One of the older customs of the human race was gender. Humanity was separated into male and female. This separation is the primary question of our day, despite our having already answered it. To put the matter plainly, the feminists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries won. Their goal was to eliminate the legal differences between men and women. They succeeded; there no longer are any. This was the end of gender.
Since this claim will undoubtedly be met with suspicion, let me explain. If we leave pregnancy and birth out of account as medical (rather than social) phenomena that are uncommon, what do women do that men do not? What do men do that women do not? Women tend to dress somewhat differently than men do, but old men dress differently than young men. What rights do men have that women do not? What rights do women have that men do not? What restrictions do either sex have that the other does not? The differences between the sexes are cosmetic, not of the sort that forge souls.
The important difference between the genders used to be that of destruction versus generation. This distinction was not absolute, and the genders were far more complex than merely being divided among these lines — it is more accurate to say that the genders divided these things than that these things divided the genders — but this division did exist, and it was significant. Men were shedders of blood, and women were generators of life. Men made up governments, for governments are destructive force. Governments imprison, execute, and make war. Women made up homes, for homes are creative. Homes create people. (Since it is now rarely understood, I should point out that it used to be commonly understood that both were necessary. Without homes, there is no purpose to destruction. Without destruction, there is no place to put homes. Indeed, without destruction, there is nothing to build homes out of.)
What the feminists introduced was the curious idea that women should be destructive. It was phrased in terms of rights, of course, but that doesn't change the meaning. If one has a right to vote, then one has a responsibility to vote well. We live in a cruel world; we live by destruction. If women are to vote, then they must be shedders of blood. They must vote in favor of death and pain and destruction. They must vote to kill other people's young men, lest we be killed in stead. They must vote to cage criminals, lest they destroy us from within. If women are to hold jobs like men, they must compete. They must work to put other people out of business. If women have the right to vote like men, then they have the responsibility to vote like men. If they have the right to work like men, they have the responsibility to work like men. In short, if they have the right to be men, then they have the responsibility to be men.
The results are not difficult to guess at; the influx of any group into another occasions shifts in both groups as the newcomers both adjust and change their new group to suit themselves. As women have become men, they naturally try to change what it means to be a man. The masculinization of women has caused the feminization of men. We must all be shedders of blood, but we must all be nurturers. Since we can no longer have separation of the sexes, we must now have war between the sexes. The end of gender is upon us, and we cannot escape its consequences. We now vie for the soul of humanity, we war with each other to define what it is to be human, because it can no longer mean two things.
We have not heard the last shot in this war, and I doubt that we ever will. There will not be peace if there will not be separation, because humanity must somehow balance these two opposite ideals, and it is difficult for one person to live two opposites without diminishing either.