The Genderless Woman

A History of How Women Lost Their Femininity

Note : After I wrote The Real Woman a friend recommended Ivan Illich’s essays “ Gender”. The collection is short, although dense. The author, a Catholic Priest who was eventually defrocked for supporting contraceptives, writes a compelling history on gender drawing no conclusions but leaving plenty of room for the reader to do so.

This essay is an attempt to write better what I wished to convey in the Real Woman now that I have more information and a richer vocabulary to work with, thanks to Illich. My intentions are to reach women of all backgrounds, politics, and ideologies, so I equip rhetoric and language from “both” sides. I believe it’s impossible to fully understand what a woman is without looking at everything important conservatives and liberals both have to say on the matter.

"The truth is the truth and proceeds from the Holy Ghost, no matter from whose lips it comes."
~ St. Thomas

We often dismiss something if it comes from someone we consider stupid or repulsive. It can become impossible to have a sincere conversation with someone who isn’t on “our side” if we refuse to be open to arguments that don’t align with our chosen rhetoric — especially if those arguments come from people we don’t respect.

I, too, have been guilty of this. I want to think that I love Truth. But this requires constant openness. I must search out my own biases and question any sentimental attachments I foster for various beliefs. It is not easy. But it is necessary if I am to love my neighbor more than myself.

After reading Ivan Illich’s essays on Gender, I realized I had shut my ears every time a woke person talked about gender and sex. Although my core beliefs haven’t changed, I no longer believe conservatives are completely correct on the gender issue 1.

Woke talking points haven’t materialized out of thin air. Culture has been in a steady decline for many decades now. We’ve long ago forgotten what it means to be human. Conservatives claim to base their beliefs in reality, but even they have forgotten what it means to be a man or a woman. Despite their rhetoric about marriage and families, divorce and broken families prevail in their communities and many men and women struggle with no-one to turn to.

If we’re to save society from collapsing, we must put biases aside and start sincerely asking, What is a woman?

Signals, Cues, and Customs

As much as we try, we can’t deconstruct gender and rebuild it at will.

We can put on different clothes or puff up our lips or cut off our genitals, but no amount of cross-dressing or plastic surgery or make-up will fix the gender dysphoria. We can swap signs on bathroom doors or welcome everyone in the bathroom. But gender will never be completely eradicated. It was put there for a reason and without it we are unable to communicate or live harmoniously.

When we think of gender today we often think of roles, work, or fashion. Illich argues that these things are only gendered in extension to the tools we use, which are gendered by how well they accommodate and flatter our bodies.

Gender paid the price when we disregarded the biological differences between man and woman and pretended everyone could equally work as soulless beings in factories. Communities disintegrated, women forgot how to sew buttons onto shirts, men lost their connection to the land. Fashion too, turned bland when it forfeited its primary functions.

Although gender enhances biological sex, it is fluid. Just as words and sounds vary from language to language, the tasks, tools, and fashions of gender were expressed differently from community to community throughout history. However, despite the differences in customs and cues, the purpose of gender remained constant: to inform.

To revisit to Charlie Kirk’s question: No, a dress does not make a man into a woman, but in a properly ordered society a dress may inform others that they are interacting with a woman. If there is a man in a dress, there may be other gendered signs to alert the viewer of the discrepancy. In other words, a man in a dress is a misgendered man, but that does not mean gender doesn’t exist.

Gender is a conversational signal with layers of information. In other words, it’s a vernacular language just as rich and complex as any other language.

If humans became completely genderless, pandemonium would become the norm. We would not know how to behave with others without overly scrutinizing their bodies and making them feel objectified.