Over the next few years, we are going to see an increasing number of major establishment figures come out and retract their support for transgender ideology.
As the evidence against so-called “gender-affirming care” mounts and the trickle of detransitioner horror stories turns into a torrent, it is becoming difficult to deny that the decade-long attempt to transition society away from the sex binary is not only untenable, but dangerous and destructive.
In the United States, the Democrats are already desperately hunting for messaging that allows them to maintain their LGBT activist credentials without defending an ideology that likely cost them the 2024 presidential election and has badly damaged their electoral standing with normal Americans.
But as the herd begins to turn, I want to emphasize something I have been writing here for nearly a decade: Most people never believed in gender ideology to begin with.
It is true that the liberal establishment accepted the “T” when it got tacked onto the “LGB” without question. It is also true that many accepted the idea that transsexuals, as we used to call them, existed and that sex changes are actually possible. But few—if any—ever really believed that there are more than 72 genders. Few, if any, genuinely believed that trans-identifying men did not possess physical advantages over women in sports.
Consider: If you had told Joe Biden, or Bill Clinton, or Nancy Pelosi in, say, 1995, that they would one day be defending sex changes for children and that their party would champion the idea of an infinite number of equally valid “gender identities,” would any of them have believed you? Not a chance. In fact, they would have accused the “far right” of once again pushing conspiracy theories, fearmongering, and homophobia (“transphobia” wasn’t a thing yet). But fast forward a few decades, and here they are.
I have long thought that some enterprising interviewer could easily prove this by asking the Clintons, or Pelosi (asking Biden would seem a bit cruel, all things considered) to name ten of the 72 genders. After all, if they believe that these genders exist and that these identities are entitled to specific civil rights, surely they could name a few? I’d bet a paycheck that none of them could. Their colleagues probably couldn’t, either. They don’t really believe this stuff, when push comes to shove.
We’re starting to see it happen. Malcolm Gladwell recently confessed on a popular podcast that he was “cowed” into being “dishonest” about his views on trans-identifying men participating in female sports, and that he never believed it to begin with.
Earlier this year, UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer responded to the UK Supreme Court decision clarifying the definition of woman by retracting his previous statement that “trans women are women,” saying, with visible relief, that: “It’s real clarity in an area where we did need clarity, I’m pleased it’s come about.” Starmer affirmed that a woman is an “adult female,” and when his spokesperson was asked if Starmer still believed that “trans women are women,” the response was succinct: “No.” Which is unsurprising. He never really did.
In 2020, then-UK Education Secretary Gillian Keegan claimed to believe that “trans women are women.” In April 2024, however, she revealed that her views had “evolved,” and that men who identify as women are, in fact, men—unless they go the whole distance and get sex change surgeries. She did not explain why surgery would change biological reality, but confessed that it was “not easy” to change her mind.
Many of these figures, like Gladwell, were “cowed.” The idea of questioning LGBT orthodoxy was simply more unthinkable than allowing men in dresses into private female spaces. Many, too, simply wrote off their critics as bigots, and refused to spend a few moments considering the massive implications of reorganizing their entire societies around a fundamentally new interpretation of reality. They allowed whistleblowers and truth-tellers and ordinary people who refused to accept obvious lies to be persecuted and prosecuted, while silencing their own doubts.
As the comedian Graham Linehan, who is currently on trial for “transphobia,” put in on X in response to Gladwell’s admission: “At least Gladwell recanted. [Journalist] Jon Ronson will probably insist he believes that men can be women for the rest of his life. He doesn’t. He’s lying.” Linehan is right. Most of them are lying—and now, some are finally starting to admit it.
