Transphobia

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, 'Who’s Afraid of Gender' charts how a transphobic moral panic morphed into an all-our war on so-called ‘gender ideology’. Together, Ash and Judith explore how Britain became TERF island, the limits of self-identification, and what really defines a woman.

Paul’s opinion column is far from the first Times piece to be cited in anti-trans legislation. In April 2023, Missouri announced an emergency order imposing new restrictions on gender-affirming care for people of all ages, citing a New York Times piece about gender-affirming care that was widely criticized as biased and inaccurate. (The emergency rule was later withdrawn.) Lawmakers in Texas and Alabama have also cited the Times’ coverage in support of proposed anti-trans legislation.

“There is such a direct pipeline from these New York Times pieces to the ways in which these laws are being defended in court and then ultimately upheld,” Strangio said in their video. “The risk of harm to trans people from these pieces is not theoretical.”

Only two weeks ago Assigned Media shared a story originally reported by the Salt Lake Tribune about a junior varsity cisgender basketball player who’d been publicly accused by an enraged parent of being trans. Last night a new story in the Salt Lake Tribune, about an entirely different cisgender athlete, shows the escalating violence of the moral panic over transgender participation in sports.

A picture of this student was shared by a far-right state school board member, Natalie Cline, who insinuated she was transgender, which in turn incited threats against the girl from Cline’s follower base. She is now under police protection, and the post has been removed.
 

Anti-trans legislation certainly never represented an attempt to address Republican voters actual concerns. We know because, in poll after poll, even Republicans place trans issues relatively low in their lists of concerns. Trans panic as a wedge issue also hasn’t been electorally successful, as the midterm elections of 2022 and the off year elections in 2023 both showed. So what was the point of making it the top priority and overwhelming obsession of the right? Anti-trans politics had just one thing going for it: Attacks on trans people were what differentiated Ron DeSantis from Donald Trump.

And the Republican establishment really, really wanted Ron DeSantis to beat Donald Trump.

Yesterday, Ron DeSantis ended his campaign for president. However, as recently as the final RNC debate, on December 6, he was still trying to use attacks on trans people to distinguish his campaign. Lying openly, DeSantis claimed that parents of trans kids were “cutting off their genitals” and used the word “mutilation,” referencing procedures that are only available for trans adults.

This desperate performance, in the waning days of a failed presidential campaign, represented the culmination of years of work DeSantis put in as governor of Florida to make his name synonymous with the most extreme anti-trans legislation in the country. During his governorship he pushed for, and got, a full ban on trans children’s healthcare (not genital surgeries but hormone therapy and puberty blockers for kids whose doctors and parents agree that these were necessary steps). He also heavily restricted trans healthcare for adults, censored educational material about LGBTQ+ people for school children K-12, banned trans teachers from explaining their transition to their classes, banned trans people from using appropriate restrooms in public buildings, and even attempted to ban drag performances in the state.

All of that work, just to wind up as an also-ran who dropped out of the race before New Hampshire. It would be funny, except the consequences of attempts by the establishment to anoint him the future of the Republican Party will be felt by the trans community across the country for years, and perhaps decades, to come.

In 2014, the Religious Right’s morale reached its lowest point. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was repealed in 2011. Same-sex marriage looked inevitable as court after court struck down ban after ban behind a wave of rising public support. Time magazine had declared a “transgender tipping point.” It was here that the Right made a decision to shift their culture-war focus to transgender people. Simultaneously, they began funding ostensibly feminist anti-trans groups like the Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF), which took $15,000 in seed money from the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Religious Right legal group dedicated to basing U.S. law on the Bible.

At the 2017 Values Voters Summit hosted by the Family Research Council, Meg Kilgannon outlined the religious right’s plan to co-opt anti-trans feminist groups, and use their feminist-sounding language to seem more secular while hiding the true motivation behind their animus. Ultimately, they would loop back around to finish off LGB people once the trans community had been dealt with.

“For all of its recent success, the LGBT alliance is actually fragile, and the trans activists need the gay rights movement to help legitimize them. Gender identity on its own is just a bridge too far. If you separate the T from the alphabet soup, we’ll have more success.”

Dykes on Bikes Melbourne describes itself as a volunteer-run, not-for-profit motorcycle club for LGBTQ+ folks who identify as women, non-binary or genderqueer, and the group is known for its activism. As a Melbourne member, one of Kieran’s favourite recent experiences was leading the Trans Day of Visibility: Reclaim the Streets protest in March 2023.

After Nazi protesters spouting dangerous transphobic and racist rhetoric were offered police protection, Dykes on Bikes stepped in. The group led thousands of trans folks and allies in a huge protest, and Kieran remembers riding down the street and hearing the marchers chanting: ‘You can’t run, you can’t hide, Dykes on Bikes are on our side!’ Kieran said: “Just thinking about it now gives me chills. I will remember it forever.”