The full title of this new book is: Sex Scandal: The Drive to Abolish Male and Female. And that is exactly what it is all about. The radical push for androgyny, the radical push for transgenderism, and the radical push to convince us that there are no differences between men and women have been occurring for a few decades now.
And as McGuire makes clear, this has not been a good thing. The ones who are especially losing here are women. They are the ones who suffer the most when we pretend that men and women are fully identical. She writes:
Nature and biology are pesky realities that are impossible to wipe out, so when we strive for gender neutrality, we are left with a frustrating mess. If anything, the effort to stamp out sex differences has only enhanced sex stereotypes such as aggressive masculinity and hyper-sexualized femininity. And the members of the sex whose characteristics are often more subtle, more mysterious, and more complex are being swept up and pressed into a masculine world. Women are set up to fail.
Going back to the sexual revolution of the 60s, along with the feminist and homosexual movements, the move has been to deny any innate differences between men and women. While women were promised liberation and freedom, they instead were the big losers, while men were the big winners:
The gender identity movement parades under the mantle of equality, but it only makes the world a less equal place. By denying the sexual binary inherent to human bodies, the gender revolutionaries just tip the scales toward men, making it easier for them to buy women for sex and easier for them to violate women’s safe spaces. And they make it impossible for women even to complain about the abuse on the basis of sex – a category they are intent on eliminating.
A book on the new androgyny and the war on gender could go down historical, philosophical or sociological paths. This book briefly engages all three, but the bulk of it looks at examples of the war on sex differences and the negative consequences thereof.
Many of the stories are familiar, and in detailed chapters she examines how this is impacting areas such as sport, the military, parenting, education, popular culture and even our bathrooms. Of course science is put at risk, as gender ideologues seek to trump scientific and biological reality.
The idea that there is no biological basis for gender but it is just a social construct is of course not something science supports. It is simply a radical ideological position being pushed for political and social reasons. McGuire cites some of the research on the very real differences between men and women.
Things like hormones, DNA, chromosomes and other key biological markers have to be dealt with, not ignored. But that is what the activists are doing, and it sure does not look pretty. She quotes UK political philosopher Rebecca Reilly-Cooper who wrote an important essay on this in 2016, “Gender is Not a Spectrum”:
Once we assert that the problem with gender is that we currently recognise only two of them, the obvious question to ask is: how many genders would we have to recognise in order not to be oppressive? Just how many possible gender identities are there? The only consistent answer to this is: 7 billion, give or take. There are as many possible gender identities as there are humans on the planet.
It does seem like all this has come out of nowhere: “It seems like you woke up one day and suddenly it was normal for kindergartens to ban Legos as sexist, for high school boys to shower in the girls’ locker room, and for America to send the mothers of toddlers to defend us from our enemies.”
But there is a background to all this, so she takes us on a very brief tour of how this came about. She looks at some of the usual suspects. French feminist and existentialist Simone de Beauvoir for example said in her influential 1949 book The Second Sex, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”
Many look to the publications by gender theorist Judith Butler from the 1980s onwards as being a key turning point here. Her theories and those of others rapidly caught on, primarily in our universities. Coupled with the feminist movement of the 60s and 70s, all this culminated in the genderless world we now find ourselves in, including the full-scale transgender revolution.
Sex Scandal: The Drive to Abolish Male and Femaleby McGuire, Ashley (Author)
Children of course suffer from all this. The universal and historical assumption that every child has a right to a mother and a father has been thrown out the window by the activists. With homosexual and trans families, children are being denied the most important thing they can have.
The truth is, men and women are different, and they parent differently as well, as the research on this is becoming increasingly clear. “As Yale psychiatrist and author Dr. Kyle Pruett sums up the research, it’s clear that ‘fathers don’t mother and mothers don’t father.’ In parenting, as in much else, men and women have different strengths.”
But as mentioned, a major loser in this sex revolution has been women. They have lost big time. Feminism and the Sexual Revolution have disdained things like chivalry, viewing them as outdated, oppressive and patriarchal. But, says, McGuire, “without chivalry the worst masculine qualities run rampant.”
Chivalry is built on respect for women. She states: “It is sexual difference that activates chivalry, and women are its primary beneficiaries. Chivalry is not exploitative; it is the force designed to prevent men from exploiting women, particularly when they are most in need of different treatment.”
In all this, women lose, men gain, and society is the worse for wear. All because we have bought the myth of the androgyny activists. “A gender-neutral society effectively stacks the deck in favour of men by binding itself, in the name of political correctness and equality, to everything that makes women more vulnerable. Women are forced to compete on male terms, and the male model of accomplishment is the default, the paradigm against which women are judged.”
The key is to return to sanity by acknowledging that real equality can only occur when we recognise and act on the obvious: men and women are different. As she says in the conclusion of her book: “The starting point for authentic equality between the sexes must be recognition of what makes us different and the acceptance that some of those differences cannot be altered. . . . Only when we can all say vive la différence can men and women truly begin to live as equals.”
7 Replies to “A Review of Sex Scandal. By Ashley McGuire.”
Vive le difference! Thanks for another great book review Bill! I’ll buy one for my daughter.
Thanks Bill
How tragic that people have to write books to point out what is plainly obvious to any normal, intelligent person who sees reality as it is. Of course men and women are different. Moreover, any two men or any two women are different from each other. Why confuse difference with inequality?
Yes David, it is sort of like needing to write a book in defense of breathing. Bizarre stuff indeed.
God created human beings male and female in his image. This push toward obliteration of the sexes is one more front of the satanic war on God.
The upcoming generation are not being taught in schools that sex is binary and that male and female have complementary giftings – essential for relationships, parenting and flourishing societies – as God intended. This is a timely book.
Yes it certainly is Arthur.
I would further argue that chivalry is specifically Christian. When the disciples attempted to ‘protect’ Christ from a mob of kids, he responded, “…forbid them not, for such is the kingdom of heaven… whosoever does it for the least of these my brethren, does it for me.” Christ also said “when you see me, you see the Father.” Thus radical compassion for ‘the least of these’ begins with care of children, because in an important sense, they *are* Christ who is also the Father. Children are the reason women are to be ‘preferred’ in some situations because without them, children — Life Itself — hope — the future — are put at risk. Women’s biology is weaker because it has to be. Her immune, skeletal, endocrine, muscular systems and structures are all weaker because to contain new life for as long as our species requires, she must be weaker. In short, no weakness, no future. Strength is a necessary short term evolutionary strategy — weakness a long term one. The two are necessary for the species to continue. If scripture is somehow also ‘written’ in biology then weakness is necessary — just as children must be smaller, have less muscle and less powerful I.Q.s. Plus, a long childhood. Why are weakness, smallness and dependency necessary? They are essential because how else do we learn to love unconditionally — when there’s nothing, at least obviously, in it for us? To love when we don’t feel like it? To love with sacrifice, pain and blood as part of the process? To love the way God loves? Christ revealed how God loves and it absolutely requires sacrifice of some description on our part. Sacrifice is built into the biology of our sexual difference. He must sacrifice for her if she is to sacrifice for the children — with whom — Christ — indeed God — identified. In a myriad of ways, Christ taught men, his disciples, how to to prioritize “the least of these, my brethern” because their biology had not taught them that without weakness, hope is lost, unconditional love is impossible and thus, finally, life is not worth living. Male biology by itself does not teach men where meaning is to be ultimately found. It does not tell them on a monthly basis how expensive life is — how much blood must be shed to give it and moreover to maintain it and save it. That is why women often had a wordless bond with Jesus. They knew where he was going if he was to save the world. They’d been there in small, daily, grass roots ways. In calling men to follow Christ, Christianity harnessed male strength in the service of weakness. The chivalric code was created by the church in the middle ages as a way of codifying this central Christian vision. The Enlightenment overthrew all things medieval and began a process that has its end in our current sterile, masculine (as in, the worst in masculine — it isn’t really androgynous) anti-christian social agenda. This is how the world ends — not with a bang but a whimper.
Vive le difference! Thanks for another great book review Bill! I’ll buy one for my daughter.
Thanks Bill
How tragic that people have to write books to point out what is plainly obvious to any normal, intelligent person who sees reality as it is. Of course men and women are different. Moreover, any two men or any two women are different from each other. Why confuse difference with inequality?
Yes David, it is sort of like needing to write a book in defense of breathing. Bizarre stuff indeed.
God created human beings male and female in his image. This push toward obliteration of the sexes is one more front of the satanic war on God.
The upcoming generation are not being taught in schools that sex is binary and that male and female have complementary giftings – essential for relationships, parenting and flourishing societies – as God intended. This is a timely book.
Yes it certainly is Arthur.
I would further argue that chivalry is specifically Christian. When the disciples attempted to ‘protect’ Christ from a mob of kids, he responded, “…forbid them not, for such is the kingdom of heaven… whosoever does it for the least of these my brethren, does it for me.” Christ also said “when you see me, you see the Father.” Thus radical compassion for ‘the least of these’ begins with care of children, because in an important sense, they *are* Christ who is also the Father. Children are the reason women are to be ‘preferred’ in some situations because without them, children — Life Itself — hope — the future — are put at risk. Women’s biology is weaker because it has to be. Her immune, skeletal, endocrine, muscular systems and structures are all weaker because to contain new life for as long as our species requires, she must be weaker. In short, no weakness, no future. Strength is a necessary short term evolutionary strategy — weakness a long term one. The two are necessary for the species to continue. If scripture is somehow also ‘written’ in biology then weakness is necessary — just as children must be smaller, have less muscle and less powerful I.Q.s. Plus, a long childhood. Why are weakness, smallness and dependency necessary? They are essential because how else do we learn to love unconditionally — when there’s nothing, at least obviously, in it for us? To love when we don’t feel like it? To love with sacrifice, pain and blood as part of the process? To love the way God loves? Christ revealed how God loves and it absolutely requires sacrifice of some description on our part. Sacrifice is built into the biology of our sexual difference. He must sacrifice for her if she is to sacrifice for the children — with whom — Christ — indeed God — identified. In a myriad of ways, Christ taught men, his disciples, how to to prioritize “the least of these, my brethern” because their biology had not taught them that without weakness, hope is lost, unconditional love is impossible and thus, finally, life is not worth living. Male biology by itself does not teach men where meaning is to be ultimately found. It does not tell them on a monthly basis how expensive life is — how much blood must be shed to give it and moreover to maintain it and save it. That is why women often had a wordless bond with Jesus. They knew where he was going if he was to save the world. They’d been there in small, daily, grass roots ways. In calling men to follow Christ, Christianity harnessed male strength in the service of weakness. The chivalric code was created by the church in the middle ages as a way of codifying this central Christian vision. The Enlightenment overthrew all things medieval and began a process that has its end in our current sterile, masculine (as in, the worst in masculine — it isn’t really androgynous) anti-christian social agenda. This is how the world ends — not with a bang but a whimper.