The Roles of Political Conservatism and Binary Gender Beliefs in Predicting Prejudices Toward Gay Men and People Who Are Transgender

Negativity toward gay men and transgender people is pervasive. Past research suggests that authoritarianism predicts biases against transgender people, in part due to an essentialist view of gender. To determine the generalizability of these findings, but with political conservatism as the focal predictor, we re-analyzed Norton and Herek’s (2013) large (n = 2281) nationally representative U.S. dataset. In doing so, we modeled a latent factor indicated by anti-transgender attitudes and prejudice toward gay men to capture prejudice toward gender non-conformists. That is, prejudice against transgender people and gay men on the political right might arise from perceived gender norm violations, which binary gender beliefs could potentially explain. Consistent with social dominance theory, results revealed that those more conservative in ideology were more likely to display prejudice toward gender non-conformists in part due to their greater endorsement of binary gender beliefs. Unexpectedly, and novel to the existing literature, conservatism predicted binary gender beliefs and prejudice toward gender non-conformists more strongly for women than for men. Binary gender beliefs seemingly function as a legitimizing myth to bolster existing hierarchical relations between gender conforming versus gender non-conforming people, particularly among conservative women.