What is Gender Ideology Really?
Deconstructing ideology
Ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence.
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Over the last few years, as anti-trans hate has been on a steep rise, we’ve that denote some mysterious force in society that is (in the eyes of reactionaries) pushing people to become trans.
One of the that really gained a lot of traction was “transgenderism”, which eventually got lumped into terms such as “woke” and more recently, “” — used by reactionaries to ridicule anything to do with trans people.
When I say anything, I really do mean it. Whenever a TV show or video game this is seen by reactionaries as an example of gender ideology, or even if we see advocacy for trans rights in even the , this is an example of gender ideology.
Many people will no doubt be confused as to what reactionaries are talking about when they mention gender ideology, given this apparent incoherence. Today, I wanted to dive in and explain what gender ideology actually means when it is used by reactionaries.
Diving in
For starters, despite the term, gender ideology isn’t actually an ideology. Don’t even take my word for it, the defines it as (among other things) “the source of the belief that children can be born in the wrong body”.
We also see accusations of gender ideology being thrown out when people in their social media bio or in their email signature. Everything and anything to do with trans people or even the mere mention of pronouns gets ridiculed as gender ideology by reactionaries, even stating the reality of gender and sex social construction.
Now, speaking as someone who has read a frankly unhealthy amount of , none of this has anything to do with what ideology actually is. Ideologies such as Liberalism, Conservatism, Communism, or Fascism have grounding in theory and philosophy. There are ways in which they view the world and the social institutions and relations around us, and this is what governs their political outlook and political prescriptions.
Even if I were to be extremely charitable here, I could say that they’re using gender ideology as a synonym for , but even this doesn’t match up with how they use the term. Gender theory encompasses a wide range of ideas from people such as Judith Butler and her theory surrounding the This is, of course, totally different from the reactionary idea of “gender ideology”.
“” doesn’t match up with any definition of ideology whatsoever. Even the definition I cited earlier from the Heritage Foundation doesn’t indicate an accurate use of the term ideology. As many people have noted, it really is just a catch-all term used by transphobes to describe anything they don’t like regarding trans people.
I would actually go even further and say it’s really just another conspiracy theory that we see from reactionaries to justify their targeting of minority groups. Conservatives that they’re going after trans people because they are afraid of them/don’t like them, as this is an obviously flimsy and silly justification for attacking trans people’s healthcare, etc, that we see from them.
Conservatives don’t see trans people as people who are just like anyone else, just with different experiences surrounding gender; they see them as would-be cis people who’ve been groomed into being trans. Transphobes can’t just accept that trans people are like everyone else because that would totally blow apart any justification for targeting them in the way that they do.
If they simply accepted trans people as they are, there would be no justification in passing anti-trans laws or going after trans people’s healthcare, etc. Groups that are otherwise innocuous don’t need to be targeted, because doing so doesn’t accomplish anything, and this is the source of the problem for conservatives. As a result of trans people being otherwise innocuous, they have to invent reasons to go after them.
The perversion of ideology
As I have explained, “gender ideology” doesn’t actually correspond with any coherent definition of ideology, and even the definitions that are offered by conservatives are flimsy at best. So, the question that should be asked here is, what do conservatives actually mean by ideology? Well, I think I have found the answer, and it is rather troubling.
When it comes to how conservatives view gender, their view is not informed by facts or any kind of reasoned analysis of the history of gender social relations and how they manifest in the present day. Their view of gender is informed by a very warped pseudoscientific view of gender being a “natural” phenomenon and a desire to uphold patriarchal hierarchies of male domination over women.
I’ve already covered this before, but conservatives see “gender ideology” as , and they are already opposed to feminism on the grounds that it challenges patriarchal hierarchies. Trans people and advocacy for trans rights threaten gender-based hierarchies, and they challenge our traditional conceptions of gender. This creates a sense of fear, which is the underlying motivation for transphobia.
Crucially, it must be understood that conservatives and aren’t open to new experiences/ideas. On a fundamental level, they can’t see outside of their own perspectives, and this is what drives them to label being gay or trans as mental illnesses.
By extension, they see the idea of being two genders (male and female) not to be an idea or part of a a natural phenomenon. As a result of this, the idea of their even being trans people is not something that is to be expected given the nature of gender as a social construct, but instead something that is imposed upon people and society through this mysterious force of “gender ideology”.
This mysterious great other is no different than “”, “transgenderism” or any other buzzword that reactionaries want to throw around to denote or ridicule things they don’t understand. I’ve said before that “gender ideology” is just the Jewish Question for transphobes, and I stand by that.
The actual construct of “gender ideology” is the same as the JQ or any conspiracy right-wingers want to throw around. At the core of it, they are all identifying (an oftentimes made-up) problem in society and passing the blame for this problem onto a mysterious, vague force instead of actually investigating how things really work. In this instance, conservatives refuse to engage with what gender actually is and instead let fear and hatred take over.
Gender ideology, then, is not an ideology as I have previously mentioned; it is instead a term of fear that is deployed by conservatives to denote a mysterious great other. A great other that only exists because they can’t see outside of their own perspective and thus need to explain in a way that doesn’t contradict their pre-existing beliefs.
