Origin of the Gender Wars

Exeter High School, in New Hampshire, has a written policy on “transgender and gender nonconforming students” that says they have the right to be addressed by their preferred name and pronoun – regardless of their biological sex. Last fall, a student in a Spanish class at the school announced to the class that she was “nonbinary” and preferred to be addressed by the pronoun “they.” One of her classmates, a young man on the football team, spoke up and said that he believed there are only two genders – male and female.

On the bus ride home, the young man and one of his friends were discussing the incident, and the discussion was overheard by another young lady who chimed in claiming there are more than two genders. Her take was that there are only two sexes, but there are many possible genders.

This young lady wanted to continue the discussion, so she somehow obtained the football player’s cell phone number and began texting him about the subject. After a few exchanges, he became annoyed with her and, rather rudely, told her to leave him alone.

The next day, the young man was pulled out of his science class by the vice principal and his football coach who then confronted him with the text messages and chastised him for “not respecting pronouns.” He was then suspended for one week from playing football.

This case is already heading to court because of the belief by the young man and his mother that the boy’s free speech rights have been violated. No doubt, that will be resolved at some point from a legal perspective.

But the bigger point here is to point out that a fantasy point of view has become so mainstream that people are being sanctioned for expressing what is objectively real. How in the world can a school have a policy that punishes students, not just for expressing an opinion, but for stating the obvious truth about what is objectively real?

There are only two genders. A person’s gender and sex are the same. The idea that they are different is not based on biology, but on relativistic philosophy.

Over the last several years we have heard of people “identifying” as things they are not. There was the case of a white woman who identified as a black person. There was the politician who was not Native American who identified as Native American to gain an advantage as a minority person. Now we have men identifying as women and being allowed to compete in women’s sports. All of this is fantasy masquerading as reality, and it is being accepted as real in much of mainstream society – and very few are willing to shout out, like the child in the well known children’s story, that “the emperor has no clothes.”

All of this craziness is a result of a society that has become dominated by naturalistic beliefs. Naturalism is the belief that the only thing that exists is the natural universe operating by natural laws. There is no God or any kind of transcendent reality.

When naturalistic philosophy first started spreading in western societies, the main battleground for those beliefs was in science – particularly in biology. The biggest fight over the years has related to whether or not the Theory of Evolution is true. Obviously, if God does not exist, then naturalistic evolution must account for the existence of all the life forms that exist on earth. After all, for Naturalists, there is no God to do any creating.

But over the years, naturalistic belief began being applied to the social sciences. These are attempts to study subjects using the scientific method that cannot actually be studied by science (using observation and experimentation). This includes such subjects as sociology, anthropology, psychology, political science, economics, black studies, women’s studies, and a whole host of others. In these fields, you have to move away from pure science as you begin having to deal with elements regarding human motives and values. To deal with these topics, rather than using actual observation and experimentation, researchers are forced to use such tools as polling, surveys, and speculation. Since Naturalism does not have any objective criteria for dealing with these things, the humans doing the studies have to make up their own criteria for analyzing the data they gather. They have to make up the moral values that they use as a basis for analyzing their data, and they usually do this by projecting onto their research their own personal opinions and values.

For them, since there is no such thing as objectively real morality, they feel they can make up any moral standard they wish. But the crazy thing is, they have now gone so far as to make up moral standards that actually contradict the very basis of their own belief system. Since biologically, there are only two genders, they have had to redefine words to mean something they don’t actually mean in order to promote beliefs that are fantasy. And that is how you come up with two sexes but many genders.

While those who believe in Naturalism don’t like Christian beliefs, it is the Christians who are actually respecting science and recognizing reality for what it is. Naturalists can pretend all they want that there are more than two genders, but it is simply not true.

Freddy Davis is the president of MarketFaith Ministries. He is the author of numerous books and has a background as an international missionary, pastor, radio host, worldview trainer, and entrepreneur. Freddy is a graduate of Florida State University with a BS in Communication, and holds MDiv and DMin degrees from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is a popular speaker, particularly on the topic of worldview and its practical implications for the Christian life. He lives in Tallahassee, FL, with his wife Deborah.

You may also contact Freddy at Leadership Speakers Bureau to schedule him for speaking or leadership engagements.

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