Considering dolls is a term applied only to trans women, he should have just said “a term of endearment for trans women”. The only reason he didn’t is because he’s anti-trans, and maybe he doesn’t even understand that “dolls” is a term specific to trans women, or that trans men even exist, a lot of anti-trans bigots are obsessed with trans women and think the only trans people are trans women; there are estimated to be equal numbers of trans men as trans women, they just don’t get the same attention.

The bathroom debate shows this mindset, anti-trans activist want trans women to use men’s restrooms, but they aren’t thinking about the fact that those same laws and policies force trans men women’s restrooms, leading to this kind of situation:

So the anti-trans movement claims they are keeping men out of women’s restrooms, while doing exactly the opposite.

I think the anti-trans movement wants to claim that the entire idea of trans people is ideologically driven, but they have it in reverse - the gender binary and anti-trans movement is ideologically driven, while the position that trans people exists and should have gender-affirming care is based on actual empirical evidence. The science shows reality is much more complicated than the gender binary, and that being trans is biologically determined, genetically inherited, and part of natural human variation throughout our history as a species.

So it seems acknowledging the reality and gender of trans people is not so much ideologically driven as much as it is more aligned with reality than the status quo of assigning gender according to a model of binary sex based an a quick inspection of genitals at birth, which we know is ideologically driven. The only reason to reject the undisputed science is for religious and political reasons, there is no actual debate or ambiguity about the science. Every single major medical and scientific association endorses gender affirming care for minors and adults, there is a firm consensus on this. These organizations are typically conservative, not “woke”, and they only support those treatments because they are the only known effective treatments of gender dysphoria.

The anti-trans movement has more in common with young earth creationism, the anti-vaxx movement, and other anti-science movements, which are often politically motivated and intersect with conservative forms of Christianity. These are truly ideologically based movements, and they support views of reality based not on what is empirically demonstrated but rather based on a dogmatic interpretation of religious texts.

For example, Matt Walsh’s anti-trans film What is a Woman was compared to antivax films like VAXXED or the anti-evolution film Expelled!.