Hitchhiker's Guide to the Transgender Galaxy (Part I)

Why We Must Fight Gender Identity Ideology

A BiologyMatters Report
By Carol Dansereau
May 2, 2022

Table of Contents and links to Parts II through VI appear below.

PART ONE:  INTRODUCTION

Gender Identity Ideology:  A Toxic Hoax that Must Be Opposed

In a remarkably short period of time, a bizarre new ideology has taken hold across the U.S. and around the world.  Gender Identity Ideology claims that any man who feels like a woman is a woman.  He and his male anatomy are entitled to be in the women’s locker room and women’s sports. It claims that any woman who feels like a man is a man, even when she’s doing something quintessentially female like giving birth.  In fact, by giving birth, a woman who identifies as a man demonstrates that men have babies too.  According to Gender Identity Ideology, children who reject their actual sex must be “affirmed” as the sex they claim to be, including via medical “treatments”, if they want those.

Schools are teaching this ideology.  Major medical institutions have embraced it.  The Democrats, the Greens and most socialist groups are avidly pushing it.  Executive Orders, federal and state legislation, and local policies already enshrine it into law. 

This is a very bad thing.  Every person, Left or Right, who cares about justice and human rights, needs to stand up now to vocally oppose Gender Identity Ideology.  We must all demand that Gender-Identity-pushing policies and programs be rescinded.

Many who have been cheering on Gender Identity Ideology believe it’s the next logical step forward in civil rights.  They are dead wrong.  Many assume it is protecting children and enabling them to thrive, but it is doing precisely the opposite.

Gender Identity Ideology is a toxic hoax, a parasite that destroys every host it latches onto.   It is an anti-science cult misrepresenting and undercutting the struggles of intersex people in an attempt to wrap itself in a scientific façade.  It is a virulently homophobic and sexist belief system masquerading as a civil rights movement, even as it eviscerates the gains of homosexuals, women, people of color, indigenous communities, and everyone, male or female, who rebels against sexist stereotypes.  It is a Pied Piper delivering vast numbers of children to extreme medical harm and persuading well-intentioned adults to applaud as this happens.

The damage being done in the name of Gender Identity Ideology is not hypothetical and minor.  It is very real and massive, and it must be opposed.

But there’s another reason to fight Gender Identity Ideology:  it undercuts our ability to organize on the crucial issues of our day.  Any group or political party that embraces this regressive ideology loses all credibility.  It alienates long-term supporters and people who would otherwise join their cause.  Gender Identity Ideology is normalizing suppression on a grand scale—thereby undercutting all campaigns for social justice and environmental sanity.  It is also promoting a mindset of labeling those with different opinions as evil and refusing to hear what they have to say.  Mired in cancel culture, Gender Identity Ideology splinters humanity precisely when we need to build solidarity with one another.

This report provides an in-depth review of the harm Gender Ideology is doing, how it became so powerful so fast, what we need to do to escape its toxic grip, and how doing so could help us build the powerful movement for system change we have always needed.

The report is divided into six parts:
Part I—this introduction — lays out the irrational core tenet of Gender Identity Ideology.

Part II details how Gender Identity Ideology hitchhikes on other people’s struggles. Movements to advance the rights of gay men and lesbians, girls and women, intersex individuals, people of color, and indigenous communities have all been commandeered and undercut.

Part III looks at the other major hitchhiking strategy that has advanced Gender Identity Ideology: hitchhiking on the compassion we have for children and our desire to protect them.   This part of the report discusses the “Affirmation Only” approach that now reigns in most schools, medical centers and other institutions, and the tremendous harm this does to children.  

Part IV moves beyond hitchhiking to explore other tactics employed by gender ideologues to advance their agenda:  vicious suppression of all dissent; and intentional incoherence, lies and manipulation. Part IV also discusses the huge profits accruing to the Pharmaceutical and Medical Industrial Complex as more and more children and adults medically “transition.”  It exposes the wealthy forces behind Gender Identity Ideology’s meteoric rise.

Part V explores how Gender Identity Ideology undercuts the work we need to do on other issues, like global warming.   It also discusses the opportunity that lies before us.  Overcoming Gender Identity Ideology could be a springboard to building the kind of movement we need to prevent environmental catastrophe and create a just world.

Part VI lays out the steps we need to take to end Gender Identity Ideology’s grip on our world. 

The Irrational Core of Gender Identity Ideology

“Gender Identity Ideology” revolves around a completely irrational tenet: What sex you are, has nothing to do with your body.  According to gender ideologues, sex is determined by what individuals feel rather than their sexual anatomy. 

If you think this is hyperbole, check out the gender identity lessons taught to children starting in kindergarten in U.S. public schools. Doctors are said to “guess” and “assign” sex at birth, but later a child—even one who still believes in Santa Claus—can declare that they’re something else. And it’s that something else that is considered real.   Because somehow, some people are “born in the wrong body.” 

As a matter of science, sex is defined by the objective binary reality of whether ovaries or testicles are present at birth.  We are either males or females based on which of two sexed body types we belong to: the male one associated with production of the male “gamete” (sperm) or the female one, associated with the female gamete (eggs.)  Secondary sex organs (uterus, vagina, fallopian tubes in females; penis, epididymis, and vas deferens in males) are almost always consistent with a newborn’s primary sex organs (the ovaries or testicles). 

But Gender Identity Ideology is faith-based, not science-based.  It declares that sex is determined by individuals’ feelings, not by reproductive anatomy.  A woman is said to be anyone “who identifies as a woman.” A man is said to be anyone “who identifies as a man.” These are obviously circular definitions which render the terms “man” and “woman” meaningless.

According to Gender Identity Ideology, someone born with testicles, a penis, an epididymis, vas deferens and a Y chromosome is a woman, if he says so.  Someone born with ovaries, a uterus, a vagina and only X chromosomes is a man, if she says so. Other terms related to the sexes, such as “male”, “female”, “boy” and “girl” are similarly gutted.

Individuals can also declare themselves to be “nonbinary”, i.e. to be neither male nor female, or to shift back and forth between sexes. Sex is treated as a function of self-perception entirely disconnected from the material reality of which sex organs a person has.

Gender Identity Ideology is an attempted definitional coup.  We’re all supposed to cheerfully discard consistent objective meanings for crucial biological terms, accepting in their place shifting subjective meanings, as if this were the most rational thing anyone could suggest.  And then we’re expected to accept the outrageous consequences that flow from that coup.  Men who say they’re women are to be treated as such.  Women who say they’re men are to be treated as men.  Children who say they’re a different sex, are to be “affirmed” in that self-perception, no questions asked.

The result is staggering damage to the rights and health of vast numbers of people. Far from expanding rights and civil liberties, Gender Ideology tramples them as it drives people apart. Instead of building solidarity, it sows division and poisons the organizing efforts humanity needs to survive.

Gender critics strongly support the rights of those who identify as transgender or nonbinary to believe whatever they want and to enjoy the freedoms and dignity to which every human being is entitled. We strongly support those who break free from sexist stereotypes and many of us are “gender nonconforming” ourselves.  What we oppose is the imposition of Gender Identity definitions and doctrines upon others, and the destruction this delivers. 

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You have reached the end of PART I. To move on to PART II, click HERE.
The full Table of Contents for Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Transgender Galaxy is below, with links to each part.

                                          
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Transgender Galaxy Table of Contents            

PART I:   INTRODUCTION (Included in this Post above.)
Gender Identity:  A Toxic Hoax that Must Be Opposed
The Irrational Core of Gender Identity Ideology

PART II:  HITCHHIKING ON OTHER PEOPLE’S STRUGGLES
How Civil Rights Movements are Co-opted & Derailed by Gender Identity Ideology

Attaching the “T” to the “LGB”.

Glomming onto the Fight Against Sexism
Women are being denied their right to women-only spaces, gatherings & groups.
Men are regularly participating in female-only sports, stealing opportunities and honors from women.
Other damage done by Gender Identity Ideology to women’s rights and the fight against sexism
Déjà vu.

Latching onto Intersex

Appropriating Black, Brown and Indigenous Struggles

PART III:  HITCHHIKING ON COMPASSION:
How Caring People Become Cheerleaders for Hurting Children
* The Suicide Ploy
* Affirmation Only
* Transing Children: The Basics
* The Painful Realities of Medical Transition
* Out of Sight. Out of Mind.
* Permanent Major Losses for Children?  Big Whoop.
* Life-long Medicalization and Maintenance
* No Going Back
* Gender Medicine is not Evidence-based.
* Reasons Children Reject Their Sexed Bodies.
* The Number of Children Claiming Trans and Non-binary Identities is Skyrocketing.
* Are Children Leading the Way?
* Affirmation isn’t the only option.
* Think again

PART IV:   OTHER TACTICS AND WHO’S BEHIND GENDER IDENTITY’S RAPID ASCENT
Suppression
Incoherence, Lies and Manipulation
* A Thoroughly Irrational Ideology
* Incoherence as a Weapon
* Lies and Manipulation
Big Pharma, Big Money, Big Power
* The Money to Be Made
* Big Money Backers
* A Bigger End Game?

PART V:  UNDERMINING THE MOVEMENT HUMANITY NEEDS
First, Gender Ideology normalizes suppression, and that undercuts all of our work.

Second, Gender Ideology steers people away from the work we should be doing and the solidarity we need to do it

Third, Gender Ideology destroys the credibility of any group that embraces it.
Social Justice Groups
Political Parties
In the UK:     The Labour Party; The U.K. Green Party

In the US:      The Democratic Party; The U.S.  Green Party
Socialist Organizations

Gender Ideology’s Impact Will Grow

The Opportunity

PART VI:  WHAT WE NEED TO DO