I was asked recently why I am so critical of gender ideology and in opposition so-called “trans rights.” There are several reasons covered in my many essays on the subject on Freedom and Reason, but the question gives me a chance to collect and summarize those reasons here.
Before getting to those reasons, on the matter of “trans rights,” it must be said that there are no rights enjoyed by others that are not also enjoyed by trans identifying individuals. The Bill of Rights secures the same rights for all of us. What the construct of “trans rights” is actually is a demand for privileges or special rights. Trans activists demand that people and institution behave in ways that contradict the fundamental rights all individuals enjoy.
Every individual has the right to believe in gender identity, just as he has the right to believe in a soul or the thetan and to express his belief in those things in speech and writing—just as he has the right to reject all those things (which I do). This is what it means to enjoy freedom of conscience and thought. If a man wishes to use a feminine name or to request others refer to him by feminine pronouns, then he has the right to change his name and ask others to refer to him as “she/her.” He does not have the right, however, to make rules that punish people for deadnaming him or for making them refer to him by pronouns that do not correspond to his gender (or sex). This is because everybody else enjoys the same rights as the trans identifying person. The right to express something one believes is at the same time the right deny or resist that with he does not believe.
That a Muslim believes he has a soul does not obligate me to believe in the soul along with him. Moreover, I am free to criticize his belief in such a thing. In Islam, the origin of the soul (or rūḥ) is a divine mystery created directly by Allah. The Qur’an indicates that the soul comes from Allah and is instilled into human beings by his will. The archangel Gabriel told the founder of Islam, Muhammad, this. I don’t believe it.
I express the same disbelief for the Scientologist’s belief in the thetan. In Scientology, the thetan is considered the true spiritual identity of a person. According to Scientology’s teachings it is an eternal, immortal entity that has existed since the beginning of time. Thetans are not created or born, the doctrine says, but have always existed in the universe. They have taken on bodies and accumulated “engrams,” or traumatic memories, that cloud their true nature. The goal of Scientology is to clear these engrams (through auditing) and free the thetan, restoring its ability to operate independently of the physical body and the material universe.
I have only ever met one Scientologist in my life (that I know about). It happened many years ago following my criminology class. It was the first day of classes and I began, as I often do, asking students to define crime. We quickly got into the area of morality, and I pivoted to the problem of fraud and the separation of somebody from his money with the promise of something that really can’t be delivered. I wanted to talk about Christianity, but I didn’t want to alienate the class on the first day, so I used the example of Scientology instead. There couldn’t possibly be any Scientologists in Green Bay, Wisconsin, I thought to myself. I talked about the absurdity of the doctrine and the practice of auditing, and how France regards Scientology as a dangerous cult and doesn’t recognize it as a religion (which was true at the time), even though the United States does.
After class, a student came up to me and told me about how she and her parents had moved to Green Bay from California and were devout Scientologists. My first reaction was one of incredulity. “Seriously?” I couldn’t quite read her expression. I thought she was a joker giving me a good go of it as a way of introducing herself. She struck me as effervescent. But she grew furious and got too close to me. She wasn’t kidding. She demanded an apology. I refused to apologize, appealing to free speech and academic freedom, and encouraged her to go to the chair of my department and complain, giving her the office number and the name of my chair, offering to write it down for her if need be. She just walked away in a huff. She dropped the class that day. I never saw her again.
Imagine had she complained and my chair or to the dean of my college and either arranging a meeting to talk to me about my views of Scientology. That would have been weird. Scientology is an ideology. I’m a sociologist. I criticize ideology. I don’t care if people think thetans are real. But I do care if I am punished for saying that they aren’t. Moreover, I’m a criminologist. I criticize ideologies that exploit people, especially vulnerable ones. Am I not allowed to talk about how organizations deceive people into giving them money?
I was the talk of campus several years later when I mocked the idea of a talking snake in a class of some eighty students. I was lecturing on Ludwig Feuerbach’s thesis, primarily articulated in his work The Essence of Christianity (1841), that God is a projection of human qualities and desires rather than an independent divine being. For those who are unfamiliar with the world, Feuerbach argues that humans, in their search for meaning and perfection, create God by externalizing their own ideals—such as love, power—onto an imagined deity. In Feuerbach’s view, religious belief is a reflection of human nature; God is not a supernatural entity but a human creation embodying the best aspects of humanity. God is thus a human construct, and the positive message is that individuals can reclaim these ideals as expressions of their own potential, leading to a more humanistic worldview.
After explaining his Karl Marx used Feuerbach’s insight to develop his critique of ideology, I turned to Erich Fromm’s use the biblical story of the expulsion of man from the Garden of Eden as a metaphor for human freedom and the development of self-awareness. In his view, Adam and Eve’s act of disobedience—eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil—symbolizes humanity’s break from a state of unconscious unity with nature, where humans lived without choice or individuality. By gaining knowledge of good and evil, humans were cast out into a world of uncertainty and independence, which Fromm saw not as a fall but as a necessary step toward becoming fully human. For Fromm, this story reflects the tension between security and freedom, with the latter being the defining aspect of human existence and the path toward self-realization.
It was at this point, having directly touched upon a biblical story, a student offered a rebuttal to my lecture in which he treated the serpent as if it were actually a talking snake, suggesting that it was the embodiment of evil. In my sociology of religion class we go deeply into this matter, but in the moment I heard myself uttering “Seriously? A talking snake?” The class laughed. He took it in stride. People still remind me of that moment and the buzz it stirred on campus.
I tolerate people’s beliefs. But, by the same token, they will have to tolerate mine, as well as my criticism of their beliefs. Mock my atheism and you will find me unfazed. Lord knows I have tolerated criticism of my beliefs or lack thereof my entire life. It’s give and take in a free society. If you want to believe in souls and thetans, fine, just be prepared to hear my opinion about it if I feel so moved or if you ask me and I feel like answering.
So what about these special rights? If Muslims and Scientologists aren’t permitted them, then how can those who subscribe to queer ideology enjoy them? Consider the objection that the rights of a man who identifies as a woman are violated when he is not allowed to enter a space that excludes men. What if men from some other religion or ideology asserted the right to enter women’s spaces?
It should be obvious to those who understand the concept of rights that what “trans rights” actually means by those making this objection. It means the destruction of women’s right to gender exclusive activities, services, and spaces. It also means trespassing upon spaces exclusive to lesbians. The fact that trans women are not women means they have no right to access, participate in, or use those things exclusive to women and lesbians. A man believing or saying he is a woman doesn’t change the reality upon which sex-based rights are established. The trans woman is demanding a privilege other men do not—and should not—enjoy. That’s a privilege, not a right.
The Reasons
First, the claim that men are or could be women is an assault upon science and truth. Gender is not a social construct but the objective result of natural history, determinable by karyotype (sex chromosomes, the Y determinative), gamete size (females have big ones, males have little ones), and most of the time by reproductive anatomy and secondary sex characteristics; there are usually obvious phenotypic differences, especially during and after puberty. Like many mammalian species, humans are sexually dimorphic and their gender is immutable (same is true for birds and reptiles, and for most amphibians and fish).
The project to confuse the public about the science of gender represents a mass exercise in gaslighting. For what purpose? To disorder common sense and the innate gender recognition faculty. A scientific materialist committed to fact and reason must therefore criticize gender ideology (queer theory and all the rest of it), the pseudoscience it’s based on (such as the repurposing of the word gender and the fiction of “gender identity”), and the consequences of crackpot ideas for individuals and society.
Second, following from this, a man who believes he is a woman is mistaken. This false perception is unlike a man’s faith in his soul, which is a nonfalsifiable proposition. In this, the analogy from above is imperfect. Unlike the thetan, what gender a man is can be confirmed by any number of objective tests—his belief is falsifiable. Because he believes he is something he is not nor can ever be, he is delusional (as opposed to being in the grip of the illusions of religion).
To require people who have a strong bond with reality to affirm the delusions of those who don’t share this bond violates freedom of conscience and thought. If men are compelled to say something out of fear of what will happen to them if they don’t, then they are forced into bad faith. Moreover, they potentially harm others by helping them sustain falsehoods about themselves. On the basis of his delusion, a man may submit himself to medical interventions that have no other objective end but to damage his body for corporate profit and ideological desire.
Third, as we see in the case of Tickle v Giggle, gender ideology tramples women’s rights that, unlike trans rights, are rooted in actual grouped differences between men and women, which are many and profound. For example, men in women’s sports undermines the principle of equity since men are vastly superior to women in physical competition. It moreover comprises the safety of female athletes. (See The IOC’s Portrayal Guidelines—a Real-World Instantiation of Newspeak; Misogyny Resurgent: Atavistic Expressions of a Neoreligion; Sacrificing Equity Upon the Altar of Exclusive Inclusivity; Dignity and Sex-Based Rights)
Men trespassing in spaces exclusive to women negates the very reason those spaces were made exclusive in the first place: to keep men out of them. Thus the construct “trans woman” is a species of deceptive mimicry predatory men use to violate girls’ and women’s safe spaces. These men know they aren’t wanted in women’s spaces, yet they persist in imposing themselves on them.
More broadly, expanding the definition of woman to include men erases sex categories. That it is men who are primarily responsible for blurring or erasing the categories confirms the misogyny that lies at the core of gender ideology. This misogyny causes girls and young women to self-loathe and seek male and non-binary identities and self-harm, which may include wrong sex hormones, double mastectomies, and even phalloplasty—medical atrocities sought to escape from what they perceive as oppressive womanhood.
Fourth, gender ideology is destructive to gay and lesbian people, telling young people and children that same-sex attraction may be a sign that they were “born into the wrong body” (an impossibility), and then suggest to them a radical conversion therapy involving social transitioning, i.e., the adoption of wrong gender pronouns and gender stereotypical expressions and roles, puberty blockers, wrong sex hormones, and radical cosmetic surgery (nullification, phalloplasty, vaginoplasty). The result of these atrocities are disfigurement, genital mutilation, loss of orgasm, sterilization, and life-long medical intervention.
Gender ideology is destructive to lesbians in particular given that many men who claim to be women remain heterosexual and, on the fallacious premise that trans women are women, redescribe their sexuality as lesbian and demand access to spaces exclusive to lesbians, who are by definition women attracted to other women. (See Lesbians Don’t Like Penises, So Our Definitions Must Change.)
Fifth, gender ideology in practice transgresses the boundaries and norms that safeguard children. Gender ideologues are pathologically obsessed with the sexuality of children and have for years been busy normalizing this obsession in books, curricula, and online and television programming. Obsessive fascination with the sexuality of children is one of the hallmarks of grooming. I will have more to say about the correlation of pedophilia and the queer project in a future essay. (See Pedophilia and Other Paraphilias: A Primer in What Our Betters are Normalizing; Seeing and Admitting Grooming; Child Sexual Abuse and Its Dissimulation in the Rhetoric of Diversity and Inclusion; What is Grooming?)
(Reading back through these reasons there is a lot of overlap, so they do not break up cleanly. I thought about synthesizing the list into a single logical chain, but the chain is obvious to me, so I will leave things as they are and trust the reader to forge for themselves the links.)
Now, I am sure to be accused of bigotry for this essay, as I have been in the past for other essays. So, as I like to do, I will argue from analogy and see if anything I say in the next several paragraphs strikes the trans identifying person as bigoted. The example is disbelief in Christianity. I will argue that it is rational for a person to disbelieve in Christianity based on various historical, philosophical, and scientific considerations, and that this disbelief is not rooted in bigotry but in fact and reason.
One rational basis for disbelief is the problem of evidence. I find the empirical basis for the supernatural claims of Christianity unconvincing. I apply the same standard of evidence to religious claims as I do to other extraordinary claims, such as those in history or science, where tangible, testable evidence is expected. In the case of Christianity, my disbelief stems from an epistemological commitment to an empirical or naturalistic worldview.
I have concerns about the internal coherence of Christian doctrines. I find the concepts of the Trinity, the nature of the afterlife, the reconciliation of divine omnipotence, omniscience, and benevolence with the existence of evil logically problematic. From a philosophical standpoint, if an individual encounters contradictions within the doctrines or struggles with theodicy, he might reasonably conclude that Christianity does not provide a satisfactory explanation. I have heard attempt to explain the necessity of evil, but I am unconvinced.
Historical and textual criticism provide grounds for disbelief. The Bible, as a historical document, is the product of human authors with particular cultural biases and lacks the divine infallibility claimed by many Christians. (How could we determine the divine character of something anyway?) The fact that religious texts were shaped by historical processes and are subject to interpretation and revision makes me skeptical about their divine authority or origin. It seems to me that the Bible is itself subject to a greater morality—after all, we no longer keep slaves or sell our daughters or execute homosexuals.
Disbelief in Christianity is not inherently bigoted because it does not necessarily involve animosity or prejudice toward Christians as people. I am an atheist, but I defend the right of Christians to identify as such and practice their faith as long as it does not infringe upon my rights. My criticism of Christianity is a response to ideas, not an attack on a group of individuals. Disbelief based on evidence, reasoned reflection, or philosophical inquiry is an intellectual position. Bigotry, by contrast, involves irrational or unjust hostility toward people on the basis of their identity—and unreasonable tenacity in one’s own opinion. One can reject Christianity as a belief system while still respecting the rights and dignity of Christians, thus separating critique of ideas from prejudice against individuals or communities.
In this way, rational disbelief in Christianity reflects a commitment to intellectual integrity and critical inquiry, rather than prejudice or closed-mindedness. My disbelief in and tolerance of gender ideology is of the same character as my disbelief in and tolerance of Christianity. Just as I don’t want Christians indoctrinating children in public schools, so I don’t want gender ideologues indoctrinating children in public schools. Just as I don’t want the Christian flag flying over city hall, I don’t want the trans flag flying over city hall. Just as Christians should not be allowed to impose their rituals and rules on the rest of us, gender ideologues should not be allowed to impose their rituals and rules on the rest of us. I could continue all day with the parallels. So I will leave it there and trust that I have conveyed the point.
freedom and reason 