Trans Lawyer Pushing To Redefine ‘Sex’ Can’t Produce A Definition
This article discusses a recent interview with Chase Strangio, a transgender ACLU attorney known for arguing landmark Supreme court cases related to transgender rights, such as *Bostock* adn *Skrmetti*.In the interview, conducted by Ross Douthat on the New York Times podcast “Captivating Times,” Strangio expresses the view that society and the Supreme Court should redefine the concept of “sex” beyond conventional biological definitions. However, when pressed to clearly define what it means to be male or female, Strangio struggles to provide a coherent and scientifically grounded explanation, instead relying on subjective feelings and ideological arguments.
Strangio, who presents as a man, is noted as the first transgender attorney to argue before the Supreme Court. She has openly criticized the Court and expressed skepticism toward the Constitution and legal system. She denies the existence of a strictly “male body,” describing physical traits like a penis as simply “unusual body parts for a woman.” This perspective reflects a broader gender ideology that views sex and gender identity as primarily based on personal self-understanding rather than biological facts.
The article critiques this view as anti-scientific and argues that the transgender rights movement, by rejecting the biological reality of male and female, is at odds with worldwide human nature. It highlights how strangio’s positions reveal internal incoherence in gender theory, which even mainstream outlets like The New York Times acknowledge has caused setbacks for the movement.
The author urges readers to reject the pressure to accept gender ideology uncritically, including the use of gender pronouns and the idea of “gender identity” as an objective reality. Instead, the article calls for embracing the biological truth that all humans are male or female on a cellular level, viewing this reality as profound and freeing. It concludes by invoking philosophical and religious appeals to truth as a path to overcoming what it portrays as a political and ideological deception.
Late last week, Chase Strangio, an ACLU attorney who worked on the landmark Supreme Court cases Bostock and Skrmetti, sat for a long-form interview with Ross Douthat on his New York Times podcast, “Interesting Times.” Despite Strangio’s belief that SCOTUS and society in general should redefine “sex” to suit her desires, she found herself totally unable to present a coherent alternative definition without resorting to personal feelings and ideological babble.
Strangio, a woman who presents as a man, is the first transgender-identifying attorney to argue before our land’s highest court, an institution Strangio has called “vile.” In true revolutionary fashion, she described herself to NBC News in 2019 as “a civil rights and constitutional lawyer who fundamentally doesn’t believe in the Constitution and the legal system.”
It is enlightening to listen to gender activists when they are asked to explain what it means to be male or female. Their belief system rests on a wholly untenable, anti-scientific view of what it means to be human, so they say utterly astonishing things, expecting the rest of us to just believe them. Strangio demonstrated this dramatically in her discussion with Douthat, and in previous media appearances.
This past June, The New York Times Magazine explained that Strangio believes “There [is] no such thing as a ‘male body.’”
“A penis is not a male body part. It’s just an unusual body part for a woman,” the article quotes Strangio saying.
In a Slate essay in 2016, Strangio confessed gnostically, “I was assigned female at birth, but I have never had a female body.” Yet, she explains, “There is plainly no one type of body that we could accurately label a ‘male body,’” adding, “It is a choice to refer to some bodies as male and some bodies as female, not a fact.”
Of course, she believes that “trans” bodies are very real and objectively “true.” Why else is “misgendering” someone such an offense? Strangio wrote in The New York Times last December, days before she unsuccessfully argued United States vs. Skrmetti before the U.S. Supreme Court, that being able to medically change her body to appear male saved her life. She wants a male body to mean something, sometimes.
We’re being hustled here. Gender pronouns are mandatory, but natural bodies are fiction. This is the madness of trans politics. On this, faithful Christians and atheistic evolutionists agree.
In her conversation with Douthat, Strangio is supremely confident discussing the finer points of the law she admits she doesn’t believe in. Watch the interview and notice Strangio’s confidence clearly shift when Douthat interrogates her on her working definition of sex, asking, “What does it mean to have a male or female sex assigned at birth, as distinct from being male or female in biological terms?”
As she answers, note the subjective preface to Douthat’s direct question: “To me, what that distinction means is at birth, when our children are born, by and large, a doctor looks at their genitals and says, ‘You have a penis. We’re going to put M. You have a vagina, we’re going to put F.’”
By and large? You can almost see Strangio’s hapless obstetricians shrugging, hoping they guessed correctly with such primitive indicators.
Strangio then inserts her own anti-scientific assumptions (emphasis mine):
The external genitalia are one facet of the biological components of sex. There are others – chromosomes, hormones, secondary sex characteristics, and I would include within my understanding of sex, how we see ourselves. So, these are different aspects of our biological sex.
Note the subjectivity in that explanation and this conclusion, which follows: “So, I would say that a man or a woman is someone who understands in their core that they are a man or a woman.”
Sex as self-perception is a dreamy ideology as thin as smoke, and just as toxic. Detransitioners are the receipts.
Douthat presses Strangio on this point, asking, “Is there a distinction between gender identity and biological sex? Or is this just a continuum?”
Strangio defaults to word salads again. “The way I understand it, our gender identity is in our bodies, it’s in our minds, [and therefore] it has a biological component.” But, she adds, “I’m not saying it is biological sex, as such.” That is because she knows she can’t. No science has established this assertion.
“I do think that oftentimes, the most salient biological components of our sex diverge from our gender identity,” she continues, “and those things are the disconnect that makes someone trans.”
I do think that oftentimes … quite the vote of scientific certainty!
The trans revolution is built upon the crass rejection of the universal reality of male and female. And that is why the project is losing steam. Trans revolutionaries set themselves against reality and demand we all play along.
Even The New York Times Magazine admitted on June 19, the day after SCOTUS decided against Strangio in Skrmetti, that the incoherence of gender theory on display in that case could “set the movement back a generation.” Yet ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero called Skrmetti “the best case in the transgender rights docket.”
Younger LGBT activists like Strangio, the magazine explained, sought to “deconstruct assumptions about what was normal — to dismantle bourgeois institutions, not seek inclusion in them,” as assimilationists successfully did just years before in Obergefell.
The institution these activists are trying to dismantle is reality itself. So how do reasonable people respond?
Our first task is to reject the game we are being bullied into cooperating with, too often with manipulative appeals to our human and Christian kindness. It is never loving, kind, or wise to ignore reality. Ignore that bullying without hesitation or apology.
Second, refuse to participate in the gender pronoun catechism of this wholly pagan religion. Do not uncritically use the term “transgender,” as if it means something. Even the American Psychiatric Association admits it is not a medical term, nor a psychiatric diagnosis. Refuse to pretend that “gender identity” is real, either. It is an ideological artifice referring to nothing science can measure.
Live under the reality that to be human is to be male or female — for every cell in the human body is sexed, after all — and cherish the profound mystery and beauty that this indicates. Refusing to live by lies or illusion on this matter is the most direct and powerful way to overcome our current political deception. As the great Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn taught us in 1974 regarding Marxist lies, “when people renounce lies, lies simply cease to exist. Like parasites, they can only survive when attached to a person.”
Or, as someone of even greater significance once said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
Glenn T. Stanton is the director of family formation studies at Focus on the Family and the author of “The Myth of the Dying Church.”
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