Gender is not an ideology – but conservative groups know learning about it empowers people to think for themselves

[IwantToRetire]

(NB article is by US based academics)

Political attacks on teaching about gender in colleges and universities are about more than just gender: They are part of a grander project of eroding civil and human rights, limiting personal freedoms and undermining democracy in the name of “traditional” values.

On the first day of his second term, President Donald Trump issued an executive order declaring there are two sexes determined solely by the kind of reproductive cells the body makes, and that the federal government would recognize nothing else. The order claims to protect the “freedom to express the binary nature of sex” and bans the use of federal funds to “promote gender ideology.” Legal experts have criticized the directive as unconstitutional and are challenging it in the courts.

Yet the order has provided fuel for conservatives, right-wing politicians and activists trying to remove so-called gender ideology from many places in American society, including classrooms. Right-wing activists are pushing for censorship of educational curricula in K-12 schools and in colleges and universities, and they have succeeded in Texas, Florida and other red states.

Why are conservative politicians so determined to control how Americans define sex and understand gender?

As sociologists who research and teach about gender, we know that gender across disciplines is understood to be a complex topic of study, not an ideology. The study of gender represents the kind of free inquiry that allows people to decide for themselves how to live, free of coercion or government control.

Article continues at https://uk.news.yahoo.com/gender-not-ideology-conservative-groups-140804996.html

1. Making a critical study of the notion of gender, and all the various definitions of it and approaches to it, is not an "ideology". It's a legitimate subject of academic enquiry.
2. Pushing a particular view of gender as correct and progressive (with disapproval or worse for anyone who even questions this approach), absolutely is an ideology.

If Trump and co are preventing 1 as well as 2, they're out of order.
However, I'm not convinced it's 1 that the writers of the article are actually trying to protect. They show all the signs of having bought into 2.

I must admit I found it quite confusing and thought it must be that the situation in the US is different.

But I mainly posted because of the corny use of "traditional values". I know some conservative and religious groups might use those word, but the common factor across the vaious groups who rejected gender ideology is basic biology. ie Nobody can change sex.

So concerned that 2 academics have expressed it the way the have.

If it was back in the 70s, or was it 80s, when some people were part of a movement of "gender bending" some of their criticisms might apply. Because nobody argued that you could change sex, but did argue you didn't have to accept the narrow traditional gender roles, dress, etc..

So now wonder what academics are teaching as opposed to trans activists in the US.

If you've got a fanny you get dressed with Annie. If you've got a willy you get dressed with Billy. It needn't be any more complicated. 😆

I totally misread the meaning of the article title and thought it was saying that learning about Gender Ideology has been useful in getting people to think for themselves,

It certainly did for me. The more I read the source material that is gender studies, the more I realised it was personal subjectivities based on cherry-picked garbage statistics in pompous obfuscatory language of recycled neo-Marxist simplistic oppression dynamics, where mediocre thinkers supported each other in churning out more utter nonsense to keep their jobs and hang onto the funding sources.

But it turns out it was another article about how the people are too stupid to understand how terribly complex gender is and they are such reductive thinkers. Progressive genius butting up against material reality again. Aw bless their organic cotton socks.

I read it in the same way.

Much as I dislike the 'no debate' philosophy of gender fruitcakes I'm starting to become a bit tired of seeing their stupid arguments being engaged with respectfully and seeing people calmly debating with them to have their goodwill thrown back at them. So bollocks to them (pun intended). I'd almost rather people just laughed and said "nah, a transwoman's a bloke. Don't be silly."

It kinda feels like earnestly debating with a flat earther about the shape of the earth - it legitimises their argument and fosters this dynamic whereby no trans person shall ever be disagreed with. I honestly think these people are best treated dismissively or just asked silly questions like whether a plane would fall off if it landed on the underside of the flat earth, or what happens if somebody with a magical trans brain identifies as cis.

Grifters keeping the grift going. 🤮 They really do live in the Upside Down World now.

I think it's a mistake to ignore the intense appeal this framing has. It's tiresome, but important to repeatedly draw the distinction between homosexuality and transgenderism. Acknowledging homosexuality is not an interpretive act and therefore is not an 'ideology'.

Acknowledging that some men have an intense desire to present as women for their own satisfaction and to be affirmed as women by others, likewise is simply observable fact, but interpreting that that phenomena means that in some sense they ARE women is a a speculative ideology. It makes the movement categorically different than the gay rights movement, and enshrining it in institutions where the the view is given punitive, coercive force has proved to be highly anti-liberal. And in environments that are supposed to be governed by liberalism of the mind - higher education.

If I were an evil capitalist overlord I would be happy to see my subversive, rebellious or just unhappy subjects engaging with gender ideology (rather than say Communism.) It doesn't challenge my control of economic systems - in fact if anything it leads to individualist consumption and it directs the largest harms back onto the rebels'own bodies or towards unimportant women and children.

IIRC the American Constitution specifies that the government shall not be associated with promoting or enforcing any political or religious belief, but shall protect individuals’ rights to express their own political or religious beliefs in so far as they do not impinge upon others. In practice this means that any institution that receives government funding cannot teach any political or religious beliefs as factual/right/wrong etc, but can teach about them in a neutral, evenhanded manner.

So this objection fits with the neutrality aspect. If the quote is representative of the whole article, what it ignores is that, where genderism is engaged with, it is not being taught in a neutral, evenhanded manner. It is taught as if it is factually and morally correct. It is imposed upon all. No dissenting view is permitted. And that conflicts with the neutrality aspect.

(IANAL, nor a US citizen.)

I agree but we already know this, we've known it for a long time. There's nothing in the article that's new, they doing what they always do, they're taking the criticism directed at them and aiming it back at they're critics, and around and around in circle's we go.

There's no point to paying attention to it, the Trump administration aren't ignoring it, it's trying to stop the circle by defunding these micky mouse 'studies' subjects. GI is entirely made up by academia and so academic's who's whole career revolves around this subject are going to keep pushing it and so long as higher education keeps acting like a play centre for idle minds, this ideology will continue to get new recruits.

Defunding academia is the only way to stop the rot, although given that this country is in financial free fall it may not be long before the grift all comes to a crashing end anyway.

Academia can discuss theoretical concepts til the cows come home - that's what it is there for. But that doesn't mean it's a design for life that applies to the real world. Quantum physics is similar.

The old Harvard slogan applies in reverse: "yes it works in the real world but does it work in theory?"

Fully agree.

I had to check the date of the article - yes it's March 2026, and to read something like this, which has been refuted so many times already, is an answer to the question in the placard in the photo
WHAT ARE YOU SO AFRAID OF?

I'm afraid of allegedly serious people continuing, in 2026, to repeat outlier claims like
Scientific evidence suggests, however, that sex is not always binary. In biology, sex refers to genes, reproductive organs, hormone systems and observable physical characteristics; different combinations of these lead to variations in sex. Far from straightforward, then, sex is complicated.

And a person’s assigned sex at birth does not always align with their deeply held sense of self – their gender identity.
I agree with this. I'm more prepared to accept the concept of 'gender' than most posters on this board. I had a deeply-held sense that I was not like other little girls when I was a child, and I have a sense that I am not like other women as an adult. I could even accept, if pushed, that I have a 'gender identity'.

But so what? My 'deeply held sense of self' is a matter for myself, my nearest and dearest and possibly a therapist, but it is not a valid basis for legislation.
Are we to have laws that enshrine every citizen's 'deeply held sense of self', or just the ones that haven't come to terms with the sex their were born into?

The idea that this kind of article can be written. presumably in good faith, and taken seriously in March 2026 is depressing.

I agree that a huge part of this problem has been the legitimising of more abstract university disciplines.

I did an English degree just as 'gender studies' would have been making its first appearance and I agree it's fun sitting round talking about Butler's ideas of gender as performance and how that applies to literary texts.

But the idea of 'gender' shaping the law/policy above actual sex is completely horrifying.

The university sector boxed themselves in here. They can't admit that the level of academic rigour in 'studies' degrees is not the same as that of hard science.

This is also compounded by the idea that a certain type of intelligent, articulate person is attracted to these disciplines, because they like ideas and they like debating them. These departments are not entirely full of idiots. But unfortunately, not enough people have the intellectual honesty to understand where their discipline sits in a hierarchy of what's important to people on the street and was isn't.

Ideas about 'gender performance' are not equivalent to facts about biological development of the species. They are certainly not more important. Third level has failed everyone in failing to call out the difference.

I get tired of it being seen as left / right, or liberal/ conservative, issue. Acknowledging biological reality should have nothing to do with neat, binary - pun intended - political categories.

Biological reality is fact: it is neither left wing nor right wing. It just suits shouty armchair commentators who love creating division online to use these lazy binary groupings; unfortunately, and very annoyingly, these categories seem to have got stuck in the minds of people everywhere.

I think the study of how biological sex has influenced things like work roles, power differentials, physical appearance, dress, speech patterns etc etc over the millennia and across cultures is fascinating.
If that's what 'gender studies' was, fair enough.

Only it's not, is it?😡

Authoritarian approaches to governing rely on scapegoating people, policing thought and speech, and punishing dissent.

They should know all about that!!!

Scientific evidence suggests, however, that sex is not always binary. In biology, sex refers to genes, reproductive organs, hormone systems and observable physical characteristics; different combinations of these lead to variations in sex. Far from straightforward, then, sex is complicated.

No, it most certainly does not suggest that sex, in mammals, is not binary. That is nothing but a bare faced lie. That is notwithstanding a minuscule number of activists, or shills, who will lie for pay.

And a person’s assigned sex at birth does not always align with their deeply held sense of self – their gender identity.

Nobody is assigned sex at birth, of course, but I dont disagree that a very small number of people wish that they were the opposite sex. That said, wishing it doesn't make it true.

This is exactly the problem, isn't it?

The scientific community need to stand up and shut these nonsense ideas down. Currently no one seems to want to put their head above the parapet. But it's only their own reputation they are harming. I'm not sure if they fully understand that.

This thread starter makes no meaningful sense.

I would have grave concerns about the capacity for independent thought of anyone going through or teaching Gender Studies courses in recent years. Do I think they should be shut down? No, because if we do that we lower ourselves to their level. But we do need to somehow shut down the idea that it isn’t polite/moral/virtuous to disagree with them in any way shape or form. Fortunately I think that is happening now, but it won’t go easily and the academics and researchers who have pinned their colours to this particular mast (and been very generously funded to do so) will be standing with the parents who have transed their kids and fighting it out to the last they/them.

That's what struck me. Even allowing for the US context the 2 female(?) authors seem to have not heard or decided to ignore the biology part of the arguement.

And instead hijacked the issue to virtue signal their political stance.

Which they are entitled to have, but not as part of a discussion about gender vs biology.

But of course in invisibilising biology they dont have to explain.

Of course the other possibility is that this type of article is the inevitable outcome of 40+ years of gender studies burying women's studies.

It reminds me (sorry it is repeat comment I often make) is the film called Idiocracy, which I certainly think the virtual world is making more likely to happen, especially when the academic world is as adrift from logical thought as this article is.

So now wonder what academics are teaching as opposed to trans activists in the US.

Most (but not all) US academics in the humanities and social sciences ARE "transactivists". Most are also female, Liberal (in the US sense), authoritarian and against free speech. Probably similar in the UK.

There is a lot of research into this phenomenon - and a huge quantity of mind-rotting "transactivist" research gibberish published by academics that bears this out.

What also infuriates me is that it is precisely these sorts of idiots who were funded to go out to Afghanistan to "empower women" when what they actually did was run classes on Judith Butler!

Its a little bit more complicated, because in the USA 'fan' or 'fanny' are words for butt / bum. So everyone has one.
Not sure what word they use for the "front lady parts"
😁

That was my take, too.