by Patrick Sawyer, Missional Living Pastor
What is Transgender Ideology?
Transgender ideology argues that biology and gender are separate, which means biology does not determine one’s gender. Andrew Walker states, “This may mean dressing in the culturally determined dress; it may mean having hormonal treatment or surgical treatment to align their bodies or chemical balance with their gender identification.” Simone de Beauvoir, in her book The Second Sex, argues that men and women are not born with an essence and that biology does not determine human behavior, attitudes, dispositions, or psychology. The transgender movement can separate gender and sex because it believes gender is not determined by biology but by social constructs. Judith Butler, in her book Gender Trouble, argues that humans are not born a gender, but they become a gender. Gender is no longer linked to biology but refers to the psychological, social, and cultural aspects of being male and female.
Where did it come from?
For many people, the rise of transgenderism came into prominence in 2015 when former Olympic athlete Bruce Jenner came out as a trans woman. While Jenner may be the face of the transgender movement, this movement or ideology has been slowly and quietly brewing for many years. Where did transgender ideology come from? What is the underlying influence of its ideology?
Douglas Murray, in his book The Madness of Crowds, believes this ideology is a form of modern-day Marxism. He believes the hierarchy pyramid of oppression and exploitation that Karl Marx revealed is still relevant today. At the top of the pyramid is the white heterosexual male and at the bottom are minorities, women and those who identify as LGBTQ+. These individuals are kept down, oppressed, sidelined and otherwise insignificant. Carl Trueman believes this ideology is linked to the nineteenth century, as seen in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engel's work The Communist Manifesto.
Karl Marx was a materialist. He believed there is no absolute truth, only socially constructed norms. He believed human identity resulted from social relations connected to their place in the economic structure. Karl Marx believed the problem in society was a division between economic classes, which led to the oppression and exploitation of one group over another.
He believed the solution to the problem was a rebellion from the lower class over the ruling class. Ultimately, Marx believed in a perfect world where all classes would be eliminated and all people would be seen as equal. He even believed that through technology and the means of production, there would eventually be an elimination of the distinction between the sexes
In the late twentieth century, the development of feminist theory and its belief that social relations form human identity can be linked back to Karl Marx, where Marx connected identity to economic structures, and Marxist feminist thinkers, such as Simone de Beauvoir, connected identity psychologically. This movement challenged the belief that humans exist as two sexes, male and female, with differences linked to biology.
She believed society created categories of “male” and “female” to control society. De Beauvoir argues that men and women are equal and that biological differences are stated only when relations of domination start to be put in place. Her belief is in line with Marx’s theory of domination. She believes these relationships are established so that one human dominates another. For a male to dominate a female, there needs to be a justifiable reason that is connected to their stated or specified biological differences. Her solution is for women to deny their feminine identity, break free from oppression, fulfill themselves in careers, flee motherhood, and enjoy sexual liberation. De Beauvoir’s theory would later be known as Queer Theory.
Michel Foucault, a French communist, has been widely considered the progenitor of Queer Theory. He would build on de Beauvoir’s category of “woman” and expand it to include “homosexual.” Foucault did not believe in absolute truth. He believed truth is what those in society who hold power choose to say is the truth. When it came to sex, he believed those in power used their authority to trick society into thinking heterosexuality was natural and normal. The result, he believed, caused people to “imprison themselves” to conform their bodies and minds to the objective truth of heterosexuality.
Through her famous work Gender Trouble, Judith Butler built on the work of Simone de Beauvoir and Michel Foucault. Her main argument was that “gender” is a performance and that people do not have a gender but become one through performances. Like de Beauvoir and Foucault, Butler believes society created “male” and “female” for social control. She believes society has created these roles and has scripted them to force people to play these scripted roles.
Butler believes the more the act of gender departs from the “normal,” the better. If “gender reality” is revisable, then biological reality will be revisable as well. Butler would build off of de Beauvoir’s “gender is a social construct” and include that “sex is also a social construct.” When sex is separated or removed from personality and behavior (gender), it loses meaning.
Basically, if sex does not determine how we behave or think, then it does not determine who we are. Humans are not born with a set or specific gender; they can perform and determine who they are as a person. For Butler, performing or living out your gender in a way different than the script developed by society leads to a life of freedom for your soul.
De Beauvoir, Foucault, and Butler’s Queer Theory applied Marxist theory to sex, gender, and sexuality. They shifted Marxist thought from economics to psychology and developed a framework that did, in fact, eliminate the difference between genders beyond the workplace. Marx believed in Bourgeois tyranny through economic structures and Queer Theory believed in Bourgeois tyranny through the assault on the idea that biological differences between men and women should exert a decisive influence on their respective roles. The solution to this oppression is not only a separation between sex and gender but also the elimination of the belief of male and female binary.
This separation between biology or sex and gender and its psychological connection to identity is what we are seeing with the transgender ideology. The transgender ideology believes gender is not determined by biology or sex but is determined psychologically by the person’s self-awareness of who they are.
1 Andrew Walker, God and the Transgender Debate: What does the Bible Actually Say about Gender Identity, 2nd ed. (Charlotte, NC: The Good Book Company, 2022), 36.
2 Ibid.
3 Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier (New York, NY: Vintage, 2011).
4 Judith Butler is an American feminist philosopher and gender studies scholar. See, for example, Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York, NY: Routledge , 1990).
5 Mark Yarhouse, Understanding Gender Dysphoria: Navigating Transgender Issues in a Changing Culture (Downers, Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2015), 17.
6 Carl Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2020), 350.
7 Ryan Anderson, When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Movement (New York, NY: Encounter Books, 2019), 9-10
8 Douglas Murray, The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity (London: Bloomsbury Continuum, 2021), 52.
9 Ibid.
10 Carl Trueman, Strange New World: How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2022), 132.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid.
15 Arya Meroni, “Marxism and the Oppression of Trans People,” International Viewpoint (June 28, 2021).
16 Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier (New York, NY: Vintage, 2011).
17 Logan Lancing and James Lindsay, The Queering of the American Child : How a New School Religious Cult Poisons the Minds and Bodies of Normal Kids (Orlando, FL: New Discourses, 2024), 31.
18 Ibid., 33-34.
19 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (New York, NY: Pantheon, 1978).
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid.
23 M. Mikkola, Feminist Perspectives on Sex and Gender (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2008).
24 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York, NY: Routledge, 1990).
25 Judith Butler, “Sex and Gender in Simone de Beauvoir’s Second Sex,” Yale French Studies (Yale University Press, 1986): 35-39.
26 Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York, NY: Routledge, 1990).
27 Ibid.
28 Logan Lancing and James Lindsay, The Queering of the American Child : How a New School Religious Cult Poisons the Minds and Bodies of Normal Kids (Orlando, FL: New Discourses, 2024), 42.
29 Nancy Pearcey, Love Thy Body (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2018), 31.