How Radical Feminism Sowed the Seeds of Our Transgender Moment
The transgender movement originates in the radical feminist project begun after World War II. The founding mother of radical feminism is French thinker Simone de Beauvoir, whose book, “The Second Sex,” was published in America in 1953.
Beauvoir begins her book by asking, “What is a woman?” Her answer sets the stage for subsequent feminist thought: “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” Society makes or constructs a woman’s identity, not nature or God.
That socially constructed identity would eventually be called “gender.” If society would just stop pigeonholing girls into artificial feminine roles, second-wave feminists argue, they would no longer act as if they were “the second sex” and subordinate to men....