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In several of his recent discussions, Peter Boghossian has brought up the substitution hypothesis.

That is, that the reason genderism and other similarly cultish ideas have had such success, is that organised religion has been pushed to the wayside. According to the hypothesis, this has left a vacuum because most people yearn for, essentially, religion. Genderism and other similar fads have then moved into this vacuum.

I have several problems with this hypothesis, but I think the biggest one is the following.
It doesn’t fit the data.

If it were true, one would expect genderism et.al. to have the greatest sway in the most secular countries, quite possibly even originating in them. Yet, this is not the case. In several polls the most secular country has been found to be Estonia, if measured by the population’s lack of religion. Yet, Estonia is not even on the scene when it comes to genderism. Nordic countries are also well known to be highly secularised, yet they have been adopters, not leaders in genderism. And Sweden and Finland were first ones to officially announce they would stop giving endochrine disruptors for adolescents.

Instead, the “patient zero” of genderism, as Helen Joyce put it, was the U.S. A country which I would argue, is one of the least secular western countries.
Ergo: the data doesn’t fit the hypothesis.