Florence Ashley, a Canadian bioethicist, recently took to Twitter to chastise people for "gendering animals."  Ashley opined that "[g]endering animals serves to normalize bio-essentialist conceptions of gender."  Ashley added, "When we gender animals, we forget that sex is assigned.  We begin to believe that sex is literally ~in~ the body."

So "gendering" animals is bad?  Not just "misgendering" them?  Note to Florence: Sex is — literally — in the body.  If it weren't, none of us would be here.  (Not that that would be considered a bad thing by many progressive wackos and "bioethicists.")

For those unfamiliar with the concept, bio-essentialism is the belief that biology determines specific attributes and traits, including those related to gender identity. Or, as defined by Oxford Reference: "The belief that 'human nature', an individual's personality, or some specific quality (such as intelligence, creativity ... masculinity, femininity, or a male propensity to aggression) is an innate and natural 'essence' (rather than a product of circumstances, upbringing, and culture).  The concept is typically invoked where there is a focus on difference, as where females are seen as essentially different from males[.]"

Anyone who has had more than one child or who has picked a puppy from a litter knows they have distinct individual traits and personalities right out of the chute, so to speak.  To deny that is to deny reality, thereby rendering one's judgment on all other matters suspect at best.

If anything is demonstrably real or true, bio-essentialism is, at least as regards biological sex.  No one who is serious about science or possesses an I.Q. greater than that of a paramecium can honestly doubt this.  As regards sex, biology determines if a person is born a boy with a penis or a girl with a vagina...and those traits determine if and how reproduction takes place.

If we can't gender any living things, we can't categorize them in any other way, either.  This would not have been a good thing for increasing our understanding of the world.  Medical professionals don't assign sex at birth.  And if biology doesn't, either, then how is this determined?  Who or what put the parts there?  God?  The gender fairy?  One can say there is no such thing as sex, much as one can say there are no such things as biology, fact, or truth.  (But, if there is no sex, then there can be no real misogyny, either.)  Just because we refuse to acknowledge something doesn't mean it doesn't exist — much like the mental illness tragically afflicting the vast majority of the hyper-woke.

CNN recently ran a commercial proclaiming that just because someone calls an apple a banana, it doesn't make it so.  Let's apply that concept to this subject.  Just because someone calls a boy a girl, that doesn't make him one.  And vice versa.  Yet CNN routinely calls truth fiction and fiction truth.  That, too, is nuts.

In conclusion, a clinical observation: Why are so many with "ethicist" in their job title apparently utterly amoral?

Image via Max Pixel.

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