In the US the “gender identity” debate created a truce between feminists on the political Left, who found themselves cancelled by their contemporaries for their disagreement with “gender identity” ideology, and people and organisations on the Conservative Right:
You might be thinking to yourself, why is a lesbian speaking at the Heritage Foundation?1
The Conservative Right is now leading the anti-“gender identity” movement. The political commentator Matt Walsh has organised rallies that have been able to support the politically right anti-“gender identity”, and open up space for politicians like Ron DeSantis to campaign and win on a promise to eject oppressor versus oppressed ideology from state institutions.
This truce between feminists and the Conservative Right has been a fragile one, as anti-“gender identity” feminists on the Left continue to believe that “gender identity” is caused by the “patriarchy”, rather than recognising that “gender identity” movement is another Left-wing victimhood ideology, that evolved from feminist ideology itself, and found fertile ground in which to grow in the censorious and and aggressive society that feminism and other “social justice” movements helped to cultivate.
Accordingly, the response from feminists has often been to often criticise, rather than support. The journalist and author Helen Joyce, sees that the 10 years “gender identity” and “trans” was caused by a resurgence of gender-essentialist views of a 1950s-style “patriarchy”, which Joyce paints onto Walsh:
Both conservatives like Matt Walsh and gender ideologues, that he’s mocking, fairly—completely fairly—both believe that gender stereotypes and gender roles are inherent to what it is to be a woman. One side uses them to define what a woman is, Matt Walsh thinks that they’re inseparable. He understands that a man is a male person and a woman is a female person, but he thinks that a whole load of things follow from that: about who’s in charge, who makes the sandwiches, whose voice gets heard, and all this sort of thing. Well, if you give the average teenage girl the choice between cutting off her breasts and taking testosterone and having a shot at being seen as the half of humanity that’s regarded as truly human, or accepting that she’s Matt Walsh’s wife in the kitchen making sandwiches and asking him to open the jar, which is very near the end of film, she’ll cut her tits off and take testosterone.2
It is difficult to have observed anything that has happened in the last 10 years and hold this view. The identity of a “cis, white, hetero, male” is not a privileged identity amongst young people who are captured by “social justice” ideology. The boys who are caught up in “gender identity” ideology were trying to escape being seen as part of the “cis, white, hetero, male” oppressor group, to the point of trying to change their sex.
In the last 10 years, males have not gained more privilege than ever before at the expense of women, but rather victimhood and identifying as an oppressed minority has come to confer social status.
Girls are not seen to be “transitioning” because they want the “male privilege” that Joyce assumes all men to have. They are identifying as “trans” as this is a privileged identity, coming at the top of the oppression hierarchy, as the most marginalised identity. It is a similar story for any number of the new marginalised identities, such as “non-binary”, or identities that are linked with self-diagnosed mental illnesses.
When asked on his actual opinion on how men and women should behave, far from believing that “gender stereotypes” are “inseparable” from being a man and a woman, Walsh says the opposite:
If you’re saying you’re a female, but I don’t identify with girly things, and I don’t like the colour pink, or whatever, then that’s OK, that’s your personality and its fine, there are many ways to be a woman; there are many ways to be a man, there’s almost infinite ways of doing it, because each man and woman has their own personality, their own perspective of the world, and that’s fine. I think what I’m expressing is more the kind of traditional ideas; much more expansive, because it allows you as a man to be who you are; you’re still a man, but be who you are. The idea now is that if you’re a man, but you have ideas or interests that fall outside of the standard norm, then you lose your manhood—you’re actually a woman, so they’re actually reinforcing the gender binary, while trying to destroy it at the same time, which is interesting. I think a lot of what they’re trying to describe is just personality.
For Walsh, and other men in the Generation-X and Millennial generation, what is now traditional is that you can have any personality you like, it doesn’t make you any less of a man or a woman.
The Conservative Right remains the only group that can attract enough political support in order to dismantle the institutions that prop-up “social justice” ideologies that run parallel to democracy, and are the only ones who can legislate against “gender identity” ideologues from experimenting on and targeting children, and who can stop “gender identity” ideologues from creating legislation that gives some males the legal right to enter into female spaces, to the detriment of the safety of girls and women.
As the Conservative Right’s criticism of “gender identity” ideology progresses, the truce between anti-“gender identity” feminists and Conservatives will necessarily come to an end. Only those on the Conservative Right appear capable of seeing how “gender identity” ideology has risen, and only they are capable of gaining the support in taking the steps necessary to dismantle it.
Those on the political right, both in the US and in the UK have been reluctant to campaign against “gender identity” ideology. In the UK, the worst excesses of “gender identity” ideology has happened under a supposedly Conservative government. However Walsh has shown, that if the issue of “gender identity” is seen to gain votes, then politicians on the Conservative Right will follow.
This is the final part of the series “Trans: when reality meets ideology” (read it from the beginning.)
“Lesbian Feminist Explains How The Equality Act Promotes Inequality”
“Helen Joyce on Matt Walsh”