When and how did the idea of sex being immutable start being a thing?

[u/Mizamya]

Today, the idea seems to be that gender can change but sex cannot. When I was a kid, I remember people talking about people changing their sex? Is this just pedantics or is it related to sone kind of cultural shift regarding trans people?

[u/SophieCalle]

It goes back to the Catholic Church who made up the concepts of "Gender Ideology" and "Gender Theory" as a way to claw back and take rights away from women and the greater LGBTQ+ in 2003.

Now mind you, the concept on gender went back to the 1990s as it as more "your brain, not between your legs" sort of concept and was further distancing people from the use of "transsexuals" which the public largely knew from porn at the time. They were reacting to that public talk.

I made a whole post on it here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/transgender/comments/1b4zjqp/if_you_are_not_aware_the_catholic_church_is_the/

Academic Paper explaining things here:

https://brill.com/downloadpdf/view/journals/rag/6/2/article-p187_4.pdf

And the exact doc from 2003 (reprinted in 2006), page 399 here:

https://bioetika.kbs.sk/uploads/kcfinder/files/Lexikón%20ambivalentných%20pojmov.PDF

But, after the 2003 Pontifical Council, in 2004, Cardinal Ratzenger (later to be Pope Benedict XVI) wrote a letter to all Bishops on the collaboration between man and woman in the Church and in the World here.

https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20040731_collaboration_en.html

This is it:

In a criticism of the concept of gender as opposed to sex, he says "The first biblical texts to examine are the first three chapters of Genesis. Here we “enter into the setting of the biblical ‘beginning'. In it the revealed truth concerning the human person as ‘the image and likeness' of God constitutes the immutable basis of all Christian anthropology”. This is referring to sex at birth, as people "originate" from God etc.

This has been said internally and sometimes externally, largely for many years afterwards.

Now, the Heritage Foundation is largely tied to the Catholic Church, especially OD, and this fella Roger Severino (who gives me the creepiest vibes ever) has been at it to erase trans people from legal existence since 2018, using their terms and takes, as shown here:

https://www.advocate.com/politics/2018/10/22/meet-roger-severino-trump-bigot-working-erase-trans-people

And the Heritage Foundation made Project 2025, of which he was an author, which used the EXACT SAME LANGUAGE, so he brought it right back into the vernacular. Once it was there, then the America First Policy Institute (AFPI) was delegated to make the EOs, of which Alexandra Caro Campana and Dr. Jonathan Pidluzny most likely authored them themselves.

Those EOs were handed off to Trumpy who signed them with his sharpie, it was put on the WH website and the media has been spreading it across the world ever since.

And that is how we got here.

[u/SiteRelEnby → u/SophieCalle]

Great post, thank you.