The 144th Congress of Correction, which was held between August 15 to August 20, 2014 in Salt Lake City, featured a workshop over the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) and its ramifications for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) populations in detention. The consensus of those presenting this workshop was that inmates of these particular orientations were at increased risk for sexual victimization. Never once during the course of this workshop was the possibility raised of LGBTI inmates actually perpetrating such victimization. This omission betrayed an implicit partiality for those who embrace unconventional sexual orientations. Perhaps this omission was, to some extent, attributable to the overall outlook of those who assembled the workshop. The chief speaker was Bernadette Brown, who, in addition to being a Senior Program Specialist for the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, is a self-avowed lesbian. During her presentation, Brown boldly declared, “Gender is a social construct”.
This radical claim, which hinges on a purported disjunction between sex and gender, is certainly nothing new. In recent years, it has been largely popularized by socially and politically active feminists. Recognizing the equally advantageous implications of the sex/gender dichotomy for their own social movement, various LGBTI rights organizations have adopted it as a central rationale for their platforms as well. Underpinning the claim is the tacit promotion of androgyny as normative. In turn, the promotion of androgyny can be traced further back to the most pervasive of ancient heresies: Gnosticism. The pseudepigraphical Gospel of Thomas exemplifies this normative view of androgyny. (more...)
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