By Betsy Mayer
Defining ones gender based on self-perception is rapidly gaining acceptance with governments, academic institutions, and the business world. The UKs National Health Service website states that, “Biological sex is assigned at birth, depending on the appearance of the genitals. Gender identity is the gender that a person ‘identifies’ with or feels themselves to be.” It explains that gender dysphoria is a mismatch between ones biological sex and gender identity.
Young people are increasingly challenging gender “stereotypes.” In a recent US survey of 1,000 18-34 year-olds by Fusion, a multi-platform media company that targets a young and diverse audience, fifty percent believed that gender is not binary—that is, limited to male or female.
When The Guardian, a British daily, invited millennials to define their gender, they received a variety of responses: “My gender is an evolving thing, like my sexuality;” said Peyton Quinn, 24, “the more I explore it the more it changes. The only reason why I feel I should put a label on it is just to make it easier for other people.”
“Cam, 20, from Ireland has experienced as many as 10 different genders, including male, female, bigender and agender. ‘Yesterday I came across another word: fluid flux. This fits with me because I experience several genders but they vary in intensity. They are socially constructed genders inasmuch as I would probably have described them differently in another civilisation, but the feeling is still innate.’”
So, how many subjective “gender identities” currently exist? Tumblr, a social media site has listed 112 genders and 70 sexual orientations. The site encourages users to “Feel free to mix and match your own prefixes and suffixes to create the identity that best describes you.”
When gender is defined as a feeling, not as biology, there is no end to the ensuing confusion, and we are plunged into a world void of any meaningful reality. Gender fluidity is also a direct attack on God who created both male and female to express His image. See Genesis 1:26.
Earlier civilizations who turned aside from God’s express commands about sexuality and gender experienced the natural consequences of this rebellion: “God gave them over to a reprobate mind (a mind void of conscience, lawless) to do those things which are not convenient (fitting). Romans 1:28.
As we witness this rapid descent into the darkest forms of human thinking and behavior, we must love the confused, but we must not join their confusion.
“Looking down to the last days, the same infinite power declares, concerning those who ‘received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved,’ ‘For this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.’ As they reject the teachings of His Word, God withdraws His Spirit, and leaves them to the deceptions which they love.” Early Writings, page 45.