Gender ideology has a reality problem. Just look at the latest cover story for New York Magazine, in which the trans-identified writer Andrea Long Chu denounced reality itself, writing that “the belief that we have a moral duty to accept reality just because it is real is, I think, a fine definition of nihilism.”

Well, that is a … novel philosophical assertion.

It is tempting to dismiss Chu’s denunciation of reality as an insane gambit by a flailing ideology, but declaring war against reality might just be crazy enough to work. This approach provides the collapsing gender ideology movement a way out of myriad difficulties — instead of relying on shoddy science to support medical “transition,” including for children, gender ideologues can instead appeal to a supposed right to physical self-determination and modification, even for children. Liberals like the idea of liberating mankind from the limits of our humanity, and so even as Chu retreats from the usual arguments of gender ideology, he invites the left to join in this more radical vision.

This effort to find a better justification for gender ideology pushes Chu to argue that it was a mistake for the left to hang “trans rights on the thin peg of gender identity.” This approach won some victories, but it “failed to form a coherent moral account of why someone’s gender identity should justify the actual biological interventions that make up gender-affirming care.” 

The radical bodily alterations of “gender-affirming care” have been justified by elevating “gender identity” to the status of a person’s essence, deeper and more real than the body itself. But people are realizing that a “gender identity” is metaphysical conjecture, not medicine or biology. Thus, Chu sees reliance on gender identity as a trap for transgender advocates. It is superstitious to imagine that there is something like gendered souls that sometimes, somehow, get stuck in the wrong bodies. 

He also sees that searching for reasons and explanations for transgenderism may prove deadly to the cause of gender ideology. By making the case for “transition” (again, especially for children) contingent on generating favorable evidence (medical, sociological, psychological) for it, the transgender movement has become more vulnerable as that evidence has failed to materialize. Furthermore, requiring reasons for transition tends to establish some form of gatekeeping, in which transition is doled out only to those determined to be truly transgender. 

Chu fears that subjecting the transgender movement, and especially its medical wing, to rational, evidence-based scrutiny will restrict and ultimately destroy it. Instead, he wants transgender activists and their allies to:

[S]top relying on the increasingly metaphysical concept of gender identity to justify sex-changing care, as if such care were only permissible when one’s biological sex does not match the serial number engraved on one’s soul. … [W]e must rid ourselves of the idea that any necessary relationship exists between sex and gender; this prepares us to claim that the freedom to bring sex and gender into whatever relation one chooses is a basic human right.

He thereby makes explicit what has always been the position of gender ideologues, which is that there should be medical transition on demand for everyone. He writes, “We must be prepared to defend the idea that, in principle, everyone should have access to sex-changing medical care, regardless of age, gender identity, social environment, or psychiatric history.” This is not about medical need, but about a subjective desire to flee from the reality of one’s embodied self.

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