[Image and text from It Feels Good to be Yourself: A Book About Gender Identity by Theresa Thorn with illustrations by Noah Grigni; reproduced under the fair dealing exception in the Copyright Act of Canada, section 29.1 related to criticism or review].

(Approx. 30 minute read).

Introduction

In March 2025, intense public opposition and protests in the State of Massachusetts targeted proposed changes to a “decency” law in the form of a citizen’s bill that would see legal exemptions for schools, museums and libraries removed were they to be accused of providing materials deemed to be harmful to minors. Opponents of the change warned that it would not just encourage “book bans” but would put library workers in legal jeopardy. At a particularly raucous public meeting regarding the proposal, one of the Republican officials supporting the bill insisted it was only intended to protect children from sexually explicit content, but that books about gender identity would remain on the shelves.

On one level, I found it significant that an official would make this distinction for, all too often, media coverage of library collections controversies—to say nothing of institutional data gathering on challenges—tend to lump together all complaints related to matters of sex and gender under the banner of “LGBTQ+”. I’ve long been of the mind that making clear such distinctions are essential: I do think public and school libraries should make available materials on sex education in increasing complexity for readers as they develop and mature, and I also have no problem with libraries stocking books with age-appropriate materials featuring gay characters and themes. After all, even young children may be aware of same-sex relationships in their familial or social circles, and may have gay parents themselves. Books featuring two penguin dads, for example, are simply reflecting this social reality.

That said, I would argue that that Massachusetts Republican official may not be correctly assessing the nature and extent of the objections against gender identity in children’s literature—that the grounds for believing such books to be inappropriate for young readers are just as reasonable as those citing books with explicit sexual content.

I realize that some readers may object to the comparison. And I wouldn’t blame anyone for thinking so, given how our major media and professional discourses have embraced and integrated the imperatives of gender identity ideology, to such a point that to even acknowledge that this is the case, or that such an ideology even exists at all, is perceived to be a bigoted right wing “dog whistle.”

For example, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s coverage of a community conflict in Alberta over its public library on its investigative program The Fifth Estate exhibited four shortcomings common to much mainstream coverage of this controversy. First, it described it as a conflict over “so-called gender identity ideology”, implying opposition to something that exists only in the minds of the protesters. Second, left unmentioned in the coverage was any discussion of the actual content of the books in question. While there were a few on-camera interviews with critics of the Valleyview Library—plus a single quote from what appeared to be a lengthy written submission—these did not solicit specific concerns might be, nor quote text or show images from frequently-challenged children’s titles—again, leaving viewers with the impression that critics’ concerns are not just baseless but bigoted. Third, as is the case with the Canadian Federation of Library Associations’ Library Challenges Database, all concerns were classed under the umbrella of “2SLGBTQ+” content, obscuring and flattening not just the matters at hand, but stakeholder interests. Finally—and because it didn’t address content—the report also didn’t identify and situate the perspective of critics according to the term they would likely use to describe themselves, which is to say as gender-critical, the view that the reality of biological sex matters to women’s rights and the rights of gays and lesbians. This leaves viewers/readers without a common frame of reference, or context for understanding what the debate is actually about, and what motivates and concerns those raising opposition.

All of this contributes to what I see as a particularly “wicked” problem in our field.

Framing the Problem

In my August 15^th, 2024 HiTS post, “Wicked Problems and Comprehensive Doctrines,” I explained how the idea of “wicked problems” as a core theory in urban planning and the policy sciences allows decision-makers to understand the vexing complexity of many social and political problems. According to Rittel and Webber’s classic 1973 article, “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning,” so-called “wicked” problems have (among other qualities) no clear, agreed-upon definition or solution, and may be symptoms of still other problems, making “unitary aims” on the part of policy-makers—who have no right to be wrong because their choices will have consequences for the public—impossible to pursue to everyone’s satisfaction.

As I see it, the conflict over gender identity ideology in children’s books is one of the most wicked problems ever faced by our profession, for it comprises a professional, social, and political conundrum in which a clash of world views is making dialogue almost impossible—one in which what one faction considers a social good is regarded by the other as a social harm, and none can agree that the core matters dividing partisans even exist at all. The entire debate is being seen by many in increasingly Manichean terms—as a battle between good and evil—with the future of vulnerable children at stake. None can escape the moral and ethical imperatives at stake.

All this puts us, as a profession, in a decidedly precarious position in terms of articulating a response, mediating between contesting parties, and curating our collections into the future in a manner consistent with the public interest. But it is absolutely essential that we do so, for this conflict is not only dividing communities, but alienating public and school libraries from their communities, and turning a significant portion of the public against us. We are, frankly, at risk of losing the public trust.

Allow me then in the next two three essays to address what I see as the character of the problem in terms of the factors internal to gender identity ideology—which, I will argue, patently does exist—as well as external, institutional factors. The nature and reach of the gender identity belief system is, I think, inextricably connected to the reasons why it is also largely unrecognized at the institutional level as an ideology; taken together, these internal (ideological) characteristics and external (institutional) contexts combine with a widespread activist impulse within the profession to impair efforts to address community conflict over the issue. This first essay will cover the former factors, while the latter will be dealt with in Part Two; Part Three will examine our professional context and conclude with recommendations for improved public engagement concerning the controversy.

The Character of the Problem—Internal

1. A highly theoretical, contested, and incoherent core concept

Given the explosion of publishing in children’s books dealing with gender identity, and the fierceness with which these books are defended by librarians against any opposition, it is nothing less than astonishing to discover that the concept of “gender identity” has no agreed-upon definition in the social sciences, nor any established empirical basis in neuroscience (see Bakker 2024). While there are literally thousands of scholarly articles on the topic of gender identity—making a thorough literature review far beyond my scope here—an examination of just a handful of recent examples reveals the extent to which scholars simply flounder to explain what they are talking about, even when they are ideologically motivated to come up with the best explanation that they can.

The exact origins of the concept are disputed, but it is most often attributed to Robert Stoller in a 1964 article in the pages of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis. According to Stoller, one’s “gender identity” was seen to derive from a combination of awareness of one’s genitals, the treatment of the individual by their parents and other caregivers, and a compulsion originating in what he referred to hypothetically as a “biological force,” all of which leads us to understand within our first year of life that we are members of one or the other sex. In its original formulation, then, it was more accurately understood as “sex identity”, even to the point of Stoller arguing that a boy who wishes he were a girl nonetheless retains his core gender identity as male, because that’s what he understands himself to actually be. However, this original sex-based meaning has been lost in a flurry of postmodern social constructivism, such that, according to philosopher Alex Byrne, “gender identity has gone from being well-defined to being ill-defined” (p. 2710)

To illustrate, consider Rach Cosker-Rowland’s declaration in the 2023 paper “Recent Work on Gender Identity and Gender”, that “[o]ur gender is the property we have of being a woman, being a man, being non-binary or being another gender.” Since “non-binary” and “another gender” clearly aren’t intended by the author to refer to a sex, “woman” and “man” can’t be seen as representing sexes either. So what, then, is the reader supposed to understand “gender” to mean? Take the named categories out of the sentence and we are left with “[o]ur gender is the property we have of being…a gender”, which is simply circular reasoning.

This circularity is acknowledged in philosopher Katharine Jenkins’ 2018 article “Towards an Account of Gender Identity” writing,

someone who asks what it means to say that a certain person ‘has a female gender identity’ will be told that it means that that person has a sense of herself ‘as a woman’— but if the questioner then asks what a ‘woman’ is, they will be told that a woman is ‘a person with a female gender identity’. Thus, the questioner is none the wiser as to what it means to have a female gender identity (714).

Because of this, she writes, “there is no consensus on what kind of account [of gender identity] might be appropriate” (ibid), and in the paper’s conclusion offers her own account—premised on internalized expectations of social norms in the social environment one perceives to be relevant—but only provisionally and with caution (p. 742).

Cosker-Rowland’s 2023 article summarizes the four dominant views on the matter: the “gender identity first” view, which holds that our identity determines our gender (whatever that means); the “no connection” view, which prioritizes one’s social positioning or socialization (as well as the recognition of biological sex) and is therefore “trans exclusionary”; contexualist perspectives, which understand gender to be socially determined by the social contexts in which one finds oneself, contexts which therefore might deny people’s self-perceptions; and the pluralist view, which (in the author’s view) unsatisfactorily combines our self-determined gender identity, and the gendered social class into which we are placed. The following year Cosker-Rowland would attempt to articulate yet another view of gender identity, the “subjective fit” account, which holds that subject A takes being treated by others as the gender G to be a “fit” for them. Significantly, the author is quite open about making no attempt to actually define to what the term gender actually refers.

What’s troublingly non-scholarly about both of Cosker-Rowland’s articles is the contemptuousness with which the author treats the very idea of biological sex: while all of the constructivist theories are lavishly discussed with reference to theorists’ names, the recognition of sex as being possibly relevant to one’s gender is only mentioned in passing with a footnote referring readers to the work of gender realist authors Alex Byrne (whose name is, incidentally misspelled) and Kathleen Stock, while general references to “gender critical feminists” and “biological essentialists” apparently warrant no citations at all.

What all these “accounts” of gender identity have in common (besides their collective incoherence) is their struggle to avoid the obvious: that we are members of a sexually dimorphic species, and that the terms man and woman actually refer to an inescapable, physical reality—one with social consequences.

So much for the philosophers and social theorists. What about empirical studies? In a 2024 paper in the journal of Hormones and Behavior entitled “Neurobiological Characteristics Associated with Gender Identity” Julie Bakker describes the result of a series of comparative neuroimaging studies undertaken on groups of “transgender” and “cisgender” children and adolescents while the subjects completed specific activities under controlled circumstances. While subtle deviations at the functional level were detected among the former subjects, most of these were conceded by the author to have possibly been owed to other factors, such as the sexual orientation of the subjects, or their socialization or learning in shaping their brain development. Bakker also admits that the modest sample size limits the generalizability of the findings. Significantly, the study also suggests that puberty blocking and cross-sex hormones may interrupt essential brain development processes during puberty. In the paper’s conclusion, Bakker adds a note not only of caution but of concern:

At present, there is an urgent need for these studies considering the dramatic but unexplained rise in number of referrals to specialized gender identity clinics worldwide and associated increasing demands for hormonal interventions such as puberty suppression and cross-sex hormones. In addition, the current treatment protocols are increasingly being criticized due to the lack of sufficient solid scientific evidence to weigh the risks and benefits of these hormonal interventions in young people. There is thus increasing concern of young people regretting the transition and consequently, asking for a detransition (p. 8).

Note that here is a neuroscientist pointing out to her colleagues that the startling rise in referrals to gender clinics (elsewhere in the article revealed to comprise mostly young women) is unexplained—the very observation for which Abigail Shrier was excoriated and “cancelled” for writing about in her book Irreversible Damage.

What, then, are we left with? There is clearly no scholarly consensus on the theory of gender identity—what it means, where it originates, or what its implications are for the human condition. This is not a matter of opinion; the theory’s staunchest advocates in the academy admit this is so. Yet, despite these murky, tenuous, and controversial foundations, the notion of gender identity is believed in so fervently by many professionals and activists as a social justice imperative that it is supposed to supersede sex in public policy, and may not be questioned.

All other things being equal, if something is believed essentially on faith but without evidence, we do not hesitate to acknowledge this as existing only in the realm of ideology, if not metaphysics. We should then reasonably be able to refer to such a belief—and with some skepticism—as deriving from an ideology concerning gender; yet the phrase gender ideology when it appears at all in the mainstream press coverage (as on The Fifth Estate for example), is almost always presented in scare quotes (and preceded with the phrase “so-called”), as if to indicate some bizarre, fringe, far-right conspiracy theory about a belief, rather than a reasonable descriptor for that belief system.

Strictly speaking, of course, gender identity on its own isn’t actually an ideology per se. It is, however, foundationally nested within…

2. An ideology of regressive gender stereotypes

In her picture book It Feels Good to be Yourself: A Book About Gender Identity author Theresa Thorn declares, “[t]here are so many different ways to be a boy or a girl—too many to fit in a book!” That would all be well and good—except that she (and fellow gender activists) are, unfortunately, rather disingenuous in this sentiment. According to their belief system there are, in fact, only very, very few ways to be either a boy or a girl. This is most explicitly—and regressively—expressed on the “Barbie-G.I. Joe Scale” promoted by the UK gender charity Mermaids: if a child doesn’t identify with, adhere to, or conduct themselves according to traditional gender stereotypes, then they might be “born in the wrong body.”

The postmodern gender studies scholarship is replete with this dependence on traditional gender stereotypes—of the kind that second wave feminism pushed against decades ago—because, by deliberately eschewing for ideological reasons any reference to actual biology, it has nothing else on which to anchor its theorizing. In Jenkins’ article, for example, she prefers the term “gender classes” (which she defines as coercively imposed and hierarchical social classes), yet concedes that the term is entirely replaceable with “gendered social roles”—aka stereotypes. She also cites a 2015 paper by Jennifer McKitrick, who defines gender identity in terms of one’s disposition to behave in “feminine” ways which “could include modes of dress, posture and mannerisms, productive and leisure time activities, styles of communication and social interactions” (p. 2581). Again—gender stereotypes. And in a 2022 article Elizabeth Barnes states that gender identity “requires awareness of various social norms and roles (and, moreover an awareness of them as gendered), the ability to articulate one’s own relationship to those norms and roles, and so on” (p. 842). It’s gender stereotypes all the way down.

The obvious irony to all this is that, under the ostensible goal of “challenging” or even “smashing” the “gender binary” these gender studies scholars are, instead, aggressively reinforcing it, and problematizing any deviation from it as requiring some sort of social or medical intervention, as well as a host of structural and political accommodations in society. We cannot escape the conclusion that decades of effort on the part of gender studies scholars to conceptually engineer their way out of the salience of biological sex has come to naught. They have also ignored the fact that all this conceptual confusion and contradiction is premised on…

3. The conflation of phenomenology with ontology

According to its own rhetoric and convictions, gender identity ideology valorizes the inner self-concept and experience of the individual over their actual, empirically determined sex. As David Schwarts puts it in the pages of the Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy,

gender identity is psychological, made up of expectations and self-perceptions. Gender does not exist in the body or in any bodily structure or process. This is in contrast to sex, which is determined exclusively by bodily data: genitals and chromosomes...So I ask you to keep in mind the purely psychological nature of gender and gender identity.

As the slogan goes, people are who they say they are. In other words, it is concerned with the phenomenology (one’s individual experience) of self, rather than one’s ontology (or that which exists), i.e., the subjective over an intersubjectively-shared experience and understanding. Only this psychological sense of self matters, not only to ourselves, but to everyone around us and society at large.

This is the message children are continually given in such books as It Feels Good to be Yourself by Theresa Thorn, When Aidan Became a Brother by Kyle Lukoff, and A House for Everyone: A Story to Help Children Learn about Gender Identity and Gender Expression by Jo Hirst. Because the children in these books declare that they “feel” like boys, girls, both or neither, that is what they are. What’s more, books like Jacob's Room to Choose—in which two children get their school to change the washrooms to be gender neutral—socialize young readers to expect the rest of the world to see them the same way and accommodate them accordingly.

But reality is recalcitrant. Belief alone cannot make a thing so, and (works of fantasy literature aside) it is psychologically destabilizing and unfair to tell children otherwise, for it sets them up for a lifetime of conflict with (and resentment against) the society in which they live. Philosopher Tomas Bogardus argues as much in his 2022 Philosophia article “Why the Trans Inclusion Problem Cannot be Solved”,1 “no matter what it means to be a woman, it’s one thing to be a woman, and another thing to identify as a woman. This follows from a more general principle: it’s one thing to be some way, and another thing to identify as being that way” (p. 1662).

This recognition isn’t “hateful”. It shouldn’t even be controversial. An experience may well be powerful, troubling and the source of great discomfort, and a compassionate society will seek means of alleviating that distress; and if that entails allowing afflicted individuals the right to dress and live as the opposite sex, most open-minded people in liberal societies until recently adopted a live-and-let live approach to adults holding such beliefs about themselves—but only to the extent that the exercise of that belief does not infringe on the rights of others, or the rights of others to hold their own beliefs on the matter. Most importantly, such beliefs should not supersede the recognition of the material reality of our sexed bodies and the rights owed to women and girls to ensure their privacy, safety, and dignity in law and social practices.

If this distinction was universally declared and understood by all parties, then perhaps we wouldn’t be caught in such a rhetorical quagmire over gender and social justice. That it has not obtained as a result of ever-more fervent social justice activism is why gender identity in public policy has been facing such resistance. German-American philosopher Eric Voegelin describes as much in his 1970 chapter “Eclipse of Reality” in which he observed that the creation of a “second reality” comprised of one’s own ideals doesn’t just result in a conflict with reality, but also a conflict within reality, i.e., between individuals and groups. Yet, what almost all observers fail to recognize is that this isn’t really a debate about social justice so much as it is one over…

4. Gnostic Metaphysics

The idealistic and wholly ideological project of making an ontology out of a phenomenology premised on the metaphysics of one’s “gendered soul” is only possible if bodies have no meaningful existence or salience to the believer. As it turns out, this view of the human condition isn’t new or even socially progressive—it is, in fact, derived from the ancient Christian heresy of Gnosticism, which views all matter including the human body as inherently evil. According to Gnostics, we are “trapped” in our bodies, and since the mind is superior to the body, and because these flesh shells are entirely separate from the sacred “spark” of the souls given to us by God, we may do what we want to with them in order to escape them, an achievement that may only be brought about through the acquisition of “hidden knowledge” (or gnosis). As Stephen Aaron Covert writes of the parallels between Gnosticism and transgenderism,

the modern view of identity places the inner thoughts and feelings of one’s being above the biological/physical reality of the person’s gender. The extreme consequence of this disconnect can occur in the utilization of medical intervention. The soul, seen as identifying whatever it wills, places the body at its mercy…The soul and body do not make the person. Rather, it is the soul alone which represents the fullness of one’s identity. The body then is a mere prison in which the soul must reside throughout its time on Earth. Such a system means that the body can, and some believe must, be changed at the will of the soul…The body is owned by the soul…[t]he shape of the body can be changed in order to match the desires of the soul…The process of affirmation within the transgender community is also seen throughout Gnostic philosophical thought and practice. The “hidden knowledge” [of the ”gendered soul”] is a personal revelation of one’s being and how they relate to the physical and spiritual worlds (41-42).

Covert stresses that trans-identifying individuals are not knowingly adherents of Gnosticism per se, only that the two belief systems are remarkably similar. Still, the core beliefs, the intent behind those beliefs, and their net effects on the discourse of the human condition are one and the same, deriving as they do from the same metaphysics.

In short, gender identity ideology is an expression of a metaphysical (if non-theistic) belief rather than an uncontested fact. Regardless, many recent children’s books insist on treating…

5. Abstract metaphysics as established fact

Despite the highly contested nature of the scholarship described above, and the profoundly metaphysical belief about the nature of the human experience, the children’s books promoting gender identity treat it as established, incontrovertible fact, rather than framing the concept (more appropriately) as something “some people believe to be true.” For example, Theresa Thorn’s 2019 picture book It Feels Good to be Yourself: A Book About Gender Identity (which, according to her publisher is aimed at children aged 4-8), introduces readers to Ruthie, “a transgender girl” who “everyone thought she was a boy” when she was born, “until she grew a little older [and] told every one that she’s actually a girl.” “Girl” asserts the narrator, “is Ruthie’s gender identity.” The book goes on to introduce us to several other children in Ruthie’s social circle, all of whom have various gender identities which aren’t just self-declared, but according to the narrator, factual:

This is Ruthie’s friend Alex. Alex is BOTH A BOY AND A GIRL. When Alex was born, everyone thought Alex was a girl, but Alex is both boy and girl. This is Alex’s gender identity. This is Alex’s friend JJ. JJ is NEITHER A BOY NOR A GIRL. Ever since JJ was very little, they never felt exactly like a boy or a girl – they just felt like themselves. This is JJ’s gender identity. Alex and JJ are both NON-BINARY…

Notice the certainty in the narration: Alex is both a boy and a girl, while J.J. is neither; not that Alex and J.J. might feel this way, but that they are this way. Far from acknowledging the controversial and metaphysical nature of this belief, Thorn is telling young children that this is a reality about which they need to be inculcated. What’s more, to say one “feels like oneself” pretty well describes most people’s experience, yet is equated here with being neither sex, surely leading at least some young readers into needless existential doubt. And we cannot overlook the implications of every child in Ruthie’s social circle announcing a non-traditional gender identity—which, if were the case in real life, would surely qualify as evidence of the very social contagion described by Abigail Shrier in Irreversible Damage.

As is always the case with ideologies, they not only treat abstractions as reality, but also reality as abstractions. Case in point: the 2021 edition of The Bare Naked Book by Kathy Stinson. Where the charming 1978 original edition dealt frankly with the human body—informing children that penises were for boys and vaginas for girls and asking “where is your penis?” and “where is your vagina?”—the new version is bizarrely non-specific about private parts, telling readers, “whatever you call whatever you have, your genitals belong to you.” While this emphasis on privacy, agency, and consent is certainly important and welcome, referring to genitals vaguely as whatever you call whatever you have is not only spectacularly uninformative but is evasively euphemistic and even shame-inducing in a manner that wouldn’t have been out of place in a Victorian era children’s book.

As is the case, however, whenever any metaphysical belief is regarded with absolute certainty, gender identity ideology is enforced through…

6. A Manichean worldview

What makes this controversy so seemingly intractable is that it is replete with dualistic absolutism: one is either “affirming” and “inclusive” of the ideology (the existence of which is denied) or else is accused of being “transphobic”, “anti-LGBT”, and “attacking trans kids.” No reasonable skepticism, objections, discussions, or safeguarding is permitted, even when those expressing concern are stakeholders who, in any other circumstance, would be granted, at the very least, a modicum of deference and legitimacy by the progressive Left, namely women and the same-sex attracted. In the latter case this has led to the bizarre situation in which a gay-rights organization like the LGB Alliance is being accused of being “anti-LGBT.” In general, any opposition is framed (and stripped of legitimacy) as a “right wing attack on libraries” when, in fact, most gender critical feminists (like J.K. Rowling and Kathleen Stock) have always identified with the Left, even as it has largely abandoned their concerns.

The political consequences of such a starkly polarized worldview are obvious and troubling; the battle over children's books becoming an existential one for all concerned, including for libraries seeking to mediate and resolve such conflict.

For all these contortions and consequences, however, it is not at all obvious what social and developmental problem these books are seeking to address, making gender identity ideology…

7. A Theory in search of a problem

What is so ironic about all this is that we were once, as a society, on a much more positive path towards healthy gender neutrality. For example, I remember that for my ninth birthday in 1972 I received a copy of Marlo Thomas and Friends’ educational record album Free to be You and Me, which guided children through songs and stories about self-acceptance and gender equality. One of the stories I particularly remember is William’s Doll, about a boy who wishes for a doll to play with, which taught children of my era that boys and girls can do or be anything that interests them. By contrast, contemporary gender identity ideology titles on the same theme conflate sex and gender stereotypes, with confusing and regressive results. For example, in Jamie is Jamie by Afsaneh Moradian, a child plays with both boys and girls and various (gender-typical) toys, but because the reader is never told if Jamie is male or female (a theme carried into the sequel Jamie and Bubbie: A Book About People’s Pronouns) the message is not just that you can’t gauge a person’s sex based on their interests (which is pretty strange lesson, when you think about it), but that sex is simply socially irrelevant. This is also the main problem with Eric Geron’s board book Bye Bye, Binary, which not only makes the dubious assumption that toddlers will have any idea what a “social construct” is (yes, this phrase—normally confined to postmodern academic papers in the humanities—is literally on page 4) but, in conflating gender stereotypes with sex, it tells very small children that their sex is not just intimately associated with those stereotypes, but is every bit as much a choice as the toys they play with. When the parents in the book are asked by a passing stranger, “He or she?” they respond (fairly combatively it should be noted) “What’s it to ya? They don’t need to be EITHER! Besides, we’re letting them see for THEMSELVES one day.” While the theme of breaking away from gender stereotypes may be positive, the book’s messaging about sex is—to say the very least—misleading: no child can “see for themselves one day” what sex they are.

However, we know that gender ideologues don’t actually believe that sex is irrelevant, otherwise they wouldn’t also raise the possibility that children might be “born in the wrong body”, a condition that may require “gender affirming care” to alter their bodies to be congruent with their stated self-concept (we will delve into this issue in greater detail in Part Two). It would never have occurred to Marlo Thomas and Friends in 1972 to suggest to a child that they were “born in the wrong body” because they preferred non-stereotypical toys! Where the gender critical view is that children should be free to pursue whatever interests they have and be whomever they want to be, gender identity ideology turns the entire project of gender equality on its head, with adult authorities encouraging minors to obsessively ruminate about how to categorize themselves for the rest of their lives based on what their gendered interests are.

Finally, it should not surprise us that an ideology of bodily disembodiment would also be equally unmoored linguistically.

8. An ideology premised in language

As soon as one begins drilling down into this ideology, it doesn’t take long to realize the extent to which its power and resilience are entirely dependent on its manipulation and use of language, most of which is in dramatic variance to traditional usage. This is most explicit ins Jenkins’ 2016 article “Amelioration and inclusion: Gender identity and the concept of woman” in which she seeks to “conceptually engineer” the term woman so that it can include trans-identifying men, and therefore meet the objectives of activists—without (it should be noted) any regard for truth-conduciveness. Once understood to refer to an adult human female—that member of a sexually dimorphic species which produces large gametes—woman is now reduced to an empty (or floating) signifier, such that it means whatever a speaker wishes it to, with a host of dehumanizing replacement terms and phrases (menstruator, cervix-haver, bodies with vaginas) being offered in its place. Perhaps the nadir of this impulse might be found in Serena Bassi’s and Greta LaFeur’s introduction to a 2022 special issue of Transgender Studies Quarterly, in which they refer to women as “people whose bodies house a vagina, uterus, and ovaries” (p. 324). This linguistic erasure of womanhood is the cause of particular consternation among women’s rights activists who insist that our ability to discuss women as a sex class is essential to articulating their human rights.

The linguistic dimension of this debate has become a generational cultural project, which is why a picture book like It Feels Good to be Yourself includes a glossary (“Some Helpful Terms to Know”) as well as “A Note About Pronouns”, while even toddlers are being read the ABCs of Gender Identity (although it is difficult to imagine what the intended audience is to make of such entries as “Ungender: Someone whose gender can only be described as the opposite of another gender”).

Summary of Part One

To summarize then:

• “gender identity” is a theory of considerable debate in the social sciences, with no agreed-upon definition, and for which neuroscientists have yet to establish empirical support;

• it is a theory that rejects the salience of biological sex in favour of traditional and regressive gender stereotypes;

• it confuses phenomenology with ontology—feelings and experience for reality—with psychologically destabilizing consequences; and

• it is a profoundly metaphysical belief of physical disembodiment which—for all intents and purposes—mirrors Christian Gnosticism, making it essentially a faith-based belief system.

• Despite these contested theoretical origins, a lack of empirical support, and abstract metaphysics, children’s books dealing with gender identity treat it as an incontrovertible fact.

• This certainty about metaphysics also contributes to making gender identity ideology highly Manichean, with troubling political consequences.

• What’s more, these books are offering an explanation—in the form of dozens of supposed genders or the possibility of being “born in the wrong body”—for normal childish play behaviour, preferences, interests, and explorations that should require no explanation in the first place.

• Finally, the ideology is premised in a postmodern and fluid vocabulary that its opponents—to say nothing of most of the general public—do not share.

Given all of these dimensions—which have not, as far as I am aware, been incorporated into the LIS discourse—our ability as librarians to engage with each other and with members of the public on the issue has been hampered by a lack of a shared vocabulary and frame of reference. The external reasons why this is the case—and their implications for librarianship—will be taken up in Part Two, with their implications for librarianship to follow in Part Three.

Note: Updated April 15th, 2025 to reflect that essay would constitute three parts, not two.

References

Bakker, J. (2024). Neurobiological characteristics associated with gender identity: Findings from neuroimaging studies in the Amsterdam cohort of children and adolescents experiencing gender incongruence. Hormones and Behavior, 164, 105601.

Barnes, E. (2022). Gender without gender identity: the case of cognitive disability. Mind, 131(523), 838-864.

Bassi, S., & LaFleur, G. (2022). Introduction: TERFs, gender-critical movements, and postfascist feminisms. Transgender Studies Quarterly, 9(3), 311-333.

Bogardus, T. (2022). Why the trans inclusion problem cannot be solved. Philosophia, 50(4), 1639-1664.

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