How Gender Ideology Leads to Violence
From a former 'true believer'
Simon B. Amaya Price * Oct 21, 2025
Last Sunday, I attended the funeral of a man I had never met. He was a friend of a friend, a colleague of a colleague, but most importantly, we shared – at least in part – a mission: to end gender ideology. After Charlie Kirk’s death, friends and colleagues reached out to ask me for my thoughts.
I told them that seeing a video of a good man killed in front of a crowd of people, his wife, and his children has a way of sticking with a person. But it is not the video or the act itself that haunts me the most. What haunts me is that I was not surprised it happened; I was not surprised by who did it; I am not surprised by how people – including former friends and classmates of mine – have celebrated it. I am not surprised, because as someone who was once a true believer, I know that gender ideology leads to violence.
It was unsurprising that Kirk’s murder occurred on a university campus, by a young man only one year my senior: universities are where gender ideology was created. In the academy, ideas in the social sciences and humanities are no longer selected for their usefulness or predictive power, but for their citations, theoretical interest, and commitment to Social Justice. As a result, over decades, an especially virulent, useless, and ultimately destructive ideology took shape as what we now call gender ideology.
I was fourteen when I learned about the “gender unicorn” in my sex ed class, at fifteen, my pediatrician asked my father if he wanted “a dead son or a living daughter,” and my parents had to walk on eggshells knowing that the state would take me from them if they were too overt about their opposition to my transgender identity. I was blind to the reality: gender ideology is an underdog narrative with institutional support. I immediately felt like a stray dog pushed into a corner, with the coercive force of the government and major societal institutions at my back. I truly believed that either I was going to transition or die, and that the world was against me.
Standpoint Epistemology
For much of the first year of my transgender identification, I saw a therapist at Boston Children’s Hospital. While she was somewhat helpful at first, she was rendered useless after I shared my transgender identity with her. She believed that she could not understand in any meaningful way what it was like to be transgender, despite her best efforts. And when one does not understand another, what use is there in attempting to provide advice?
My therapist was, at least implicitly, a believer in standpoint epistemology. That is, the belief that there are certain categories of information that are only accessible to people in particular identity groups. While at first this may appear reasonable - I, as a white man will never know the subjective experience of being black, asian, or arab - standpoint epistemology further postulates that no amount of explaining will be able to give me a practical or actionable understanding of the reality faced by other races.
It may not be immediately obvious to the reader how ingrained standpoint epistemology is in our culture. Look for phrases like: “my truth,” “as a trans woman I...,” or “listen to trans voices.” One soon realizes that most, if not all, transgender people construct an understanding of the world not based on empiricism and scientific thinking, but instead on standpoint epistemology. There is little point in talking to someone if the ability to possess certain knowledge is predicated on an immutable identity. A transgender activist’s debate with someone who disagrees then becomes not a good-faith attempt to change his mind, but instead a performance for the camera - and more importantly, an act of loyalty to the ideology.
This creates a situation where transgender people can say what they want, and to be a “good person,” you must always take them at their word. This unearned trust is constantly abused. When surrounded by yes-men, thinking inevitably degrades, into emotion first, reason second. Rationality is replaced with rationalization. To stay secure in my transgender identity, I had to become a professional apologist for gender ideology – not unlike a religious apologist – appealing to faulty logic and poorly conducted studies. While unintelligent people may be unable to see the merits of the opposition’s arguments, intelligent people can convincingly win a debate, even if the other side is in the right.
Intersectionality and the Purity Spiral
Gender ideologues not only target non-believers, but also those within their ranks who do not subscribe entirely to the orthodoxy of related beliefs. They believe that to be a true transgender ally, one must also be on the same page on Israel-Palestine, systemic racism, and colonialism. This is an implementation of intersectionality, originally a legal theory, which postulates that there are certain forms of discrimination unique to the intersection of “oppressed” identities. Again, at first this seems reasonable: there have in fact, been cases where, for example, black women will face discrimination where black men and white women would not.
Intersectionality is a great way to start a purity spiral. Even those who believe in much of the central conceit of gender ideology can be scrutinized. For not using the right words in the right way, they could be cast out and ostracized. I was personally attacked and ostracized after criticizing affirmative action in my first year of college, despite my then-trans identity. What ensued were threats of violence so regular and severe from people who had previously been allies that I was advised to move dorms.
Even underestimating the importance of a particular issue will lead to “cancelling.” As a result, the most extreme positions are selected. Surely enough, gender ideologues have happened upon the most extreme rhetoric possible: that of death, nazis, and genocide. If one genuinely believes that there is a “trans genocide” and that transgender children will kill themselves if not given access to irreversible hormones and surgeries, then it may seem morally justified to resort to violence. Is it not self-defense to fight back against those who are “genociding” you?
Extremism
Their only chance at winning is to fight dirty and silence the opposition. Even if only a few are consciously aware of this, the incentive structures have converged on their present strategy. Those who are amenable to reasonable discussion and new information will quickly find themselves in one of two situations: either they are cast out for asking questions, failing a purity test, or they kneel to the ideology, apologize, and stop questioning. I refused to do the latter, so now I get regular death threats.
A fictitious minority has been constructed into which anyone, for any reason, can opt in. There are no objective measures for gender dysphoria, nor objective standards for who is and who isn’t transgender. Yet transgender identity is widely considered to be real, consequential, and oppressed. While these contradictions may seem obvious to an outside observer, true believers are blind to them. That doesn’t mean they are wholly irrational: they do have reasons for thinking what they think, which are crucial to understand if we are to engage in dialogue with them, as Charlie Kirk died doing. We need to provide them with an off-ramp.
Every single young person who is trans identified (and those who are true believers in gender ideology) is deeply distressed by trauma, bullying, family issues, or a mental health disorder. What we must never forget is that at the end of the day, these are young people like me, like your kids. I worry that the widespread, unsophisticated, non-specific villainization of trans-ID’d people will only lead to more radicalization and violence, making it harder for people to leave the cult of gender.
Simon is a desister, writer, and speaker, fighting gender ideology with classical liberal values. He has written for The Boston Globe, testified on bills nationwide, has spoken in communities across the country, and been featured in the Daily Mail, Boston Herald, and The Daily Signal. Simon is the Outreach and Events Lead at the LGB Courage Coalition.
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Simon is a desister, writer, and speaker, fighting gender ideology with classical liberal values. He is the Outreach and Events Lead at the LGB Courage Coalition.