Virginia Democrat’s Lead Erodes Amid Familiar Mistake On Gender Ideology

With less than three months until Election Day, Virginia’s off-year gubernatorial race is becoming increasingly competitive, as Republican Lieutenant Governor Winsome Sears closes the gap with her opponent ….

A Roanoke College poll released Tuesday shows Sears trailing Spanberger by seven points. In comparison, a previous poll from May had Spanberger leading by 17 points in the 2025 governor’s race.

As public polls show the race tightening, Sears told the Daily Caller ... that she always believed the contest to be winnable.

“Our polling showed that we were much closer and even my opponent said that this was a toss-up race, but the mainstream media would not believe her because they want her to win,” Sears said.

But Sears now has extra momentum thanks to a renewed debate over gender ideology in schools — an issue that was pivotal in Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin’s 2021 victory. Questions about how schools should handle transgender students and how much say parents should have in the public education system are once again emerging as a central focus in the final stretch of the 2025 race.

Sears also highlighted the significant increase in fundraising for her campaign ….

“I’ve raised in this last quarter $6 million,” Sears said. “I have raised more money in the second quarter of the campaign than any Republican ever has, including my wonderful Governor Youngkin — and he will tell you that. People like what we’ve done and they want it to continue.”

This issue and abortion were my motivation for a 15,000-word essay defining Democrats as predatory and evil.

“But Sears now has extra momentum thanks to a renewed debate over gender ideology in schools — an issue that was pivotal in Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin’s 2021 victory. Questions about how schools should handle transgender students and how much say parents should have in the public education system are once again emerging as a central focus in the final stretch of the 2025 race.”

These two Hillsdale articles do a good job of describing this transition from a minor medical issue into a major political initiative promoting Cultural Marxism.

Gender Ideology Run Amok by Abigail Shrier

https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/gender-ideology-run-amok/

EXCERPT: For nearly 100 years of diagnostic history, gender dysphoria typically began in early childhood, between the ages of two and four, and usually involved a boy who insisted that he was not a boy but a girl. Children afflicted are insistent, consistent, and persistent in the feeling that they are in the wrong body. It is by all accounts excruciating—I’ve talked to many transgender adults, most of them biological males, who describe the relentless chafe of a body that feels all wrong.

Historically, this has been the classic presentation of gender dysphoria. When these children were left alone—when no one intervened medically or encouraged what we today call “social transition”—over 70 percent of them naturally outgrew their gender dysphoria. Most of those who outgrew it became gay men. Those who did not outgrow it became what used to be known as transsexuals. They did not believe they were women, but they felt most comfortable presenting themselves as females.

The common thread running through these topics is that the truth is being obscured by gender ideology. Lies are told about the risks of the transition treatments administered to young children, both to play down the dangers of those treatments and to exaggerate the degree to which those treatments are known to be helpful. Lies are told about the researchers and journalists who attempt to report on the crisis of social contagion among teenage girls undergoing transition treatments. And lies are told about the movement to eradicate women’s protective spaces.

The gender ideology behind these lies is a sibling of critical race theory. While critical race activists are teaching kids that they are largely defined by their skin color, gender activists are teaching kids that there are a great many genders, and that only they know their true gender. And just as families who object to racial indoctrination in schools are told that their denials of racism are proof of racism, young women who object to biological males participating in girls’ sports are told that their objections are proof of transphobic bigotry.

Inside the Transgender Empire

https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/inside-the-transgender-empire/

The transgender movement is pressing its agenda everywhere. Most publicly, activist teachers are using classrooms to propagandize on its behalf and activist health professionals are promoting the mutilation of children under the euphemistic banner of “gender-affirming care.” And despite frequent claims to the contrary, this is not a temporary or reversible process. Of the children who begin puberty blockers, the medical literature suggests that approximately 95 percent move on to cross-sex hormones, and that 50 percent of the females who begin cross-sex hormone treatments move on to “trans-affirming” surgeries.

It is clear from this and from other transgender scholarship that the transgender movement is inherently political. Its reconstruction of personal identity is meant to advance a collective political reconstruction or transformation. Some trans activists even view their movement as the future of Marxism. In a collection of essays titled Transgender Marxism, activist writer Rosa Lee argues that trans people can serve as the new vanguard of the proletariat, promising to abolish heteronormativity in the same way that orthodox Marxism promised to abolish capitalism.

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