Eliminate Eliminationism from the Trans Question

One can debate the scope and limits of trans rights but not with those who deny their right to exist

L-R: U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, President Donald Trump, Daily Wire podcasters Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles. (Ann in the UK, Shutterstock, The UnPopulist illustration)

Upon first glance, it seems as though the “trans debate” fits within the usual mold of ordinary political contestation: on the one side are those advancing the trans cause and on the other those opposing it. When right-wing politicians and influencers say they’re opposing “the trans agenda,” “trans ideology,” or “transgenderism,” it suggests that they’re targeting a political program. In reality, they’re often targeting trans people themselves who are agitating for more inclusion in a society that has made no room for them. Indeed, even deploying words like “agenda” to describe the plight of trans people serves the dual purpose of discrediting them while bestowing political legitimacy on the right’s approach. It gives the right’s crusade a status it would have a harder time securing if it more forthrightly acknowledged its real aim: oppose trans persons’ efforts to live their lives as trans persons.

Consider, as a representative example, conservative commentator Matt Walsh’s declaration: “We are not going to rest until ... trans ideology is entirely erased from this earth.” The term “trans ideology” might suggest Walsh merely wants to eliminate a political program. In reality, he wants to eliminate the ability of trans people to be trans. This is not surprising given that he believes that trans people suffer from a “delusion” that is the product of “mental illness.” He wants to outlaw gender-transitioning treatment, even for adults. He believes trans persons who use a bathroom matching their gender identity are guilty of committing “an act of violence” and “sexual harassment.” Likewise, when Walsh’s Daily Wire colleague, Michael Knowles, urges, “We must eradicate transgenderism from public life at every level,” he’s not calling to merely oppose a political interest group whose claims he is trying to reconcile against those of others. No, he is trying to wipe away transgender expression from public life altogether. As investigative journalist—and The UnPopulist contributor—Radley Balko remarked, no one would interpret “we have to eradicate Judaism” as anything short of a call to harm Jews themselves in a profound way. The agenda language thus obscures that the attacks are fundamentally aimed at the very idea of being trans.

Rights in a free society necessarily invite questions of competing claims and what exactly we owe one another. People of good will sincerely and earnestly debate when children should be given gender-reaffirming care or what the fair parameters for trans participation in sports competitions are. But let’s be clear: Walsh and his ilk don’t want a thoughtful debate about trans rights in American society; their view is that those identifying as trans should have no place in public life whatsoever and therefore the question of their rights is moot.

This eliminationist stance takes two broad approaches: biological and moral. In both cases, the thrust is the same: Transgender identity and the process of transitioning represents a fundamental violation of fixed biological or moral truths and it needs to be stopped by extraordinary means.

Eliminationist Orders

Denying trans people participation in public life isn’t just something that the right’s loudest pundits are doing. Although Donald Trump was mostly quiet about this issue in his first term, the anti-trans cause right now has a friend at the highest level. Two weeks into his term, his administration has already taken active steps to strip away the rights of trans people.

Trump has signed executive orders barring trans identification in the military; banning gender-affirming care for youth, tellingly, till age 19, not 18; and censoring trans-inclusive education in schools. The State Department has now removed the “X” gender designation on its passport application portal and paused the application process for trans persons until their gender identification is updated to match their biological sex. A passport is a crucial identifying document that affirms your government’s recognition of you as a citizen. This is nothing short of a denial of trans identity through bureaucratic means.

As journalist Erin Reed warned after Trump signed the “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” executive order:

This far-reaching order impacts nearly every aspect of transgender lives, from federal identification to education, healthcare, and workplace protections. Its scope and implications demand immediate attention—not just from transgender individuals, but also their allies, journalists covering LGBTQ+ issues, and policymakers representing vulnerable communities.

I would add: it demands a response from liberals committed to a pluralistic society that allows individuals of all stripes to exist in public life just like anybody else. It is not “trans activism” to say that trans people ought to be accorded the freedom commensurate with life in a pluralistic liberal democracy. They are not asking for special favors; just a right to exist with equal dignity—the same as everyone else.

The Two Body Problem: The Biological Side of Eliminationism

Returning to Walsh, his main argument against transgender identity is that it breaks from the biologically predetermined sex binary of male and female. In this view, gender dysphoria does exist but as a kind of mental confusion, not a condition for which medical transitioning is a legitimate remedy.

It isn’t only self-styled right-wing provocateurs and religious fundamentalists who believe that transgender people constitute a biological category error. Gender-critical feminists also reject that trans women should be accorded the status of womanhood and thus entry into places reserved for women. “Sex” is the watchword for these activists. Take the organization Sex Matters. It claims to stand for human rights and still asserts:

We do not think that institutions, including the government, regulators, and courts, must regard the two sets of beliefs—that sex is real, immutable, and important, and that “gender identity” determines whether someone is male or female (or both or neither)–as equally valid. One is objective reality and the other is a strongly held and erroneous personal feeling.

If the outfit were merely offering its ideas for consideration in the scientific or philosophical debate, it would be one thing. But it is advocating a built-in bias for gender-critical views in the marketplace of ideas and demanding that only those be considered valid for organizing society. This inevitably means strictly controlling and confining trans people. As prominent British-born gender-critical feminist Posie Parker (the pen name of Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull) insists, “I just don’t want men in women’s spaces.”

The issue has erupted on Capitol Hill since the election in November of the first transgender congresswoman: Delaware’s Sarah McBride, a Democrat. Her colleague, South Carolina Republican Nancy Mace, has led the charge on banning McBride from women’s restrooms and locker rooms. She puts the biological argument in the crudest terms possible: “I’m not going to stand for a man, someone with a penis, in the women’s locker room—that’s not OK.”

Mace also added a sign above the women’s restroom that reads: “biological.”

Degeneracy on Display: The Moral Side of Eliminationism

Both fundamentalist and secular critiques associate degeneracy with transgenderism. But for the former, this critique also seamlessly slides into a rhetoric of demonology. Knowles, a self-avowed Christian nationalist, grabbed headlines in 2023 when he opined:

Isn’t it odd how depictions of demons, how depictions of weird, ghoulish, devilish, demonic figures are always androgynous? They’re never super-duper hyper-masculine chads. They’re never beautiful, truly gorgeous women with classical proportions and representations of beauty. They’re always androgynous. They’re always trans.

Where does this ultimately come from? For Knowles, the answer is Satan himself: “The Devil hates humanity ... so he tries to cut away at the very core of humanity.”

Likewise, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, had this to say at a rally last December against gender-affirming healthcare for youth: “What you’re hearing is the outcry from the demons in those that worship evil, that are abusing our children—brainwashing our children.”

For many Americans, the correct public policy for gender-affirming care for children is an open question. But in an episode of The Dr. Jordan B. Peterson Podcast, the aforementioned Dr. Ross labeled the pro-trans position “the new paganism.” In another episode, guest Dr. Eithan Haim called it “an evil ideology.” These detractors have their minds already made up, their scientific pretensions notwithstanding.

Anti-trans feminists may not go so far as to call trans people demons. But they also attribute sinister motives to ban trans folks from feminine spaces, claiming that trans people want to be in women’s spaces to engage in sexual misconduct and even violence against women. In an event at Westminster, Australian academic and anti-trans feminist Sheila Jeffreys compared trans people to parasites, asserting, “When men claim to be women ... and parasitically occupy the bodies of the oppressed, they speak for the oppressed.”

The parasite metaphor is a convergence of the biological and moral arguments. By transgressing biological boundaries, trans people leech resources and attention intended for women and, in the worst cases, pose a physical threat to women by their very presence. The insinuation is that they do this because their nature is, by default, dishonest, greedy, and lustful. Nancy Mace invoked the inherent predatoriness of trans women in her Capitol Hill crusade:

I’m a victim of abuse myself. I’m a rape survivor. I have PTSD from the abuse I’ve suffered at the hands of a man and I know how vulnerable women and girls are in private spaces. So I’m absolutely, 100% going to stand in the way of any man that wants to be in a woman’s restroom, in our locker rooms, in our changing rooms.

A UCLA study found no evidence that trans-inclusive bathroom policies led to heightened security risks. Rep. McBride has no record of any inappropriate behavior toward anyone in a bathroom or anywhere else. Mace’s trauma deserves empathy, but it does not justify manufacturing a threat to exclude her colleague—or anyone else—from public life.

Mace and her ilk want to spread the fear that trans people are not just spiritually abominable but, more crucially, dangerous—because they will convince young persons that they, too, are trans and either spread the perversion or prey on them or both.

The Dark Shadow of Eliminationism

There’s a subtle two-step at work in these attempts. Denying any biological basis for transgender identity serves to remove the question of discrimination. How can one discriminate against a group that doesn’t exist? That’s ultimately how Knowles justified his recommendation that society “ban transgenderism entirely”: as he sees it, “transgender ... is not a real ontological category. It’s not a legitimate category of being.”

Gender dysphoria, however, has always existed everywhere. Yet it is striking that in the West (unlike India and other Eastern cultures), trans persons have been allowed no public space in society, even on the margins. They have been totally negated. And social and legal erasure can of course portend more ominous outcomes.

Now that trans people, unwilling to keep pretending that they don’t exist, are trying to eke out some space for themselves, they are unsettling long-standing social structures based on binary assumptions. What these structures should be replaced with will be debated and discussed. It is not obvious to many what kind of social structures would allow them space without diminishing it for others.

But allowing trans eliminationists to dominate the conversation and set the rules will result in injustice and inhumanity.

© The UnPopulist, 2025

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