Monday, September 18, 2023

It could happen (and is happening) here: Transphobia is fascism

Naomi Klein wrote:

"As the transnational extreme right — from Giorgia Meloni to Jair Bolsonaro — landed on anti-trans fearmongering as a powerful adhesive to bind together its Frankenstein of “inclusive nationalism,” many of the same people in the wellness world who railed against the unnaturalness of Covid vaccines have begun to speak more openly about the supposed naturalness of the gender binary, and of traditional family roles. Far from the unlikely bedfellows they first seemed to be, large parts of the modern wellness industry are proving to be all too compatible with far-right notions of natural hierarchies, genetic superiority, and disposable people."

— Naomi Klein. Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023.

More from Naomi Klein in Doppelganger:

"Similar attempts at diversifying the hard-right base can be seen in Australia and France. These movements are still built around hate and division — on scapegoating migrants; on pathologizing trans youth; on bashing teachers trying to support these students or tell a truer story of their nations’ past; and on scaremongering about communists and Islamists. “Inclusive nationalism” just means that they have found some new blocs of voters who are also looking for scapegoats, and not all of them are white, or male.

The endgame is not hidden. Bannon tells his posse that they are going to “run this country for one hundred years, [for] every ethnicity, every color, every race, every religion — that’s an inclusive nationalism.”

[Speaking of France, in May 2024, over 10,000 people protested anti-trans legislation.]

And Klein again:

"As recently as 2020, Wolf had strongly pushed back against the attacks on trans rights by some feminists of her generation, hinting they had become tools of the right. Now she was making common cause with the very women who linked all-gender bathrooms with sexual assault. The results of this 'huge victory' showed, she said, the 'gigantic plutonium weapon” represented by “suburban women who will do anything for their children' — parents who had become aware that 'there are dark forces arrayed at their kids ... all kinds of weird abuse of children going on.'"

weeping stone statue
Based Brenda tweets March 11, 2023: Too many people in this stupid fucking country seem to think fascism arrives suddenly to ominous organ music, wearing a black cape and twirling a sinister moustache.<br><br>It doesn’t.<br><br>It takes root over many years, and it always begins with demonising and scapegoating minorities.
Jeff Sharlet tweets March 6, 2023: Even now, we are afflicted by the double (un)consciousness of "It can't happen here" and the even more insidious secret desire among many for some part of "it" to happen--"Well, maybe it would be better if homeless people were all moved to one place..."
Matt Seybold tweets March 9, 2023: New Yorker: You know that racist historian everybody hates? We’re going to fawningly profile him. New York Times: We’re going to give an education column to a TERF. Wall Street Journal: Hold my beer. Screenshot of article headline: College should be more like prison

Rep Andy Biggs tweets June 9, 2023: We have now reached a war phase. Eye for an eye.
Rep. Clay Higgins tweets June 8, 2023: President Trump said he has 'been summoned to appear at the Federal Courthouse in Miami on Tuesday, at 3 PM.' This is a perimeter probe from the oppressors. Hold. rPOTUS has this. Buckle up. 1/50K know your bridges. Rock steady calm. That is all.

Both of these tweets are referenced in "GOP Congressmen All But Declare War After Trump Indictment", Matt Shuham, HuffPost, June 9, 2023


i don’t know how to effectively convey to cis people that the anti-trans movement is a fascist one that is advancing terrifyingly fast and that its aims and impacts will not be limited to trans people
simultaneously i wish that more prominent trans activists were really explicit about the fact that transphobia is undergirded by antiblackness / white supremacy as a whole bc we cannot possibly hope to meet the moment without, at the very least, an understanding of that fact
ok lol gonna get ahead of this tweet getting big and self promo: i’m a trans filipinx journalist, i cover anti-trans violence/policy/etc. for @them and also culture stuff, i have no idea what the fate of this website is but i can be found here and on ig at the same handle

In the replies, another person recommends "the chapter "Antifascism through the Lens of Transgender Identity" by Emily Gorcenski in ¡No pasarán!: Antifascist Dispatches from a World in Crisis."


In reply to a screenshot of a tweet from the username 'Gender critic' who said 'girls need blouses and skirts to reflect their biological differences,' Natacha tweets: 'Gender-critical' transphobia has revealed its narratives of 'biological sex' and 'sex-based rights' as the deeply sexist, misogynistic and patriarchally oppressive ideology trans people always said it was. It is about forcing everyone, including children, into rigid...
…gender roles based on repressive assumptions about their sexuality, reproductive function and roles in life. It rejects pretty much everything that is core to feminist principles and   wants to enforce an oppressive cultural determinism on women and girls in particular ... their cult of 'biological sex' is in fact just the co-option of a very restricted patriarchal interpretation of biological determinism - something feminists have always fought against - as a rhetorical weapon to remove trans people’s human rights. This has resulted...
...in them adopting an extreme & particularly repressive patriarchal belief-system that would not be out of place in Victorian England or most totalitarian states. It needs to do this to justify its policies of transphobic exclusionism by rigidly defining its imposition ... of an ideology of 2 biologically-determined gender roles in all areas as a means of excluding, oppressing & harming trans people. 'Gender-critical' transphobia has literally become what trans people always said it would; an extreme right-wing patriarchal gender fascism ...
no wonder it is attracting so much funding from far-right homophobic, anti-abortion groups, support from the worst abusive misogynistic right-wing men & from billionaire media. In reality 'Gender-critical' transphobia is all the far-right’s Christmases & birthdays come ... at once. It is a small group of deeply conservative, hate-driven women and right-wing men pretending to support them giving the current wave of global fascism an added veneer of legitimacy in order to further their blind hatred and desire for elimination of trans people.

“The GOP’s obsessive focus on punishing trans people is, in every way, a feminist issue — it arises from fascism’s predictable and eternal obsession with white fertility and ensuring “traditional,” patriarchal gender roles.“ Read this story from Jude Ellison S. Doyle on Medium (friend link)

"It’s definitely been getting worse. A lot of people who have been out since the '70s and '80s are saying that this is an unprecedented level of public hate. Even if there's been progress around rights for a lot of people, there's a whole lot more hostility."
— Florence Ashley, interviewed by OpenMind, April 2024


See also: "This Novel Imagines Fascism in the 1930s USA". It's a 4-minute read on Medium.

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