If gender is subjective then why are women oppressed? If gender is up to individual perception then how do men know which class of people to systematically dominate?
An Open Letter to the Guy on Twitter Who Wonders if Biological Sex is Real
Imagine you’re standing at a train station.
Across from you, you see another man step across the tracks. He’s distracted, too busy to take the long way around, too lost in his phone to notice where he’s going. You turn your head the other way and see the train, barreling towards him as he walks into its path. What do you do?
The answer is obvious, hopefully. You scream. You shout. You wave your arms and make a scene. And if he still doesn’t notice, still doesn’t look up from his phone, you jump down and push him off those tracks yourself. Maybe you’re not that brave in reality. I’m not sure if I am. But at the very least you hope that’s what you’d do, right?
And why is that? Why would you go through all that effort? Because, consciously or not, you understand Newton’s laws. You understand that force is equal to mass times acceleration, that a very heavy thing moving very fast can destroy a fragile human body in an instant. You do what you can to get that man off the tracks because you know that a life depends on it.
But did you know that Newton’s laws are hardly stable? That they exist as mere approximations, liable to break down in all sorts of situations? It’s true. Newtonian physics can’t predict the way light bends on its way through the solar system, or how an electron might spin around an atom’s core. Even something as mundane as your cellphone relies on a far more sophisticated model. While those equations you learned in junior high school might get you through the day, the whole truth is never so simple.
Now, here’s a question: Knowing that, do you change what you yell to the man on the tracks? After all, “The train is coming towards you!” is technically inaccurate. Einstein showed us that movement is relative; in a sense, it’s just as reasonable to say that the man is hurtling towards a stationary train. You’ve got a few seconds left. Do you take your time and capture all the nuance?
Physics may be the least of your problems, by the way. Biology is just as messy. You’re probably worried that the man will end up dead, smashed to pieces or ground into bits. But what does it mean to be alive or dead anyway? Many scientists would tell you that no single criteria exists to distinguish inanimate and animate matter. Some entities, like a virus or a prion, hove in the grey space between the two categories. If you can’t even explain why the man on the tracks is alive, what “alive” even means, then what sense does it make to worry about keeping him that way?
And of course, all of this is beside the point if we don’t know what makes something right or wrong in the first place. Dozens and dozens of complex ethical questions exist without any agreed-upon answer, and the foundations of morality are endlessly debated. Should you do anything to help the man at all? You can imagine situations where inaction is best; perhaps he’s a serial killer, or some other unrepentant monster. Perhaps no moral truths exist, and your efforts to save him are completely irrational. Can you be sure it’s right to intervene, if you can’t even define what “right” means in the first place?
Looking back, what started out so simple ends up quite complex —a complex obligation, a complex process, a complex result. Presumably, you’ll want to make sure your warning is in line with all the latest quantum theory. You’ll want to figure out just what you mean by “life” and “death” too. And it wouldn’t hurt to track down the nearest priest or philosophy professor to elaborate the finer points of ethics. Nuance, accuracy, and a critical eye are important, after all. Shouldn’t we strive to get everything right?
Now, here’s a different thought experiment: Imagine it’s you on the train tracks.
Lately, I’ve seen a lot of debates break out on Twitter over biological sex — what defines it, how it can be measured, whether it exists at all. The men who dominate these debates are often experts in their fields, meaning they use terms like “bimodal distribution” and “nonstandard karyotypes” to make their otherwise mundane points. I think most of these points are foolish, tired rehashings of fallacies first identified by ancient Greeks in the fourth century BCE. They confuse — or, perhaps, intentionally conflate — imprecision with invalidity, social perception with social construction, and binarism with exclusivity. In other words, they trade in the all-too-familiar illogic that festers at the intersection of science and philosophy, where ontological cowardice appears as the highest form of nuance.
But here I go again, right? It’s so easy to get sucked into this debate, to get that hot indignation in your stomach that comes when a foolish claim is so proudly asserted. And I don’t even have skin in the game — binary or not, my sex will still land me squarely in the “paid more, raped less” category. So what’s the point beyond intellectual exercise? It seems more and more obvious to me that even entertaining the debate is a concession, an assent to women’s lives being made the subject of thought experiments and counterfactuals plucked from the air by some post-grad who, coincidentally, has never once worried about pregnancy from rape.
So that’s my quarter-through-the-year resolution: I’m not going to debate with you about the reality of biological sex, for the same reason I wouldn’t stand on the train platform debating the finer points of physics while the man on the tracks is ground into bits. Not because your position is unassailable. Because even bringing it up makes you an asshole.
That might sound a little dramatic, a flourish of rhetoric to cover up a weak rebuttal. But how long have you spent reading up to this point? Five minutes? Ten? If so, the world has fifty more mutilated girls than when you started. Were the men who carried out those mutilations confused about what makes a female body? Did they ponder chromosome parings and standard deviations when they chose who to cut? Or is that kind of nuance a luxury set aside just for educated, progressive, worldly men like you?
Isn’t it odd that sex was never so complicated before? There was nothing ethereal about biology when it came to allocating the right to vote, or own property, or walk down the street at night without fear. We knew perfectly well what made someone female when that female-ness guaranteed a life of subservience and pain. Only when women began to say no did their bodies become a concept.
So many feminists have made this point, over and over again. I see them say it. I know you read it. Did you listen? If not, why? And why do you always respond when I say it? It seems you do know who has a female body, when it comes to deciding which perspective gets ignored.
Sex is such a mystery to you when women want shelters for themselves, meetings for themselves, words for themselves. Pardon me for asking, but is it equally mysterious when you log off Twitter and move over to Pornhub? The true nature of a female body is so complex when you lecture. Does it become simple again when you masturbate? Who does the laundry in your house? Were you somehow able to navigate an inchoate soup of X’s and Y’s to saddle your girlfriend with the dishes? Give yourself some credit — I think you know perfectly well what a female body is. But in case you don’t, here’s a hint:
It’s the only type of body that gets you thrown on the funeral pyre when the husband dies. It’s the only type of body that gets your feet bound and your breasts ironed. It’s the only type made pregnant through rape and burned with acid, the only type expected to sit quietly and listen while we redefine it away, the only type men have spent millennia criticizing and critiquing and buying and selling until we suddenly decided we don’t even know what the fuck we meant this whole time.
You know what a female body is, dude? It’s the only type of body that makes men like you ask such stupid questions. So please, stop. This is an emergency. This is three and a half billion human beings tied to the tracks, and you’re riding on the train. Your insistence on nuance, your fetish for accuracy, your smug deconstruction of common sense — it doesn’t make you thoughtful. It doesn’t make you wise. It doesn’t make you progressive. It makes you an asshole. It makes you worse than a bystander. A bystander does nothing. He watches from afar. You step into the fray just to prod the victim for the imprecision of their screams. I’m not going to step in too, laying out my rebuttal over the sound of grinding bone. It’s just not worth it.
Here’s my resolution: As long as pimps, priests, and politicians know what a female body is, I do too. The moment they’re confused — the moment they hesitate, the moment they qualify, the moment they adopt the restraint and caution you demand from the targets of their abuse— then I’ll happily open myself up to ambiguity. Until then, I beg you. Reserve your philosopher’s curiosity, your scientific rigor, for the ten thousand other questions that don’tmake a thought experiment out of an atrocity. What marks the division between knowledge and belief? How did life develop from non-life? Does P = NP? At what point does a man losing his hair become bald and not merely thinning? Go tweet at Rogaine and get their thoughts on that conundrum. Leave women alone.
Edgar Allen Poe- Marries first cousin when she is 13 and he is 27
Everyone- Oh my god, The Tell-Tale Heart is such a beautiful piece! Have you read it? What do you mean you didn’t like it?
Charles Dickens- Abuses wife and tries to have her diagnosed as mentally ill and committed to an asylum after blaming her for “causing him financial strain” by “choosing” to become pregnant with each of his ten children.
Everyone- What do you mean you haven’t read Oliver Twist? Don’t you appreciate classic literature? It’s so good!
Fyodor Dostoyevsky- Gambles away all of wife’s possessions, makes countless comments about how women are incapable of persistence or devotion to anything.
Everyone- I heard you like Russian literature! Have you read Crime and Punishment? Oof, well I guess you’re not a real fan then.
TS Elliot- Horribly misogynistic and antisemitic. Viewed women and Jews as responsible for all irrationality in the word and considered female sexuality disgusting and the work of “modern succubi”.
Everyone- You’ve never read a TS Elliot poem? But I thought you liked poetry. Let me email you some right now!
August Strindberg- Referred to women as “half-apes” and “instinctively evil animals” and denounced anyone who considered giving them any rights.
Lit Professors- If you refuse to read this play you’re getting an F. No I don’t care if you have personal objections. Stop being sensitive.
JK Rowling- Shares the controversial opinion that biological sex is real, and that sex-based discrimination has lived consequences.
Everyone- Oh my god, how can you still like Harry Potter? What’s it like literally advocating for violence against trans people? You’re such garbage. Just let me pick you something acceptable to read from my bookshelf containing 10,001 male authors who hated women on the basis of biological sex. Have you read Pygmalion? As long as you ignore the horrific way that women are reduced nothing more than their biological anatomy, it’s a great read!
During World War II, 600,000 African-American women entered the wartime workforce. Previously, black women’s work in the United States was largely limited to domestic service and agricultural work, and wartime industries meant new and better-paying opportunities – if they made it through the hiring process, that is. White women were the targets of the U.S. government’s propaganda efforts, as embodied in the lasting and lauded image of Rosie the Riveter.Though largely ignored in America’s popular history of World War II, black women’s important contributions in World War II factories, which weren’t always so welcoming, are stunningly captured in these comparably rare snapshots of black Rosie the Riveters.
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Most of these fics are rated T or M so if you’re underage or that’s not your thing then these probably won’t be for you. Fics are broken down into categories to make it easier and each states number of chapters, rating and word count. Enjoy!
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CANON FICS
A Dream Within a Dream by BlindAssassinUK (M, 25 chapters, 125k words)
Booth struggles to recover from his brain surgery and with Sweets’ assessment that his feelings for Bones aren’t real. As if this wasn’t enough to keep our favourite FBI agent busy, a serial killer comes to town. Mostly written in tandem with Season 5.
A Lotta Heart by nelliesbones (M, 10 chapters, 18k words)
“Bones, she believes in the system.” Except that she didn’t. Not completely. Not anymore… This is a story about a woman protecting her family. A story about the man who loves her. Spoilerfree, warm-hearted and M for a reason.
An Aggregation of Maladjusted Companions by Jazzyproz (M, 43 chapters, 250k words)
Suffering from a declining solve rate following their returns to DC, Booth and Brennan are forced to attend a team-building convention. Neither of them think they need the workshops or exercises, but it’s apparent to everyone around them that if they don’t do something, the whole team will soon be falling apart. Can they fix their broken partnership?
An Unexpected Outcome by BB-loverr (M, 5 chapters, 8k)
Before she could do anything Booth had her pinned. He made sure most of his weight was on his elbows so he wasn’t crushing her. Someone is after Bones & Booth is protecting her. Set in early season 5
Becoming One by nelliesbones (M, 21 chapters, 83k)
He is handsome, she is beautiful, and somewhere in between… they have made a baby. Warm-hearted and M for a reason. Slightly spoiler-y AN’s, the story itself is spoilerfree.
By Any Means Necessary by Heather Wyatt (M, 45 chapters, 433k, DARKER FIC)
When an overseas trip for Brennan leaves her in terrible danger, Booth does what is necessary to save her - even if what he is forced to do has the potential to drive her away from him forever. Set in season 5, pre-100th; Inspired by the movie “Taken”.
Can You Save Her, Agent Booth? by Jazzyproz (M, 62 chapters, 464k)
Booth receives a disturbing text in the middle of the night aboout Bones - will he be able to find her in time? Or will he lose her forever? Will this guy really kill her, or is it just a bluff?
For You, I’d Bleed Myself Dry by coffeehelps (M, 1 chapter, 11k)
The night that Booth took a bullet for Brennan in front of that karaoke stage was forever ingrained in Brennan’s mind. Every year, on the anniversary of that night, Brennan experiences those volatile feelings all over again… and they help her realize just how much Booth means to her.
Another favourite scene is Matthew telling Elizabeth that not only will the realm survive her death but that she’ll be remembered as England’s greatest monarch!
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