‘Gender ideology’ is all around us – but it’s not what the Tories say it is

Photograph: Reuters

In December, five years later than promised, the Tories finally delivered draft, non-statutory guidance for schools on “gender questioning children”. It provoked criticism and concerns from all sides, and is open for consultation until March. But whatever its final form, one aspect of the guidance has gone largely unnoticed.

The document doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know about this government’s hostile stance on trans identities, inclusion and rights; but, unfortunately, what it does do is further solidify in official documentation and language the politicised phrase “gender identity ideology”. The government is attempting to bring into the mainstream this contested term, a creation of rightwing sex and gender conservatism that dates back to the 1990s, and which forms a key part of renewed attacks against the LGBTQ+ community.

As used in this context, the phrase “gender identity ideology” is actually nothing to do with gender, as in masculinity and femininity, and how this shapes our identities. Instead, it is used to imply that trans, transgender and gender non-conforming identities are a new fad, and that the longstanding social justice movement for trans rights is really a recent conspiracy of nefarious elites.

The use of terms such as “gender identity ideology”, “gender identity” and “social transition” serve to obscure the ideology of gender that members of this government, like all sex and gender conservatives, merrily adhere to themselves, and enforce on us all. Gender ideology is real, but it wasn’t invented by trans men or trans women, and it doesn’t just apply to trans or transgender people. The real gender ideology is the binary sex and gender system that requires all of us to be either male-masculine-heterosexual or female-feminine-heterosexual; and which attaches harsh penalties to those who deviate from this script. Almost all of us will have been socialised on to pink or blue paths from birth, if not by our immediate family, then by the books, TV, toys, clothes and adverts that surrounded us in wider society. This socially prescribed gender informs our gender identity.

However, in its guidance, the Department for Education states that gender identity is a contested belief, and that many people don’t consider themselves to have one at all. They define gender identity as a person’s sense of their own gender, which may or may not be linked to their biological sex. In the document’s explanation of pupils’ “social transition”, this is described as using different names, pronouns, clothing or facilities from those provided for their biological sex. What all of us should read here, not in between the lines so much as actually in the lines, is the bizarre claim that things like this have a biological sex in the first place. How can names, the fabric of clothes, or the porcelain of toilets possibly have a biological sex? The fact is that all children should be “gender questioning” and this is the natural state of children – it is something to be encouraged. If only adults could unlearn the lessons of gender ourselves, rather than subjecting our children to it.

Thanks to this guidance, school leaders will feel empowered to embed this ideology in their schools, for example through highly gendered, sex-segregated uniform requirements that can extend to hairstyles; or through the banning of nicknames deemed to be inappropriately gendered. This is a statement of intent to pursue the government’s tried and tested section 28 approach to suppressing marginalised identities, by attaching penalties to breaching gender norms.

In the guidance, one of these penalties is that schools are advised to inform parents if a pupil discloses they are questioning their gender, or request a change, such as name, pronouns or clothing. This “don’t ask or we tell” policy will of course silence young people who are exploring trans, transgender or gender non-conforming identities – as well as affecting LGBTQ+ staff. In December, laying out the rationale for the guidance, Kemi Badenoch, the minister for women and equalities, stated on X, formerly known as Twitter, that “no one loves children more than their parents”. As a feminist who has worked for many years against sexualised male violence against women and children, I know that parents can be a danger to children – the family is not a safe place for all. The risks of outing these pupils to unsupportive parents can be abuse, homelessness or conversion practices.

Trans people didn’t create “gender ideology” and should not be blamed for somehow making gender visible. Rather than pathologising a stigmatised minority, we need to focus instead on the gendered majority. Gender criticism should start at home. If there is no gender, and there is only biological sex, why are so many of us spending so much of our hard-earned time and money on gendering ourselves? How are the fashion and beauty industries sustained, if not through the pressures of gender conformity on women and men to be appropriately feminine or masculine? How might all of us do gender differently, or, even, not at all?

Ironically, what the government is describing in its DfE guidance are these very processes of societal gendering. This is gender ideology – the gendering of clothing, styles, names, sports, roles, spaces and the promotion of the belief that these are attached to one sex or another as their rightful property and place. We are, nearly all of us, conditioned into this ideology, so effectively that we mistake patriarchy for nature and view natural difference as deviance.

This is a feminist concern, and has been for decades. All schools of feminism seek to liberate women from harmful gender roles and expectations, and some schools of feminism go further, such as radical feminism, which aims to eradicate gender for everyone, gender being seen as the operating system for patriarchal governance. Attacking trans people won’t further this aim; and the burgeoning sex and gender conservative movements encouraging such attacks know this. Their message is clear: do gender, and do it right, or be sorry.

• Finn Mackay is the author of Female Masculinities and the Gender Wars, and a senior lecturer in sociology at the University of the West of England in Bristol

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