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Building a transgender resistance
I was sincerely hoping not to have to write this piece, especially as my research for the last four years has focused on mediation and hospitality of rights. Sophie and Hans Scholl of the White Rose resistance movement in Nazi German serve as my go to example of people putting it all on the line for rights, dying for a cause that was both noble and in the end right. Martin Luther King’s letters from his jail cell show the dire need for everyone to step up, and as the Scholl’s learnt to their cost there are plenty of ordinary people who will happily sell out the resistance if it means an easier life for themselves. Building a transgender resistance needs to be inspired by the Scholls but end up like King’s, building from the grass roots to have mass appeal.
The irony is that gender critical beliefs and values were a fringe movement circa 2012. Pretty much every country was moving in the direction of trans normativity, giving trans people equity with the rest of society. Yet, as a hardcore group of writers such as Julies Burchill and Bindel typify there has always been a strand of radical women’s rights advocate who have desperately hated the idea of trans women in public. Trump’s first term saw the rise in anti-trans insurgency, replacing the anti-gay agenda once Obergefell v Hodges allowed gay marriage. The anti-trans resistance found its opening in political discourse, and societies…
