by Richard Dawkins, UnHerd
A politically powerful lobby today thinks your sex is not genetically determined but is malleable under your personal whim. That it is a social construct. That if you feel you are a woman, you are a woman. Never mind if you have a Y-chromosome, testes, and a penis, no matter if you have breasts and ovaries, your male or female identity is something you get to decide for yourself, as easily as you might choose your political party or favourite football team.
It is a doctrine that has become highly influential. The American Medical Association in 2023 laid down “best practices for sex and gender diversity in medical education.” Medical students are to be taught that both sex and gender are “[socially] constructed.” And “it is appropriate to affirm each individual’s self-determination regarding both sex and gender labels.” But are “male” and “female” really social constructs like money or like our 12-month calendar? Is that really the considered view of the American Medical Association? Are we seriously training a generation of young doctors to think that the sex of a patient is a matter of individual choice, not objective anatomical and physiological reality?