Political attacks on gender teaching in colleges and universities are about more than just gender: they are part of a broader project of eroding civil and human rights, limiting personal freedoms and undermining democracy in the name of “traditional” values.
On the first day of his second term, President Donald Trump issued an executive order declaring that there are two sexes determined solely by the type of reproductive cells the body produces, and that the federal government would recognize nothing else. The order claims to protect the “freedom to express the binary nature of sex” and prohibits the use of federal funds to “promote gender ideology.” Legal experts criticized the directive as unconstitutional and are challenging it in court.
Still, the order provided fuel for conservatives, right-wing politicians and activists trying to remove so-called gender ideology from many places in American society, including classrooms. Right-wing activists are pushing for censorship of educational curricula in K-12 schools and colleges and universities, and have been successful in Texas, Florida, and other red states.
Why are conservative politicians so determined to control how Americans define sex and understand gender?
As sociologists who research and teach about gender, we know that gender in all disciplines is understood as a complex topic of study, not as an ideology. The study of gender represents the kind of free inquiry that allows people to decide for themselves how to live, free from coercion or government control.
What is ‘gender ideology’?
“Gender ideology” is an umbrella term that conservative Catholics initially promoted in the 1990s in response to the United Nations’ promotion of women’s equality.
In 2004, rejecting the global women’s and gay rights movements, the Vatican declared in a letter to bishops that men and women are different by nature “not only on the physical level, but also on the psychological and spiritual level.” The letter claimed that the idea of gender “inspired ideologies” that sanction alternatives to the traditional two-parent, male-headed family and treat homosexuality on par with heterosexuality.
Over the following decades, evangelical groups and far-right parties around the world, from Hungary and Russia to Peru, Brazil, and Ghana, used the language of fighting “gender ideology” to counter a range of social policies, including sex education in schools, the legalization of gay marriage and same-sex adoption, reproductive rights, and transgender rights.
The anti-gender movement is no longer marginal, but is well financed, organized and transnational. For example, 40 countries signed the Geneva Consensus Declaration, an international pact proposed by the first Trump administration and supported by anti-gender activists as a way to deny the right to abortion internationally.
In the United States, where the majority of Americans support gay marriage and abortion rights, attacking trans rights became one of the galvanizing themes of the conservative movement. An avalanche of state bills not only ban books and discussions about gender, sexuality, and race in schools, but also criminalize abortion, ban gender-affirming health care, and legalize discrimination in housing and employment on the basis of religion.
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What we talk about when we talk about gender
The way gender is researched and taught in universities has become a key target of anti-gender campaigns around the world, in part because the study of gender raises questions about the universality of traditional social roles and the inequalities that can result from them.
Gender is a focus of research not only in gender studies classes, but also in literature, sociology, law, government, history, anthropology, and cultural geography, among many other fields.
Anti-gender activists argue that there is nothing to understand about it because gender is given by nature or by God. For them, gender is equivalent to sex, which is considered simple and without exception male or female.
However, scientific evidence suggests that sex is not always binary. In biology, sex refers to genes, reproductive organs, hormonal systems, and observable physical characteristics; Different combinations of these lead to variations in sex. Far from being simple, then, sex is complicated.
And a person’s assigned sex at birth doesn’t always align with their deep sense of self: their gender identity.
Gender is both a characteristic of individual people and a way of organizing social life. At the individual level, people subjectively sense and embody their gender by dressing and behaving in ways that encourage other people to see them as they want to be seen. A man can wear a tie in the office to convey masculinity. People will interact differently with a woman when she is wearing high heels and makeup than when she is naked or wearing a swimsuit. Someone who is gender fluid may appear more masculine or feminine at different times and experience prejudice and discrimination.
Gender shapes societies through norms and rules about everything from what you wear to how families function, who you are allowed to associate with, and what jobs you are likely to have. Whether in the spheres of culture, family, economic, or civic life, gender roles and norms intersect with class, race, and other social differences and change across cultures and historical eras. Indigenous societies around the world have long recognized more than two gender categories, and historical and contemporary examples of gender diversity abound.
A ban on learning about gender would sideline all this variation in favor of a homogenous worldview that deliberately ignores biology, history, and lived experience. Denying gender diversity makes it easier to impose a conservative worldview and roll back rights.
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Education as a political objective
Anti-gender activists see education as an important battleground in the fight for social values. In the US, conservative efforts to ban the study of gender and sexuality initially focused on K-12 education, exemplified by bills such as Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law of 2022. But the movement has also affected colleges and universities.
The president of Texas A&M fired a professor in September 2025 after a student recorded his confrontation with her for discussing gender diversity in a literature course. The student alleged that the course “was not legal” because it contradicted “our president’s laws” and her own religious beliefs. The university’s president also later resigned under pressure.
The same month, the chancellor of the Texas Tech University system, citing Trump’s executive order on “gender ideology,” banned all faculty members at its five universities from recognizing “more than two sexes” in any course or classroom.
As the Texas chapter of the American Association of University Professors reminds its members, professors have the constitutional right to teach and discuss “all matters relating to the subject matter of a class” without interference from administrators, politicians or government officials. Despite this, states led by conservative lawmakers have used a variety of tactics to eliminate gender studies programs or college curricula.
These attacks on universities are attempts to control thought, subdue social movements that advocate for change, and promote an orthodoxy that defends those in power.
Restrict rights, erode democracy
These attacks on education are not just academic issues. They disempower women and marginalized groups who achieved some legal protection or rights in recent decades. And they contribute to the erosion of democracy.
Authoritarian approaches to governing rely on scapegoating people, policing thought and speech, and punishing dissent. This is true whether it is Viktor Orban’s Hungary, Vladimir Putin’s Russia or Donald Trump’s United States. By banning questions and challenges, autocrats gain the power to limit the way people think and control their bodies.
*Victoria Pitts-Taylor professor of Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies; Sociology; Science and Technology Studies at Wesleyan University and Elizabeth Anne Wood is Professor of Sociology, Nassau Community College.
This article was originally published on The Conversation/Reuters
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