Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on Often contending with other difficulties.

You’d think they’d make sure there actually was such a thing as a “gender identity” before offering to “develop” it, “treat” it, or follow its dictates with regard to the bodies it allegedly inhabits. Why do some people claim to have such an identity, while others do not? Why are most people’s identities “aligned” with their sex, while others are not? What causes this supposed “misalignment”? How is the identity’s presence and nature determined, apart from patient self-diagnosis? How do you screen out people who don’t require your services, and/or those who will not benefit from them? Surely clinicians dealing with this phenomenon would want fundamental questions like this answered before taking any steps, drastic or otherwise, that involve any kind of medical intervention, hormonal, pharmaceutical, or surgical.

Quite apart from practical considerations like those outlined above, what about questions around the origin and evolution of “gender identities”? This is specifically about gender, not sex, so clown fish are not what we’re asking about. We’ve been told that such identities have nothing to do with gametes, so let’s take them at their word, and rule them out from the start. What is your evidence of gender identity outside of the genus Homo? What other species exhibit such an entity, and how does one tell? What adaptive advantages might it confer? These and a host of other interesting questions would make the concept of “gender identity” a potentially fruitful field of study, if such a thing actually existed. But the “knowledge” which its adherents claim to possess smacks more of fan fiction, literary criticism, or theology than anything real or tangible. Belief and obedience are held in higher esteem than curiosity and critical thinking. Like astrology’s unquestioningly confident acceptance of the existence and import of the supposedly contending influence and power of inherently meaningless alignments of planets against the backdrop of completely incidental “constellations” (ascribed to them by ancients who had no idea at all that “planets” were worlds like the Earth, and that “stars” were distant Suns like our own), gender ideology takes the existence and primacy of “gender identities” as foundational and axiomatic, an unreasoned, unjustified, and unquestioned faith position, rather than the end result of hard work and research to confirm an hypothesis.

I’ve never understood the power of this ridiculous ideology. I’ve never understood why so many formerly intelligent people rushed to sign up to it and demonize their friends who said no.

Neither do I. Not only its power to attract and maintain followers (given the manifest lunacy and contradictions it accepts with a straight face), but also the power and influence it has managed to acquire and wield. This unprecedented level of unaccountable, behind the scenes machinations have allowed it to enact huge parts of its agenda without review or oversight, as well given it the ability to shield itself from criticism, as well as recruit others to isolate, circumvent, and punish anyone it judges to be a critics or opponents. It might pass itself off as scientific, but with regards to power, it certainly behaves much more like religion, from the time when religion had more leverage than it does now. That supposed sceptics, secularists, humanists, progressives, and scientists, all of whom seem to know better in other areas, can fall prey to this unevidenced patchwork of bullshit continues to astound and dismay. For a field in which there’s no there there, genderism has a disturbingly large population of supporters, and an unfortunately well-equipped and active standing army.