Recently I watch a Majority Report interview segment with trans actress Laverne Cox; I'll probably share that here too once MR gets around to clipping the segment. In that discussion she talks about how the road to America's anti-trans pogrom was built built by shifting the focus off (then) unpopular bathroom ban bills, and towards the subject of trans (mostly) women competing in sports, after monstrous fundie think tanks like the Alliance for Defending Freedom (ADF) actually focus tested which trans-related issues were most effective in riling up anti-trans sentiment and triggering the slippery slide towards trans eliminationism.

At the time, I honestly didn't think much of the fascist right's tactical shift; after all, there aren't that many trans women athletes, trans women are not dominating women's sports even when they do participate, and I didn't think America would have much sympathy for the petulant fit Riley Gaines (a woman who finished tied for fifth place with a trans woman athlete in an NCAA swim meet literally nobody would care about otherwise) was throwing. I'm going to have to take the "L" on that one; apparently I forgot that tears from a semi-attractive white woman are often part of the arcane spell eliminationist reactionaries use to conjure up support for fascist ideology and oppression - silly me.

Unless you've been in a coma, you already know the rest of the story; Gaines would appear on Fox News a staggering 29 times in the year after her race, trans sports bans would lead to the very same unpopular bathroom bills now passing, and today we live in a country where the President has made the erasure of trans people in public life (both figuratively, and literally) an official US government policy. In studying the aftermath of this anti-trans propaganda campaign, researchers have noted that the attacks on trans women in sport were an effective permission gate for the anti-trans pogrom because they triggered a sense of "unfairness" in cis-het people who were already inclined to think of trans people, particularly trans women, as an "otherized" and alien group in our society. Which is of course surreal, because as this article by Jules Boykoff and Satoko Itani notes, scientific evidence has repeatedly demonstrated that trans women who've been undergoing hormone replacement therapy for at least a year, literally do not have an advantage over cis-women athletes at all.

commondreams.org/opinion/trans…

The Spreaders of the Trans Athlete Moral Panic Live in a Fact-Free Fantasyland

"One in-depth review of existing scientific literature on transgender athlete participation in competitive sport published between 2011 and 2021 found that “trans women who have undergone testosterone suppression have no clear biological advantages over cis women in elite sport.”

Another study found that transgender women athletes could actually be disadvantaged: “Compared with cisgender women,” the study found, “transgender women have decreased lung function, increasing their work in breathing.” Douglas Oberlin, an exercise physiologist who reviewed the scientific evidence related to transgender athletes’ performance, notes that “the limited information available does not suggest that trans men and trans women have much, if any, athletic advantage post-transition.”

In other words, yes, Americans who don't know their ass from their elbow just empowered a real as fuck fascist regime that is now destroying their lives, at least in part because they're big mad about the presumed "unfairness" of trans women competing in sports they otherwise do not care about, despite the fact that said "unfairness" has been scientifically proven to not exist. And while that's a sort of tragic comedy moment on its face, the consequences for trans people and folks who don't like fascism, are no laughing matter.

"Let’s be absolutely clear: The stakes are sky-high. The endgame of this bipartisan, anti-trans witch hunt is twofold. On the practical side, it enables the bracing possibility of raving randos demanding genital checks from the sidelines of youth sports events for kids who don’t conform to their strict versions of gender. (In West Virginia, Republicans have already voted through legislation green-lighting healthcare providers’ ability to perform genital checks on children without parental consent). But more broadly, the endgame is trans banishment. As journalist Dave Zirin put it, “The ‘pro-trans in everything but sports’ position can metastasize into… a broader anti-trans stance, the forcible erasure of transgender people from society.”

The push to expel trans women from elite sport, aided and abetted by Democrats like Gavin Newsom, is stoked by what Judith Butler calls “fascist passions.” As M. Gessen recently wrote, “The message, consistent and unrelenting, is that trans people are a threat to the nation. The subtext is that we are not of this nation.”

#TransRights #AntiTransBills #Trump #Fascism #Transphobia #TransSportsBan

So, I'm just a lady who studies the horrors of fascism and right wing extermination campaigns, but is it a *good* idea to let nazi propagandists completely control the narrative surrounding a fascist government's rapidly expanding pogrom against a highly-vulnerable marginalized group?

truthout.org/articles/trumps-a…

Trump’s Anti-Trans Orders Get Most Airtime on Fox News, Report Finds

"In President Donald Trump’s first month back in the White House, Fox News broadcasted more coverage of his anti-transgender executive orders than both MSNBC and CNN, according to a report by Media Matters for America — allowing the right-wing network to shape public discourse on trans people at a critical time for transgender rights.

“The shocking lack of coverage by more liberal media has allowed Fox News to push increasingly harmful narratives about transgender people,” LGBTQ legislative researcher Allison Chapman told Truthout.

In his first 31 days back in office, Trump signed a slew of anti-trans executive orders undermining the rights and protections of transgender, intersex, and nonbinary people. These policies sought to eradicate legal recognition of transgender identities, reinstate a ban on transgender people in the military, cut federal funding for hospitals providing gender-affirming care to trans people under the age of 19, withhold federal funds from schools that allow trans women to compete in women’s sports, and reverse diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives."

Folks, I'm getting pretty tired of explaining to incredulous cis-het people that the larger liberal establishment doesn't care if trans people live or die; the evidence, whether it's raw television broadcast data, a lack of organized protest to oppose anti-trans laws, or maggot collaborators like Gavin Newsome gleefully telling nazi propagandists they make some good points about trans rights, is literally all around you. As both an antifascist researcher and a target of the anti-trans pogrom, I can assure you that this is real and I'm not overreacting. When a government pursing fascist policies and using eliminationist rhetoric officially decrees that there are only two "biologically" determined "sexes" and thus trans people don't exist, they are following an eliminationist blueprint designed to make trans people not existing an enforced reality; if you want to know how that story ends, you should study the step by step process of isolating, de-personing, and demonizing Jewish people that Hitler and the Nazi Party used to justify, enable, and enact the Holocaust. Maybe you already realize this, maybe you know that the fascists aren't going to stop eliminating groups of people they don't like after they get done erasing the existence of trans people, maybe you even care about trans lives on a personal level; but your leaders don't, the opinion makers who control public discourse don't, and the politics being pursued by the larger liberal establishment in the face of an active anti-trans pogrom actually occurring as we speak, make that abundantly clear.

Or, maybe you don't care. Perhaps, like a lot of cis het people, you're not openly transphobic, but you find trans people somehow scandalous, distasteful, or disconcerting, and that's enough to buy your silence and keep you from speaking out against the silence of your leaders and media organizations. I don't know how to make folks who don't think my existence matters care about trans lives if telling them that refusing to speak out and fight back now, means their families, their children, will be next, isn't enough. What I can tell you is that avoiding the subject and hoping the nazis lose interest in erasing trans people from our society isn't going to work, and hasn't worked for anyone else trying to stop a fascist takeover in all of human history.

The fact is that Fox News (and every other fascist propaganda outlet in America) hasn't been pushing a moral panic about trans people (particularly trans women) while gleefully celebrating legal assaults on trans people's right to exist, for no reason; these fascists are dead serious about this, they want their base to be excited about this, and they're putting in the work every day to make sure public opinion continues to favor further marginalizing, punishing, and yes eventually eliminating, trans people. The fact that corporate media muppets and bougie Democrat political strategists can point me to polls showing that the fascists are moving the needle, and defending trans people is unpopular with suburban white voters who picked Trump anyway, doesn't prove their cowardice is justified, it just proves that the larger liberal establishment isn't working hard enough to oppose an anti-trans pogrom; and that, whether you want to believe it or not, puts everyone in danger - even you.

#Fascism #Media #TransRights #AntiTransPogroms #FoxNews #Trump #AntiTransBills #ExecutiveOrders #Transphobia