FINA, the organization that oversees watersports competition, recently came up with a third category for sanctioned contests. In addition to the classifications of men and women, there will now be an open division where those who with gender dysphoria* will compete. The creation of this category is in direct response to the obvious competitive disadvantages witnessed when biological women were made to compete against gender dysphoric men. Simply speaking, the physical advantages the men possessed before they ever stepped into the pool (despite whatever surgical procedures they had undergone or hormones they were taking), were too great to be overcome.
If you’re keeping score, this means we’ve now arrived (with some kicking and screaming) to a place culturally where it seems as if we have no option but to accept that men and women are in fact quite different from each other. If you been paying attention the last couple of decades, you know this is quite an admission. Over this period of time, certain forces have been hard at work trying to convince us to that men and women were more or less identical.
Many of our cultural prophets (entertainers, politicians, influencers, the news media) labored hard to disproportionally expose us to the tiny number of women who worked in traditionally male professions (firefighting, logging, military special forces, etc.). Or they showcased women playing football, dunking a basketball, or wrestling against guys. Or in the worst-case scenarios, we had a series of raunchy movies about groomsmen, so a series of raunchy movies about bridesmaids were made in response to show that women are equally capable of getting drunk or high and acting in crude and coarse ways!
All of this was done to push the idea that men and women are more or less identical.
Meanwhile, we heard very little about distinctly feminine accomplishments. I read 65 quotes from “strong women”—mostly entertainers, politicians, etc., —and there was nothing in them concerning motherhood! How can motherhood have nothing to do with being a strong woman? What kind of message is this? Apparently, it was a message meant to convince us that women could be essentially identical to men.
But even then, it backfired.
By consistently putting before girls and young ladies the idea that strong women were those who acted like men—the not-so-hidden message became that they were only important to the degree they were like men! What a ridiculous and harmful message! No wonder so much confusion arose in regard to basic gender matters. Unfortunately, that part hasn’t changed but at least we now seem to understand that men and women are not anything close to identical.
We just took the ridiculously long way around in learning this.
The Scripture makes it clear that God created humans as male and female. They are wonderfully different but both made in His image and therefore equal in value and status (Genesis 5:1-2). Both are to be celebrated because they were created not be competitive, but complementary.
*I use the term “gender dysphoric” because I believe it is more accurate than “transgender” since no amount or hormones or surgery can unmake a man or woman—their DNA is still that of their biological gender.
A Taste of Grace with Bruce Green 