Political ideology has always been a dangerous thing, particularly when utopians get power and get impatient, but political ideology is also dangerous when it causes large numbers of people to reject science in the name of some political agenda. Listening to influential educators, politicians, and pundits today, one might get the impression that human biology is on the same level as astrology.
Because of the widespread influence of political ideologies, a large number of people today have a difficult time defining what it is to be male or female. Those who have a stake in convincing the multitudes that the emperor is actually wearing clothes play shell games with terms like "gender" and "biology" in a deceitful attempt to cloud the issue.
But what if we remove political ideology from the equation and attempt to answer the root question? Is that possible? Well, it's worth a try.
Imagine an alien species, far more intelligent than human beings, comes to this planet to examine its inhabitants. Imagine one group of these aliens is tasked with studying everything there is to know about humans. What are some of the things this hyper-intelligent alien species will discover? Will they discover that aside from minor differences in height, weight, hair, eye, and skin color, that all humans are identical in every way? Or will they discover that although all humans have much in common, approximately half of humans differ in significant ways from the other half? If this alien species is thorough in its investigations, it will note that all humans have skeletons, muscles, sensory organs, as well as self-contained respiratory, circulatory, and nervous systems. It will also notice occasional defects in each of these, but it will be able to discern the norm by which defects are measured. Even if this alien species is not thorough, it will discover that unlike the human respiratory, circulatory, and nervous systems, the human reproductive system is not self-contained in each individual human. It will discover that a completely functioning human reproductive system takes two humans, each of which has half of the reproductive system.
It will discover that half of the humans on this planet produce one kind of reproductive cell (or gamete), which we call ova or egg cells. The other half of the humans produce another kind of reproductive cell, which we call sperm cells. The aliens observe that when these reproductive cells unite, they produce a zygote - a genetically unique human in the earliest stage of its development. They will observe how the new human being develops and grows inside the human that produced the egg cell rather than inside the human that produced the sperm cell. They will observe the process of childbirth. They will observe how the human who gave birth feeds the new child with another biological feature belonging to only half the human race.
Given that this alien species is intelligent, would it be able to make a biological categorization based on the objective and quantifiable biological differences it observed among humans? Of course. It might even coin words to note these differences. It might, for example, designate one half of the human race with a word something like "male" and the other half with a word something like "female." The word "male" would designate those humans who, when mature, produce sperm cells. The word "female" would designate those humans who, when mature, produce egg cells. Any intelligent species capable of minimal competent scientific research would come to the same conclusion based on the biology of human beings. The only species who might deny the conclusion would be species with an agenda, species incapable of doing any science, or species only capable of pseudo-science.
Imagine, however, that the aliens now do further observation of human males and females, each of which has half of a human reproductive system. Such study will reveal that the biological difference extends all the way down to the DNA of males and females. The aliens will notice that those humans with the male half of the reproductive system have XY chromosomes in every cell, while those humans with the female half of the reproductive system have XX chromosomes in every cell.
They will also notice that even though all humans have muscles, males on average have greater muscle mass and strength. They will notice that the muscle strength of females is typically between 40 - 75% of male muscle strength. They will notice that even though both males and females have respiratory systems, males generally have narrower airways and larger lungs. They will notice that even though both males and females have circulatory systems, males generally have wider blood vessels and larger hearts.
They will also notice that almost all of the things they have discovered about male and female human beings have been known by human beings themselves for as long as human beings have had functioning brains. Of course, the hypothetical aliens will not be able to physically observe things like the human soul or know that all human beings are created in the image of God, but they are able to discern the biological similarities and differences.
The point of all this is that if we set political ideology aside and simply focus on what any minimally intelligent being would observe upon a basic examination of the biology of human beings, the issue is not that complicated. It becomes complicated only when political ideologues complicate it in the name of a political agenda. And the only political agendas powerful enough to compel normally intelligent people to question or deny the blatantly obvious are agendas connected with sexual desires.
But how does such an ideology move from ridiculous to dangerous? What difference does it make if some people assert that someone's subjective feelings, rather than objective biology, should determine whether that person is male or female? It makes a difference, first, because such an ideology endangers any individual man who feels that he is a woman and any individual woman who feels that she is a man.
One immediate danger is medical. Medical science is grounded in biology. Surgeons and doctors know how to treat human beings because they have studied human biology. Given that there are objective biological differences between male and female human beings, competent doctors have to take the actual biology of an individual into account. In particular, doctors who treat elements of the human reproductive system have to know whether they are dealing with a male or a female. When biological males insist on being treated by gynecologists, it's dangerous. You might as well ask your ear, nose, and throat specialist to do your heart surgery.
The medical danger is heightened by quacks who buy into the ideology and try to conform reality to the feelings of an individual patient through surgical mutilation of the body or the injection of hormones. Neither is going to make a person with XX chromosomes have XY chromosomes or vice versa. Surgery merely results in an extreme and irreversible form of cosplay, and hormone injections are a form of medical malpractice that will likely result in cancers and other serious diseases. When such procedures are performed on young children, the medical malpractice becomes child abuse and exploitation. Compassionate medicine based on biological facts should focus on aligning a person's feelings with reality when the feelings do not match reality. This is easily understood in the case of anorexia when a dangerously underweight person self-identifies as fat. Imagine a doctor who treated such a dangerously underweight person who feels fat by saying, "I respect your pronouns and your adjectives. You feel that you are fat, so you are fat. Let's do surgery and staple your stomach, and I'll also prescribe some appetite suppressors." What would we say about such a person? We would say this doctor is a sociopath whose medical license needs to be revoked before someone is killed. Well, the same should be said of any doctor who says that a male who feels that he is a female is a female or that a female who feels that she is male is a male. Feelings do not define reality. A truly compassionate and competent doctor would work to get the anorexic patient to see reality as it actually is, and a truly compassionate and competent doctor would work to get a patient with gender dysphoria to come to grips with reality as it actually is. Anything else is sadistic. Unfortunately, with sexual self-identity, many doctors are pressured to do the opposite of what is compassionate and competent and instead endanger human beings by trying to make reality something it isn't and something it can never be.
This political ideology also creates dangers for others. We have already witnessed the damage done to women's sports by biological males who insist on competing against biological females. The objective physical differences between males and females is absurdly dismissed as if it doesn't matter in a physical competition. Imagine a situation in which a heavyweight boxer self-identified as a flyweight and was allowed to box against flyweight competitors. Would people recognize the problem? Would they recognize the unfairness to the flyweight boxers? It's hard to say anymore. Many don't recognize the problem of having a biologically male swimmer compete against biologically female swimmers even though it is exactly the same kind of situation that would exist in the hypothetical boxing situation.
It is the height of irony that an ideology created by second wave feminists is effectually one of the most mysogynistic ideologies ever to exist. It completely disregards and disrespects biologically female athletes and the work they have done to reach the levels they have reached. In many of the sports where this has occurred so far, there has been no physical danger to the female competitors, but if the ideology continues to expand, eventually a female competitor will get hurt or worse. But do the ideologues care? No. The ideology trumps everything including the safety of women.
Another danger is created by those who would take advantage of the ideology to pursue their own perverse goals. Human beings lie. Is it really difficult to imagine a teenage boy or even a grown man lying about his sexual identity in order to get into a female locker room and/or shower? Is it really difficult to imagine a male criminal lying about his sexual identity in an attempt to get placed in a women's prison? It's not a matter of if, but when.
At its root, the main problem with the ideologues is that they won't accept the fact that reality is what it is regardless of what you or I think. The ideologues assert that each of us can effectively create our own reality regardless of what reality actually is. Each of us can be a god. In other words, the politically correct ideology today is what, for most of human history, has been defined as delusion and insanity.
This political ideology is an extreme form of pseudo-scientific nonsense on the same level as belief that the earth is flat. Thankfully those who believe the earth is flat have not yet been able to tie their view to some deviant sexual desire. If they ever do, affirming the objective truth of a spherical earth might start to be considered as offensive as affirming the objective truth of biological differences between males and females. Some will say that's silly. How could people ever be bullied into affirming something so self-evidentially absurd? Well, they already have been, and they are already doing it. And those who speak the truth and say out loud what every sane person knows to be true are labeled as bigots. Why? Because ideology trumps truth in the minds of many powerful people. The ideology gives them power, so they simply redefine lies as truth.
Christians, however, are not to live by lies. Christians are to stand for and live by truth, and the truth is simple in this case: The emperor has no clothes.