Was Julius Caesar male or female? Be careful not to assume, or you might offend the dead emperor.
These are the new rules being thrust upon academics, as chronicled by the conservative education-based publication The College Fix on Monday.
“Gender activists push to bar anthropologists from identifying human remains as ‘male’ or ‘female,'” the headline reads.
The paper outlines a movement in anthropology to adopt the left’s new orthodoxy on sex, by which it already dishes out retribution against those who refuse to play along.
“As soon as ancient human remains are excavated, archaeologists begin the work of determining a number of traits about the individual, including age, race and gender,” The College Fix reported. “But gender activists argue scientists cannot know how an ancient individual identified themselves.”
A group called the “Trans Doe Task Force” has begun the process of exploring “ways in which current standards in forensic human identification do a disservice to people who do not clearly fit the gender binary.”
“We propose a gender-expansive approach to human identification by combing missing and unidentified databases looking for contextual clues such as decedents wearing clothing culturally coded to a gender other than their assigned sex,” reads the mission statement.
In other words, occasional cross-dressing, which is common among children and adolescents today as it was hundreds of years ago, might be code for transgenderism. Thus a snapshot into the life of an ancient person for whom evidence suggests engagement in the practice must mean that individual was transgender and should be identified as such.
That instant identification conforms with today’s knee-jerk approach, which is enshrined by “gender-affirming care,” leaving people’s questions about their own identity without scrutiny. Never mind that 70 percent of children today eventually outgrow their gender dysphoria. That number is likely far higher for children who exhibited signs of gender dysphoria more than 100 years ago in the absence of peer influences breeding what journalist Abigail Shrier explains in her investigative book “Irreversible Damage” as a “social contagion.”
Shrier’s findings undermine the premise of this movement to redefine the sexual boundaries of the ancients by modern left-wing standards. While the existence of trans-identified people might not be unique to the 20th and 21st centuries, (the Roman Emperor Elagabalus reportedly sought so-called sex-reassignment surgery), the sudden spike in those claiming alternate identities is. Even The New York Times has finally admitted that much.
“But there is something else, too,” Shrier writes, explaining a contrast between the presence of homosexuality versus transgenderism over time, specifically as it relates to conversion therapy.
We know homosexuality can’t be eliminated through socialization–because it hasn’t been for thousands of years, in all kinds of cultures that specifically attempted to repress it. And we have voluminous records, throughout history, of gay writers, poets, leaders, and philosophers living under oppressive regimes, even battling their own homosexuality, unsuccessfully. We don’t have any similar weight of history telling us that we can’t treat gender dysphoria.
The concept of transgenderism, meanwhile, remains a foreign one among primitive tribes.
There is already retribution, however, against academics who refuse to get on board with the trans movement’s latest antics to erase sex with the assumption of widespread transgenderism among ancient people.
Whether it be motivated by a bizarre fantasy of ancient people or an obsession of professors seeking tenure to prove who’s more “progressive,” proponents have already deployed familiar tactics to coerce their colleagues to adopt their practice and refuse projections of so-called gender identity onto uncovered remains.
San Jose State Archaeology Professor Elizabeth Weiss was reportedly barred from her school’s human remains collection and is now engaged in litigation to reclaim access, according to The College Fix. The lawsuit was filed after she opposed the repatriation of remains, but she is also a critic of efforts to erase gender descriptions of remains until ancient lifestyles can prove correspondence with a certain sex, if their individual lifestyle can even be studied.
“Over time, biological anthropologists and archaeologists worked hard to determine which traits are determined by sex, regardless of time and culture,” Weiss told The College Fix. “This new policy of erasing this progress is a step back for science and women.”
“Sexing skeletal remains is a critical skill in forensics and any diminishing of this skill will negatively impact criminal investigations, denying the victims and their families justice,” Weiss added.
