Gender ideology is the theory that the sex binary doesn’t capture the complexity of the human species, and that human individuals are properly described in terms of an “internal sense of gender” called “gender identity” that may be incongruent with their “sex assigned at birth.”

The plain truth: Gender ideology does not accommodate the reality of sex—the reproductive strategy of mammals including human beings. Sex, in this reckoning, is not an objective truth about men and women. We are not male or female by virtue of our body structure or the fact that our bodies are oriented around the production of sperm or eggs. Human beings, are, in essence, psychological selves with internal senses of gender—like disembodied gendered souls. These “gender identities” are independent of, and can be incongruent with, the bodies that God gave us and that medicine has come to associate with “male” and female.” These “sex” categories are mere conventions, says the gender ideologue, not facts.

Richards says that "gender acolytes" will "rarely speak so bluntly," because he is apparently certain that to just say what he just said would offend and upset people. I'm not so sure. It seems like a fairly food definition; what's less clear is why it's objectionable. 

The standard right wing complaint seen here is one we've seen again and again-- there is One Objective Truth and we know it and people who disagree are stupid or nuts or evil. Learning to be in the world is all about learning the One Objective Truth about everything (as discovered by some dead white guys); "critical thinking" is about learning how to unfailing arrive at the One Objective Truth. People who talk about different points of view are just trying to cause trouble. This has animated endless arguments since the Mayflower docked, and it is the foundational principle behind the classical school movement. 

The other argument here is a less common one, but Richards seems to be arguing that human beings are just flesh and bone, and talk about psychological selves or souls is just silly. God gave us a body, but our psychological selves, our souls, come from... somewhere else? There's a more obvious flaw with this part of the argument-- God does in fact give people bodies that are a wide variety of intersex (also, am I in trouble because I wear glasses and had cataract surgery to correct the eyes that God gave me at birth). But I am fascinated to see the christianist Heritage Foundation arguing against the idea of souls and asserting that we are just meat sacks, and the nature of the meat sacks determines all that we are. 

Ultimately Richards falls back on depending on "what you know to be true" in resisting the gender ideologues who try to tell you that human beings are varied and different, because "you know" they aren't. Nor does one have to search far to find the same right wing folks arguing that not only are there just two sexes, but the correct ways to be a real man or woman are limited to only a few choices (go get to making some babies, missy). 

We're talking about fundamentally different ways to view the world, which is why these arguments inevitably land in schools and debates about whether students should be taught about how to navigate through a rich and complicated world or whether they should be taught that for every question, there is one Right and True answer and all others should be avoided and suppressed-- not even mentioned or acknowledged to exist. It is one thing to disagree with a point of view, and a whole other thing to insist that it not even be mentioned. Maybe, the hope goes, if we can commandeer education and teach only the One Objective Truth and suppress all the rest, children will grow up to see the world as we do. Good luck with that.