Member-only story
Trans people are not weapons of mass cultural destruction
One artefact of the culture war being waged against trans people is the apocalyptic language levelled against them. Drag queens are labelled harbingers of doom, trans healthcare practitioners are accused of destroying LGB youth, and trans children are denied their identity because society thinks they are too young to decide for themselves. To be trans is to be a walking culture bomb, agents of chaos that will tear down western civilization. Much like gay men were labelled in generations past there is not any room for queerness in society, only a rigid conformity to the necrotic grip of the past. Trans people are the imagined phantasms of sacred conservatives, and it has been this way ever since the Old Testament.
What changed around 2015 was a shift from pity and contempt to a loathing dredged up from the depths of conservative hell. Trump’s ride down the escalator dragged up tales of Mexican rapists and dragged the right wing talking points into polite conversation. Suddenly drag queens were harbingers of doom, and then Hannah Barnes and Riley Gaines shifted the narrative by showing the world the “evils” for trans healthcare and trans women in sport. Forgetting the fact that for the past twenty years neither had been an issue. This weaponizing of trans identities to win votes was always going to be pyric because anti-trans sentiments was a niche subject, yet it rallied enough right wing hate to get legislation pushed through legislatures and parliaments. Hate sells, and trans hate fuels enough careers to keep it careening out of control.
British transphobia whips up the most pernicious form of fear dressed up as feminist respectability. No matter how often trans people counter attack and show the hollowness of the arguments feminists clutch their pearls and demand we let women speak. Gender critical deconstruction of trans rights has ridden the coattails of UK government austerity, with none of the main gender critical voices deigning to attack the UK government’s anti-women policies of restricted child benefits, lack of investment in the NHS, and refusal to properly implement equal pay across all sectors. Trans people are the side show that has become the main show because they are a useful distraction.
