Q. It wasnât just Trumpism. Some Democratic voices say itâs time to move beyond the issue of trans rights in areas like sports, which affect very few people.
A. You could say that about the Jews, Black people or Haitians, or any very vulnerable minority. Once you decide that a single vulnerable minority can be sacrificed, youâre operating within a fascist logic, because that means there might be a second one youâre willing to sacrifice, and a third, a fourth, and then what happens?
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We have a pernicious history of misogyny, which is being celebrated in the person of Trump. Guilty of sexual crimes, he has done more than any other American person to demean and degrade women as a class. The people who say, âOh, I donât like that part of his behavior, but Iâm going to vote for him anyway because of the economy,â theyâre admitting that they are willing to live with that misogyny and look away from his sexual violence. The more people who say that they can âlive withâ racism and misogyny in a candidate, even if theyâre not enthusiastic racists, the more the enthusiastic racists and the fascists become stronger. I see a kind of restoration fantasy at play in many right-wing movements in the U.S. People want to go back to the idea of being a white country or the idea of the patriarchal family, the principle that marriages are for heterosexuals. I call it a nostalgic fury for an impossible past. Those in the grip of that fury are effectively saying: âI donât like the complexity of this world, and all these people speaking all these languages. Iâm fearful that my family will become destroyed by gender ideology.â As a consequence of that, theyâre furiously turning against some of the most vulnerable people in this country, stripping of them of rights as they fear that the same will be done to them.
Mentions Judith Butler
A solid summary of a distressing few months that seemed to go on for years.
A few weeks ago an anonymous person threatened to kill my friend. Her crime: being trans. This sort of thing is depressingly familiar to anyone who dares to be or support trans online. Away from the darker reaches of the internet, however, the so called âgender criticalâ (what I understand to be âanti-transâ) movement enjoys platforms in national media and access to the highest corridors of power. The health secretary, Wes Streeting, has even appeared to make high profile statements in support. This summer, however, the GC movementâs claims to legitimacy crumbled.
Judith Butler, a titan of feminist academia, argues that the movement enforces the patriarchal gender norms favoured by the religious and far-right. âMenâ and âwomenâ are confined to tightly defined stereotypes and anyone who deviates is punished. It would explain why GCs receive support from authoritarians like Vladimir Putin, and far right politicians like Giorgia Meloni.
One might be forgiven for thinking the GC movement spent the summer trying to prove Butler right.
For a special edition of Downstream IRL, Ash Sarkar is joined by philosopher, author, and one of the world's most cited academics, Judith Butler. Their new book, 'Whoâs Afraid of Gender' charts how a transphobic moral panic morphed into an all-our war on so-called âgender ideologyâ. Together, Ash and Judith explore how Britain became TERF island, the limits of self-identification, and what really defines a woman.