The gender agenda
The June 26 cover story, “The body politic”, asserts that “gender diversity is a worldwide trend”, but your stories focused on New Zealand and Western case studies. Has the rest of the world caught up with the idea of an innate gender identity that is independent of biological sex?
The feminist movement of my day recognised that true equality would be an elusive goal without getting rid of stereotyped sex roles. Woven throughout many of the case studies in your story are examples of young people still grappling with sex stereo-typing, so I fear that the “girls (and boys) can do anything” message has been lost.
For example, Max’s mother suggests that in her youth, it was more acceptable to experiment with different ways of dressing and behaving, so the sexes were less pigeonholed. The case of “Rachel”, who is now detransitioning, suggests she changed her body, at least partly, because she struggled to meet a feminine stereotype. Her conclusion is poignant: given the right support, she would have been happy living as a “masculine lesbian woman”.
Over the centuries, the socially constructed feminine stereotype has cast women in an inferior position. The landmark 1981 United Nations’ Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women affirms the sex-based rights of women and seeks to modify social and cultural patterns and practices
