

Sex is real. The concept of sex they learned as babies, as schoolchildren, as participants in a patriarchal society must be real, because the alternative—they don’t know how to contemplate the alternative. If they live in a world where sex is mutable, where someone can cross gender lines and for all intents and purposes interface with society as a different sex than the one coercively imposed upon them at birth, then they live in a world where some of the basic, fundamental beliefs they hold are in fact more arbitrary and underminable than they thought possible. It would destroy the very foundations of patriarchy and make them question everything they thought they knew about sex and the social regime built upon it.

They wouldn’t know what to do in a world where sex doesn’t matter.