It throws the very concept of gender into the void, causing all genders to lose all meaning. Of course, that is precisely what a handful of critical gender theorists want. Still, many believe their gender gives them certain rights and protections under the law, but if gender goes, so do their rights associated with it. We cannot separate gender and sex without slipping into absurdity.

How many genders are there? If you Google it, you will get varying answers. Medicinenet.com says there are 74. Google’s AI says, “There are many genders, and the number is infinite. Gender is a person’s internal identification and is not determined by genetics.” What does this ultimately mean? It seems illogical to say that by separating gender from genetics, there are an infinite number of genders; instead, it seems more reasonable to say there are none.
The following analogy might help us understand why this view of gender does not multiply them but eradicates them. If I say there are a limitless number of possible ice cream flavors, therefore, there are no ice cream flavors, you would be right to point out the flaw in my logic. Even if there is no limit to the number of ice cream flavors, that does not mean that each scoop of ice cream does not have its own unique flavor. But this is not what critical gender theorists are doing. To make it fit, we need to adjust the analogy a bit.
A more accurate analogy would be to say there are a limitless number of possible ice cream flavors, but the taste of the ice cream has nothing to do with its ingredients. It is entirely psychological. One’s internal experience solely determines the flavor of the ice cream. In other words, there may be a limitless number of ingredient possibilities that would change the objective makeup of the ice cream, but since ingredients do not determine flavor, each objective recipe has an unlimited number of subjective flavors depending on who is doing the tasting.
In this analogy, the flavor of ice cream has been entirely untethered from any objectivity, which also means it becomes irrational to talk about flavors because any shared experience becomes unattainable. It is no longer possible to point to any ice cream and say it has a specific flavor, as flavor has lost all common reference points and meaning.
This freedom from objective reality is what many proponents of this view of gender find appealing.
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The new free documentary Lost Boys: Searching for Manhood spotlights five young men who have decided to tell their stories. Alex, Brian, Njada, Ritchie, and Torren come from a variety of backgrounds. No two of their stories are exactly the same. Each is like a fingerprint, unique to the storyteller. But all five men have something in common: courage.

I would definitely like to have been a woman, because I feel, whether rightly or wrongly, that then everything would have fallen into place. The way I speak, the way I walk, the way I move, and the thoughts in my head would not any longer have been remarkable. They would have been acceptable. What I’m so bad at is being a man. — Quentin Crisp
When transgenderism was a budding fad, some people looked into their crystal balls and shrewdly predicted that a reckoning was coming. It wouldn’t be immediate, of course. It would take time for young people to realize they’d been screwed over. And it would take courage. Lots and lots of courage.
Over the past few years, a number of women have displayed that courage, coming forward to tell their stories and sue the medical professionals who harmed them. A few men have as well. But many more women than men.
This shouldn’t be surprising. Statistically, men are also more reluctant than women to report sexual assault, which also requires a great deal of courage for both sexes. But for men, it carries an extra weight of shame. The same is true when it comes to identifying as a victim of transgender “medicine.” Like telling one’s rape story, it’s not easy for anyone. But it will always be easier for a woman to stand up and say, “I thought I was a bro” than it is for a man to stand up and say, “I thought I was a sissy.”
The new free documentary Lost Boys: Searching for Manhood spotlights five young men who have decided to tell their stories. Alex, Brian, Njada, Ritchie, and Torren come from a variety of backgrounds. No two of their stories are exactly the same. Each is like a fingerprint, unique to the storyteller. But all five men have something in common: courage.
Their stories are interwoven with reflections from two therapists, Joe Burgo and Az Hakeem, and Irish writer-activist Graham Linehan (who lost his reputation, family, and career after publicly opposing trans ideology). Linehan doesn’t have very much screentime, but his presence is a sad reminder that we’re dealing with a top-down cultural contagion, enforced by people with enough power to completely demolish someone’s social capital.
There is also a sixth young man whom we never see. Instead, we see his father, Steven. Steven tells us how the boy “came out” transgender in his senior year of high school, walked away, and has never come back. He remains “lost.” “The last thing I think about in a day is my son,” Steven says, “and first when I wake up, before I’m even out of bed.”
Although each story is unique, there are certain recurring patterns. One running theme is that the men in these boys’ lives often seemed to be either absent, predatory, or weak. This is not a grand unifying theory. There’s Steven, after all, apparently a loving and present father who reports that he and his wife were “blindsided.” But it ties several stories together. Ritchie Herron, a young Englishman, only ever talks about his “mum” showing up to appointments with him and being pressured to make decisions. But he found plenty of men willing to enfold him into a “community” online. These men, of course, were predatory.
Meanwhile, Torren grew up in a blue-collar American subculture where the men occupied themselves with a narrow range of “manly” interests (cars, beer, hunting), while the women, in his words, “ran the show.” Similarly, Njada’s father tried to push his son towards “manly” interests and tasks, but when Njada drifted into gender confusion, he ironically failed to “man up” to his own wife. Njada recalls how she instantly took the driver’s seat and began to insist, “You better use the pronouns.” Like the women in Torren’s world, she was definitely running the show. These two stories are particularly interesting, because they complicate simplistic narratives of “toxic masculinity.” If anything, they evoke a world in which men become absorbed in “manly” pursuits while simultaneously failing to embody masculine leadership in the home. Thus lacking immediate models of how to be their own distinct selves while still being healthy men, these boys sought guidance from the broader culture. But as they discovered, that broader culture of teachers, therapists, and influencers was not going to help them become healthy men. Quite the opposite.
In the film, Joe Burgo proposes a nuanced third way for how men can properly lead and nurture misfit boys—neither by questioning their manhood if they diverge from rigid norms of masculinity, nor by “problematizing” all distinctly masculine traits, a trend which he believes has increased male depression. If boys do in fact like distinctly “boyish” things, that should be fine. If they don’t, that should also be fine.
I once discussed this in person with Burgo at a cocktail party in Washington. When I asked him what he thought of Richard Reeves’ book Of Boys and Men, which is generally sympathetic to the plight of boys, he said he still disagreed with Reeves’ idea of nudging boys towards more “feminine” trades—teaching, nursing, etc. As a disclaimer, I still need to read Reeves for myself, but I agree that particular idea isn’t going to solve the masculinity crisis. As I put it to Joe, it’s less urgent to mix up more statistically feminine trades and more urgent to re-dignify masculine trades. Here Joe looked up with a little smile, very taken with this, and said, “One thousand per cent.”
The other featured therapist, Az Hakeem, is also very concerned about the masculinity crisis, and he makes a further connection to the co-factor of autism. He’s consistently observed that young male patients on the spectrum followed a certain rigid chain of logical reasoning, based on their tendency to create rigid categories: “To be male, you have to be like this, this, and this. I’m not like this, therefore I’m non-male. Therefore I must be female.” Burgo adds the observation that autistic young people will struggle more than average with the changes their body undergoes in puberty, more likely to feel disgust or a desire to disassociate from who they’re physically becoming.
Several of the young men in this film are themselves either on the autism spectrum or, relatedly, on the OCD spectrum. Depression and anxiety are also recurring themes, as is p*rnography addiction. Yet the “professionals” who should have cared for them bypassed all these cofactors and glibly promised that everything would be “solved” not by treating their mental health, not by quitting p*rn, but by female hormones. All of them took estrogen, though Brian, Njada, and Torren seem to have reversed their process before pursuing surgery. Njada recalls how the therapist he sought out in college informed him that “transition is the typical treatment that makes people feel satisfied with their life.”
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In becoming flesh, the Word also dwelt among us. Dwelt is the verb form of the Greek word for tabernacle (skene). Thus, we could say: And the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us. The tabernacle was a glimpse of heaven on earth, but Jesus is heaven come down to earth and living among us.

We always keep Genesis 1-3 closely at hand because, through those chapters, we are able to make sense of intermingled wonders and sorrows both around us and within us. The whole process of creation in Genesis 1 builds toward the LORD’s creation of mankind, male and female, in His image and after His likeness. Even their task upon the earth would reflect God’s creative work. For just as God formed the formless and filled the void, He commanded mankind to fill the earth with more of God’s image and subdue the earth and have dominion over its creatures.
Chapter 2 then describes God’s creation of garden in Eden, which we rightly call paradise. Yahweh filled the garden with all kinds of fruit trees for food for the first man and woman. It also held the tree of life, which was in the midst of the garden, and rivers flowed out from the garden into the rest of the world that Adam was tasked with subduing. Yet most importantly, the garden was the place where Yahweh would walk, where His presence could be found.
Yet in Genesis 3, Adam and Eve defile the paradise that God provided for them by eating the only fruit in the garden that the LORD forbid them to eat. Not content with reflecting God’s nature, they desired to become gods themselves, and through their rebellion, they were cast out of the garden and brought sin’s curse upon the world that they were given to rule. Barred from the tree of life, Adam, Eve, and all of their children now die and return to the dust from which God made them.
Again, all of this resonates so deeply with us because, as Tolkien rightly said, “We all long for [Eden], and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature at its best and least corrupted, its gentlest and most humane, is still oaked with a sense of ‘exile.’” Marvelously, the rest of the Bible is focused upon how God is restoring and repairing what our own sin has broken and marred.
The Tent of Meeting
As we noted last week, Yahweh’s instructions for building the tabernacle began with the most important furnishing, the ark of the testimony, which represented the very presence of God and would be the place upon which the sacrifice of atonement would be made. It then moved outward to describe the table for the bread of the Presence and the golden lampstand. These three items represented the primary furnishing within the only two rooms of the tabernacle: the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place. Continuing the outward movement of the description, the instructions in our present chapter now focus upon the tabernacle itself. Let us first begin by actual instructions given in this chapter, then we will consider the theological significance of the tabernacle as a whole.
Although our eyes may gloss over as we begin to read these instructions, we would do well to remember two things. First, these instructions are not quite as detailed as we might have imagined. In looking at artistic illustrations of the tabernacle, you will quickly find that no two are exactly the same. That is because only the overall details are instructed, while Oholiab and Bezalel (who were the craftsmen in whom God put His Spirit to construct everything) evidently had a measure of artistic freedom.
However, secondly, the instructions that were given do not reveal an overly elaborate and visually stunning tent. Certainly, it was richly furnished and beautifully made, yet it would have been remarkably simple compared to the pagan temples.
As we said of God’s instructions for building altars, this too should shape our understanding of worship as a whole. There is a measure of individual freedom, so long as God’s instructions are carefully followed, yet the overall tenor of worship ought to be simple, beautiful, and obedient.
Moreover, you shall make the tabernacle with ten curtains of fine twined linen and blue and purple and scarlet yarns; you shall make them with cherubim skillfully worked into them. The length of each curtain shall be twenty-eight cubits, and the breadth of each curtain four cubits; all the curtains shall be the same size. Five curtains shall be coupled to one another, and the other five curtains shall be coupled to one another. And you shall make loops of blue on the edge of the outermost curtain in the first set. Likewise you shall make loops on the edge of the outermost curtain in the second set. Fifty loops you shall make on the one curtain, and fifty loops you shall make on the edge of the curtain that is in the second set; the loops shall be opposite one another. And you shall make fifty clasps of gold, and couple the curtains one to the other with the clasps, so that the tabernacle may be a single whole.
Verses 1-6 describe the inner curtains of the tabernacle. They were to be made of linen with blue, purple, and scarlet yarn, which were colors that invoked royalty. They were also to have cherubim skillfully worked into them. Thus, from the inside, the priest would be surrounded by cherubim as a reminder that he has entered the tent of God’s earthly presence.
About the size of these curtains, Douglas Stuart writes:
All joined up, the curtain mass that formed the tabernacle roof and sides measured forty-two by sixty feet. Some of this was draped to form side walls and the back wall, so the actual floor space of the tabernacle was forty-five feet by fifteen feet (six hundred and seventy-five square feet). As later described, this floor space was divided in a two-thirds and one-third split into two rooms, the holy place (two-thirds of the floor space, or thirty feet by fifteen feet) and the most holy place (one-third of the floor space, or fifteen feet by fifteen feet). (584-585)
Verses 7-14 then describe the outer curtains.
You shall also make curtains of goats’ hair for a tent over the tabernacle; eleven curtains shall you make. The length of each curtain shall be thirty cubits, and the breadth of each curtain four cubits. The eleven curtains shall be the same size. You shall couple five curtains by themselves, and six curtains by themselves, and the sixth curtain you shall double over at the front of the tent. You shall make fifty loops on the edge of the curtain that is outermost in one set, and fifty loops on the edge of the curtain that is outermost in the second set.
You shall make fifty clasps of bronze, and put the clasps into the loops, and couple the tent together that it may be a single whole. And the part that remains of the curtains of the tent, the half curtain that remains, shall hang over the back of the tabernacle. And the extra that remains in the length of the curtains, the cubit on the one side, and the cubit on the other side, shall hang over the sides of the tabernacle, on this side and that side, to cover it. And you shall make for the tent a covering of tanned rams’ skins and a covering of goatskins on top.
The first set was made from goats’ hair, and the second set were made from animal skins. The curtains of goats’ hair were slightly larger than the linen curtains in order cover them completely as a protective layer. As verse 14 says, there were actually two outer curtains, one of rams’ skin and the other of goatskin (or more likely dugong or dolphin skin). These two layers of leather would protect the tabernacle from the elements.
You shall make upright frames for the tabernacle of acacia wood. [16] Ten cubits shall be the length of a frame, and a cubit and a half the breadth of each frame. [17] There shall be two tenons in each frame, for fitting together. So shall you do for all the frames of the tabernacle. [18] You shall make the frames for the tabernacle: twenty frames for the south side; [19] and forty bases of silver you shall make under the twenty frames, two bases under one frame for its two tenons, and two bases under the next frame for its two tenons; [20] and for the second side of the tabernacle, on the north side twenty frames, [21] and their forty bases of silver, two bases under one frame, and two bases under the next frame. [22] And for the rear of the tabernacle westward you shall make six frames. [23] And you shall make two frames for corners of the tabernacle in the rear; [24] they shall be separate beneath, but joined at the top, at the first ring. Thus shall it be with both of them; they shall form the two corners. [25] And there shall be eight frames, with their bases of silver, sixteen bases; two bases under one frame, and two bases under another frame.
[26] “You shall make bars of acacia wood, five for the frames of the one side of the tabernacle, [27] and five bars for the frames of the other side of the tabernacle, and five bars for the frames of the side of the tabernacle at the rear westward. [28] The middle bar, halfway up the frames, shall run from end to end. [29] You shall overlay the frames with gold and shall make their rings of gold for holders for the bars, and you shall overlay the bars with gold.
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