Gender Ideology
#essay #politics

"Gender ideology" is how members of the anti-trans movement refer to social acceptance of trans people and to associated ideas and practices. Like all buzzwords bandied by fascists, it has no particular meaning: it can be expanded to encompass all the things they don't like. Hence, it is also a conspiracy theory: Bad Things are not just Bad, they are also components of a larger Big Bad Miasma, echoing Nazi rhetoric.

But of course, they are right that there is an ideological current opposed to theirs. Normally people would refer to this as "gender politics". Everyone has gender politics, but in the fevered imagination of trans exterminationists, only trans people and our allies have them; everyone else just has common sense (and is definitely NOT being swept along by the dangerous ideology of a hate movement!). Many have remarked on the obviously ideological nature of the anti-trans movement, which comes through clearest in their immunity to evidence. If anyone is operating on pure ideology, it's them.

So, let's take it as a given that there is such a thing as "gender ideology", but remove its conspiracist trappings: the anti-trans movement has a gender ideology, and so do we, the people who oppose it. Let's call this opposing ideology "trans lib" for short. (I will refer to the anti-trans side as "fascist".¹) What are the actual components of the trans lib gender ideology, and how do we distinguish it from the gender ideology of fascists?

I think we can summarize it very simply: the gender ideology of trans lib is not enforceable by rape. Fascist gender ideology, however, can be.²

Bold claim? I think not. Let's take an inventory of the beliefs one must hold to fall on the side of trans lib:

• People are entitled to bodily autonomy.
• Further, people are entitled to basic dignity when they exercise their bodily autonomy in unpopular ways, eg by transitioning.

How could you possibly enforce bodily autonomy and basic dignity with sexual violence? Sure, we can imagine some lurid horrors lurking in the imaginations of people like JK Rowling, wherein hulking trans women rape cis women until they accept their identity; and we have their oft-repeated smears that basic social acceptance is somehow tantamount to rape, in a mysterious metaphysical way. But it just wouldn't be coherent. Anyone who actually attempted it would be fundamentally in violation of trans lib gender ideology. You can't spread bodily autonomy and dignity with rape! You just can't, no matter what that girl and her dragon tattoo say. Trans lib gender ideology is fundamentally an anti-rape belief system.

Now let's turn to the opposing side. What do they believe?

• People are not entitled to bodily autonomy.
• Further, people should be subjected to harm when they exercise their bodily autonomy in unpopular ways, eg by transitioning.

There's plenty of window dressing on it,³ but it boils down to an inversion of trans lib. Fascist gender ideology might not require sexual violence, but it is entirely consistent with it. There is no contradiction in using rape to harm people and take away their bodily autonomy. That's its whole purpose!

Unfortunately, I'm not speaking hypothetically. Even more unfortunately, I'm not speaking hyperbolically. This essay was prompted by the announcement that the Trump regime has canceled the already paltry protections against sexual violence for imprisoned trans, intersex, and queer people afforded by the Prison Rape Elimination Act.⁴ In other words, the fascist regime is using state-sanctioned rape as a tool to enforce their gender ideology. As horrifying as this is, it is not a new ideological development; it's baked in. The anti-trans movement has fought for years to ensure trans women are placed in men's prisons, where it is known the majority of them will be repeatedly raped — at rates far exceeding those of the rest of the population.⁵

Even if we skip over these visceral horrors, the anti-trans movement still thrives on sexual violence and conceptually related harms. They have fought for the right to sexually harass trans children in schools by repeatedly misgendering and misnaming them,⁶ for institutions to out students to their parents for abuse,⁷ for institutions to expose students to ostracism and ridicule with discriminatory bathroom rules, and on and on. This a movement that considers it laudable to confront someone in an intimate setting like a changing room or bathroom, harass them, demand they prove their sex, and even physically attack them — all based on their perception of the victim's gender. If my analysis is wrong, they aren't trying very hard to disprove it.

More fundamentally, what could possibly be more invasive than forcing someone to go through an unwanted puberty? Few things are more harmful, more detrimental to dignity, than turning someone's own body against them. For all their protestations of metaphysical rape-by-proximity-to-trans-women, their designs are far darker: to control the basic sexual characteristics of their victims. They have another slur that is appropriate here: grooming. This is the core of the anti-trans movement's fascist gender ideology: coercing children to sexually develop the way they prefer.

See Also ¬ §