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Fear of trans sex

Rachel Saunders
4 min readOct 28, 2023

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Photo by Anete Lusina: https://www.pexels.com/photo/fist-of-crop-man-near-helpless-anonymous-woman-5723194/

It is always interesting seeing a person’s motivations, especially when they are targeting a minority group for persecution. We think of xenophobia as the fear of other nations and other peoples, though the same base fears equally apply to any minority we dislike and harass. Most xenophobia, be it antisemitism, homophobia, and transphobia, is rooted both a desire to control your own life and find ways of blaming minorities for your own woes. Transphobia in particular is rooted in the inherent mistake that desire, bodies, and personal bodily autonomy should dictate how other people should live their lives. Trans bodies, and the sexualisation of trans bodies, unnerve many people because they blur the rote teaching that bodies should always be categorised as one thing always and in perpetuity. Transphobia is xenophobic because it fears the other for no other reason than because it is different from established norms.

Which is why arguments that trans folks are groomers is so pernicious. It takes every xenophobic trait from antisemitism, anti-black, anti-gay, indeed anti any minority culture and repackages it as trying to defend children. Gay men have long suffered under the slur of groomers, only for them to turn it back on trans folk via organisations such as the LGB Alliance. They weaponise their own oppression and bring it with vengeance against an even smaller social minority. They see trans women as gay men…

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Rachel Saunders
Rachel Saunders

Written by Rachel Saunders

Writer, researcher, and generally curious

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