Gender Ideology’s Attack on Our Humanity 

This article first appeared in the Christian Research Journal, volume 46, number 1/2  (2023).

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The account of God’s creation of human beings in Genesis 1 is sparse and precise. After creating the land animals on day six, the day doesn’t end — as the reader expects from the pattern followed on the previous days. Instead, this day has an encore. And rather than just speaking, God speaks to Himself:

“Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them. (Gen. 1:26–27 ESV)

Note the reference to a single “man,” that is, “human”: “God created man in his own image.” So, each of us is fully human, but with a difference: “male and female he created them.” The suggestion is that though each of us is an image-bearer, humanity can’t fulfill what that means without this difference. Difference is not quite the right word, though. Complementarity is better. When we come together in the right way, we are much greater than the sum of our parts. One man or woman alone can’t reproduce. Neither can two men or two women. But exactly one man and one woman can give rise to the entire human race.

Of all human traditions and revered texts, this bundle of truth claims is most clearly and fully expressed here, in Genesis. At the same time, it includes basic truths that are, or have been, known everywhere — in every time and culture.

• There are men and women.
• They are both human, but they are different.
• Men are not women. Women are not men.
• Men cannot become women. Women cannot become men.
• It is not possible to be a man but have a woman’s body or to be a woman with a man’s body.

Until recently, this list of propositions would have seemed trite. But we live at the shocking moment in history when each of these claims is contested. That’s because an ideology has overrun our institutions — our schools, our media, our laws, our medicine, even some of our churches. Let’s call it gender ideology.

Most people really became aware of it only in the last decade. In 2015, so-called “transgender” people, such as Caitlin Jenner, formerly Bruce Jenner, suddenly appeared on dozens of magazine covers. And only recently have most people realized what’s happening in schools and gender clinics. Children are being taught they can be born in the wrong body. And doctors are “treating” this condition with sterilizing drugs and surgeries — on minors.¹ This so-called “gender affirming care” reveals this ideology for what it is: the greatest assault on human nature — on our maleness and femaleness — that has ever been devised or imagined.

Here’s How Fast This Happened. In 2007 — the year the first iPhone was released — there was one pediatric gender clinic in the United States. There are now at least seventy-nine. ² And that doesn’t include the 260 or so Planned Parenthood “clinics” that dispense cross-sex hormones “like candy” to minors.³

These clinics are where many minors who struggle with their sexed bodies go to receive “gender affirming care.” It starts with social transition, usually in school, and often behind the backs of parents. A boy who “identifies” as a girl will assume a new name. This will include using the pronouns and bathrooms of his new identity.

“Social transition” sounds benign. But it’s a psychosocial intervention with long-term effects. And the whole school must participate. No student or teacher is exempt. Punishment is swift for any who dare to resist.⁴

The child may move on to puberty-blocking drugs if he or she is still early in puberty and then to cross-sex hormones, that is, estrogen for boys and testosterone for girls. Next will come surgery to remove healthy breasts, penises, testicles, uteruses, and ovaries. The details, of course, depend upon the sex of the child.

Finally, this pathway leads to fashioning faux penises for the girls, vaginas for the boys, and various and sundry for those who identify as, say, non-binary — that is, neither male nor female, or both, or somewhere in between. And don’t forget life-long cross-sex hormones and complications that are as common as they are unadvertised.

Defining Gender Ideology

Sterilizing teens is the reduction to the absurd of gender ideology. But what exactly does it claim? As it has erupted in our culture, it displaces the sexual binary of male and female — which describes all mammals including humans — with two subjective notions. First, an internal sense of gender called “gender identity” that is distinct from, even in discord with, the body; and second, mere “sex assigned at birth.”

Think of Gnosticism retooled for the 21st century, and you’ll get the basic idea. If you were barely following this debate, say, ten years ago, you might have thought the claim of gender ideology was simply that a man (referring to biological “sex”) could identify as a woman (“gender”) and so be “transgender.”

The ideology is more radical than that. To see this, compare an early version of “The Genderbread Person”⁵ with “The Gender Unicorn.”⁶ These two popular images are designed to train young children in the gender mysteries obscure to their parents.

The Genderbread Person, created by Sam Killerman, teaches children to think of their friends and themselves not as simply boys or girls but as a compound of different gendered aspects that exist along a potentially-infinite spectrum — gender identity, gender expression, gender attraction, and biological sex.

The Genderbread Person went through several versions. As late as version 3.3 (figure 01), it still included the category of biological sex. Orthodox adherents of gender ideology, however, objected to it for just this reason. The image was also problematic because it tied gender identity to a (biological) brain. Oh, and it still looked a lot like a gingerbread man.

The Gender Unicorn (figure 02) solved these problems. The locus of identity is no longer a brain but an ethereal thought bubble of a rainbow. And rather than biological sex, our purple, androgynous unicorn merely has “sex assigned at birth.” Sex, that is, biological sex, has now been fully displaced by an internal self-perception and by a social convention rooted in the subjective choice of the doctor attending one’s birth.

To resist this toxic ideology, we, and especially our children, need to build up resistant antibodies. Here are two ways to do that. First, get clear on biological sex. And second, show that the Christian view of human beings captures the complex reality far better than the popular modern distortions

Bullet Proof Definitions of Biological Sex

An idea so bizarre — so insane — that it contradicts basic biology could come to dominate the commanding heights of culture through only a campaign of confusion. The main way gender ideologues have confused the public is by falsely claiming that disorders of sexual development,⁷ often mislabeled “intersex” conditions, prove that there are more than two sexes — or that the sexes are somehow fluid or mere endpoints on a spectrum.⁸

Such disorders occur in 0.018 percent of the population.⁹ In some such cases, newborns have ambiguous genitalia. This makes the task of determining sex more complex. Nevertheless, appealing to these disorders to justify gender ideology is an intentional diversion. First, none of these conditions produces other sexes or “genders.” Second, gender ideology provides no new insights into these disorders. Third, people who identify as transgender or nonbinary rarely have one of these disorders. And fourth, no such disorders correspond to the growing list of “gender identities.”

Now, everyone intuits the difference between men and women. And if you remember high school biology, you know that childbearing, XX and XY chromosomes, and the like, have something to do with sex. But biology is complex, and definitions are hard to get just right. A good definition, however, will prevent you from falling for the campaign of confusion.

Defining Sex Precisely

Any good definition of sex will point to the organization of our bodies for reproduction.¹⁰ It will refer to what happens under normal development while accounting for disorders. And it will accommodate the fact that organisms have and do different things at different stages of development.

Here’s one way to define “male” and “female.” A human male is, minimally, a member of the human species that, under normal development, produces relatively small, mobile gametes — sperm — at some point in his life cycle, and has a reproductive and endocrine system oriented around the production of that gamete. A human female is, minimally, a member of the human species that, under normal development, produces relatively large, relatively immobile gametes — ova — at some point in her life cycle, and has a reproductive and endocrine system oriented around the production of that gamete.

Again, under normal development, a male has XY chromosomes, testes, and a penis. Females, under normal development, have XX chromosomes, a uterus, ovaries, a cervix, and a vagina. Under normal development, a female can carry, give birth to, and nurse offspring at some point during her life cycle. Males cannot. Males and females also differ in the prevalence of hormones such as testosterone and estrogen, respectively. And they develop distinct secondary differences in their bodies under the influence of these hormones, especially during puberty.¹¹

There is no gamete, and no body plan, that corresponds to the recent category of “gender identity.” Gender identity, a concept within modern gender and queer theory, is not at all the same thing as various disorders of sexual development — none of which, as noted, contradict the reality of biological sex. In fact, we understand such disorders by reference to normal sex development.

There is no way even to detect a gender identity. And yet it has become the orthodoxy in large pockets of American medicine. As a result, the Department of Health and Human Services defines “gender affirming care” for adolescents — not as helping children become comfortable with their bodies — but as refashioning the body with drugs and surgery to better conform to the child’s reported “gender identity.”¹²

Evidence for the benefits of this “treatment” are in very short supply.¹³ As a result, at least four countries in northern Europe that started down this path before the U.S., such as the U.K., have now stepped back.¹⁴ The U.K.’s National Health Service now concedes that many teens reporting gender dysphoria should receive therapy in the hope that they will do what almost all such teens did before the craze: grow out of it.¹⁵

The Far Superior Biblical View

The idea of gender identity itself is also the fruit of a false anthropology. It’s the mongrel offspring of expressive individualism and the sexual revolution. It gets human beings wrong both as individuals and as social creatures. The biblical view, rightly understood, is far better than the alternatives.

Gender identity fails to grasp what is so crisply described in Genesis 1. Man is, by nature, both a spiritual and material creature. We might say that, as Jesus is truly human and truly divine, man is truly material and truly spiritual. Not merely material and not merely spiritual. Not half material and half spiritual. Both — at one and the same time.

Genesis says that, in creating us, God took the dust of the earth, but He breathed into it the breath of life (2:7). We are neither upright apes nor ghosts in meat suits. We are, by nature, embodied persons. Christians confess not just eternal life, but the resurrection of the body. Our personal survival between death and resurrection is an incomplete, temporary state.

We are also sexually complementary creatures, not androgynous replicas. Healthy adults during their reproductive phase are biologically complete as individuals, except for one function: reproduction. To fulfill God’s command and blessing to our first parents — to be fruitful and multiply — it takes exactly one male and one female coming together. This gives rise to children. Thus, the institutions of marriage and family, in which children are best raised, are the social expression and guardrails of this biological reality.

Note that I have run together the biblical view of the human person and family with biology. That’s intentional. If the biblical view of man is true, then reason reflecting on human nature can’t escape it. Even materialists assume they have free will. Even hardcore Cartesians know that too much drink, or bodily vice, can touch the soul. Even Marxist-tinged sociologists, when they’re honest with the data, can’t help but find that intact married parents are better for raising kids than the alternatives.

But, because of sin, we tend to distort truth. Following the logic of the sexual revolution, we pretend that sex, marriage, and reproduction need not go together. And when it comes to the material and spiritual nature of human beings, we tend to lurch from one side of this compound truth to the other, rather than embracing the complex whole.

How else to explain how materialism can coexist, often in the same mind, with transhumanism? The former imagines that we are nothing but chemicals arranged in a complex way. The latter imagines that we will soon upload our “selves” to more durable hardware than these mortal shells.

And how else to explain gender ideology? It implies that one’s identity is a merely “psychological self,” as Carl Trueman puts it, independent of the body.¹⁶ It is somehow gendered — whatever that means — but not sexed. It is immaterial, and yet in need of a body refashioned with the latest technology to match it.

This incoherent mess contradicts not just Christian revelation, but logic and natural reason itself.¹⁷ To fight gender ideology, Christians, Jews, and fellow travelers need not only offer a fully biblical and much more coherent view of the human person. We must, using reason, defend basic biology.

Jay W. Richards, PhD, is director of the DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family and the William E. Simon senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation. He is also a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and executive editor of The Stream.

NOTES

1. See, e.g., Azeen Ghorayshi, “More Trans Teens Are Choosing ‘Top Surgery,’” New York Times, September 26, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/26/health/top-surgery-transgender-teenagers.html.
2. My office chased down and specifically identified seventy-nine pediatric gender clinics now in the U.S. This is a minimum since some clinics cater to minors but don’t specialize. This number also doesn’t include individual urologists, etc., who may dabble in the practice. The major Reuters report states that “the number of gender clinics treating children in the United States has grown from zero to more than 100 in the past 15 years.” Chad Terhune, Robin Respaut, and Michelle Conlin, “Youth in Transition: Part 1: A Dearth of Science,” Reuters, October 6, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-transyouth-care/.
3. “‘Handing Out Hormones Like Candy’: Planned Parenthood Transitions to Top Hormone Provider for Transgender-Identifying Teens — With Little Oversight,” National Catholic Register, September 9, 2022, https://www.ncregister.com/news/handing-out-hormones-like-candy-planned-parenthood-transitions-to-top-hormone-provider-for-transender-identifying-teens-with-little-oversight.
4. See e.g., Ovetta Wiggins and Nicole Asbury, “A Financial Penalty for Not Teaching Gender Identity? Md. Bill Would Impose One,” The Washington Post, March 10, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/03/10/maryland-curriculum-sex-education/, and Sarah Ritter, “KC Area Teacher Punished and Denied Job for Using Gender-Neutral Pronouns: Lawsuit,” The Kansas City Star, March 27, 2023, https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/education/article273635495.html.
5. Sam Killerman, “The Genderbread Person,” It’s Pronounced Metrosexual, 2020, https://www.itspronouncedmetrosexual.com/genderbread-person/.
6. “The Gender Unicorn,” Trans Student Educational Resources, 2015, http://www.transstudent.org/gender.
7. Selma Feldman Witchel, “Disorders of Sex Development,” Best Practiceand Research Clinical Obstetrics and Gynaecology 48, April 2018: 90–102,doi:10.1016/j.bpobgyn.2017.11.005, Epub, November 22, 2017, https://www .ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5866176/.
8. Colin Wright, “Are There More Than Two Sexes? No,” City Journal, March 2, 2023, https://www.city-journal.org/are-there-more-two-sexes.
9. Activists often cite a higher percentage of 1.7 percent of the population, based on a claim by Anne Fausto-Sterling in her book Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality (New York: Basic Books, 2002). She vastly inflated the number by including whole groups of people without a disorder of sexual development into her category of “intersex.” Leonard Sax debunked her claim in “How Common Is Intersex? A Response to Anne Fausto-Sterling,” The Journal of Sex Research 29, no. 3 (2002): 174–78, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224490209552139.
10. See, e.g., “AAPS Statement on ‘Gender-Affirming Care’ for Minor Children, ”Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, February 20, 2023, https://aapsonline.org/aaps-statement-on-gender-affirming-care-for-minor-children/.
11. Previous two paragraphs adapted from Jay W. Richards, “Why States Must Define Sex Precisely,” The Heritage Foundation, May 31, 2023, https://www.heritage.org/gender/commentary/why-states-must-define-sex-precisely.
12. See “Gender-Affirming Care and Young People,” HHS Office of Population Affairs, March 2022, https://opa.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/2022-03/gender-affirming-care-young-people-march-2022.pdf.
13. Leor Sapir, “The Distortions in Jack Turban’s Psychology Today Article on ‘Gender Affirming Care,’” Reality’s Last Stand, October 7, 2022, https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/the-distortions-in-jack-turbans-psychology.
14. Stanley Goldfarb and Miriam Grossman, “Even Progressive Europe Won’t Go as Far as America in Child Transgender Treatments,” New York Post, January 30, 2023, https://nypost.com/2023/01/30/even-progressive-europe-wont-go-as-far -as-america-in-child-transgender-treatments/.
15. “The NHS Ends the ‘Gender-Affirmative Care Model’ for Youth in England,” Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine, October 24, 2022, https://segm.org/England-ends-gender-affirming-care.
16. Carl R. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020).
17. Editors’ note: See also in this issue, Benjamin Cabe, “The Inner and Outer Man: How Historical Christian Anthropology Addresses Transgenderism,” Christian Research Journal 01/02 (2023): 40–47.