The Woman and the Postman
“Woman” is not like “postman,” nor is a woman a post-man.
“Woman is a social role, like a postman.”
You may have heard this argument before from activists. Immediately, you know this is absurd, but activists insist upon womanhood being a “performance” or a “social role,” similar to a job in society. When challenged to define how one “performs” womanhood, you will be met with one of two responses:
a list of cultural stereotypes such as dress, makeup, and behaviors, or
the activist will realize that they’ve walked headfirst into the cultural concepts they claim to despise and argue that the performance of womanhood can only be defined by how the individual performing it thinks it’s performed because “a woman can be anything.”
Even Social Constructs Are Definable
Of course, both of these arguments are false. If a woman were anything and based entirely on an individual’s ideas, then there would be nothing to identify into. Even imaginary creatures like dragons and unicorns can be described and have an understood general definition. There is a consensus on what makes both creatures, even if cultural, regional, or individual representations differ on the details. The dragons in Chinese mythology look very different from Medieval representations or modern, chubby characters in children’s media.
But across all representations, we know a dragon must be a reptile with limbs, claws, teeth, and a tail. They can have wings or fly by some other means. They are usually large and have horns and scales. Anything outside of that typical representation requires someone to say, “this is actually a dragon,” and it’s often a purposeful subversion of expectations. Likewise, we all know a unicorn is a horse-like creature with a single horn. These creatures are social constructs.
So, if even a creature that exists only in concept and imagination can have a standard definition and agreed upon consensus so well established that we can know it across the globe, and we know they can’t just be “anything,” why are “man” and “woman” different?
A job like a postman/mail carrier is a social construct. You can’t walk into a post office, declare yourself a mail carrier, take the mail and deliver it as you like. There is a process, there is a consensus on qualifications and procedures that one must have and do in order to deliver the mail. Likewise with most other jobs and societal roles. You can’t simply identify in and out of job titles, declaring yourself a doctor one moment and an astronaut the next like a living Barbie doll. Nor can you do that with strictly social roles such as mother, grandfather, or even friend.
You can’t be a mother without being a female raising a child through birth or adoption. You can’t be a grandfather unless your child is a parent. And you can’t waltz up to anyone on the street and declare yourself their friend. For whatever reason, all these examples are obvious and any challenge to them is seen as absurd. But again, for some reason, identifying as the opposite sex, neither, or anything else relating to “gender” identity/sex is not. Why?
Imitation Is Not Reality
You won’t get a satisfying answer as to “why.” You’ll simply get a return trip to the beginning of the argument, with the opposition explaining that a man can be a woman “in every meaningful way.” If you ask them to explain, they’ll go back into stereotypes, often point to a man who “passes” as a woman in appearance, or give you a list of cosmetic surgeries and procedures that somehow turn a man into a woman in their eyes.
These are another and perhaps an even more egregious set of stereotypes, as it equates naturally developed anatomy to surgically constructed replicas with no function. After all, “if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it’s a duck,” right? Wrong. Humans can be spectacular imitators. People can waddle and quack like ducks, but we aren’t anymore a duck than your furries or “therians” are actual animals. Nor is someone a postman simply by dressing up like one and handing out something resembling the post.
Transgenderism Deliberately Avoids Any Definition
The activists seek not only to have these subjective, nebulous identities validated on an interpersonal level, but to cement them in legislation as well. Falsification of legal documentation to reflect these identities is, for whatever reason, considered a relatively mainstream position. This is of course problematic not only because it is a blatant lie on a legal identification document, but it also has no objective criteria by which it can be applied to every trans identified individual. This is by design, of course.
If they can land on an objective standard, they risk losing the privileges to change documentation or go into opposite sex spaces for huge swaths of their community who don’t adhere to them:
They can’t use a surgical or pharmaceutical standard because it would then coerce or force people to undergo treatments they may not have otherwise undergone in order to get those privileges.
A standard of “passing” doesn’t work either, because that would be based on a completely external, highly subjective measure that would lead to discrimination based on beauty standards and would also most likely make people feel similarly coerced into surgery as the previous example.
Both of these would no doubt be challenged in court and undone. This is why proponents of gender ideology have landed on self declaration and the argument of the social construct. The objectivity is in the fact that the individual stated, or even *will* state, that their gender is something other than their sex, despite the lack of evidence that supports the claim. It’s all a matter of individual belief, which is not done with any other social role or identity marker on documentation.
Race, for example, is a highly variable gradient. One can be of mixed descent, have brown skin, but identify as either black, white, or both. Is it an indicator of heritage, skin color, or both? How far back does your heritage have to go for it to factor in, if at all?
Eye color can change with contacts or some highly risky procedures, similarly to gender procedures, so why make that based on actual eye color, and not however the individual identifies their eye color?
The same could be argued for height, which can also change with footwear and surgery. Age is also a gradient, with some cultural calendars, “leap years,” and dubious record keeping nations making it confusing or difficult to track for some. But, we still track it accurately, based on objective measurements, based on date and time of birth. And, like gender, there are those who wish to identify as a different age. However, under no other means, for no other wishes do we support the ability to lie on identification.
So, what is the difference between the woman and the postman?
She can’t claim his job through self declaration, but he can claim her womanhood with it.