Media power and the trans debate
Who would have though that in the second decade of the 21st century we would be rehashing second wave feminist debates about what constitutes womanhood and sex matters. If there really were aliens peering at us from Mars they would be wiping their lenses and looking to see if there was a glitch in the space time continuum. Indeed, if there were to crash their craft into England’s green and gammon ringed commons they would scratch their heads at how quickly the exclusionary feminists have hopped into bed with the anti-feminist right wing media. And then they would go for a quick jaunt into London town before being laid low that is that self-same anti-woke virus that wants to keep all immigrants out no matter where they are from.
Power. That grubby little word that all feminists have been railing against since the French Revolution. The power to control our bodies, the power to decide who is the alien and who is the apex. The power to send a menstruating women to her monthly hovel, the power to deny her basic rights, indeed the very power to define what exactly a woman is. Our visiting Martians would be aghast at the global level of anti-woman rhetoric, from Khabul to Tokyo to Manhattan to London. No matter where in the world they crash land women are always second best.
And this is where the media discourse on trans rights gatecrashes the party. Our watching Martians would have seen the radical feminist movement split along sex-based lines in the sixties. They saw feminism tear itself apart over sex work and intersectional identities, only for third wave feminists to come along and show that sex-based notions of womanhood harm all women. They was never any point where being trans was an accepted part of society, only a begrudging understanding that trans folk deserve more rights than the kitchen dog, but only just. Our Martian interlopers would have seen the rabid media portrayals, and wondered what on earth we were all thinking.
Then the media seemed to get onboard with the whole idea that trans rights actually do matter, and somewhere around 2010 those viewers from the red planet would see headlines lionising trans folk. Gradual explorations of our lives, seeing us as human beings, not just sex workers waiting for the murderer’s hands. Seeing us as people with actual lives, not the wigs and frocks sent up on Saturday night. The power to reshape our lives into more than parody was gradually seeping through, to the point that even the Martians could see it.
Enter stage top left to bottom right Donald Trump. Okay, our Martian viewers would understand that the tangerine one was not the harbinger of all things doom, but his arrival in 2016 signalled a shift in right wing rhetoric that tore into abortion rights, migrants, and with increasing venom trans rights. Previously neutral papers like the Daily Mail and the Guardian amped up their anti-trans stories. Where once Mermaids and puberty blockers were treated as curios, suddenly they were this great threat to children. Where once trans women played sport and it was treated as a lifestyle story, suddenly it became this big deal. And the Martians scratched their heads.
This media power to reshape the debate has thrust exclusionary feminists to the fore in spaces they would previously have shunned. Why on earth would any self-respecting feminist writer ever wish to write for the Daily Mail, appear on Fox News, be featured in the Telegraph, or think GB news is ever a good idea? The Red Planet stares at us and sees these champions of women’s rights standing alongside rabidly anti-feminist voices, patsies for media empires that wish to roll back all their rights, not just those of trans women.
In latching onto the scraps of power offered by the right wing, exclusionary feminists are instead fuelling the rise of anti-women movements the world over. Andrew Tate, toxic masculinity’s cobra in chief, is symptomatic of this process, and even a Martian can tell you that writing for the same outlets that excuse his behaviour is strange fruit indeed. It does not take a vast alien intellect to see the damage done to all women when voices like J K Rowling, Helen Joyce, and Kathleen Stock shill for those same media outlets that would happily see them back in the kitchen and nothing else. Stock in particular as a lesbian woman should be very fearful of who is currently paying her bills, because all it will take is the wrong right-wing politician to come to power and all her personal freedoms will be stripped back. No Martian invasion necessary.
And this is the gist of the trans debate. For all the cries over sex matters, all exclusionary feminists do is get further and further into bed with the far right. Left and centrist media outlets cover trans stories far less frequently because they do not see it as nearly a significant issue as the right does. Trans kids, access to same sex spaces, trans healthcare, and self-ID are red herrings when abortion rights, domestic violence, cost of living, and equitable access to justice are hammering women’s rights. Our Martian star gazers stare upon us and wonder why the exclusionary feminists are foaming at the month over trans women who have little to no power; maybe that is the point. Maybe the whole point is that whaling on a tiny minority within society is all the power they have left, and that by shilling for the right wing they gain a crumb of power when previously they had none. If any virus is killing feminism it is not some interstellar one, it is the virus of fear and desperation in the face of encroaching right wing power grabs. And that is something no invasion from Mars will ever solve.
