A Sisyphean Task

Sisyphean
adjective
variants or less commonly Sisyphian
: of, relating to, or suggestive of the labors of Sisyphus
specifically : requiring continual and often ineffective effort
a Sisyphean task
Merriam-Webster Dictionary

You might remember last year at the Senate hearing on the Ketanji Brown Jackson confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court she was asked by Sen. Marsha Blackburnto to define "woman." 

That is now the task that the Republicans have given themselves; to define sex & gender!

States’ push to define sex decried as erasing trans people
AP News
By John Hanna
February 15, 2023


[…]

Nationally, conservatives are pushing dozens of proposals in statehouses to restrict transgender athletes, gender-affirming care and drag shows. But in measures like Kansas’, LGBTQ-rights advocates see a new, sweeping effort to erase trans people’s legal existence, deny recognition to nonbinary or gender-fluid people and ignore those who are intersex — people born with genitalia, reproductive organs, chromosomes and/or hormone levels that don’t fit typical definitions for male or female.

[…]

The Kansas bill had a hearing Wednesday before the state Senate’s health committee and is similar to a Republican measure introduced in the U.S. House last year. Oklahoma’s Legislature is weighing a similar proposal, while North Dakota lawmakers are considering a resolution that would urge public schools and other “public entities” to distinguish “between the sexes according to biological sex at birth.” Mississippi lawmakers had three proposals like Kansas’, but none advanced this year.

New Hampshire, Tennessee and Texas also have proposals to define male and female in state law, and a Republican lawmaker in South Carolina has proposed an amendment to the state’s constitution to declare that legally, a person’s gender would be based on anatomy at birth, not a “psychological, chosen, or subjective experience of gender.”

That is an impossible task, Mother Nature does not like to be put in boxes!

Brandi also said proclaiming that sex is binary ignores that intersex conditions and differences in gender identity exist.

At birth, external genital anatomy can be ambiguous, sometimes because of differences in sex development, or intersex conditions, which affect about 1% of the population.

Intersex conditions can involve external genitals that don’t match a person’s sex chromosomes. In one condition, testes develop internally but external genitals and breasts appear female. These babies are usually assigned female at birth, but their bodies will never produce eggs.

“There’s variation,” Brandi said. “Not everyone fits into this exact box.’’

There has been much research into how people identify their gender and guess what? They determined that gender is in our heads. The researchers looked at intersex people who were operated on to “correct” gender. In a New York Times article…

Declaring With Clarity, When Gender Is Ambiguous
By Claudia Dreifus
May 31, 2005


Dr. William G. Reiner, a faculty member at the University of Oklahoma and Johns Hopkins, says he is just a "dull guy leading a dull life."

That seems unlikely. A 57-year-old psychiatrist and urologist, Dr. Reiner is a leading specialist in the treatment of children with the intersexual condition, boys and girls born with ambiguous genitalia.

"I like working with these children," he said on a break in a meeting in Washington, where he had made a presentation before the American Association for the Advancement of Science. "They've had atypical life experiences, and they tend to be extraordinarily sensitive and vulnerable. They see an aspect of what it means to be alive in a different way from the rest of us."

[…]

Q. Aren't these intersex conditions rather rare?

A. There are probably around 1,000 intersex babies born every year in the United States. The numbers can add up. The term actually refers to six different conditions where children are born with ambiguous sexual structures.

[...]

You can get genetic girls who look from the outside like males because they were exposed to male hormones at a critical stage of fetal development. Conversely, you can get genetic males looking like females because they didn't get enough male hormones in utero.

So what did he find?

Q. How do you know what constitutes gender identity?

A. As part of a research study, I've personally seen and assessed 400 children with major anomalies of the genitals. Of those, approximately 100 might be called "intersex." Our findings have been many and complex. The most important is that about 60 percent of the genetic male children raised as female have retransitioned into males.

Did you get that? There is something inside us that tells us that we are male or female… not what’s between your legs!

Q. What conclusions do you draw from your study?

A. That sexual identity is individual, unique and intuitive and that the only person who really knows what it is is the person themselves. If we as physicians or scientists want to know about a person's sexual identity, we have to ask them.

And here these Republicans in their animosity against us have given themselves a Sisyphean Task, to define the impossible, I can see many, many lawsuits going to the Supreme Court for the courts to rule on something that can’t be defined.

Can you imagine what garbage is going to come out of this animosity will be? Can you imagine what it will be like if you are a cis gender woman and you have to prove your gender because you look too masculine... how degrading! 

I am a woman because I know myself to be a woman.