I have long asserted that Gender Ideology is fundamentally a “straw man” construct that the political right has co-opted and turned into a bucket that they fill with all of their fears about transgender people (in much the same way that the word “transgenderism” is another term they love to throw around to invalidate transgender people).  

This morning, I went to Google and asked its AI to define “Gender Ideology”, here’s what it came back with: 

“Gender ideology” is a term primarily used by conservative, religious, and anti-LGBTQ+ groups to describe, and criticize, a set of beliefs regarding gender identity, sexual orientation, and reproductive rights. It is largely employed as a pejorative, catch-all phrase to frame modern understandings of gender—particularly those that decouple gender from biological sex—as a dangerous, artificial, or fabricated construct. 

Core Beliefs Criticized as “Gender Ideology”
Those who use the term “gender ideology” often argue it encompasses the following ideas: 

• Social Construction of Gender: The belief that gender roles and identities are not fixed by nature or biology, but are constructed by society and culture.
• Gender Identity over Biology: The assertion that a person’s internal sense of their gender (“gender identity”) is more definitive than their assigned sex at birth.
• Gender Fluidity: The concept that gender can be fluid, non-binary, or chosen, rather than strictly male or female.
• Separation of Sex and Gender: The distinction between biological sex (chromosomes/anatomy) and gender (socially constructed roles), which is foundational to gender studies.

Unsurprisingly, GLAAD notes that this is a term which is used not by either academic researchers in the area, nor by actual transgender people.  It is used primarily by the same actors who used the term “gay agenda” (similarly devoid of meaning for the people it is intended to attack).  

Looking closer at the broad ideas that “Gender Ideology” is charitably intended to encompass, we see a pattern that in domains like psychology and sociology we call “biopsychosocial” (BPS), where the concepts involved encompass the domains of biology (the physical), psychology (the individual), and sociological (the social) dimensions in a manner where they intersect with each other.  

Gender Ideology As An Attack Tool

Of course, the people who are using “Gender Ideology” as a term in discourse don’t realize these interactions, because they are arguing from a more absolute perspective that prioritizes biology over the other dimensions involved – the psychological and sociological domains especially.  Second, instead of recognizing things as interacting with each other, they often engage in a form of absolute thinking, basically “if there’s a biological component, then that’s all that counts”.

This is why, when you get into an argument over “Gender Ideology” with the anti-transgender types, they will dive hard towards “biology” arguments.  They think biology is simple and absolute.  If a person has male genitalia, then they are man, and if they have female genitalia, they must be a woman.  When you challenge them by pointing out that there are exceptions, they dive to arguments about chromosomes.  Well – that’s all fine an dandy, but even chromosomes don’t provide a satisfactory answer.  

They often argue quite loudly that gendered behaviours are somehow intrinsic to whether one has a male or female body.   This falls apart as well.  Sure, feminine people are often much more patient with babies than masculine people are (for example).  There’s a problem with that.  Not all feminine people are good with babies, and not all masculine people are “bad” with babies.  There are masculine people whose broad behaviours are remarkably feminine, and there are feminine people whose behaviours are markedly masculine.  This observation alone tells us that there’s more going on here than “just biology”.  

How much of someone’s behaviours is driven by socialization?  How much is intrinsic to the person from the outset?  Those are complex questions.  What we do know from observation and experience is that you can’t easily disentangle all of the interactions from each other, and those who fall in the exceptions are often far more able to help us understand the interactions between body, mind, and social experiences. 

Those who use Gender Ideology to attack transgender people do so through a misguided understanding of science, and a desire to invalidate those that they perceive as foes. 

Consider what they roll into the construct of “Gender Ideology”, and how they mischaracterize each component:

Separation of Sex and Gender:  Recognizing that sex (the physical body) and gender (a combination of identity and social behaviours) are distinct from each other is an area where the anti-transgender movement has a collective scream of “Nooooo!”.  In large part, like a lot of anti-feminist argument in the (not so) distant past, this boils down to a belief that “biology is destiny” – a belief used to keep women subservient in society.

Social Construction of Gender:  They dislike the notion that gender has a social component – in their minds, gendered behaviour is entirely derived from biology.  It makes it easier for the opponents to believe that gendered social behaviours are intrinsic to the body you are born in, and therefore immutable.  

Many writers have talked about “gendered behaviour” as distinct from the physical body.  We’ll explore this more in a bit.

Gender Identity over Biology:  Again, the anti-transgender movement loves to argue that cross-gender identity is somehow “violating” some law of biology.  We’ll explore in more detail later why this is a very flawed way of looking at things.  

Gender Fluidity:  In some ways, I suspect the recognition of gender fluidity broke the anti-transgender movement.   If they had difficulty understanding the idea that some people have gender identities which differ from their bodies, the idea that an identity can be flexible and variable was a bridge further than their imaginations could reach.

One of the core problems here is that anti-transgender activists who cite “Gender Ideology” take a statement and draw an absolute from it.  In their minds, you cannot separate sex and gender.  For them, sex determines gender, and all of the social components of gender automatically are connected to physical sex.  They simply refuse to consider that while sex is a component in gendered behaviour, there are social and psychological components to behaviour.  To them, the body must drive all of these, and it is incomprehensible to them to argue that gender is separate from the body. 

Embedded in all of this thinking is a fundamental rejection of feminism and feminist thinking.  Remember, it took decades if not centuries, for women to finally convince men that in fact they are sentient, thinking creatures with minds of their own.  That anti-transgender activism just happens to also be fundamentally anti-feminist is no real surprise. 

A BioPsychoSocial Analysis

Absolutist thinking is exactly where the anti-transgender argument falls apart.  When you engage in a biopsychosocial analysis, you aren’t taking a hierarchical perspective.  Instead, you are expecting the facets to interact with each other, resulting in varying degrees of importance for each facet in the overall analysis.  This is where we get into one of my favourite comments about mental health:  it’s all about spectrums of behaviour – all of this is about spectrums – there are no absolutes. 

So, what do I mean by “spectrums” in a BPS analysis?  Basically, in this context I will argue that the relevant attributes occur in a gradient, and for any individual, a given trait may weigh differently into their overall conceptualization of their gender. 

Let’s apply a BPS analysis to gender and see where that takes us.  I am going to use 3 major facets for this analysis:  Biology, Identity, and Socialization.

Facet: Biology

Biology at least in the most superficial sense appears quite binary.  Mammals as a class generally have male and female sexes that engage in reproductive activities to produce offspring.  Seems fairly “binary”, right?  Well, not really.  What we actually have is a bimodal distribution with the vast majority of people falling into the categories of male or female, and a scattering of people who land somewhere in between for a variety of reasons that we broadly classify as having “disorders of sexual development (DSD)”.  

It might be tempting to say “well, we can ignore those pesky intersex cases because there’s so few of them” (which I see a lot of anti-transgender campaigners arguing).  The problem with doing so is basically then we are saying that there are “people whose experiences don’t count”, and in this type of analysis, that’s a big issue – a proper analysis needs to be comprehensive, and inclusive.  In other domains of science, models fall apart on the exceptions that they don’t encompass, same thing applies here. 

Consider the fact that we have some individuals who have 46XY chromosomes, but because their cells don’t process androgens, they develop along typical female lines, and have typically feminine gender identity.  How does this person’s biology inform their gender identity, especially when they learn they have “typically male” chromosomes?  At birth, they appear to be normally female, and the chromosomal question often doesn’t arise until they are in adulthood. 

I point this extreme example out to highlight the fundamental problem that “biology is king” arguments fall into.  Outward appearance only tells us one part of the story, and things can be going on in other areas of the person’s body that contradict those outward appearances.  This dismantles the absolute concepts that “you were born a boy (or girl)”, therefore that’s all you can be.  Similarly, we can’t just look at a person’s chromosomes and say “aha! you’re a man/woman”.  There are exceptions that are going to confound that at every turn.  

Fetal development is similarly complex.  We used to think that around the time you could tell what direction the fetus was heading through an ultrasound that “we knew”.  Except along comes a neuroscience researcher by the name of D F Swaab, who identified that the brain differentiates along sexual lines at a different time than the body in gestation (Swaab, 2007; Swaab, & Hofman, 1984).  The idea of a “feminized” brain developing in an otherwise masculinized body in utero is really an important possibility, and again like those oh-so-rare DSDs, it tells us that things are not as simple as we might have once thought. 

Similarly, in other research, Swaab’s team identified that transgender people have regions of their brain that were in the size range and neuron density for their desired sex (Kruijver, Zhou, Pool, Hofman, & Swaab, 2000).  This is a big deal. It tells us that there are significant brain development issues that are at play when we are talking about transgender people.

This is where we get to the real strength of looking at things not as discrete states of being, but as happening along spectrums which reflect the variability we observe in the world.  But, it also tells us that we need to look beyond “just the biology” to understand transgender people.  We need to expand our view of things to incorporate the psychological and social aspects of a person’s existence. 

Facet:  The Psychology (the inner person)

When we talk about gender identity, we have to delve into the person’s inner world a bit.  This is a non-trivial exercise, and even now is a long term effort, and a difficult one.  

Gender identity is central to all of us from our earliest days.  By the time a child is about to enter school, they already have a working gender identity (Perry, Pauletti, & Cooper, 2019).  In fact, their understanding of gender is remarkably complex and contains significant levels of introspection and awareness (Perry, Pauletti, & Cooper, 2019).  Far too many people equate gender identity with sexual identity and make the mistake of claiming that children are not old enough to understand gender because they equate it with sexuality, when in fact they are distinct attributes.  The reality is that gender identity is usually well established by the time most children enter school.  

This finding is consistent with findings going back to the earliest days of modern research into transgender identities where adult transgender people would often report cross-gender identification reaching back to their earliest childhood memories (Green, 1968; Doorn, Porting, & Verschoor, 1994).  

It is not uncommon for transgender people to attempt to fit into the social roles expected of them based on their bodies, but often at the price of enormous internal turmoil (Stuart, 1991).  That turmoil is usually resolved through gender transition.  In spite of the claims of anti-transgender activists, the only known effective approach to treating transgender people is affirmative care.  

But then we come along to the uncomfortable issue that transgender people are much more likely to have comorbid mental health diagnoses ranging from anxiety to personality disorders (Pinna, et al, 2019).  All of this seems very concerning on the surface, but we have to understand that comorbid (occurring at the same time as) is not equivalent to “caused by”, or even “related to” the person’s gender identity.  

For example, a transgender person may experience significant anxiety associated with their cross-gender identity and their relationship with their body.  But, they can also experience enormous stresses that are external to their gender identity.  Minority stress, fears of losing their jobs, friends, and social supports can all contribute to additional mental health issues which are only peripherally associated with gender identity.  Things like personality disorders are a whole other collection of complex mental health issues, and their causes have never been linked to gender identity.  

But, concepts like minority stress (Meyer, 1995, 2003) become important, because they give us a segue into the social side of the conversation.  Minority stress is a construct that Meyer came up with to describe the additional stresses and their effects that members of minority groups experience over and above normal stressors that occur in life.  Minority stress exists in both the psychological and sociological dimensions of this analysis because it encompasses both the individual’s reaction to those stressors as well as the stressors themselves.

I will point out that even where those stressors are overwhelming, transgender people remain transgender.  Gender identity doesn’t always get expressed, but that doesn’t mean the person isn’t experiencing the internal pressures it creates when it is at odds with their presentation.

Facet:  Sociological Factors

Society is highly gendered, and in fact it is from here that we get notions like “gender is performative”.  We all have pretty strong ideas about what words like “man” and “woman” mean, and they include everything from appearances to behavioural norms. 

In “the West” (e.g. societies that descended from Western European colonial powers, there are expected behaviours for both men and women.  Think about things that differentiate men and women in social spaces, and you’ll start to come up with a pretty good list.  It won’t be exhaustive of course, and there will be a myriad of exceptions as well.  Societies are ordered, but not necessarily consistent. 

This is where the other side of the transgender experience is driven from.  If you identify with the “other” group in society compared to the one you were assigned to at birth, things get really murky.  Stories of transgender people adopting the play styles of “the opposite sex” as children are not uncommon.  

Now, think about the messages that society gives people that transgress the “norms” that society sets out for gender roles.  Boys who act in ways that are “stereotypically feminine” are derided as “sissy” or worse by their peers.  Masculine appearing girls are subjected to equally hostile treatment by their more conforming peers.  This is a big deal because it represents a clear and unmistakable stressor that contributes to the minority stress construct described by Meyer (1995, 2003).  There are many other aspects to minority stress which can exist, and can range from the impact of local laws to societal pressures that might make walking down the street with your partner feel dangerous.  

For example, in Alberta, specific laws have been enacted which attack transgender visibility, access to treatment for transgender youth, as well as a ban on transgender women competing in sport.  If you don’t compete in sport, or aren’t a minor, those laws “don’t really affect you”, do they?  Well, the reality is that they do – they send a message to the whole of the transgender community that being transgender is somehow intrinsically “wrong”, and that you should not be visible.  This creates an enormous amount of internal stress for people, which can result in anything from withdrawing from favourite activities to socially isolating oneself in order to feel a modicum of safety.  

Tying The BioPsychoSocial Together

On an individual level, we can tie all of this together with respect to an individual and start to understand that things are complex.  We have, in any one individual a range of potential biological factors at play.  One of the interesting aspects of transgender identity is that the individual is usually completely aware of the incongruity of their internal identity with respect to their bodies (which distinguishes transgender identity from delusion).  We cannot, as yet, assert that there are necessary brain structures that play specific roles in gender identity.  There is a significant amount of circumstantial evidence that suggests that there are things related to brain development which could have something to do with the development of a person’s “gendered brain”. 

More central to the concept of gender identity is the psychological.  While a person’s body may contain any number of variations from binary sex, their identity lives wholly in the psychological space.  Identity is interesting because it can only be expressed by the individual to the degree that they feel comfortable expressing it.   What we do know is that identity develops over time, and it exists with respect to both the body and the social context of the person. 

Transgender people may well behave as a member of their “gender assigned at birth” for years – even well into adulthood.  This does not make them less or more transgender.  It is learned behaviours which they carry out in order to survive. No more, no less.  

What is intriguing about the concept of transgender identity is that transgender people receive exactly the same “gender cues” socially and from their bodies that their cisgender counterparts do.  Yet, for some reason they still end up expressing a cross-gender identity at some point in life.  The persistence of transgender people in seeking to resolve the dilemma that life has dealt them is remarkable and we should not ignore what it tells us about the concepts of gender, sex, identity, and behaviour.  

It is not unusual for transgender people to find that they “fit in best” with the social environments normally associated with their chosen gender.  The concept of fitting in is a process of learned behaviours which come with exposure and feedback.  

For example, Gender Affirming Hormone Therapy (GAHT) helps the transgender person fit into spaces associated with their desired gender by assisting with the development of secondary and tertiary sex characteristics which help others see the person as a valid member of the space, and at the same time help the individual feel like a valid member of that group.  The interactions within those spaces enable the transgender person to learn the various social cues and response languages that they need to function socially.  

Connecting Back To Gender Ideology

I hope that at this point, you’re starting to understand that Gender Identity is complex and multi-faceted.  Complexity is important here, because it speaks against the simplistic either/or reasoning often poured into Gender Ideology.

Gender Ideology starts from the idea that gender identity itself is “suspect”, and in particular transgender identities are considered deeply suspect.  A lot of Gender Ideology arguments are prone to degenerating into variations on “biology is destiny”, which is at complete odds with the observable evidence we have regarding transgender people.  There may be biological components at play in transgender identities, but there are also psychological and sociological components which need to be considered.  

The idea that “chromosomes tell no lies” is simply false – it’s a long, complex biological process from the chromosomes to what the person actually looks like.  Similarly, the idea that because someone was born with one body structure or another does not mean that their social and psychological inclinations align with the assumptions around the social behaviours assigned to that body structure.

Notions like non-binary gender, or gender fluidity, are relatively recent.  I attended a WPATH conference in the late 2000s, and the notions of gender fluidity were an active discussion as a new-ish clinical construct, arising out of the recognition of several clinically interesting subgroups that were now coming forward seeking supportive treatment.  

Closing Thoughts

The world we live in is complex, and we as human beings are complex.  It is unreasonable in a world of complexity to believe that human beings can be slotted into simplistic boxes based on what a doctor observes when a person is born.

Research in this field is phenomenological – that is to say it responds to what is observed.  The concept of Gender Ideology is intrinsically the opposite of that – it revolves around denying the validity of observed phenomena.   

Every time I see the phrase “gender ideology”, I find myself in a conversation with someone who simply cannot accept that the world does not fit into the simple view that they desire.  Gender Ideology is, at the end of it all, a straw man which the anti-transgender movement fills with their anxieties about transgender people. 

References

Doorn, C. D., Poortinga, J., & Verschoor, A. M. (1994). Cross-gender identity in transvestites and male transsexuals. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 23(2), 185-201.

Green, R. (1968). Childhood cross-gender identification. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 147(5), 500-509.

Kruijver, F. P., Zhou, J. N., Pool, C. W., Hofman, M. A., Gooren, L. J., & Swaab, D. F. (2000). Male-to-female transsexuals have female neuron numbers in a limbic nucleus. The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 85(5), 2034-2041.

Meyer, I. H. (1995). Minority stress and mental health in gay men. Journal of health and social behavior, 38-56.

Meyer I. H. (2003). Prejudice, social stress, and mental health in lesbian, gay, and bisexual populations: conceptual issues and research evidence. Psychological bulletin, 129(5), 674–697. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.129.5.674

Perry, D. G., Pauletti, R. E., & Cooper, P. J. (2019). Gender identity in childhood: A review of the literature. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 43(4), 289-304.

Pinna, F., Paribello, P., Somaini, G., Corona, A., Ventriglio, A., Corrias, C., … & Italian Working Group on LGBTQI Mental Health. (2022). Mental health in transgender individuals: a systematic review. International review of psychiatry, 34(3-4), 292-359.

Stuart, K. E. (1991). The Uninvited Dilemma: A Question of Gender.  Portland, OR, Metamorphous Press.

Swaab, D. F. (2007). Sexual differentiation of the brain and behavior. Best practice & research clinical endocrinology & metabolism, 21(3), 431-444.