Recently, a U.S. district judge chose to let a trans-male member of the Atomwaffen Division (the name is German for "atomic weapon") -- a Holocaust-denying, swastika-brandishing, Heil Hitlering neo-Nazi group responsible for numerous murders, rapes, kidnappings, cases of torture, and hate crimes of all sorts that seeks the extermination of all people of color, Jewish people, and gay people and idolizes Osama bin Laden and the Islamic State, who's de facto leader goes by the screen name "Rape" online, among other things --
off the hook without prison time after "he" faced charges of conspiracy, mail threats, and cyberstalking against journalists critical of the group on the grounds that "he" had suffered enough from his physically abusive upbringing already.
The point I aim to raise here isn't the leniency of this judge's decision (which I'm honestly sort of inclined to sympathize with, just as someone from an abusive upbringing myself), but rather that this fanatical neo-Nazi terrorist organization is ideologically transgenderist. Think about that, folks. How many times have you been called a "fascist" or a "Nazi" of late because you weren't woke enough to realize that sex-based pronouns are outdated, bra? Let me suggest to you that the Atomwaffen Division's welcoming attitude toward white men of all sexes isn't driven by a nice, liberal vision of a open, polite, and inclusive society (again, their goal is the extermination of all people of color, Jewish people, gay people, etc.) or by a scientific outlook and perspective on life (the organization's semi-official religions are theocratic Satanism and jihadist Islam), but rather by a knowledge of exactly what they're doing.
Gender-inclusive definitions of manhood and womanhood, in fact, have quite a prominent place in many corners not just of the left, but also of the global far right. Consider also, for example, the incel movement. "Incel" is a shorthand term the movement uses for "involuntarily celibate". It's a male supremacist scene that advocates state distribution of sex slaves to "beta males" who can't otherwise obtain sex, the repeal of women's suffrage, banning women from owning property, and all sorts of other misogynistic propositions that remind one of stuff they saw in The Handmaid's Tale. Self-described incels have often committed mass shootings, ISIS-style car attacks, and other murder strategies to inspire recruitment and further violence. Within inceldom there exists a concept called being
"pink pilled", which refers to, in the words of Incels Wiki, quote "coping ideology" that claims the ability to "transform an incel into a cute and sexually attractive woman to male Chads". ("Chad" is men's rights activist lingo for "alpha males" who supposedly every woman wants to bang.) The movement has built an entire genre of pornography around this concept, known as
"sissification porn", that has, in fact, reportedly succeeded in convincing many men to start identifying as women. Descriptions of the brainwashing involved are painful, but enlightening, to read. For example...
“I started watching trans porn initially five or so years ago and I remember I had post orgasm regret. Back then, I imagined myself as the guy… About a year and a half ago, I started to imagine the possibility of being the girl in these scenarios. I… wanted to be ‘forced’ to be $#@!ed by a man because I was turned on by the submissiveness of it. I dreamed about going to gloryholes or being blindfolded as men used me as an object for sex. Recently, I’ve started to really question everything. I love the attention and consequently feeling like the woman. This has lead [sic] me to have some gender dysphoria, as I would love to be the woman and see where that would take me in my life (fully transitioned transwoman). TL;DR my sexual and gender identity has been completely flipped on its head because of sissy porn/hypno.”
...and...
“I became interested in sissy porn around age 16-17. I was blown away by it! I loved the idea of someone (whether it be a man or a woman) ‘forcing’ me to become a sissy $#@! considered with nothing but pleasing ‘real men’. I want to be treated like a man’s cum-dumpster and $#@!sleeve. As of late, however, my fantasies have been less about someone forcing me to be a girl and simply me being a girl. I usually fantasize about having sex with a man as a woman.”
ETC. Submissiveness goes hand-in-hand with femaleness in incel ideology, and so self-loathing gay and bisexual men often conclude from absorbing sufficient volumes of this material, that it's time for them to undergo a gender transition. Is this still sounding like a progressive thing? A thing that is about advancement toward social equality? Or that is motivated by anything other than an understood, visceral hatred of women?
Similarly, the concept of gender identity has been enthusiastically embraced by multiple Islamic theocracies. For example,
Pakistan three years ago passed into law a new bill formally recognizing and protecting transgender identities for all legal purposes upon one's self-declaration of having one, as in
without requiring a psychiatric diagnosis of dysphoria like here in most of the Western world. Supporters' statements speak volumes about the mentality involved. For example...
“I was born with a very small male organ. Inside, my feelings are female. I want to live like a woman, cook and do domestic work."
“I want to wear women’s clothes all the time. I’m hopeful that one day we will live that freely.”
Pakistan is among the world's very most repressive societies to live in as a woman (as in leading clerics are known to advise on how to "lightly beat" your wife in accordance with Islam, for example) and same-sex relationships are punishable by whipping and public stoning. Such are the options for gay and gender-nonconforming men in such a nation. Better to "live as a woman", rewarding as that may be, so you can marry another man than to, you know, die.
In Iran, which imposes a strict male guardianship system severely restricting the rights and even movements of its female population,
men are permitted to identify as women for all legal purposes provided that they agree to undergo sex reassignment surgery and marry a man (i.e. they must be gay, for all intents and purposes). This system erases the perception of homosexuality in the country. Same-sex relationships, if practiced outside this legal framework, are punishable by death in Iran. Sex reassignment surgeries are provided for free by the state. Resultant from these conditions, you won't be surprised to learn that Iran is a world leader in sex reassignment surgeries. It's also a world leader in gender-including women out of women's athletics. For example,
the majority of the Iranian "women's" soccer team these days consists of biological males, as they've found that makes it a lot easier to win. This would be the sort of feat that trans activists here in the United States insist is impossible. Lo and behold that the impossible has already happened in Iran! Not that it matters too much: women have long been banned from watching men compete in Iran.
My point in highlighting all this is that gender critical feminists like yours truly have real reasons for rejecting accusations of conservatism and of "gender essentialism". Normal Western conservatives may not be on board with gender identity as a concept, but that's because
the Western social consensus itself is left of where it is in places like Iran and Thailand. Even our conservatives are typically not so reactionary as to legally require gay and lesbian people to embrace undergo sex-reassignment surgery on pain of torture and execution, or so misogynistic as to forbid women any rights to privacy, safety, fair play, or freedom of speech or assemly. Gender critical feminists simply agree with these convictions. It is the Western leftists, so-called, who ought to seriously evaluate how much they have in common with the global forces of the extreme right, as doing so might just call into question how "progressive" the fact-free insistence that manhood and womanhood are just ideas and not material realities actually is.