Today’s Western Europe has become the territory of a special kind of freedom: freedom of manners, unlimited freedom for any kind of entertainment and self-expression, absolute freedom in choosing one’s sexual orientation and even … sexual identity. The right to freedom of expression and pleasure has become the main value orientation that forms the social and cultural life of modern Europe. And not everyone has yet realized that the established new “values” are the ugly results of the global gender revolution, which marked the beginning of the anthropological catastrophe.
The gender revolution
In 1997, by the Treaty of Amsterdam, the European Union established gender Mainstreaming as its official strategy. The concept of gender mainstreaming first appeared in international texts after the third UN conference on women, which was held in 1985 in Nairobi (Kenya). This event is hailed as the”birth of global feminism”. Representatives of participating countries endorsed the Nairobi forward-looking strategies for the advancement of women.
The fourth world conference on women, held in Beijing in 1995, officially recognized the gender mainstreaming strategy as official. The Beijing platform for Action confirmed that the rights of women and girls are an integral, integral and indivisible part of universal human rights and proposed a number of concrete actions to ensure these rights. The platform for action recognized the need to promote gender mainstreaming policy at the state level [17. P. 11].
According to gender ideology, the concept of “gender” is now interpreted as a set of socio-cultural stereotypes, which must be abandoned in favor of the free choice of a person from an early age of their “gender identity” (which is much more than two sexes) and sexual orientation.
It is hardly necessary to prove that in the mass consciousness of the majority of people the division of mankind by natural biological characteristics into men and women and as a consequence the existence of normative male and female properties is a fact absolutely natural and not subject to doubt. It is not an easy task to change such people’s minds and “convince” them that everything that has been considered the norm up to now is no longer the norm. Therefore, a powerful system of methods, strategies, tactics, legislative tools, political and educational processing, and academic theories, called gender mainstreaming, has been put into use.
The European Commission defines this concept as follows: “Gender mainstreaming is an effective strategy aimed at achieving gender equality” [16]. The EU’s explanation is that this phenomenon is a process of integrating gender perspectives, including creation, implementation, observation and evolution at all stages of policy implementation, in order to promote and promote equality between men and women. This means assessing the impact of equality policies on the lives of men and women and recognizing the responsibility to change these policies if necessary [16].
The most simplistic explanation of the theory of gender equality is the denial of innate natural differences between men and women. Ignoring the laws of nature, the ideology of gender equality claims that people should be distinguished not by their biological sex, but by the one they have chosen. People should have the freedom to choose who they want to be and choose the gender they think is more appropriate for them. The ethical justification of the theory of equality is the idea of equality. According to gender ideology, gender should be perceived as a socially determined definition. This assumes that any sexual orientation is normal. A person has the right to choose gender, that is, what he should be, a man, a woman or… someone else. Any attempt to resist this “choice” is considered discrimination.
Children also have the right to choose their gender, and therefore they should be brought up in an atmosphere of neutral genders, that is, to treat them as asexual, until they choose a suitable gender for themselves. Psychological treatment of children is carried out consistently and systematically through the entire educational system.
This monstrous gender-based treatment of children is especially actively sought in Sweden. There, for example, practice neutral kindergartens, where it is forbidden to divide children into boys and girls. Children are raised in an absolute gender-neutral space. The beginning of this “gender” neutralization was laid in 1998 with the introduction of changes in the Law on Swedish education, obliging all schools to counteract the spread of the previous gender stereotype [21].
Another tool for processing children was the juvenile justice system. It is based on the noble idea of protecting the rights of children. However, in the West, it is increasingly used for other, far from officially proclaimed purposes, and under the guise of a noble idea, children’s sense of respect for their parents is undermined, which in turn undermines the meaning and meaning of the institution of the family. Individual cases where children really need protection are used to justify the total ideology of child protection. Through the education system, they are taught that they have an unlimited right to protection. But in the absence of a systematic approach to teaching children the principles of morality and respect for parents in children’s perception inevitably cultivated the idea of the possibility of “escape” from parental education. Children are encouraged to complain, to inform on their parents on any occasion. The very idea of trust and mutual respect between children and parents is being undermined. The principle of “honor your father and mother” is replaced by the right to permissiveness.
Sweden has become the vanguard for this kind of” protection of the rights ” of the child
She practically took control of the children’s upbringing, replacing the family. In Sweden, there is an absolute ban on corporal punishment of children, which means a ban on almost any kind of punishment of a child by parents, including raising the voice. Thus, the importance of the very institution of the family, its role in the upbringing of children, is completely undermined, instead of recognizing its crucial importance as one of the values of society, the idea of law is implanted. Such an attack on the family is one of the directions of gender ideology, since among its main tasks the ideology of gender equality puts the destruction of the institution of the family. This is easily explained – after all, it is in the family that the basic moral standards of behavior are brought up and developed.
Another goal of introducing gender ideology is to reduce the birth rate of normal people
This is achieved through policies that encourage same-sex marriage and encourage abortion. Same-sex couples cannot have children, but it is likely that the children they adopt and raise will grow up in an atmosphere of gender mainstream ideas.
Since 1999, the implementation of gender ideology has become a leading policy in Germany. When filling out various types of questionnaires, there is a right to choose a third answer to the question “sex” (gender). In December 2018, Germany approved the law “on the third sex”, according to which people with intersexuality, that is, not identifying themselves with either a man or a woman, can indicate their gender in official documents as “different”. Until January 1, 2019, when the law came into force, people with intersexuality had the right to leave the “gender” column empty.
But this innovation was not enough. LGBT activists [1] demanded that the law allow people who do not identify themselves with the gender indicated on their birth certificate to change the name of their gender in official documents [22].
The most important and tragic thing is not even what the representatives of the gender theory believe, but that this gender absurdity has become imposed on people on a mass scale. And also in that obvious from the point of view of the normal person mental deviation at the highest level is issued for norm.
In reality, the gender mainstream today is a global ideology that includes a variety of strategies and ways to manipulate humanity. Its goal is to construct a new social type of man, in whose mind the binary code of natural identity that separates people into men and women is disabled. There is an opinion that the systematic destruction of the identity of men and women is carried out in order to commit an anthropological revolution, and this leads to serious ontological and social consequences [19; 20].
The gender mainstream is an aggressive ideology directed against the moral norms of humanity and the natural acceptance and respect of biological characteristics, all the moral and value orientations that make a person human. In fact , it is a purposeful policy of etching the human in man.
The absurdity within the law
The idea of gender equality received a new impetus when Western Europe embarked on the path of legalizing same-sex marriage.
SODOM
The legal recognition of what has always been considered a deviation from the norm and even a disease means that the absurd ideology of gender equality has become even more militant, moving from propaganda to instilling the idea of same-sex love as a normal phenomenon, to a direct attack against the moral norms and moral principles on which human relations have been built for centuries.
In 2013, at the initiative of the then Prime Minister and conservative party leader David Cameron, same-sex marriage was legalized in England. The Anglican Church strongly opposed the law. She forbade her priests to perform the marriage ceremony of homosexuals. England has become the fifteenth country in the world to officially legalize same-sex marriage. Earlier, in may 2013, the law on same-sex marriage was adopted in France.
The moral justification for such non-traditional marriages is determined by their proponents in terms of seeking personal comfort and acceptance in society. From a legal point of view, the argument in favor of legalizing such marriages is based on the assertion that members of sexual minorities should have the same fundamental rights as heterosexuals.
A PROMINENT ACTIVIST OF THE “LGBT MOVEMENT” MARIA GESSEN ON GAY MARRIAGE
In academic philosophical circles, the main argument of supporters of the idea of same-sex marriage is reduced to the following questions: Why does marriage exist at all? Should marriage be gender-based, that is, based on the principle of Union of people of opposite sexes? What is the role of the state in addressing issues related to the institution of marriage? What place is given to the interests of children in matters of marriage? Will legalizing same-sex marriage lead to legalizing polygamy? [10; 11].
The polar opposite view is a sharp criticism and rejection of the very idea of homosexual marriage. Among the large number of reasons that determine this position, a special place is occupied by the interests of children. In addition to all the tragic absurdity of the very existence of same-sex couples, one of the most important problems is what children who are raised by homosexuals will grow up to be. American researchers have concluded that young transgender people are much more likely to attempt suicide than those young people whose gender is the same as that specified in their birth certificates [23].
In 2010, mark Regnerus, PhD in sociology, Professor at the University of Texas at Austin (USA), started a scientific study on the topic “how different are adult children whose parents have same-sex relationships”. The results of this study were published in 2012 in the pages of the authoritative journal “Social Science Research”.
M. Regnerus came to the conclusion that grown-up children who were raised by gay parents have serious problems compared to those who were raised by heterosexual couples. Among other things, this is a high level of venereal infection, psychological disorders (many have tried or planned to commit suicide), problems of sexual identity [24].
Dr. Regnerus’s research has been heavily attacked by those who support homosexual relationships. An extremely aggressive information campaign was also launched against him, and demands were made to prevent the results of the study from being publicly disclosed.
An objective, just a reasonable person, no matter what ideological and political positions he may hold, it is difficult not to agree with the head Of the Department of external Church relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, who called the gender mainstream an ideology of deception. “The decisions that are being made today in many European countries are dictated by the very ideology that has already led to the destruction of many families, the ideology that says that a person can choose his gender, that a person almost from childhood can determine with which partners he will live in the future-his own sex or another sex. At the heart of all these sex-change operations, at the heart of all this lies deception. Deception, which is imposed today with the help of ideology, and this ideology is imposed already in school education. This is a huge tragedy of modern Western Europe and the whole modern Western world. A tragedy, the scale of which will be understood only, probably, by the next generations” [1].
Feminism as a prerequisite for the emergence of gender ideology
To understand how gender ideology became dominant in Europe, it is necessary to trace its origins. If we analyze the main ideas of feminism, it is fair to say that it was the main prerequisite for the development of gender equality theory.
Feminism is a complex system of views on the social experience of mankind, which focuses primarily on the strengthening and even priority of the role of women in society. The emergence of feminism as a socio-political movement is due to certain social and intellectual reasons. Its appearance was the result of the process of secularization of society and the development of bourgeois relations, the involvement of women in employment.
Historically, feminism of the late XIX – early XX centuries advocated equality of social and political rights between men and women, without affecting the gender issue. This theme received a new interpretation in the works of the French writer and philosopher Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986)). De Beauvoir can be considered an ideologue of the second wave of feminism by the power of the impact of her views, which she outlined in the book “the Second sex”, published in France in 1949. It was she who gave the word “gender” a gender, that is, a socio-cultural character. In French and English, there is a terminological difference between grammatical male / female gender (French genre, English gender) and biological sex (sexe/sex). However, the concept of “gender” is more complex, including socio-cultural aspects.
De Beauvoir argued that a man is not born a woman, but becomes one [12. P. 283]. She first touched on the biological nature of women and their “suppression” in society. According to her views, women play the role of “second sex”. The reason for this she saw in the fact that in the public worldview there was an opinion that by virtue of their biological sex, a woman is doomed, unlike men, to inertia.
Rejecting this, the French writer argued that women are no less capable of an active life than men, and not just to exist within the family. But historically, she noted, women, overwhelmingly, simply submitted to men. Men, in her opinion, saw in women only the embodiment of frozen femininity. Therefore, Simone de Beauvoir declared a “revolt” against femininity as a special characteristic of the female sex [12]. At the same time, she paid special attention to the inner world of women in her works and speeches, emphasizing that no struggle for political and social rights will give liberation until the woman herself finds inner freedom.
The ideas expressed by Marxist theorists had a significant influence on S. de Beauvoir. But, revealing the theme of emancipation, K. Marx and F. Engels investigated the situation not so much of individual individuals as of the masses of women workers who are subjected to exploitation. At the same time, Marxism considered women’s wage labor as a positive factor that creates the necessary economic prerequisites for women’s independence. These ideas proved very attractive to Simone de Beauvoir. The second wave of feminism was also significantly influenced by the philosophy of the Frankfurt school [2], which sharply criticized the morality of modern bourgeois society, exposed the repressiveness that reigned in the family and the Church [18].
At the final stage of her work, de Beauvoir argued that although women had achieved equal political rights, their socio-cultural and economic influence did not extend beyond the marginal. Women still remain in a state of subordination to the world of male culture and male values.
From feminism to gender theory
De Beauvoir’s feminist ideas were further developed in the philosophy of post-feminism and social constructivism. One of its representatives is Judith Butler (Judith Butler) – the ideologist of the gender revolution, Professor of philosophy at the University of California at Berkeley, a member of the leadership of the International Commission for the protection of gay and lesbian rights. Before Butler, feminism asserted the political and social equality of women and men, but maintained the concept of female identity, recognized the right to possess feminine qualities. Butler went much further. It proclaims that “biological sex” does not exist at all: the characteristics of male and female behavior are not determined by biological sex, but are the result of socio-political construction. The differences between women and men, according to her, are not based on biological origin, but are imposed by social structures, that is, they are acquired.
In 1990, Butler published the book “Gender anxiety: feminism and identity Subversion”, which laid the theoretical basis of gender theory [9]. Its main idea is to undermine identity, to dissolve male and female identities. Butler calls for the destruction of the interaction of the sexes. Instead, it offers free choice of one’s own gender and, therefore, free choice of any sexual orientation. This idea was the basis of the gender mainstream strategy.
Butler became the author of the performative theory of gender and one of the followers of the queer theory, which became widespread at the end of the last century. Queer in English means “strange”, “different”. This is a critical sociological theory about the nature of gender, which spread in the end of XX century In the framework of queer theory people are not aware of themselves nor the relevant sample of men or the sample of women. Within the framework of the queer theory, people differ from a pre-set pattern. They are not aware of themselves as corresponding to the pattern of either man or woman. In other words, people have the right to determine their own identity, which means that they do not conform to the normative patterns of men or women and be someone else.
The peculiarity of the post-feminist concept is that it generally rejects the binary oppositions of male and female. Butler believes that the biological sex without meaningful gender content loses its “nature”. The gender identity of a woman, in her opinion, should not be determined depending on her gender, and therefore on the reproductive capabilities of her body. [7. P. 13].
The presence of reproductive organs as the main natural factor and one of the signs of natural (natural) identity in the awareness of a person as a man or woman is thus reduced to almost zero. Gender theory calls into question the existence of the feminine and masculine. This means nothing more than the negation of nature itself.
Why did the gender revolution become possible in the West
The gender revolution does not enjoy mass support in the West and is often sharply criticized and condemned. For example, the German writer and sociologist Gabriela Kubi writes about the disastrous consequences of the introduction of gender ideology in society [19; 20]. She believes that attacks on the sexual identity of men and women have a philosophical basis, it is-relativism. According to his postulates, there is no truth, because reality arises only through subjective perception. “Modern philosophers think that they can simply throw natural law and metaphysics into the dustbin of history. Instead, only a person’s need for pleasure, sexual pleasure, or love is recognized. Their credo: pleasure is the main value” [19].
Ethical or moral relativism denies the absolute character of morality. For the first time the principle of relativism is found in the ancient Greek sophists, one of whose representatives the philosopher Protogoras declared that man is the measure of all things. “In fact, ethical relativism was the brainchild of its time, which was generated by the ideas of Protagoras.”[2. C. 14]. “The philosopher suggested that virtues are not innate, but acquired properties of man. He separated the natural laws from the social and moral ones, which, with the mastery of the art of convincing in their rightness, can now be interpreted by philosophers very subjectively” [2. C. 15].
In other words, it denies the principle of binding morality, which changes depending on changes in the situation, time and the prevailing ideology. Ethical relativism is characterized by a blurring of moral guidelines, when the differences between good and evil become relative.
Representatives of the Vienna circle of logical positivists, which existed in the early 20s of the last century, believed that metaphysics and ethics are meaningless. According to their views, scientific statements make sense, because they can somehow be checked, tested. [25].
But how can one check whether an action is morally right or wrong? For example, A. Ayer and R. Carnap generally questioned the possibility of moral evaluation. [4. P. 25]. Ayer argued that the moral assessment is subjective, because this assessment is often the actual classification of certain actions by a group of people in which there is a certain moral position, which is familiar to the one who expresses a moral assessment, and therefore it is the subjective opinion of this group, where such a moral position exists. For example, a committed utilitarian [3] may call an action right because he is simply trying to promote it, because it leads to happiness. In this case, the validity of the moral assessment becomes empirical. [4. P. 21].
The domination of relativistic morality led to the erosion of moral guidelines, the denial of the concepts of “good”, “evil”, and norms of behavior. Moral priorities were replaced by values of freedom of expression. Morality has become subjective, it is reduced to personal choice, depending on the situation and time. The natural consequence of this is spiritual extinction.
By “spirituality”, by definition, it is accepted to understand the state of human self-consciousness, which finds its expression in thoughts, words and actions, represents the internal, special qualities that guide a person-ethical norms, rules of behavior [3]. As you know, every religion clearly defines the boundaries of what is possible and what is not, when the boundaries are not imposed, but are the result of internal qualities of human thinking that determine its value orientations. When good actions are performed not because it is necessary, but because there is an internal need for it, and something will never be done, even if many others do it, because there is an internal sense of responsibility that restrains desires and needs, so as not to fall into the abyss of evil.
The European rejection of religion and the imposition of the legal concept of human rights have played a key role in the process of erasing those internal qualities that define human values and support a sense of responsibility. There are different ways to assess this, but the fact is that spiritual values in the West remain only among practicing Muslims today, who draw their spiritual and moral laws from the Koran, visit mosques and pray several times a day.
Europe, whose roots go back to Christianity and Greco-Roman civilization, has ceased to be Christian. The loss of the Christian faith was due to a number of social, cultural and economic factors. One of the most important of them, in my opinion, is integration into the European Union, which does not have a strategic goal of preserving the cultural and spiritual values of Europe. The only value was the achievement of material well-being.
Due to its economic development, Western Europe has become a major center of attraction for migrants from the East, Africa and South Asia, seeking higher earnings and more comfortable working conditions. A significant part of the population of Western European countries today are immigrants from Muslim countries. Although some of them were born and educated in the Christian countries of Western Europe, they remain largely committed to their culture, based primarily on religious self-knowledge. Having lost faith in God, Europe simply “gave way” to other religions and cultures, turning into a kind of passageway, where there is a place for any religion, any culture,but there is no respect for the spiritual values of Christian civilization.
The West has plunged into a spiritual vacuum, where there is a demand for rights, but the awareness of personal responsibility has been blunted. There were only wants and needs. There are almost no brakes left to restrain these desires. Substantial social rights to life, work, security, health and legal protection have become insufficient. People, especially the younger generations, demand freedom in everything, including the right to freedom of personal identity. The problem of identity and consciousness is considered by modern Western, including American philosophers and publicists, exclusively from the legal point of view. And the emphasis is not on finding and asserting moral principles, but on justifying any “atypical” behavior with personal comfort. Whatever it is, but if a person is comfortable, why not?
In the modern political philosophy of Western Europe, the prevailing view is that the differentiation of humanity on such grounds as race and gender simplifies the issue of identity and, characteristically, limits the freedom of the individual. The concept of cosmopolitanism is put forward, which goes beyond the concepts of nationality and citizenship [5; 6]. The framework of awareness of one’s national, racial, and therefore cultural identity is being erased. “I” want to be what I want to be, regardless of racial or national roots. This theory fits logically into the framework of the ideology of gender freedom. If you can choose a gender identity, you can choose any one.
The search for freedom or freedom from morality
Gender ideology is covered by the idea of “equality” between men and women and the right to freedom of choice. In itself, this idea sounds, of course, noble, because equality leads to justice. However, this leaves aside the question of predicting the consequences of equalizing what is clearly not equal and cannot be equal in nature. Behind the idea of equality interpreted in this way lies an aggressive attack on moral norms.
The above-mentioned Gabriela Kubi clearly traces the reasons for the absurdity and danger of gender ideology, which destroys the social health of society. This ideology, she said, is fighting:
- against common sense, because it denies the biological, psychological, and social differences between men and women;
- against women, because it allows feminist-oriented image to prevail and significantly devalue the importance of motherhood and destroy morality;
- against men, because girls and women are given a privileged position, while the authority of men is belittled by the assertion of an effeminate image of a man;
- against the Union of a man and a woman in marriage and their necessary cooperation in the future;
- against unborn children, since it proclaims abortion as a ” human right»;
- against already born children, because it destroys the family, the irreplaceable space where a morally healthy person is formed and traditions of culture and religion are transmitted;
- against the family, and this ideologically, socially and materially destroys the very foundations of life;
- against the scientific ideal of truth and its roots, turning science into an agent of its ideology;
- against freedom of speech in the media and science, suppressing opinions that are at odds with this ideology;
- against democracy, sacrificing common sense and the principles of normality through state power in order to satisfy the interests of the minority; against God and Christianity [19].
Any debauchery and any lust can be found “moral” justification, if you use as the primary basis of the requirement of the right of the individual. However, rights are secondary because any right is originally intended to be a continuation of moral values. The product is the same morality is first and foremost a sense of responsibility. The demand for right is inextricably linked to the desire for freedom. But unrestricted freedom, like any other extreme, is harmful and dangerous, because it inevitably blunts, nullifies the sense of responsibility, blurs the boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable.
The values of life, on which the moral foundations of society have been built for centuries and millennia, are distorted and crumbling to such an extent that everything that was once considered a pathology, a disease, is declared and for a part of society really becomes the norm.
Being extremely militant and aggressive, gender ideology aims to silence all its critics. But how is it possible to prevent people, at least most of them, from saying what they really think? But the majority of the population is convinced that same-sex marriage is an ugliness, the ultimate distortion of the very institution of marriage as a natural Union of two people, as a result of which children are born.
In this situation spread to the West, political correctness plays a critical role political whip, which not only defines the ethics of social behavior, but also facilitates the introduction into the mass consciousness sometimes perverted to the base of the ideas of freedom, normality, tolerance. Political correctness often reaches the point of absurdity, when it struggles not so much with language tactlessness or straightforwardness, but with common sense and reason itself. Any attempts to Express dissatisfaction with the total imposition of gender equality, protest against the imposition of homosexuality are perceived as discrimination and incitement to hatred of minorities.
Here are just two examples of what is happening in this area in Europe. In January 2006, the EU adopted a resolution declaring its determination to eradicate homophobia through a system of educational measures, including information campaigns in schools and administrative measures. [14]. So-called “homophobia” is now equated with racism and anti-Semitism.
In September 2008, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on “how marketing and advertising should affect gender equality”. [15]. The resolution expresses the desire of the European Parliament to prohibit the use of images containing “sexual stereotypes” in textbooks. This means that from now on, a man in advertising, in the media should not be portrayed in such a way that it can be associated with a male image. And the image of women should not be associated only with women.
The resolution pays special attention to children’s perception. It is emphasized that “children’s programs are a special problem because of their potential impact on gender socialization, and, as a result, the formation of children’s ideas about themselves, their family members and the world around them” [15]. Since children are particularly susceptible to external influence, gender stereotypes can influence the formation of ideas in the child that gender can “dictate” what is possible and what is unacceptable” [15]. The question remains: does this mean, from the point of view of officials of the European Parliament, that the image of a woman in children’s programs should not be associated in the child with the concept of mother, and the male image should not cause the child any associations associated with the image of the father? Does it mean that a girl should not be raised as a future woman and mother, and a boy should not be raised as a future man and father?
THE FALL OF THE WEST
False value
A militant ideology that serves the interests of a minority leads a powerful attack against all the norms and values that make a person human. Deviation from the norm becomes the norm, which means that there is a statement of false values. If Judith Butler and the followers of the queer theory of the new sex and gender equality believe that the acceptance of all that is created by nature is a restriction of personal freedom, then, no matter how you interpret it, it is nothing but a loss of reason, because there is nothing more true and brilliant than nature. Nevertheless, the forcible imposition of painful fantasies of people with obvious mental abnormalities and uncertain sexual orientation as certain “progressive” ideas, values, and freedom has become not just a trend, but a reality in the West.
The modern Europe of pseudo-freedom is not at all the genuine Europe, familiar to us from legends and literature, which once drew its inspiration from the classical tradition of Ancient Greece and Rome, where philosophical thought sought truth and the laws of morality. Behind the facade of the ideas of freedom and human rights to freedom of expression hides a totalitarian ideology of deception, the purpose of which is to destroy the moral values and foundations that define human existence itself. The Kingdom of lies has come.