How to Define "Gender Ideology"

Trans activists frequently deny there is any such thing

Many defenders of Gender Identity Ideology deny that there is any unified ideological framework that is shared between all trans people and therefore attempt to downplay the existence of anything that can be meaningfully called “transgenderism.” Thus, when conservatives and gender criticals alike claim to be fighting against the evils of gender ideology, the genderists commonly retort, “That’s just a phantasm of your imagination!”

For example, in a recent article published in the Guardian, Judith Butler writes in a characteristic tone:

“It is easy enough to debunk and even ridicule many of the claims that are made against gender studies or gender identity, since they are based on thin caricatures, and often verge on the phantasmagoric. If it matters (and let’s hope it still does), there is no one concept of gender, and gender studies is a complex and internally diverse field that includes a wide range of scholars. It does not deny sex, but it does tend to ask about how sex is established, through what medical and legal frameworks, how that has changed through time, and what difference it makes to the social organization of our world to disconnect the sex assigned at birth from the life that follows, including matters of work and love…

The anti-gender advocates claim that “gender ideologists” deny the material differences between men and women, but their materialism quickly devolves into the assertion that the two sexes are timeless “facts”. The anti-gender movement is not a conservative position with a clear set of principles. No, as a fascist trend, it mobilizes a range of rhetorical strategies from across the political spectrum to maximize the fear of infiltration and destruction that comes from a diverse set of economic and social forces. It does not strive for consistency, for its incoherence is part of its power.”

Even Trump’s own lawyers defending his Executive Order defending Trump’s ban on trans people in the military couldn’t define “gender ideology” when asked by the Judge:

Reyes: “If you can’t articulate what radical gender ideology means, how is the defense secretary going to know what it means?” Reyes asked.

Lynch: I loathe to speculate what Trump meant.

Reyes: “It’s not like I randomly picked you off the street, You’re the government’s representative here.”

A recent article from NPR about gender ideology makes the same accusation of the term being too loose and incoherent to function as any kind of useful concept, writing, “Opponents say that the definition — and therefore the order's implementation across the government — are confusingly loose.”

But it no more requires all trans identified people and activist allies to believe the exact same things about transgenderism for transgenderism to be a definite ideological movement than it does for all self-identified conservatives to believe the exact same things in order for it to be possible to give a definite characterization of what it means to be a conservative.

So when I talk about gender identity ideology, or “transgenderism” broadly conceived, I do not mean that all “genderists” believe in every single one of these tenets, or that there is universal consensus among genderists about how to define philosophical concepts, or that they all agree on, for example, the relationship between sex and gender, or what these terms even mean, or even that none of the tenets contradict each other.

Nevertheless, we might develop a “cluster” definition of gender identity ideology based on family resemblance theory. Cluster theory, often tied to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s idea of family resemblance, is a way of understanding concepts in philosophy where a term doesn’t have a single, fixed definition or a set of essential traits that all instances must share. Instead, it describes a concept as a group of things linked by overlapping similarities—like how family members might share traits (nose shape, eye color) without any one trait being required for all.

So here is my messy checklist of overlapping similarities that ties together the core tenets of gender identity ideology:

• Trans women are women

• Trans men are men

• Nonbinary identity is real and valid

• There are more than two genders

  • Also, there are more than two sexes

• Gender identity is necessarily related to subjective mental states and it’s transphobic to define gender by reference to objective biological traits like one’s gametic sex

• Gender dysphoria is not required to be truly trans

  • A schismastic denomination within genderism claims, in contrast, gender dysphoria IS required to be trans

• Gender identity is innate and immutable

• As a subjective mental state, the contents of gender identity involve as objects of the mind things like the sexed body and our internal orientation towards them or stereotypical gender roles in society

  • For example, one genderist activist defines woman as “An adult human whose gender identity aligns with their personal schema of sex.”

• A woman is anyone who identifies as a woman

  • Others say that womanhood is a social construct defined in terms of shared oppression

  • “One is not born, but becomes a woman”

• The objectivity of the biological male/female sex binary is just as socially constructed as the social dimension of gender itself defined in terms of cultural stereotypes of masculinity and femininity

• A general commitment to blank slatism about innate psychological or behavioral sex differences and a commitment to social constructivism in general

• A general aversion to anything that hints of bioessentialism

  • Rejection of the validity of the entire field of evolutionary psychology

• Trans people are “born in the wrong body”

• Trans people have “neurologically intersex brains.”

• The idea that it is empirically established that trans identified males who go on hormones for 1-3 years do not have an unfair biological advantage in sports when competing against females

  • And even if there is an innate advantage in virtue of being born male, they will say that “women come in all shapes and sizes, just like Michael Phelps is an extreme outlier among men; trans women are just outliers among women.”

• A denial of Dr. Ray Blanchard’s two-type typology of trans identified males, which says there are two major types: homosexual transsexuals (HSTS) and autogynephiles (AGP

  • HSTS are effeminate homosexual men who mostly transition to fit their gender nonconformity into society better and have success dating the heterosexual men they are attracted to

  • AGP are males who are prone to be aroused at the thought or image of themselves as women

• If genderists admit that AGP is real, they will claim it is “normal female psychology” and not a paraphilic sexual fetish unique to males

• It is an intrinsic human right for trans women to be able to access intimate female spaces such as bathrooms, locker rooms, and be allowed to be housed in female prisons no matter how heinous the crime they committed, and regardless of whether they have a penis or not

• Women can have penises

• Gender identity is not reducible in anyway to physical anatomy

  • Paradoxically, gender identity is also seen to have a basis in the brain as an innate, immutable core characteristic

• Only trans people themselves can know if they are truly trans as gender identity is ultimately subjective

  • You can’t truly diagnose transness itself

  • If a trans person comes into a doctor’s office and says they are trans, it is transphobic to express any doubts about the validity of their identity

• It is “conversion therapy” to suggest that there could be any cause of the development of a cross-sex identity that isn’t a function of it being an innate, immutable, core part of your personhood, akin to race, sex, age, disability status, etc.

• Gender dysphoric children are at unique risk of suicide if they are not medically transitioned at a young age and allowed access to puberty blockers, and hormones, or allowed to get double mastectomies

• While generally it is said to be ok to have genital preferences, it is considered suspect or transphobic if a straight man does not want to date a trans woman, or a lesbian does not want to date a trans woman

• A trans identified male using his penis to penetrate a female vagina can be considered “lesbian sex” so long as the male identifies as a woman

• The primacy of self-identification says that a trans person can achieve legal recognition as the opposite sex simply on the basis of self-declaration

• Trans identity is not inherently pathological and not a medical condition

• Gender is a spectrum and there is an unknown number of different nonbinary genders such as:

  • Gender fluid

  • Gender neutral

  • Agender

  • Bigender

  • Genderqueer

  • Demiboy

  • Demigirl

  • Neutrois

  • Xenogender

  • Two-spirit

• If you do not respect someone’s nonbinary pronouns such as they/them or exotic “neopronouns” like ze/zir then you are a hateful transphobic person

• Believing that trans women are not women is deeply hateful and bigoted

• It is possible for cross-sex hormones to turn males (mostly) into females

  • This is premised on a “layer cake” model of sex wherein sex is not defined in terms of gametes but in terms of different “layers” such as:

    • Gametic sex

    • Endocrinological sex

    • Genital sex

    • Chromosomal sex

    • Psychological sex

    • Morphological sex

• A commitment to intersectional or third-wave feminism wherein power is analyzed in terms of oppressor/oppressed matrices of oppression and intersecting identities with a general recognition that black trans women are the most marginalized people on the entire planet in virtue of their intersecting, marginalized identities

• Black trans women have been behind all the major LGBT and civil rights movements of the past century

• A commitment to standpoint epistemology wherein only trans people are allowed the privilege to be able to determine whether something is considered transphobic or not

• The idea that modern trans identity is not a social construction whatsoever and has been present throughout all of history in more or less its contemporary form

• It’s important for trans people to have “visibility” and to “take up space” in society in order to receive “representation”

• Trans people should be allowed to change their sex markers on legal documents to anything they want based on self-declaration

• “Gatekeeping” trans people from healthcare on the basis of not being “trans enough” is transphobic

• If a child comes out as trans at school, the school is not obligated to tell the parents and the school has the right to socially transition the child in secret at school without the knowledge or permission of the parents

• The male-female gender binary is an imposition of Western European colonialism

• It is “cis normative” to believe that “cis” identities are more real or more valid than trans identities

  • Moreover, it is transphobic to not want to use the ideological language of “cis” vs trans

• A general political commitment to Marxism or socialism as a political ideology

• The distinction between sex and gender is blurry enough to call into question the distinction itself such that sex becomes entirely replaced as a concept by “gender identity”

• Trans people are in a grand liberation struggle and are on the “right side of history” on all of the above issues and history will eventually vindicate them

• Opposites of gender identity ideology are driven by hatred, animus, and bigotry, and not rational or evidential critique

Again, not all trans people believe every single thing on this list. And indeed, a small minority of trans identified people are fighting back against transgenderism. But generally speaking, a majority of these beliefs are held by a majority of people who would consider themselves to be engaged in trans activism or fighting for trans rights or trans liberation.

In the Trump administration’s recent Executive Order DEFENDING WOMEN FROM GENDER IDEOLOGY EXTREMISM AND RESTORING BIOLOGICAL TRUTH TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, they defined Gender Ideology as follows:

(f) “Gender ideology” replaces the biological category of sex with an ever-shifting concept of self-assessed gender identity, permitting the false claim that males can identify as and thus become women and vice versa, and requiring all institutions of society to regard this false claim as true. Gender ideology includes the idea that there is a vast spectrum of genders that are disconnected from one’s sex. Gender ideology is internally inconsistent, in that it diminishes sex as an identifiable or useful category but nevertheless maintains that it is possible for a person to be born in the wrong sexed body.

(g) “Gender identity” reflects a fully internal and subjective sense of self, disconnected from biological reality and sex and existing on an infinite continuum, that does not provide a meaningful basis for identification and cannot be recognized as a replacement for sex.

In conclusion, not only is gender identity ideology a very real belief system held by a large swath of progressives, Democrats, etc., it is a central pillar of the modern rise of Wokeness in the educated West since the great Wokification starting around 2010. It is widely propped up by mainstream media organizations and is generally believed by the journalist class and within the halls of academia.