Radical gender theory has now made its way into more than 4,000 US schools

Gender theory, which used to be confined to academia, is now infiltrating America's schools all the way down to kindergarten. How did this happen?

Christopher F. Rufo is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Sign up for his newsletter here. 

The main national organization behind this campaign, the GSA Network, is a professionally staffed nonprofit with a multimillion-dollar annual budget. GSA Network serves as an umbrella organization for more than 4,000 "gender and sexuality alliances" across 40 states. Once called the Gay-Straight Alliance Network, the group rebranded in 2016, reflecting a new focus on "the limits of a binary gender system." The individual chapters, which operate in elementary, middle, and high schools, often use the language of "LGBTQ inclusion" and "anti-bullying" in their public relations, but behind the scenes, the central organization is driven by pure left-wing radicalism that extends far beyond sexuality. 

According to the organization’s publicly accessible materials and administrative documents, the GSA Network’s ideology follows the basic framework of radical gender theory: white European men created an oppressive system based on capitalism, white supremacy, and "heteronormativity"—that is, the promotion of heterosexuality, the male-female binary, and bourgeois family norms. In order to fight back, racial and sexual minorities must unite under the banner of "intersectionality" and dismantle the interlocking "systems of oppression."