Gender is not an ideology – but conservative groups know learning about it empowers people to think for themselves
Victoria Pitts-Taylor, Wesleyan University and Elizabeth Anne Wood, Nassau Community College Political attacks on teaching about gender in colleges and universities are about more than just gender: They are part of agrander projectof 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 there are two sexes determined solely by the kind of reproductive cells the body makes, and that the federal government would recognize nothing else. The order claims to protect the “freedom to express the binary nature of sex” and bans the use of federal funds to “promote gender ideology.” Legal experts have criticized the directive as unconstitutional and are challenging it in the courts. Yet the order has 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 in colleges and universities, and they have succeeded in Texas, Florida and other red states. Why are conservative politicians so determined to control how Americans define sex and understand gender? As sociologistswho research and teach about gender, we know that gender across disciplines is understood to be a complex topic of study, not an ideology. The study of gender represents the kind of free inquiry that allows people to decide for themselves how to live, free of coercion or government control.
What is ‘gender ideology’?
“Gender ideology” is a catch-all term conservative Catholics initially promoted in the 1990s in response to the United Nations’ promotion of women’s equality. In 2004, pushing back on 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.” The letter stated that the idea of gender “inspired ideologies” that sanction alternatives to the traditional two-parent family headed by men and treated homosexuality on par with heterosexuality. Over the following decades, evangelical groups and far-right parties across the globe – from Hungary and Russia to Peru, Brazil and Ghana – have used the language of combating “gender ideology” to counter a host of social policies, including sex education in schools, the legalization of gay marriage and same-sex adoption, reproductive rights and transgender rights.Anti-gender protestors during a 2018 Equality March in Kraków, Poland.Silar/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA The anti-gender movement is no longer fringe but rather well funded, organized and transnational. For example, 40 countries have signed the Geneva Consensus Declaration, an international pact proposed by the first Trump administration and supported by anti-gender campaigners as a way to deny abortion rights internationally. In the U.S., where the majority of Americans support gay marriageand abortion rights, targeting trans rights has become one of the conservative movement’s galvanizing issues. A flood of state bills not only ban books and discussions of gender, sexuality and race in schools but also criminalize abortion, ban gender-affirming health care and legalize discrimination in housing and employment on religious grounds.
What we talk about when we talk about gender
How gender is researched and taught in universities has becomea key target of anti-gender campaigns across the globe, 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 inquiry not only in gender studies classes but in literature, sociology, law, government, history, anthropology and cultural geography, among many other fields. Anti-gender campaigners argue there is nothing to understand about it because gender is given by nature or God. For them, gender is equivalent to sex, which is taken to be straightforward and without exception male or female. Scientific evidence suggests, however, that sex is not always binary. In biology, sex refers to genes, reproductive organs, hormone systems and observable physical characteristics; different combinations of these lead to variations in sex. Far from straightforward, then, sex is complicated. And a person’s assigned sex at birth does not always align with their deeply held sense of self – their gender identity. Gender is both a feature of individual people and a mode of organizing social life. At the individual level, people have a subjective sense of 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 might wear a tie at the office to convey masculinity. People will interact differently with a woman when she is wearing high heels and makeup than when she goes barefaced or dons a swimsuit. Someone who is gender fluid may appear more masculine or feminine at different times and experience prejudice and discrimination.Gender roles shape society and culture in both subtle and glaring ways. Gender shapes societies through norms and rules on everything from what you wear to how families operate, whom you are allowed to partner with and what jobs you are likely to hold. Whether in the spheres of culture, family, economic or civic life, gender roles and norms intersect with class, race and other social differences and shift across cultures and historical eras. Indigenous societies across the globe have long recognized more than two gender categories, and historical and contemporary examples of gender diversity abound. A ban on learning about gender would sweep aside all this variation in favor of a homogeneous worldview that deliberately ignores biology, history and lived experience. Denying the diversity of gender makes it easier to impose a conservative worldview and roll back rights.
Education as a political target
Anti-gender campaigners view education as a major battleground in the fight over societal values. In the U.S., conservative efforts to ban the study of gender and sexuality initially centered on K-12 education, exemplified in bills such as Florida’s 2022 “Don’t Say Gay” law. But the movement has also affected colleges and universities. Texas A&M’s president fired a professor in September 2025 after a student recorded her confrontation with her for discussing gender diversity in a literature course. The student alleged the course was “not legal” because it contradicted “our president’s laws” and her own religious beliefs. The university 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 across its five universities from recognizing “more than two sexes” in any course or classroom.Controlling thought is a means of repressing social movements.AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall As the Texas chapter of the American Association of University Professors reminds its members, faculty have a constitutional right to teach and discuss “all matters related to the subject matter of a class” without interference from administrators, politicians or government officials. Despite this, states led by conservative lawmakers have useda rangeof tacticsto eliminategender studies programs or curriculum from colleges. These attacks on universities are attempts to control thought, subdue social movements advocating for change and promote an orthodoxy that upholds those in power.Books on gender are among those conservatives are purging from libraries and classrooms.AP Photo/Rick Bowmer
Restricting rights, eroding democracy
These attacks on education are not only academic matters. They disempower women and marginalized groups that have 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’s Viktor Orban’s Hungary, Vladimir Putin’s Russia or Donald Trump’s United States. By prohibiting questions and challenges, autocrats gain the power to limit how people think and control their bodies.Victoria Pitts-Taylor, Professor of Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; Sociology; Science and Technology Studies, Wesleyan University and Elizabeth Anne Wood, Professor of Sociology, Nassau Community College This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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What a bear attack in a remote valley in Nepal tells us about the problem of aging rural communities
A 71-year-old in Nepal’s Nubri valley survives repeated bear attacks as youth outmigration and rapid population aging leave fewer people to protect crops and homes—pushing bears closer to villages and raising urgent questions about safety, conservation rules, and rural resilience.
Dorje Dundul recently had his foot gnawed by a brown bear – a member of the species Ursus thibetanus, to be precise.
It wasn’t his first such encounter. Recounting the first of three such violent experiences over the past five years, Dorje told our research team: “My wife came home one evening and reported that a bear had eaten a lot of corn from the maize field behind our house. So, we decided to shoo it away. While my wife was setting up camp, I went to see how much the bear had eaten. The bear was just sitting there; it attacked me.”
Dorje dropped to the ground, but the bear ripped open his shirt and tore at his shoulder. “I started shouting and the bear ran away. My wife came, thinking I was messing with her, but when she saw the wounds, she knew what had happened.”
Researchers Dolma Choekyi Lama, Tsering Tinley and I spoke with Dorje – a 71-year-old resident of Nubri, a Buddhist enclave in the Nepalese highlands – as part of a three-year study of aging and migration.
Now, you may be forgiven for asking what a bear attack on a septuagenarian has to do with demographic change in Nepal. The answer, however, is everything.
In recent years, people across Nepal have witnessed an increase in bear attacks, a phenomenon recorded in news reports and academic studies.
Inhabitants of Nubri are at the forefront of this trend – and one of the main reasons is outmigration. People, especially young people, are leaving for education and employment opportunities elsewhere. It is depleting household labor forces, so much so that over 75% of those who were born in the valley and are now ages 5 to 19 have left and now live outside of Nubri.
It means that many older people, like Dorje and his wife, Tsewang, are left alone in their homes. Two of their daughters live abroad and one is in the capital, Kathmandu. Their only son runs a trekking lodge in another village.
Scarcity of ‘scarebears’
Until recently, when the corn was ripening, parents dispatched young people to the fields to light bonfires and bang pots all night to ward off bears. The lack of young people acting as deterrents, alongside the abandonment of outlying fields, is tempting bears to forage closer to human residences.
Outmigration in Nubri and similar villages is due in large part to a lack of educational and employment opportunities. The problems caused by the removal of younger people have been exacerbated by two other factors driving a rapidly aging population: People are living longer due to improvements in health care and sanitation; and fertility has declined since the early 2000s, from more than six to less than three births per woman.
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These demographic forces have been accelerating population aging for some time, as illustrated by the population pyramid constructed from our 2012 household surveys in Nubri and neighboring Tsum.
A not-so-big surprise, anymore
Nepal is not alone in this phenomenon; similar dynamics are at play elsewhere in Asia. The New York Times reported in November 2025 that bear attacks are on the rise in Japan, too, partly driven by demographic trends. Farms there used to serve as a buffer zone, shielding urban residents from ursine intruders. However, rural depopulation is allowing bears to encroach on more densely populated areas, bringing safety concerns in conflict with conservation efforts.
Dorje can attest to those concerns. When we met him in 2023 he showed us deep claw marks running down his shoulder and arm, and he vowed to refrain from chasing away bears at night.
So in October 2025, Dorje and Tsewang harvested a field before marauding bears could get to it and hauled the corn to their courtyard for safekeeping. The courtyard is surrounded by stone walls piled high with firewood – not a fail-safe barrier but at least a deterrent. They covered the corn with a plastic tarp, and for extra measure Dorje decided to sleep on the veranda.
He described what happened next:
“I woke to a noise that sounded like ‘sharak, sharak.’ I thought it must be a bear rummaging under the plastic. Before I could do anything, the bear came up the stairs. When I shouted, it got frightened, roared and yanked at my mattress. Suddenly my foot was being pulled and I felt pain.”
Dorje suffered deep lacerations to his foot. Trained in traditional Tibetan medicine, he staunched the bleeding using, ironically, a tonic that contained bear liver.
Yet his life was still in danger due to the risk of infection. It took three days and an enormous expense by village standards – equivalent to roughly US$2,000 – before they could charter a helicopter to Kathmandu for further medical attention.
And Dorje is not the only victim. An elderly woman from another village bumped into a bear during a nocturnal excursion to her outhouse. It left her with a horrific slash from forehead to chin – and her son scrambling to find funds for her evacuation and treatment.A woman weeding freshly planted corn across the valley from Trok, Nubri. Geoff Childs, CC BY-SA
So how should Nepal’s highlanders respond to the increase in bear attacks?
Dorje explained that in the past they set lethal traps when bear encroachments became too dangerous. That option vanished with the creation of Manaslu Conservation Area Project, or MCAP, in the 1990s, a federal initiative to manage natural resources that strictly prohibits the killing of wild animals.
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Learning to grin and bear it?
Dorje reasons that if MCAP temporarily relaxed the regulation, villagers could band together to cull the more hostile bears. He informed us that MCAP officials will hear nothing of that option, yet their solutions, such as solar-powered electric fencing, haven’t worked.
Dorje is reflective about the options he faces as young people leave the village, leaving older folk to battle the bears alone.
“At first, I felt that we should kill the bear. But the other side of my heart says, perhaps I did bad deeds in my past life, which is why the bear bit me. The bear came to eat corn, not to attack me. Killing it would just be another sinful act, creating a new cycle of cause and effect. So, why get angry about it?”
It remains to be seen how Nubri’s residents will respond to the mounting threats bears pose to their lives and livelihoods. But one thing is clear: For those who remain behind, the outmigration of younger residents is making the perils more imminent and the solutions more challenging.
Dolma Choekyi Lama and Tsering Tinley made significant contributions to this article. Both are research team members on the author’s project on population in an age of migration.
The Building That Proved Los Angeles Could Go Vertical
Los Angeles once banned skyscrapers, yet City Hall broke the height limit and proved high-rise buildings could be engineered safely in an earthquake zone.
How City Hall Quietly Undermined LA’s Own Height Limits
The Knowledge Series | STM Daily News
For more than half a century, Los Angeles enforced one of the strictest building height limits in the United States. Beginning in 1905, most buildings were capped at 150 feet, shaping a city that grew outward rather than upward.
The goal was clear: avoid the congestion, shadows, and fire dangers associated with dense Eastern cities. Los Angeles sold itself as open, sunlit, and horizontal — a place where growth spread across land, not into the sky.
And yet, in 1928, Los Angeles City Hall rose to 454 feet, towering over the city like a contradiction in concrete.
It wasn’t built to spark a commercial skyscraper boom. But it ended up proving that Los Angeles could safely build one.
A Rule Designed to Prevent a Manhattan-Style City
The original height restriction was rooted in early 20th-century fears:
Limited firefighting capabilities
Concerns over blocked sunlight and airflow
Anxiety about congestion and overcrowding
A strong desire not to resemble New York or Chicago
Los Angeles wanted prosperity — just not vertical density.
The height cap reinforced a development model where:
Office districts stayed low-rise
Growth moved outward
Automobiles became essential
Downtown never consolidated into a dense core
This philosophy held firm even as other American cities raced upward.
How Los Angeles City Hall Proved Skyscrapers Could Be Built Safely
Why City Hall Was Never Meant to Change the Rules
City Hall was intentionally exempt from the height limit because the law applied primarily to private commercial buildings, not civic monuments.
But city leaders were explicit about one thing: City Hall was not a precedent.
It was designed to:
Serve as a symbolic seat of government
Stand alone as a civic landmark
Represent stability, authority, and modern governance
Avoid competing with private office buildings
In effect, Los Angeles wanted a skyline icon — without a skyline.
Innovation Hidden in Plain Sight
What made City Hall truly significant wasn’t just its height — it was how it was built.
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At a time when seismic science was still developing, City Hall incorporated advanced structural ideas for its era:
A steel-frame skeleton designed for flexibility
Reinforced concrete shear walls for lateral strength
A tapered tower to reduce wind and seismic stress
Thick structural cores that distributed force instead of resisting it rigidly
These choices weren’t about aesthetics — they were about survival.
The Earthquake That Changed the Conversation
In 1933, the Long Beach earthquake struck Southern California, causing widespread damage and reshaping building codes statewide.
Los Angeles City Hall survived with minimal structural damage.
This moment quietly reshaped the debate:
A tall building had endured a major earthquake
Structural engineering had proven effective
Height alone was no longer the enemy — poor design was
City Hall didn’t just survive — it validated a new approach to vertical construction in seismic regions.
Proof Without Permission
Despite this success, Los Angeles did not rush to repeal its height limits.
Cultural resistance to density remained strong, and developers continued to build outward rather than upward. But the technical argument had already been settled.
City Hall stood as living proof that:
High-rise buildings could be engineered safely in Los Angeles
Earthquakes were a challenge, not a barrier
Fire, structural, and seismic risks could be managed
The height restriction was no longer about safety — it was about philosophy.
The Ironic Legacy
When Los Angeles finally lifted its height limit in 1957, the city did not suddenly erupt into skyscrapers. The habit of building outward was already deeply entrenched.
The result:
A skyline that arrived decades late
Uneven density across the region
Multiple business centers instead of one core
Housing and transit challenges baked into the city’s growth pattern
City Hall never triggered a skyscraper boom — but it quietly made one possible.
Why This Still Matters
Today, Los Angeles continues to wrestle with:
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Housing shortages
Transit-oriented development debates
Height and zoning battles near rail corridors
Resistance to density in a growing city
These debates didn’t begin recently.
They trace back to a single contradiction: a city that banned tall buildings — while proving they could be built safely all along.
Los Angeles City Hall wasn’t just a monument. It was a test case — and it passed.
When TV Talks About Gentrification and Shopping Local — and Where It Gets It Right (and Wrong)
A closer look at how the TV show The Neighborhood tackles gentrification and shopping local—and where the reality of online sales and small business survival is more complex.
In our continuing look at how entertainment—television, movies, and streaming shows—grapples with real-world issues, this time we turn our attention to gentrification and the often-repeated call to “shop local.” Once again, we examine how popular culture frames these conversations, this time through the CBS sitcom The Neighborhood and the episode “Welcome Back to What Used to Be the Neighborhood.”
A Familiar Story: When the Neighborhood Changes
In the episode, Calvin’s favorite longtime restaurant closes its doors and is replaced by a flashy new pet spa. To Calvin, the change symbolizes something much bigger than a single business closing—it represents the slow erosion of the neighborhood he knows and loves. In response, he launches a campaign urging friends and neighbors to buy local in order to protect small businesses from disappearing.
Emotionally, the episode hits home. Many communities across the country have watched beloved neighborhood institutions vanish, replaced by businesses that feel disconnected from the area’s history and culture. In that sense, The Neighborhood gets something very right: gentrification often shows up one storefront at a time.
Where Television Simplifies a Complicated Reality
But, as is often the case with television, the episode also simplifies a much more complex economic reality.
The show frames “shopping local” as a direct alternative to shopping online, subtly suggesting that online platforms are inherently harmful to small businesses. In real life, however, the line between “local” and “online” is no longer so clear.
Many local and small businesses now survive precisely because they sell online—through their own websites, through Amazon, or through other platforms that support independent sellers. For some, online sales are not a threat to local commerce; they are a lifeline.
Why Brick-and-Mortar Isn’t Always Sustainable
Rising costs are a major factor driving these changes. Commercial leases, insurance premiums, utilities, staffing costs, and local fees have all increased dramatically in many cities. For small business owners, keeping a physical storefront open can become financially impossible—even when customer support remains strong.
As a result, some businesses choose to close their brick-and-mortar locations while continuing to operate online. Others scale back to pop-ups, shared spaces, or hybrid models. These businesses may no longer have a traditional storefront, but they are still local—employing local workers, paying local taxes, and serving their communities in new ways.
The Real Issue Behind “Shop Local”
Where The Neighborhood succeeds is in capturing the emotional truth of gentrification: the sense of loss, displacement, and cultural change that comes with rising rents and shifting demographics.
Where it misses the mark is in suggesting that consumer choices alone—simply avoiding online shopping—can solve the problem.
The real challenges facing local and small businesses go far beyond individual buying habits. They include zoning policies, commercial rent practices, corporate consolidation, and economic systems that increasingly favor scale over community presence.
A Conversation Worth Having—Even If TV Can’t Finish It
The Neighborhood deserves credit for bringing these issues into mainstream conversation. It sparks discussion, even if it wraps a complicated topic in a sitcom-friendly moral lesson.
The reality is messier. Supporting local businesses today often means rethinking what “local” looks like in a digital economy—and recognizing that survival sometimes requires adaptation, not nostalgia.
At STM Daily News, our Local and Small Business coverage continues to explore these real-world dynamics beyond the TV screen, highlighting the challenges, innovations, and resilience of the businesses that keep communities alive—whether their doors are on Main Street or their storefronts live online.
📍 Read more Local and Small Business coverage at:STM Daily News
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Victoria Pitts-Taylor, Professor of Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; Sociology; Science and Technology Studies, Wesleyan University and Elizabeth Anne Wood, Professor of Sociology, Nassau Community College This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
