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Troony troons: Inventing trans hate speech
Hate speech is a site of cohesion and memory, a congealing of spite born of malignant intent and a desire to use hate as an oppressive force. One is not born hateful, you are taught and marked, someone who deep down resents the world and is desperate for a modicum of power. Lashing out at your chosen target feels good in the moment, a speck of something in the vicinity of power, yet all you do when hate speech is uttered is victimise an innocent person for the sake of that brief moment of succour. To speak hate first the language must be invented, a slithering tumour that seeps through society until those who wield it first hear it. Troon, groomer, tranny, bum boy, faggot, pufter, queer, slag, bitch, kyke, nigger, Jew, rag head. The list is endless because the desperate desire for power is endless; there will always be new victims, new groups to target, and new enemies to identify. Trans women are troons precisely because gender critical believers tar their victims in a cloak of dank humour designed to dehumanise and strip them of any dignity. To be a troon is to be beneath contempt.
Yet for all the semantic callousness of Twitter and 4chan, the reality is that hate speech has likely been around as long as there has been a minority we can point our finger at and say they are the enemy. Antisemitism has a sordid history of calling Jewish men groomers, all the dank hate…
