Trying to read the tealeaves of the past without interpreting them from modern biases is hard enough without the current Wokeness that disregards sex in favor of rigidly defined gender roles. New DNA tests on a 1,000 year old warrior has NPR leaping to Woke conclusions about the past.

From the NPR article:

Analysis of ancient DNA found in Finland has unveiled a surprise a century later – the remains of an early medieval warrior thought to be female may have been nonbinary.

The new findings challenge previous ideas about gender roles and expression and suggest that nonbinary people were valued and respected members of their communities (snip)

The findings are a reminder that “biology does not directly dictate a person’s self-identity,” said Ulla Moilanen, the study’s lead author and an archaeologist at Finland’s University of Turku.

In case you are confused on how a DNA test determines self-identity, don’t be. DNA indicates sex (not subjective feelings) and this particular warrior is – per an admittedly small sample – a male with Klinefelter syndrome. This syndrome, where a XY male is born with an extra X chromosome (XXY). Effects are rarely evident until adulthood (e.g. fertility issues) and many males with KS are never diagnosed.

But this particular high-status warrior grave, discovered in 1968, has annoyed researchers for decades. It had both a sword and jewelry so there was the faction that declared it is proof of female warriors while others disputed that conclusion positing a double burial of both a man and woman.

Again, the NPR article leans heavily toward the nonbinary conclusion as settled science. Other articles give a fuller picture. Specifically, the DNA analysis is not reliable and the reasons behind the grave goods are not conclusive. Was this an actual nonbinary person or a respected man of a rich and powerful family?

And that’s the rub. Whether its NPR engaging in Woke cheerleading or even these researchers peppering their paper with faddish terms like male-bodied and female-bodied, we are still a blind person trying to describe an elephant after holding its tail.

There is a tendency of people to look on the past as some sort of brutal slog of Evil Patriarchy that forced people into unrelenting roles. I’ve certainly encountered that listening to 20-somethings sneer at the 1950s and 1960s as women living lives as little more than house slaves. However, from Joan of Arc to Abagail Adams, we can see that human relations and roles were not so rigidly defined.

None of that, too, excuses NPR’s and other wokesters’ hubris at tossing about the phrase nonbinary as an “Ah HAW!” moment to pwn the great unwashed who still understand that humans are sexually dimorphic and that sex does influence skills, talents, and interests. How many times must we point to the example of sports? The myth of wage gap?

Binary sex isn’t a Western invention nor a social construct. For the vast majority of history the roles of both men and women have had to heavily take into account not just strength and endurance differences but reproductive. Gender roles reflected those differences, but the boundaries have always been soft, regardless of the caricatures people hold of the past. NPR looks through a lens that declares anything or anyone outside of a narrowly defined gender role must be queer. Yet, tomboys are happy being girls and males who like to knit are perfectly happy as men.

Face it, reality isn’t Woke.

UPDATE: Welcome Instapundit readers!

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