I’ve seen this meme being talked about by my sister and some of her friends, and there is a lot going on here. They were saying that something felt off about it but they weren’t sure what. What’s off is that it’s very poorly argued, and relies on rhetorical tricks. Let’s walk through it panel by panel, and then discuss the meme as a whole.
Panel #1: The assertion is that Biological sex is a social construct, which they attempt to support by saying that the motive was to create a society where one class loses out for the benefit of another.
The first problem with this argument is that biological sex does not describe our social roles. That’s what gender is. So the argument remains unsupported. The second issue is the over use of jargon. The majority of audiences are going to have a difficult time understanding what the author is trying to say here.
Panel #2: This is a logical counter-argument to panel one. There is scientific evidence to back the claim. It uses complex terms, so it could stand to be simplified for broader audiences, but there isn’t anything majorly wrong here.
Panel #3: This one appears pretty simple at it’s face, but there is actually a lot to untangle here. Let’s break it down into a simple argument pattern and work from there.
Statement 1: There are XX Men and XY Women
Statement 2: Intersex people are are neither male nor female
Conclusion: Human sexes are nonbinary.
With Statement 1, this one lives or dies based on how you define man/woman. If Man means “Adult Human Male” than there are no XX men. If Man means “Someone who identified as a man” than man describes a social role. Social roles aren’t a manifestation of sex. So either way, Statement 1 doesn’t support the conclusion.
Statement 2 is factually wrong. A biological sex describes the type of gamete (one of the cells needed to make offspring) an organism is trying to produce. Humans only have two gamete types, and a given person can only produce one of them. Intersex people’s bodies only try to produce one or the other, they don’t produce some third gamete or both. And all this is before the fact that calling them sexless is actually intersexist and discriminatory, but I’ll let someone who’s more well versed in the subject elaborate on that.
Since both statements are unrelated at best, and false at worst, the conclusion is unsupported again.
Panel #4: Notice the sudden shift in tone? In the previous panel, this guy was depicted as overly wordy and verbose just like the bearded guy. Now he’s speaking in plain language. His first line about “why the divide” would have been addressed in the first panel, had that panel been talking about gender. The second line makes no sense for him to ask since he already stated that biological sex was reality based on science, which would be why he learned it in school. So why would he ask that?
Because he’s been set up as a strawman. He’s no longer representing an actual opposing argument. He’s instead saying something bordering on irrelevant to set up panal 5 for an easy takedown, while discrediting the side he’s meant to represent.
Panel #5: The meaning here is absolutely drowning under jargon, to the point where it needs translation. Furthermore, this is a run-on sentence, which can be difficult to parse even when they have simple phrasing. So to understand, we’re going to need to break things down again. First, let’s suss out what the words and phrases mean:
Cishetropatriarchal Hegemony: Cishetropatriarchal implies “not transgender, straight, lead by males” and hegemony means a leadership, usually of nations, and often with expansionist goals.
Binary Model: Here this means male/female biological sexes.
Foregrounds: Usually used in visual arts, the antonym of “background.” It’s supposed to convey putting one group over another.
Status Quo: Our society as a whole, at this moment. It has a charged implication in this instance, since it’s becoming political shorthand for “everything that’s wrong.”
We’ve got a bit closer to understanding what’s being said, but we’ve still got a hell of a run-on sentence to deal with here. Unfortunately, the phrasing makes it nearly impossible to tell how the author intended the sentence to flow. Interestingly, since this opens it up to reader interpretation, that gives the author room to claim that any given critique is misrepresenting the content. To try and leave the sentence as intact as possible, we’ll split it in two:
“Because the continuation and the success of the cishetropatriarchal hegemony relies on blind adherence of members of our society to”
Simplified: To continue successfully, our non-trans, straight male leadership needs people to follow blindly
“a binary model which foregrounds the maintenance of the status quo at the expense of minorities such as trans people”
Simplified: A Male/Female model of human biology is the basis that the status quo is founded on. The status quo is maintained in a way that causes harm to minorities, such as trans people.
That took so much breakdown and reassembly, by now it gets hard to remember what this was even a response to! But now we can stick everything back together and analyze what it actually being said. To summarize, we had Hat Guy ask “Then why is society divided in two, and why is biological sex taught in schools?” and the Beard Guy essentially says “Because to continue successfully, our non-trans, straight male leadership needs people to follow blindly (which supports the status quo.) A Male/Female model of human biology is the basis that the status quo is founded on. The status quo is maintained in a way that causes harm to minorities, such as trans people.“
With the haze of jargon cleared away, the argument doesn’t work, because it is still founded on the basis that biological sex is a social construct. The simplest test to see if something is a social construct is to ask what would happen to it if humanity lost self awareness and society. Does the presumed construct survive?
Without any labels, we’d have one type of human who could produce sperm, and one that could produce eggs and carry offspring. You can only make offspring when you match a sperm producer with an egg producer. That is what sex is, in the most simple and basic terms. Biological sex exists in absence of human understanding. So the argument would fail on that fault alone.
Interaction Between Panels #4 and #5: This is where we get into some pretty clear rhetoric, which merits close examination on it’s own. Rhetoric can be used to bolster a well made argument, but it can also shore up a bad argument, since the purpose of rhetoric is to just “feel” true.
We have Hat Guy, who is representing the opposing argument. His shift in tone and sudden use of simpler language is used to imply his arguments have failed, and he’s only resisting out of stubbornness and prejudice. We’re meant to scoff at his ugly ignorance.
Then we have Beard Guy, who is set in place to make that sick take down that the audience can revel in. The panel has an accusatory air to it. The phrasing, where it isn’t making things murky, is highly emotionally charged. Phrasing like “blind adherence” paints Hat Guy, and by extension, the opposing side, as feverishly devoted to a lie.
The undercurrent of the argument in panel five implies that by taking his position, Hat Guy is supporting a system that’s using and abusing an underclass for its own gains. Without saying as much, it evokes a similar gut reaction to being told you’re supporting slavery. It’s framed as a brutal and just take down.
So rather than dismantling the opposition with counter points backed by accurate evidence, Beard Guy has instead attacked the argument with pure rhetoric. He’s guilting the opposition, defaming their character by implying they’re stupid and/or immoral. The evidence provided, rather than being dismantled, has been dismissed and forgotten.
To get all of that information across, using relatively few words, and in a couple panels is the power of rhetoric, context, and framing situations. It’s a lot to take in, and very emotionally charged. This is why we need to look past rhetoric and into arguments, no matter which side they come from.
The Meme Overall: Alright, so we have a meme here that’s absolutely loaded with poor arguments, logical fallacies, falsifiable facts, and searing rhetoric. So what? Memes aren’t essays, they’re jokes, you aren’t supposed to think to deep about them right? Glance over it, laugh, maybe glance again as you share it and see it again as it passes through your group of friends.
But this isn’t really a joke, now is it? These claims are currently being asserted as facts in long-winded, even harder to digest essays, and trickling out into more mainstream activism. It’s more akin a snippet, a quip, or a piece of an essay that’s easier to swallow. It’s the same ideas, but repackaged in a format that’s easy to understand. We know how this meme goes, who’s right and who’s wrong, and why it should be funny. We know that we don’t need to think hard about what it says.
We have an image here, one that has a clear point of view that it wants the viewer to agree with. One that misrepresents facts, and hides that with buzzwords and jargon. One that paints it’s opponents as blind, irrational supporters of evil. And we have all of this wrapped into a pithy and familiar package for that asks us to take it at face value, don’t think to hard about it, and share it widely. It’s propaganda in meme form.
