Lena Holzer is an academic at Cambridge University who recently caught the attention of some alt right accounts on X/twitter. She is specifically recognized for her work in the field of law with a focus on gender, race, and sexuality. She holds the position of Assistant Professor in Gender, Race, and the Law at the University of Cambridge’s Law Faculty and is a Sheila Lesley Fellow at Girton College. The X post referenced her contention that recording the sex of babies at birth was an “intrinsically violent” act because it goes beyond recording “sex”, which has itself not been defined.
Registering a newborn’s gender/sex on the birth certificate is usually seen as a mere formality that reflects a natural state of affairs. This article, however, shows that the registration of gender/sex does something else than record naturally given sex differences in bodies; it actually produces and shapes bodies to develop in a way conformant with understandings of sexual dimorphism. Sexed bodies are therefore not pre-discursive and static objects, but they are constantly in the process of becoming, influenced by socio-legal procedures, including gender/sex registration. By analysing the effects of registering the legal gender/sex on birth certificates and the change of gender markers thereof in various jurisdictions, in particular Australian states and territories, the article aims to show how bodies of intersex as well as endosex cis and trans persons are made into what they are expected to be: sexually dimorphic. It concludes that legally assigning a gender/sex has intrinsically violent effects on bodies, something that could be avoided by eliminating the public registration of gender/sex.
Holzer published her work in 2019 and this kind of academic twittering is hardly surprising coming from Queer and Feminist Studies zealots. It may still shock the normies but the likes of Holzer ruled X when it was still Twitter. Being experts in Critical Legal Studies, those such as Holzer are the ones sports governing bodies, government departments and legacy media rely upon to make policy that impacts on millions. People like Holzer shape international human rights laws.
Here she is holding forth with the confidence of a true expert :
My issue is that I read or listen to people like Holzer and think that they are categorically wrong and that their worldview and reasoned arguments rest on many false premises. The stated aim is of course social justice for a tiny cohort – trans and intersex- and I can understand, though with rapidly diminishing sympathy, the travails of these groups. But it seems to me that there is a breathtaking arrogance in thinking that biology and nature are subservient to law, that the canon can dictate and shape the world. It is a surprisingly medieval religious mindset. If all the priests were to concur that the sun revolved around the earth, so be it. The ruling is the substance of the matter, nothing else. This is what enabled the judge in Australia to rule against Sal Grover – there was a body of (recent) law that needed to be upheld, not common sense nor justice for the greater number of people, women. And ironically, the IOC accepted nothing but the passport of Iman Khelif as absolute proof that he was a woman. Do you notice how we keep disappearing down the rabbithole and coming back to the same point?
