Musings on Marriage

Tag: Sex

What is a Woman?

Dear Daughters,

Some of the most profound questions in the world are the simplest. 

What is a woman?

 It’s a short question Matt Walsh asked numerous people around the world.  Interestingly, many men and women were unable to answer that simple question.  Some people (especially the highly educated) became evasive and remarked that there is not a simple distinction.  A college professor of gender studies stated that you are what you feel, regardless of what biological sex you were born with.

Our culture has been inundated with the idea that your feelings play the most important role in your life.  Some of our society has come to believe that you are what you feel.  Science and reality are tossed to the wind in exchange for feelings and opinions.  Feelings are king, supreme, they are everything – and now have become the confusing and dangerous idea that your sex is not necessarily the body you are born into, but whatever you feel like during a given day.  

When babies are born, they are obviously male or female. According to science, sex is assigned not at birth, but at conception.  Every single cell in the human body has the DNA of either male or female.  There is a biological difference between women and men.  And if we can’t agree that this foundational truth is a reality, then how can we protect our girls and women?

Today, the word gender has become how a person perceives themselves.  If you have a male body but feel like a female, you are able to become a female – which has been named transgender according to many college professors.  Which inversely means if you were born with female genitalia but feel like you are a male – there are hormones and surgeries to make it appear you are a male.

You may have heard about Lia Thomas, a man on the Penn State swim team, who was 65th in his class as he competed against other biological men during 2018 and 2019.  In 2019 he began transitioning to a woman and joined the women’s swim team.  In 2021 he started competing against women, winning 1st in the 500-meter women’s freestyle. In 2022 he won the NCAA Division 1 title in the same race.  Recently he has been nominated as “NCAA Woman of the Year.”

When interviewed recently, he stated that he is now “happy” being a woman, when in the past he was depressed and confused.  So, does this mean that many women are supposed to be willing to give up their right to win in women’s sports because it makes a transwoman “happy” to win the medals and accolades which should have been theirs?  Some women will speak up but only to be shut down by those who have more power and volume.

My heart goes out to all those biological females competing against Lia Thomas, because the training they have gone through doesn’t mean anything when a biological male can come in with 2 years of hormone therapy at the age of 22 and win first place easily.  

Some may accuse me of being transphobic or anti-trans, but it is simple science which naturally gives an advantage to a man going through puberty who then chooses to transition to a woman.  For so many years women have fought for equal rights – in voting, becoming doctors, going to college, and choosing many occupations that have in the past been occupied only by men.  But now they are being shut out of their own sports.

Women’s sports are mocked when trans women are invited to compete with biological women. There is absolutely no way a biological male who feels as if he is a female can compete honestly on an equal playing field with biological women.   

By the way, the simple definition of a woman is:

A woman is an adult human female.

As Mr. Rogers said many decades ago,

Life is deep and simple, but our society has made it shallow and complicated.

Love, Mom

When Angels Fight

Dear Daughters,

I was browsing through our local bookstore awhile back and came upon a new book by a Grand Rapids author.  Being the book lover that I am, I bought it and started on it that night. 

When Angels Fight is an autobiography about a woman born and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan, about 7 miles from our house, Leslie F. King.  When she was 15 years old, after living a life of abuse as a child, she was befriended by a man – C – who saw her walking outside and crying.  He pulled up in his car and took her to dinner, bought her clothes and listened to the sad story of her home life.  He told her he loved her and she should be treated much better than she had been.  He said she was beautiful, and brought her around to his other friends, introducing her as his girlfriend.  Slowly, she gave him her trust as he continued to treat her like a queen – until one night he didn’t. 

She woke up after being drugged, as another man was using her body any way he liked.  From that night on Leslie became the property of C and he became her pimp.  At only 15 years old she was trapped into a life of sex trafficking.

The Stroll, conveniently close to the house that I now lived,

was where women were prostituted every day and every night,

where police occasionally patrolled, where men came to pay for sex.

Leslie was the youngest woman in The Stable and quickly learned there were quotas to meet every night, and if the quotas weren’t met there were beatings or some other punishment.  She was given the street name Candy and learned to survive unthinkable and unspeakable horrors.  She took valium and alcohol simply to survive her day-to-day life out on The Stroll (Division Avenue in Grand Rapids).

When her family found out where she was and what she was doing they tried to bring her back home, but she would run – always run.  In and out of jail, back on the street, learning her trade so well that she became proud of how much money she could make in a night – always trying to become the pimp’s favorite and become worthy of his love.  But it never happened, she was no different than the other women in The Stable.  She was used, abused and ultimately just survived as a human being.

Years of life on the streets eventually took their toll.  Increasingly she became hopeless and some nights were simply unbearable.  She had lived her life at animal level for so many years, confusing abuse with love and was beginning to lose hope of going forward.  Sometimes, when she would cry out to God – in anger, distrust and frustration – miraculously there was someone to pick her up when she was laying on the side of a road where a john had disposed of her, leaving her for dead.

Working her trade not only in Grand Rapids, but around the country – at Super Bowls, NCAA Final Four, Kentucky Derby, Rose Bowl and any other national event –  there was always payment for the pimps and their girls, especially where there’s big money and booze.

In all those cities, at all those events, whether I traveled with my pimp or on my own,

I knew one thing: I would never, ever not make money because johns are everywhere.

And then, when Leslie was 35 her life hit bottom, she swallowed enough pills, drank enough alcohol and smoked enough crack with a plan to die, yet again cried out to God.  Through a long string of miraculous events, she called her mom to pick her up, checked herself into rehab and slowly but surely became sober.  God’s angels won over the devil’s. 

That was 22 years ago, and since then Leslie started Sacred Beginnings Women’s Transitional Program, which has served over 3,500 women in several Grand Rapids locations.  Some women come and relapse, others stay clean and go to college, get married, build a career.  Some have died.  The pictures of these women adorn a wall of the home office of Sacred Beginnings downtown Grand Rapids.  One side of the room is filled with pillows of all shapes, colors and designs, available for women to hold onto and cry into when they finally decide they want out of the life.

The hearts of the workers we met a few weeks ago are filled with love, often times tough love, yet they never give up hope.  A few nights a week, Leslie and others walk the same streets where they used to work, letting the girls know someone cares, that there is a safe place for them to land.

When angels fight, God’s angels always win.

Love, Mom

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