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The effort to blur and even erase gender distinctions is a decades-long effort by liberal activists to achieve equality but the effort is only serving to endanger the very women the movement supposedly champions.

That’s the premise of “Sex Scandal: The Drive to Abolish Male and Female” by journalist and Catholic Association Senior Fellow Ashley McGuire.

She says the movement has far larger goals than winning restroom and locker room accommodation for people who believe they are a different sex than their anatomy would indicate.

“The endgame is being pushed by an elite segment of society that thinks that equality only will come when we all seem truly identical or when we ‘liberate’ ourselves from this idea of sex and gender,” said McGuire.  “Women are the ones who lose in a world where it’s scandalous to even use the word ‘woman’ as a category.”

While many social conservatives see the transgender movement bursting onto the scene in just the past few years, McGuire says the larger effort has been unfolding for decades.

“Radical left-wing feminists pushed this idea that we’re very gendered, that we’ve been socialized to be a certain way, that these are superficial things and that sex is something very random and we just need to get ourselves out of these male and female boxes for women to be equal like men.  We’re just starting to see some of the most extreme manifestations of it now, a few decades later,” said McGuire.

In her book, McGuire highlights stories such as a schoolteacher removing Legos from her classroom because boys were far more likely to play with them than girls and high schools removing Homecoming king and queen from the lexicon in favor of ‘royalty.’

Target stores have stopped labeling toys for boys and girls and there is even a push to stop dividing boys and girls clothes into different sections of the stores.

“What we’re seeing now is society actually actively encouraging confusion.  That’s the kind of things parents have to resist, whether they’re getting it in their consumer choices or whether it’s actually being taught in their schools,” said McGuire.  “This idea that toys and clothes have to be gender neutral or else you’re doing some sort of harm to your children is completely false,” said McGuire.

But it’s not just kids who deal with the consequences of the effort to eradicate gender and sex.  McGuire says adult women are paying the price, including those serving in the military.  She says women in the service can now be forced to the front lines of combat if they meet the physical requirements.

In 2016, the issue took on a greater dimension, when Congress very nearly required all women to register with Selective Service, which could one day make them eligible for non-voluntary service, possibly even in combat.

“It’s ironic to me that we’re suddenly talking about taking away choice for women, a choice as to whether they’re going to be put into some of the most dangerous situations possible,” said McGuire.

“The Marines just had their boot camp go co-ed and now they’re going to be putting men and women into the same sleeping quarters.  That raises all sorts of risk for sexual assault, lawsuits, rape and things like that,” said McGuire.

College campuses also continue to pursue policies that are marketed as progressive but that McGuire believes puts women at great risk, especially in residential housing.

“Something like 80 percent of rapes (on campus) happen in college dorms.  A lot smaller percentage than you think happen in fraternities and sororities or off-campus housing.  That shouldn’t surprise us because most of these dorms are co-ed,” said McGuire.

“The idea being that men and women are no different.  We can put them in the same building where they’re going to sleep and shower.  Often they’re showering and bathing in the same bathroom.  Some (colleges) are already implementing co-ed dorm rooms but at the same time wondering why women are being raped left and right,” aid McGuire.

So what do feminists have to say in response to this effort endangering women?  McGuire says the left is very good at silencing opposing views.

“They’re trying to stifle any sort of dissent on the issue.  I think there are very few people speaking out against it,” said McGuire.

She also says it took awhile for many people to see how the movement could impact them and their children.

“This all seemed like something that didn’t affect people in a very personal way.  Increasingly, I think people are starting to see, whether it’s someone like me – a mother to a couple of young children – faced with the prospect that my kids might be taught in their school curriculum as young as kindergarten about gender being a malleable construct,” said McGuire.

McGuire says there are some groups on the left that believe ending gender and sex distinction is harmful to women so the fight against the cultural tide will lead to “strange bedfellows.”

She also says studies show that equality for women is being achieved without blowing up our cultural foundation.  Citing research showing that CEO’s with daughters are likely to offer better salaries and opportunities to women, McGuire says things are moving in the right direction and a radical redefinition of humanity is not needed.

“That’s the direction we should be going.  We should be exploring what our differences are, how our differences contribute in mutually beneficial ways, and trying to establish an equality based on that, not on this fake and unrealistic idea that if we make everything identical that’s when we’ll have achieved equality,” said McGuire.