Bubbles and Realities: How Ubiquitous is Gender Ideology?

(Note: As soon as this went live a moment ago I remembered an essay I published June 14, Mouth Breathers in the Democratic Party, in which I summarized parts of the Pew Research Center published the report Cultural Issues and the 2024 Election which covered, among other things gender identity, immigration, and racial diversity. In there I noted, as I noted in the present essay, that the share of survey participants who say that sex at birth determines whether someone is a man or a woman has increased since 2017. The note I want to make here is that the trend documented by three time points is now documented by four. As of June 2024, nearly two-thirds of Americans say that sex at birth determines whether someone is a man or a woman.)

Don’t assume in what I write today that I believe majority opinion determines the validity of truth claims. The validity of truth claims is a scientific endeavor, not a majoritarian one. If 99 of a 100 people believe X, and the one believes not-X, and X is false, then the one is right. The point I make here is concerns the problem of ideologically captured spaces and the leading of intelligent people to irrational beliefs that sometimes result in harmful action. We see this in religious systems all the time. I know a great many smart people who believe in souls and devils. They are free to do so, of course. At the same time, there are those who are not so smart, or a bit deranged, the true believer, who take a doctrine seriously and act on its basis.

I became aware early in my professional career that it’s not only in religious systems that smart people believe things they couldn’t possibly know or ever demonstrate, or that contradict truth—or that only stupid people act on irrational belief. Nothing could illustrate this more clearly than the case of gender ideology, the subject of today’s essay (and many past ones). Indeed, the horrors of gender affirming care testify to a moment in history where highly-trained professionals are prepared to sacrifice children on the alter of mythology—and profit (See Jennifer Bilek’s latest “Wrong Bodies: A Castration Cult”). This is not the first time in history that people have not merely tolerated medical atrocities but leaned into them. (See The Persistence of Medical Atrocities: Lobotomy, Nazi Doctors, and Gender Affirming Care; Fear and Loathing in the Village of Chamounix: Monstrosity and the Deceits of Trans Joy; Thomas Szasz, Medical Freedom, and the Tyranny of Gender Ideology; The Exploitative Act of Removing Healthy Body Parts;  Simulated Sexual Identities: Trans as Bad Copy; Making Patients for the Medical-Industrial Complex; Disordering Bodies for Disordered Minds; The Body as Primary Commodity: The Techno-Religious Cult of Transgenderism.)

As this essay is about public opinion, it might be useful to note at the outset that undesirable ideological systems can sometimes clash with even less desirable ones. In the case of gender ideology, traditional religious beliefs often inoculate individuals from belief in other impossible things and the terrible things that logically follow. Protestants make up half of the US population, and while a great many of them have been out front in expressing their desire to limit women’s reproductive rights, especially since the 1970s, more than three-quarters of Protestants—87 percent of white evangelicals—believe gender is determined by sex at birth, and their numbers have been growing. That Protestants are largely correct on the question of gender is due not only to the biblical view of man and woman; many Protestants subscribe to science and the obvious, but only science uncorrupted by gender ideology (for the obvious, see what you see, Matthew 13:17). We can thank for this the broad immunity Christianity provides to the scientism of woke progressivism, where science has become a neo-religion controlled by the corporate state.

Of course, we must keep fighting to secure reproductive freedom. As a general rule, we cannot depend solely on religious people to fight the good fight given all the other stuff that comes with religion. Rather we join with the clear-headed in this fight; resistance to the medical-industrial ritual of releasing authentic gendered souls with hormone and scalpel finds the readiest allies among Protestants. Indeed, as we shall see, atheists and agnostics are the least useful in the struggle to stop the atrocities because they are the most likely to believe the lie that gender is myriad and mutable. The row of reason is a hard one to hoe in light of the deep roots of ideological tangle in part born of the human need for religious-like belief in a secular society. (Poll numbers on religiosity and beliefs about gender can be found here.)

It seems obvious to me that those for whom the progressive-captured corporate state media, culture industry, education system, and government bureaucracy play a major role in determining attitudes are more likely than the general population to agree with the statement “trans women are women.” I work at a university, and this impossibility is widespread among administrators, students, and the professoriate. To be sure, I know colleagues and students who disagree with the slogan; but for a few fearless students, they have told me in strict confidence, fearful of the consequence of expressing heretical ideas in the church of higher education. Indeed, I am the only one among my faculty who publicly states the truth of the matter (see The Snitchy Dolls Return).

The reason for this is obvious to the honest sociologist who studies politics and ideology. The quality of belief in many of those I work with is of the same quality as the religious beliefs I grew up around, even while many of them eagerly declare their atheism. To illustrate, I have a colleague who made a testimonial in my presence (in a struggle session I should write about in the future), the story of a trans woman’s journey of authentic self-discovery that convinced him that people can change their gender. In transition, everything about his past now made sense. All his mental health issues were explained. He was really always a woman. That was the problem. I have many times heard Christian converts tell an identical story in form, only the content was different: it was the distraught individual for whom Jesus put everything in relief. As an atheist, it’s a surreal experience to sit in a room of people with advanced degrees who believe that which is so easily disconfirmed; as a sociologist who studies religious systems, cult indoctrination, and tribal commitment, I understand it.

At the same time, atheists are especially vulnerable to the myths of gender ideology, what I categorize as a neo-religion. More than three-quarters of atheists and two-thirds of agnostics disagree with the scientific statement that gender is determined at birth. Atheists and agnostics, despite their rejection or skepticism of traditional religious beliefs, often find themselves drawn to systems and ideologies that fulfill similar roles in their lives. This phenomenon can be attributed to the human yearning for meaning and transcendence, a drive that seems almost instinctual (see Peter Berger’s 1967 master work The Sacred Canopy). Political and social movements can provide atheists and agnostics with a structure that addresses existential questions and the need for spiritual fulfillment. These apparently secular belief systems encompass narratives of belonging, cultural enrichment, moral imperative, personal development, and social progress, fulfilling the deep-seated need for a coherent worldview that connects individual lives to something greater than the self. This is the need that propels the social justice warrior—the secular mujahideen. The impulse toward transcendence underscores a universal human desire to find significance in existence, transcending the confines of one’s immediate, personal experience. (Poll numbers can be found here.)

Fortunately, in part because of the aforementioned pervasiveness of Protestantism, most Americans do not subscribe to the irrational beliefs that have colonized the terrain of higher education and other elite sense-making institutions. Surveying 10,000 adults, a Pew Research Center survey published June 28, 2022 found that 60 percent of Americans agree with the statement that whether a person is a man or a woman is determined by “sex assigned at birth.” Significantly, the proportion of the population who agree with this statement is increasing, up from 56 percent in 2021 and 54 percent in 2017. Use of movement and industry propaganda found in the construct “sex assigned at birth” makes the question leading to this methodologist’s eyes; at the same time, in asking if the gender identity is determined by the sexual identity of the individual, the question usefully embeds the assumption of binary, a primary fact of gender.

We find troubling things in the crosstabs. For example, among Democrats younger than 30, around 72 percent say someone can be a man or a woman even if that’s different from the sex they were “assigned at birth.” Age is less of a factor among Republicans. In fact, at 88 percent each, similar cohorts of Republicans ages 18 to 29 and those 65 and older say a person’s gender is determined by their sex at birth. Republicans are much better than Democrats generally on the science of gender, again partly attributable to the greater degree of religiosity among Republicans. But there is among Republicans and conservatives, categories that capture many of today’s liberals, a general skepticism the claims of corporate medical science. We saw this for example in resistance to lockdowns, masking, social distancing, and vaccine mandates among conservatives. Protestants still seek medical help, but they don’t eschew prayer on their way to the hospital.

The 60 percent of those who remain rooted in the real world on the question of gender includes those who work in corporate state media, the culture industry, the education system, and government bureaucracies. However, those who believe that persons can change their gender, be both genders simultaneously, or who can be genderless altogether are overrepresented in the institutions and organizations to shape private and public life. If those individuals were excluded from the sample, that is, if only those who lived, worked, and studied outside the environment of progressive-captured institutions were surveyed, the proportion of Americans who believed that gender was binary and immutable would be much greater than six in ten. Put another way, existence beyond the ideological tangle of dominant sense-making institutions makes it more likely that a person will have a better handle on the truth of gender (race relations and a great many other things, as well).

A useful example of why we need to be careful in assuming ubiquity in the sense-making institutions is revealed in a February 22, 2024 survey by Pew Research Center on the question of whether gender identity should be taught in school. Whereas only fourteen percent of teachers (elementary, middle, and high school) agree that children should be taught that whether someone is a boy or a girl is determined by sex at birth, half of all teachers agree that gender identity should not be taught at all, suggesting that the matter is at least unsettled or that instruction based on gender identity is age-inappropriate. At the same time, public schools still play an outsized role in confusing children over gender, with around third of parents with K-12 students reporting that at least one of their children has learned about people who are transgender or nonbinary from a teacher or another adult at their school. Given the size of the k-12 system, it only takes a few administrators and teachers to put children on the path towards gender confusion. In the 2020–21 school year, there were 3.8 million full- and part-time public school teachers. Moreover, it is very often the case that, whatever the beliefs of the employees, the system itself requires them to administer curriculum they otherwise wouldn’t. Remember, these surveys are anonymous. How many teachers are compelled to festoon their classrooms with movement propaganda in violation of the First Amendment?

As suggested at the outset, a large majority doubting the claims of gender ideology does not make those claims false. The claims are false because they are demonstrably so by the lights of scientific materialism uncorrupted by queer theory. Nonetheless, that most Americans are correct in their beliefs on the immutability of the gender binary is heartening. It also makes obvious the reality that progressives control our sense-making institution, so much so that the majority moves through ideologically-captured spaces with their heads down, fearful of the repercussions if they didn’t. Tens of millions of people act on bad faith because they suppose the ubiquity of gender ideology, a perception reinforced by the silence of others. Parents astonished as the festooning of their child’s school with movement propaganda typically say nothing believing they’re alone in their silent objections and fearing the smear of bigotry. The same occurs at the doctor’s office, with the conditioned sense of subordination adding another layer of suppression.

Beyond the value of integrity of truth in opinion, Americans who say a person’s gender can be different from their sex at birth, which the construction “sex assigned at birth” invites them to do (see here and here), are more likely than others to see discrimination against trans people and a lack of societal acceptance. In other words, those who have incorporated into their belief system the core fallacy of the gender identity movement are more likely to believe that trans identifying individuals belong to an oppressed category and that our society hasn’t gone far enough in accepting people who are transgender when trans identifying people belong to arguably the most privileged category in Western society, so privileged in fact that they are increasingly invited to transgress child safeguarding norms.

On the other hand, those who disagree that a person’s gender can be different from their sex at birth are more likely to disagree with queer demands—at least as an anonymous subject in a public opinion survey. For example, only around a third of Americans say that it is important to use somebody’s preferred pronouns, mirroring the proportion of Americans who believe somebody born a man can be a woman. This rises to just over half when only Democrats are asked, so we can see the role of ideology and tribal identity at work (the Democratic Party is the greatest threat to reason in America today). But the numbers are promising and it’s the goal of Freedom and Reason to help raise mutual knowledge about the fact that most and a growing number of people do not accept the bogus claims of trans activists. You can help by pushing out my content. Thanks for reading.