There is a lot of talk in America today about “transgender rights.” News outlets talk about “transgender athletes,” “transgender prisoners,” and “transgender students.” Our society is steeped in debate about so-called transgenderism. However, I see very few people asking the question, “What does ‘transgender’ mean?” or “What exactly is ‘trans?’”
The crux of the matter is this: People across the political spectrum have been persuaded to accept that there is a coherent category of people for whom sex is irrelevant and that this category of people is called “transgender” (or simply “trans”). Democrats on the whole support “rights for ‘transgender people,’” and Republicans on the whole oppose allowing sex-confused people to hijack sex-specific spaces. But regardless of whether or not a person supports or opposes “rights for ‘transgender people,’” that person probably believes that there is such a category of people.
But there isn’t. “Trans” is a lie. It is a lie as big as the lie that the emperor is wearing clothes. He isn’t wearing clothes. He’s naked. He’s just too arrogant to acknowledge it, and everyone around him is too cowed to say so.
To understand how transgenderism became so entrenched in our society despite its obvious distortions, one must first understand the philosophy from which it began. Starting in the 1970s, a group of people in academia started talking about postmodernism — a new philosophical and political movement that dismissed claims to objective fact and reason. It objected to the idea that anything could be grounded in material reality. One of its main proponents was Michel Foucault, a French philosopher who taught for a while at the University of California, Berkeley. Foucault was also, incidentally, a known pedophile who advocated the abolition of age-of-consent laws. For Foucault, age was just a construct, which meant that adults should be permitted to have sexual relationships with children.
Out of postmodernism came “queer theory,” the idea that biological sex is a social construct. Queer theorists in the 1990s argued from their ivory towers that the material reality of sex doesn’t exist and that it is a social construction meant to oppress. However, the “queer” theorists understood that if they tried to persuade ordinary people that sex isn’t real, they would have been (rightly) ridiculed and ignored. So they invented a new term: “transgender.” This term does exactly what it was intended to do — it persuades ordinary people that the material reality of biological sex isn’t real or, at least, that it doesn’t matter.
There very well may be people who sincerely suffer from what the DSM refers to as “gender dysphoria.” But it does not follow that it makes sense or is healthy for a society to allow people to “identify as” a gender different from their sex. In fact, doing so will only create more confusion and anxiety in those who are very often mentally vulnerable to begin with.
And before anyone asks, I am not a political conservative. I have always been a staunch leftist and, for as long as I can remember, a feminist. I registered as a Democrat the day I turned 18 years old, and I am still a registered Democrat (though I spent a short time as a registered member of the Green Party).
Some have pointed the blame at feminists for the rise of gender ideology. But that’s not a fair accusation. Actual feminists fight for the liberation of women and girls, by which we mean female human beings. Feminists aren’t confused about the category of human beings for whose liberation we fight. We are not confused about the category of people whose voting rights suffragists fought for (at great peril to their own safety). We are not confused about the category of people who are subjected to the horrific offense of female genital mutilation. (The word is right there.) When feminists complain about male violence against women, we aren’t confused about what the words “male” and “women” mean. Feminists didn’t create this “trans” monster. And we are more than willing to work with anyone, even those with whom we might generally disagree, to protect the sex-based rights of women.
The U.S. chapter of Women’s Declaration International, for example, of which I serve as president, works to advance the Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights throughout U.S. law and society. We are nonpartisan and work with women across the political spectrum who agree with the principles outlined in the declaration. (We are also not shy about our support for abortion as a sex-based right for women and girls.)
Because of our opposition to gender ideology and the harms that it is doing to women, we are often smeared by the Left as traitors to progressivism. However, we are not the ones who abandoned progressive values. That crime belongs to the gender ideologues who are pushing an ideology that is politically regressive in every way. Indeed, “transgenderism” destroys the equality that women have achieved and actually enshrines harmful sex stereotypes in law, medicine, academia, and throughout all of society.
But that is exactly the goal of gender ideology: to take over our institutions and destroy from within any truth that grounds us to material reality, including biological sex. The entire edifice of “trans” is being driven by a vicious industry whose aim is to literally obliterate the reality of sex. This industry is a loose conglomeration of Big Tech, Big Pharma, medical supply companies, legacy media, and government agencies. I realize this sounds like a conspiracy theory, but it isn’t. This industry operates out in the open, from renowned children’s hospitals to legacy newsrooms to the White House itself.
Thankfully, more and more people are willing to speak up about this ideology and the damage it is doing to our society. But the only way we win this battle is if we push back as boldly and aggressively as the gender activists who pushed this on us in the first place. We have to tell the truth: “Transgenderism” isn’t real. “Gender identity” is a fake concept. The “transgender” emperor isn’t wearing any clothes.
Kara Dansky is the president of the U.S. chapter of Women’s Declaration International and the author of the book “The Abolition of Sex: How the ‘Transgender’ Agenda Harms Women and Girls.” She has a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and a B.A. from Johns Hopkins University. Follow her on Twitter and Facebook and subscribe to her Substack.
