IN EARLY August 2025, the Petro government in Colombia, appointed a gay man and ex-porn actor, Juan Carlos Florian, as minister of equality (in the erstwhile Ministry for Women). Not an unusual event for a left-leaning government, one might say. However, Florian, immediately demanded to be called “ministra” — equivalent to the female term for minister in Spanish, instead of ministro, the male term — because, Florian said, he “felt female” (his words) and non-binary.  

This pronouncement caused a wave of protests, across the political spectrum, since the incident was widely regarded as a political mockery of women’s struggle for political representation, particularly in their fight to gain the right to be appointed and called ministra.

It was certainly bad timing, and many portrayed it as a complete disaster, in a ministry that has consistently underperformed for a variety of reasons, amid other pressures on the left-wing government in its last year of office.

On the other hand, it was about time that all the intellectual and political confusion generated by misunderstandings of sex and gender in Colombia, came to the surface for air.

The oppositional Colombian far right’s disapproval of that ministerial appointment is hardly worth mentioning, because it’s a well-known fact that its reactionary adherents have been trying to bring Gustavo Petro’s left progressive government down daily, largely by manipulative plots and lies, from the time of its possession in 2022. So, one more criticism from that lot can be justifiably seen as a baseless deja-vu.

The nature of the Colombian far right is also common knowledge, and it has too often been comfortable with alliances with a myriad of suspect and convicted actors and horrifying violent tactics, for decades. The far right’s views on gender are also universally retrograde, proposing rigid and repressive regimes where the sex (male or female) you are born into, largely determines how you live your life (gender). So again, it has not been surprising that they would criticise a ministerial appointment at the Ministry for Equality, for whatever the reason.

What is interesting and crucial for progressives, is the series of knots the left has got itself into when discussing sex and gender.

The left in Colombia, and in too many other places, is generally pretty confused about sex and gender. How has this happened? It could roughly be summarised in three reasons.

On the one hand, many on the progressive left have brushed aside the whole issue of sex and gender as a niche feminist, and/or LGBTQ+, concern, which can be put aside, as often as necessary, while other more pertinent issues are dealt with eg: climate change, war, the economy and so on. This is clearly a misconception, since sex and gender are pivotal to all the important issues humanity is having to deal with. Climate change, war, the economy etc, affect men, women, children, older people, and diverse peoples, differentially, and this must be taken on board.

Secondly, with notable exceptions, many on the left, particularly men, have been markedly lazy in their analytical approach to the subject. Granted, thinking critically about sex and gender is not to everyone’s taste, despite it being a fascinating subject. But this is also because a patriarchal society allows most men to have the luxury of ignoring the subject — since they view sexism as not really having an effect on them. Again, those who assume this are wrong. Sexism relentlessly affects their lives daily, at home and at work. Men’s freedom from going to war, freedom to care for their children, decent conditions at work, the need to decrease violence and isolation in male lives are instances affected by sexism, to name but a few examples.

But thirdly, and most importantly, as many observers have noted, great sections of the progressive left have erroneously taken on board, often without reflection, a set of irrational ideas about sex and gender, sometimes known as genderism, derived from a combination of extreme postmodernism (social constructionism) combined with contradictory proposals from queer theory, promoted by US academic Judith Butler.

In a nutshell, and for the sake of this short essay, extreme postmodernism tends to deny the existence of ontological reality (Butler would, mistakenly, contest this), by an overemphasis on the role of language, proposing that nothing exists outside one’s thoughts and discourse, thus positing an unrealistic subjectivism and voluntarism of the self-versus-society. Inevitably this results in confused ideas on the nature of identity and an overblown anti-social narcissism, as the left Spanish academic psychologist, Jose Errasti, has observed (2022).

On the other hand, the pretence at denying material reality, as proposed by queer theory, in particular, via a denial of sexual differences, is taken to be an act of “subversion” and “liberation” by its adherents. However, the simulated blindness to existing biological differences does not liberate anyone. What that pretence does, in effect, is to disallow the identification of the diverse groups of people (via negating enduring categories) who may be oppressed and the exact social conditions which need transforming. What the denial actually achieves is a re-enforcement of actually existing power structures, such as patriarchy.

The Swedish Marxist writer, Kajsa Ekis Ekman, has written on the subject and interestingly, also pointed out the contradictions between genderism and queer theory (2023). The left philosopher Martha Nussbaum, as well as rejecting Butler’s baseless claims to “subversion,” primarily via denying sexual differences between men and women, said of Butler’s ideas that they were basically an empty defeatist parody of what social change requires and are even collaborative of oppression (which she termed “evil”) (Nussbaum, 1999). Noam Chomsky, the left libertarian political scientist, has often pointed out the lack of morality in extreme forms of relativism as proposed by Foucault, much admired by Butler. Equally, Susan Neiman, the socialist moral philosopher, has deemed Foucault’s reactionary and gloomy stance, severely limiting to progressivism by denying agency (Neiman, 2023).

Many other left-wing analysts have contributed to this rich debate, but overall, from a left perspective, the conclusion is that extreme postmodern proposals are in opposition to the ethics of equality, solidarity and a common humanity. In particular, the reality of relations, between men and women are denied by this hotchpotch of relativist ideas.

No, in a shared planet, we do not, and cannot, just live in our heads and impose any concept on ourselves or others, irrespective of what exists, as if one were writing a novel, however wonderful a book can be. The world is not all within our thoughts and words. No-one is denying the partial contribution of language to social construction, but relations between men and women are, in fact, grounded in actual material conditions, many of them subject to scientific laws which are largely independent of our thoughts, including the nature of corporality due to sexual differences, which have resulted in historically culturally imposed asymmetries of power and class differences. This is the realisation which gives true power to agency.

It is worth noting that the re-enforcement of patriarchy and of gender stereotypes enacted by presumed gender identitarians, is also enacted by groups who would appear to be polar opposites, such as incels, who can arguably be classed as right-wing (Preston, 2025).  Genderism proponents say stereotypes are subversive because they are adopted across the male and female sex. Incels affirm sex-stereotypes, as culturally attributed within the male and female sex. Their stated attitudes towards feminism seem to be in opposition, but the oppressive results are the same: to trap behaviour into straightjacketed narrow possibilities which hide structures of power imbalance. Both groups (genderists and incels) propose that sex and gender determine each other, albeit in different directions:

• Gender identitarians insist that gender determines sex
• Incels insist that sex determines gender

Both positions are conceptually wrong. There is no determination between sex and gender, in either direction. It is this which has been the essence of the battle of feminism, which points out that, whilst in reality men and women are different corporeal beings who must be valued in their differences, freedom in a democratic society lies in the liberty to express, socially and or culturally, their own individual, diverse understandings of  masculinity or femininity (as the characteristic of gender, as opposed to sex which is male or female) or both, and even negate them, within the parameters of respect for others and without the need to deny their existence as males or females.

It’s high time for progressives to wake up on this subject.

So, why has Florian’s appointment as Minister of Equalities, brought all this to the fore in Colombia? Because according to several observers, and in particular, the constitutional lawyer and academic, Luis Miguel Hoyos, Florian’s appointment was problematic because it violated law 2424/2024 which legislates that parity in governmental appointments to ministries must be adhered to, in order to ensure the equality of nominations between men and women.

As Hoyos said, Florian’s appointment was not unlawful because of what he determined his identity to be. Florian is fully entitled to auto-determine himself. But the law of parity is meant to ensure equality between the men and women and not to determine equality between “identities.” (Razon Publica: Hoyos 2025 and others).

And what has been the response from the Progressive Government in Colombia?

Disappointingly, a flat denial that there is a problem.

Pointedly, and in consequence, the Constitutional Court on September 15 2025 suspended Florian’s appointment until a clear lawful determination was made by the court, after a series of legal challenges. By the third week of September 2025, Minister Florian was back in place, after the government ceded that Florian was in effect male and part of the male quota while simultaneously evening the male and female quotas, by appointing an extra woman to an unrelated ministerial post.

But men and women on the progressive left, who are sex-realist and who support the Progressive Government of Change in Colombia, in the majority of its policies for progressive social change and who have also, steadfastly, supported President Gustavo Petro in particular, have expected, at the very least, a decent debate on the contested subject of sex and gender in the particular case of Minister Florian’s nomination.

There is a valid international discussion within feminism on the subject of sex and gender which has been raging for more than a decade. But let’s be clear, once again, that, though on the political left, this debate is still ongoing, it is certainly not about denying diversity or taking away LGBTQ+ rights, as some of the right and most of the far right would have it.
It is about respecting both the rights of LGBTQ+ individuals as well as the rights of women.

When disagreement occurs and rights clash — and they clearly at times do — there needs to be debate, compromise and fairness. Justice cannot be achieved with confused ideas and imposition.

President Gustavo Petro, an inspiring economist, usually known and admired for his in-depth and careful analysis of many aspects of governance, came out, after the court pronouncement and gave his views on the topic of Florian’s appointment. Clearly, the subject of feminism is not his forte.

Petro could not be more wrong in his superficial handling and frankly inadequate analysis of the situation at hand. He dismissed the controversy as due to the “political right” trying to torpedo his plans for transformation. Many of us on the left would agree that this has often been true about the Colombian political right over the last three years of government, but unfortunately, this is not the case in this instance.

His critique then dismissed sex-realist feminists as “not real feminists” (his words) and lumped them all with “the right.” Again, not true to fact. How did Florence Thomas, Colombia’s highly respected and pioneering left-wing feminist, now in her eighties, who came out in favour of Hoyos’ legal defence of the parity law, feel about this? Probably as displeased as all the other, numerous, sex-realist feminists, on the left, who have fought for equality, and for left-wing Petro’s election, over decades.

It seems that Petro’s analysis of the meaning of identity and the biological basis of sex was, unfortunately, derived from confused and extreme postmodern and queer theory-adherent advice. His speech alluded to a “wave of feeling” that “makes you either a man or a woman” (his words). Nonsense. The fact is that biology is important to women (and men). A belief in biology, as science, is not right-wing. Petro should know this, bearing in mind his repeated reference to the importance of science as a way to understand the world around us.

So, the Government of Change in Colombia needs to get up to speed on this subject and engage respectfully with this debate and the different currents of international feminism.

To help the discussion along, sex-realist feminists on the political left would summarise their perspective on sex and gender, simply, as follows:

The existence of biological sex is a scientific fact which is undeniable so the fact of being a woman (or a man) is not an “identity.” Is this essentialist? Yes, but biological entities do have some essentialist qualities, which may be multilayered according to critical realist philosophers. (See Roy Bhaskar, 2008). Social entities may also have essentialist qualities which are relational and not deterministic (Andrew Sayer, 1997). Biological sex differences — including the existence of only two different gametes for reproduction in humans — are at the very basis of our persistence and survival as a species as defined by Darwinian evolutionary theory. That is in itself wonderful, but biological sex is also at the root of the oppression of women. Negating biology erases an understanding of women’s basis of sexual oppression but also the freedom of choice (diversity) in sexuality — ie the freedom to be straight, gay, lesbian or bisexual. Biology defines us women as a sex-class but does not determine us.

With respect to gender, yes, both men and women may have waves of feelings attributed to loose culturally bound “femaleness” and “maleness” — sometimes both — which are carried over into behaviour, but these are subjective musings, and do not objectively define individuals as physical women (ie female) or men (ie male) in real life. These feelings and behaviours, or social roles, are what gender is. But gender is not sex. Expression as gender, being culturally and socially determined, may take many forms. Feminist women have fought for individuals’ freedom to behave in whatever way each pleases (gender choice) irrespective of sex. As reiterated above, feminists have pointed out for decades: sex does not determine gender, nor does gender determine sex. Understanding this is the basis of true liberation from patriarchy. Progressives need to get some clarity on this subject, say sex-realist left-wing feminists.

No, sex-realist left-wing feminists are not part of the political right. Yes, everyone should have rights — even those we disagree with. And grown-ups have the right to “identify” as they wish, but auto-identification is not a sex-category. Identification refers to gender not sex. Progressive change should be carried out with evidence, analysis, critique, ethical judgement and debate. Not at the expense of walking all over women’s rights and hard-won battles.