Anti-vaxxers punching down at the trans community

"Identifying as" has become a right-wing conspiritualist trope

Earlier this week, social sciences scholar Caroline Orr posted a number of examples of right-wing figures—including Fox Nation host Tomi Lahren, actor Terrence K Williams, National Security “expert” Brigitte Gabriel, and congressional candidates Michael Rufo and Willie J Montague—who thought it would be a good idea to punch down at the trans community on Twitter. 

Their new anti-vax talking point is to “identify as being vaccinated.” This is not a new trope. JP Sears, for example, has “identified” as a doctor and vegetarian; he also created a trans-bashing shirt. This is only the latest in a series of insecure men and women thinking they’re being clever by spinning a talking point to their own advantage. Step back a few feet and the callousness and ignorance in these sentiments become clear. 

Let’s leave aside the ridiculousness of the CDC expecting that Americans will abide by an honor system—or the idea that the aforementioned figures have any honor to begin with. Leave aside the anti-vax rhetoric as well. I want to reflect on what they’re really saying. 

Their contention is that if you’re born a male and identify as a female, or vice-versa, there’s something wrong with you. This is a false rendering of gender. Gender is not binary, though it makes sense that this topic is culture war fodder in Christian America.

Christians are accustomed to binaries—good and evil, black and white—compared to Asian religions, which recognize the complexity of interdependence. Life is easier if everything is either this or that. Ignoring nuance must make life less confusing in some manner.

It makes sense that anti-vaxxers would latch onto this trope. Epidemiology, like all science, is complex. So is gender. We grew up learning that if you have a Y chromosome, you’re male; if not, you’re female. We were taught (at least in the eighties when my gym teacher taught sex ed for some reason) that every fetus essentially starts out female, then you either get a Y or not. Case closed. 

Only it’s not. None of that is true. Recent research shows that roughly 1% of children are born with DSDs (Differences of Sex Development). Advancements in DNA sequencing and cell biology show that almost everyone has a patchwork of genetically distinct cells from those determining the gender binary. The genetic line between male and female is much more porous than imagined. Gene mutations can cause typically female characteristics to develop in babies with XY chromosomes, and vice-versa. 

There are many variations of sex development, such as complete androgen insensitivity syndrome, in which someone’s cells become insensitive to male sex hormones; they’re born with internal testes and external female genitalia. Anatomical sex doesn’t always comport with chromosomal sex.

There’s also congenital adrenal hyperplasia, which causes the body to produces excessive male sex hormones. That means chromosomal females are born with an enlarged clitoris and fused labia that looks like a scrotum. Some people even end up with two distinct cellular chromosomal sets, as when embryonic twins fuse in the womb and become one person—a chimera. 

As the physician and author, Siddhartha Mukherjee writes in The Gene: An Intimate History, gender has never been binary. We’re only discovering its complexity.

Imagine a gene—call it TGY—that determines how the brain responds to SRY. One child might inherit a TGY gene variant that is highly resistant to the action of SRY on the brain, resulting in a body that is anatomically male, but a brain that does not read or interpret that male signal. Such a brain might recognize itself as psychologically female; it might consider itself neither male or female, or imagine itself belonging to a third gender altogether.

One percent of the population born with a DSD is no small number. If you’re old enough to remember when gay rights really began taking form in post-Reagan America, it suddenly seemed like there were so many more gay people than before, just as it sometimes feels like there are so many more transgender people today. The truth is that the culture caught up to the reality of gender and sex differences and became more accepting—if you’re not a bigoted anti-vaxxer on Twitter, that is. 

That gender is so complex forces Christians to confront another uncomfortable truth that essentially upends their worldview: if gender is in large part dictated by genes and hormones, that means it’s an emergent phenomenon, not a choice. That is, gender is biologically determined by the physiological properties of the body.

The psychology of gender is in part determined by chemistry. 

This makes total sense. Besides cosmetics surgeries, transgender people undergo hormonal therapy. The combination of testosterone replacement with reconstructive surgery has repeatedly shown improvements in mental health. It’s yet another reminder that you can’t separate physicality and psychology from biology. Who we are is determined by our genes as much as our environment—not anything “other” inside of us. 

Which, of course, threatens the Christian notion of a transcendent soul. I’m not sure how much that factors into the uptick in Christian nationalist anti-trans bills occurring in a number of states right now. I’m not sure they think that deeply about it. The usual refrain is “it’s just not right” or “it’s now how god created us.” But the link is there. 

Speaking of legislation, Kara Swisher recently reported that more than 100 anti-transgender bills—the bulk of them aimed at kids—have been introduced by Republican legislators in 2021 alone. This co-opting of a sentiment—the right of identification—in an oppressed community is yet another example of the conspirtualist merging of right-wingers and wellness influencers.

I don’t know what more I would expect from people who chant “All Lives Matter” or consistently distort vaccine information to sell supplements. I just don’t understand why people, and Americans in particular, are so deeply disturbed by issues of sex, whether it involves gender, lust, or romance. But for a bunch of supposed freedom-loving patriots and immune system-bragging yogis, they sure spend a lot of time belittling (and even legislating against) people who experience life differently.