The war on “gender” is a fascist threat
The Right is obsessed with gender. This deep paranoia comes out of America and international far right movements. It harms straight people and LGBTQIA+ people differently, and we need to fight it before our copycat Right entrenches it here too.
On Sunday night, Channel 7 broadcast a deeply specious piece of argumentation about trans youth suffering regret. It featured few examples and generalised that experience on the basis of activist talking points and from outlier medical opinion. The international far right is very enthusiastic about the “investigation.”
Most pain that might inspire regret is described by trans people as emerging from the difficulty of living within families and societies that demonise and discriminate against them.
In fact over 95% of trans youth embrace their changed form with joy. Most have only hormone treatment which has proven to be a saviour of mental health and life. Very few have irreversible decisions made before adulthood and expert consultation. To suggest that any other treatment is common is misleading and dangerous for the fostering of hate that it provokes. The estimated overall rate of regret at transitioning is as low as 0.5%.
Depicting children as victims of harm is one of the most powerful ways that a faction can ignite violence against a chosen enemy. Spreading propaganda against the weight of evidence to fuel this terror is indefensible.
The international Right shares a single concept as the enemy for which their targets operate: gender. For them “gender” is the unifying force behind modern society’s disorder and degeneracy.
The concept of gender in society was meant to highlight our wholistic identity and life choices. It was meant to free us from the dictates of biology which limited women’s options in particular. Gender stood in contrast to an idea of sex that determined our lives.
For the Right, however, the idea of binary sex is the prized attribute, with gender its perverted enemy. The Catholic Church invented the mythical “Gender Ideology” in the 1990s as a focus for the fear of LGBTQIA+ existence and feminism. The term now pervades the international Right. For these forces, biology must dictate sex. There can only be male and female. These (mistaken) “facts” are irretrievably based on sex allocated at birth. That sex label must dictate most elements of the life that follows. Man is strong, traditionally masculine, a leader in the world and at home. Woman is reproductive, but only within the confines of sacred marriage.
They must function together as a reproductive unit, within the “traditional” family home. This unit, it is argued by many on the further Right, ought to be the basis of any democracy they allow. The father must have the sole family vote, acting for his wife as he does now for his children.
In Republican states across America, women’s access to reproductive healthcare has been savaged as a result. Ironically this has also made desired pregnancies much more dangerous too. Plans exist to make abortion illegal nationwide, despite the disingenuous Supreme Court arguments that the Dodds decision was about states’ rights. In discussion also are plans to block access to contraception and women’s ability to initiate divorce.
The intent is that women will be functionally removed from the civic space: uncontrolled reproduction is a crippling weapon. It is not just implicit, however. The American Right is selling this message overtly too.
Turning Point USA, the youth arm of the MAGA movement, holds an annual Young Women’s Leadership Summit. There predominantly women with successful media careers tell school and college-aged young women that they should not aim to pursue careers, but embrace a glorified domesticity.
This year, a medical student asked organisation founder Charlie Kirk how to manage her career with future family. He told her to spend time with babies, to contract baby fever. If she was implicitly unnatural enough not to become infected then she was welcome to her medical career, and a miserable future with cats for company.
The more frightening aspect of this attack on gender is that LGBTQIA+ people have no place at all and certainly not anywhere near children.
Christian Nationalism embraces America’s Purity Culture. It fosters a prurient obsession with what people do with their bodies. It leads to a focus on distinct dress that is both sex-appropriate and modest.
Anyone who does not dress or live according to these mandates is advertising their sinfulness. Indeed within the Pentecostal movement so important to today’s Right such people are literally demonic.
Instead of seeing gender as describing a whole person, the Right sees “gender” as depicting a person misusing their God-given reproductive organs. This focus on genitalia is manifest in the way that homophobic groups are fighting to have children’s picture books labelled as literal “pornography.” It explains why merely speaking in support of LGBTQIA+ existence earns the label “groomer” on social media.
If two penguin dads raising a chick in a picture book are “pornographic,” imagine the fate of LGBTQIA+ people in these regions. In fact, we don’t need to imagine. Bills have been tabled in their hundreds in Republican states to constrain not just trans but all LGBTQIA+ people. The presidential campaign of Ron DeSantis has trumpeted that his gubernatorial term in Florida has been an attack on all LGBTQIA+ people, not just trans people. DeSantis has painted Trump as the pro-Queer candidate to discredit him.
Russia has also been a leading force in social media’s spreading of bigotry against Queer people and feminism. The international Right has been fusing these campaigns since the end of the Cold War, depicting both feminism and LGBTQIA+ existence as societal threats. The attack on LGBTQIA+ people has been core to Russia’s propaganda justifying its invasion of Ukraine. Hungary’s Viktor Orban is a particular conduit of this ideology into Australia.
Both these threats are on display in our Coalition parties under siege by Christian Nationalists and Orbanist Eastern European “traditionalist” politics.
No identity’s existence is a matter for “debate.” No group (or rights) should be used as wedge issues for political gain.
Australians who want to be free to make choices about our own bodies need to join together against a Right who would eliminate us.
This was first published in Pearls and Irritations as Channel 7 fostering fascist politics
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28 comments
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Lucy Hamilton
Return to home pageThis overlaps many points made in the Barbie piece intended for those who were put off by the the Pink one. I hope you find it more useful without that distraction.
Well said.
Thanks K
I’m not quite sure whether to be disgusted, outraged or depressed by this article.
Makes you wonder how they would treat a non binary child or one who decides that they don’t want to “provide” grandchildren —- actually I probably know the answer to that, having worked with teenagers all my working life and seen some of the things that some have had to endure.
Love thy neighbour.., do unto others.., live and let live.., whatever happened to (the theory of) civilised behaviour and discourse? Unfortunately, many live with pushing little buttons, levers, dials, mousies, tabs, and so become effectively slow and chained to technology for worse. This perhaps prevents proper initiative, thought, foresight, development, flexibility, and areas of decency, real freedom, ethics, morals. And so, nearly half of USA voters supported a hollow deficient empty and nasty space called Trump But, there are others, De Plorable, De Luded, De Santis and others of brainless uncaring conservative fixations. Can this be corrected?
Thank you Lucy. I appreciate your efforts to keep these issues front and centre.
Below is a link to an article on the subject of “..contemporary Transgender Issues.”
It was written by a retired professor of historical theology.
Part of the conclusion reads: “There is no single explanation for why some people are transgender. The diversity of transgender expression and experiences argues against any simple explanation.”
Uhm ….. I said nothing when they came for the gypsies, the mentally deficient, chronically ill. I did nothing when they came for the Asians, the Africans, the Jews. Then they came for me ….. and there was nobody to protest.
When I was about 8 or 9 years old, we singled out a crowing hen and isolated her. She laid fertilised eggs and hatched her own chickens.
I believe in hermaphrodites, from my own experience.
So anything between hermaphrodite and heterosexual is comprehensible as far as I am concerned.
The god botherers and the hood winked far right don’t want to know or accept the diversity of the natural world of which we are part of.
Ankisip:
True hermaphroditism is incredibly rare amongst humans. There are many other intersex conditions, most (probably all) of which are a great deal more common. And none require anyone’s “belief” in order to exist.
All the anti-trans, anti-anything-but-heterosexual-within-marriage, anti-equal–rights, etc bull is about control. The RRWNJs believe in freedom all right – but only their freedom to impose (however forcibly) their own beliefs and choices on everyone else. Another Dark Ages looms.
There is a large chunk of Australia in the anti-LTGBTQIA people section and I’ll bet my arse they will vote no but 40% is a long way from defeating the proposal.
In 61, I was shocked when Kruschev planted a big sloppy kiss on Gagarin.
Despite many years with gay school teachers, I am still uncomfortable with males kissing but tittilated with females???
Good one, below is a repost of a comment made on a similar article in IA (April) titled ‘Anti-trans hate: The awful virus infecting Australia’; it’s by the eugenics movement
‘On Twitter there is a hotbed of Anglo RW anti-trans or anti-LGBTIQ hate speech emerging under the guise of ‘freedom of speech’ inc. the UK Free Speech Union (Spectator writer Toby Young who also runs Koch supported Daily Sceptic climate etc. science denial), Koch linked SpikedOnline and locally a former News journo promotes same & other content from the US & UK.
In the US The Atlantic has linked this agitprop and support to the anti-abortion movement (guess Evangelicals too), also with Anglo links into Hungary (& Russia) sharing similar views, ByLine Times:
‘Charity linked to Viktor Orbán Wants to ‘Take Over’ British Schools to Promote Far-Right Pro-Russia Propaganda. A right-wing political network in the UK with links to the Charles Koch Foundation, the Reclaim Party and the pro-Putin Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán, is using the idea of free speech to promote pro-Russia narratives about the Ukraine war in schools and universities.
The network is also opposed to climate action, gender pronouns, anti-racism movements, and regularly peddles disinformation rooted in far-right narratives.
The chief vehicle for the campaign is the ‘Free Speech Champions’, a project run by Toby Young’s Free Speech Union…..’
ByLine Times has an excellent article by Nafeez Ahmed giving an overview of Toby Young, one of the chief protagonists in ‘Alt-Right Pseudoscience – Part 2: The Free Speech Union and Scientific Racism. Nafeez Ahmed reveals British commentator Toby Young’s defence of the Nazi-inspired Pioneer Fund and explores how discredited race science has been normalised under the guise of ’free speech’’
From Andrew; “A right-wing political network in the UK…the pro-Putin Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán, is using the idea of free speech to promote pro-Russia narratives about the Ukraine war in schools and universities.”
So free speech is a wonderful concept, as long as you say what I want you to say. Freedom of speech is only available to liberals.
Like all liberal values, the liberal reverence for free speech is so shallow as to be non-existent. As I said in response to another article, our freedom of speech is limited by how far our cultural managers permit us to go.
The irony here is, that this is an article about creeping fascism.
The rabid right when you think about it don’t want to go back to the ’50’s but go back to the height of the Victorian era where men ruled and everything else that wasn’t male was subservient to them.
Steve Davis:
Tolerance only goes so far. We do not have to – and, in fact, should not – tolerate intolance. People can think and believe what they want, but as soon as they promote actual harm to people, they’ve crossed a line we must keep them behind.
Your right to swing your fist ends at my nose. Your right to free speech ends when you say “burn the witches”.
It’s not about agreeing with me, it’s about hurting people and advocating harm.
leefe, all good points that I have no problem with. But those points do not apply to a discussion of the Ukraine conflict, which is what my comment referred to.
Steve, was it you I communicated with about the failures of liberalism, particularly individualism?
I cannot recommend highly enough listening to “Know Your Enemy” recent podcast’s discussion about Cold War Liberalism. It’s an absolutely fascinating – albeit demanding – philosophical discussion about how the totalitarian regimes’ emergence drove liberals away from the project into despair and hopelessness, creating a particular mutant form of liberalism that merged with neoliberalism and neocons.
The three speakers have differences, but the ultimate agreed point is that liberalism needs rescuing from people scared off from the project of improving society within a framework that allows for the individual. If that was you I was communicating with before, I said that women, Queer people, people of Colour have a lot to lose if we throw the liberal and individual idea that we can be who we need to be out with the political economic impact of “individualism.” All those groups have a lot to lose if we are re-subsumed into the greater demands of a society once again. It’s easy for straight/white/men to see communal demands on the individual as less problematic.Your identities have been better served by it.
Another aspect they discuss is the false impetus towards undiluted tolerance within liberalism. Free Speech is not a good in and of itself. We must have a conversation about the balanced need for honest and good faith (and even data-driven) conversations. As things stand, humanity is going to lose everything to fascistic Right Wing regimes that will drive us faster towards the climate apocalypse because there is so much money to be made in disaster capitalism. They forces heading that way have no commitment to truth, integrity, preventing long-term harm. An argument for absolute Free Speech, once again, is easier for straight/white/men to argue for because they have, again, less to lose.
Steve Davis, you have both misinterpreted and manipulated the theme of my comment, to present a RW Kochian Fox News GOP Orwellian piece of double speak, to blame the left and avert your gaze from an unethical movement.
It’s a form of sophistry or smartarsery common in politicised and activist Anglo media, now social discourse too; the whole point.
Andrew, I was not criticizing the theme theme of your comment, so there was no misinterpretation.
I criticized a single sentence, which might seem rather petty, but it was important.
I’m sure you have lots to say, things that would interest me and others, but you have the habit of grouping concepts together, implying guilt by association, asking rhetorical questions etc., without getting to the point.
It’s not hard. Just make a point and give evidence in support.
Lucy, thanks for the info on that podcast, but I’ll have to search for a text version — I’m one of those who absorbs more from reading than from watching or listening. (I think that’s due to the slow pace of my brain, by the time I take in a point they’re halfway thru the next!)
In regard to liberalism being forced by the emergence of totalitarianism into a mutant form, I have no doubt that there was an adverse effect on liberalism, but this was foreseeable. Here’s the explanation.
When I looked into this years ago I slowly came to the conclusion that liberalism will eventually transform into authoritarianism. This is because a system based on individualism must by its very nature generate little if any social cohesion, and will most likely undermine social concepts and institutions. (As in the urge to privatise public utilities.) Its resulting system, in order to prevent splintering, must be authoritarian. And because liberals have expanded their Hobbesian fear and suspicion into the global arena, their reaction to totalitarian competition should come as no surprise. But my view is that this reaction would be the same from any form of competition, no matter how benign.
If the three speakers in the podcast agree “that liberalism needs rescuing from people scared off from the project of improving society within a framework that allows for the individual” then I think they have a far too rosy view of liberalism. Ultimately, when push comes to shove, liberalism is all about economics. It’s about property rights. It’s about enacting laws to protect property rights and profits. When these are challenged, noble aspirations take a back seat.
I agree entirely that vulnerable minorities have a lot to lose if we throw out the idea that we can be who we need to be, while dealing with the political economic impact of individualism. But I just cannot see that protection of vulnerable minorities is a liberal priority. In fact, the protection of minorities was beginning to develop across Europe when along came liberalism. The guilds were setting up social security systems through hospitals, care for widows and orphans etc. Next thing we knew we had Dickensian squalor.
In regard to your final paragraph and disaster capitalism, it was not a product of “fascistic Right Wing regimes” as you suggest. One of it’s first manifestations was in Chile where it was used to de-stabilise the economy to allow for the coup. Disaster capitalism actually established a fascistic right-wing regime.
Another was the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina where, as Naomi Klein describes — “I watched hordes of private military contractors descend on the flooded city to find ways to profit from the disaster, even as thousands of the city’s residents, abandoned by their government, were treated like dangerous criminals just for trying to survive.” Abandoned by their government. Treated like dangerous criminals. That tells us all we need to know about liberal principles, and protection of vulnerable minorities, as practiced.
Lucy, thanks again for chipping in, I really do appreciate it. It takes a lot of courage to do that because you never know what you’ll cop, but your articles and comments are great.
Cheers
if you think we are not already there, have i got news for you.
Lets start with the obvious one , for me anyhow. The pension. If your single, you get the full wack but if your married, you get less. the arguement is about cheaper cost of living if two people live together. For renting purposes yes, for everything else its not. what it does do is reinforce the concept of “coupledom”. And if one of you isnt of pension age, the other still only gets 1/2 the couple rate. Talk about designing policies for one suposed purpose only to find your driving people the other way.
If your young and married with kids, taxs breaks gallore, single or divorced, nadda. Now i aint saying married with children doesnt need assistance, but please it seems its the be all and end all of assitance.
Superannuation is squewed towards men of all persuasions. Married women with children can hardly be in a position to put millions away for retirement. And then we have the preposterous position that some women earn less than men for the same work.
Ageism in the country. If your over 50 , work is hard to come by. Yes lots of labouring work around but i can tell you from my own personal living experience, its bloody hard once your over 65. And i am a very heathy specimen unlike just about everyone else my age. So how do women get into this ” workforce”? lets get this straight, there are no incentives to work once your on a pension apart from starvation. Forget the bullshit about extra $4000 work bonus, its a flat $300/ week. Then when you hit $11,000, its 50c in the dollar off your pension. What the fuck are we? Parasites? Lets face it, if your a pensioner according to neocon stupidity your suppose to conform to their ideals and live happily ever after in a retirement village. Scrimping and saving for that special roast once a month. All your wealth is to be channeled back to your offspring so they can buy a house in a leafy suburb. What an absurd agenda to have thrust upon you.
The whole country is riddled with spur of the moment ideas that are only going in one direction. And i have only been back 8 months…..
Lucy, I failed to address your final sentence, and it’s of some importance.
You said “ An argument for absolute Free Speech, once again, is easier for straight/white/men to argue for because they have, again, less to lose.” That is quite true, but it raises the question — is free speech a cornerstone of a free system, an icon of liberty, or is it not?
If it is an iconic cornerstone of liberty then it must be unrestricted, unconditional, and we must simply bear the consequences of any unpleasantness that might ensue.
If we are not prepared to do that, as we should not, for example, in the case of racial slurs or “otherness” slurs, then let’s drop the pretence that freedom of speech is anything particularly special. It is emotionally and ethically special, but in practical terms it’s just another aspect of social life. It will have conditions attached, just as we are free to drive a car but with conditions attached.
However, if one of those conditions is that a political network or a government does not have the right to express an opinion on any matter because of prior opinions on completely unrelated matters, (which is what is bubbling away in the background here) or if we take the view that an opinion contrary to ours is a misuse of the freedom of speech, then we have become the fascists that we despise.
Steve: You focused on one sentence of Andrew’s, so I’m going to focus on just one of yours.
“This is because a system based on individualism must by its very nature generate little if any social cohesion, and will most likely undermine social concepts and institutions.”
To me, it seems that you’re confusing liberalism with libertarianism. Liberalism is about individual freedoms in so far as they pertain to that individual’s life. It does not deny or reject social cohesion – it’s more like promoting social cohesion through universal acceptance of purely personal and private differences. Libertarianism is where you get the disconnect between the individual and society; it’s Maggie Thatcher’s “there is no society, only people” attitude taken to its bitter end.
Thanks Lucy, excellent article full of information,
Seems to me these prosthelytizers, afraid of their own loss, failure and inner voice, opt to forsake the process of entreatment and inquiry, preferring assaults on our thoughts whether we have voiced them or not. There appears to be much twisting, misuse and abuse of information to fit their fixed and often concealed agenda, rather than having a flexible agenda based on the flow of unadorned information.
One’s freedom of speech, like the freedom to remain silent, may or may not influence the judgement cast by others. The assignment (or modification) of those freedoms and the judgement of others, will always be accompanied by conditions, and underlying those conditions will most likely be notions of proprietary rights.
As such, for the feckless and fearful seeking absolutes, influence is so easily bought.
Leefe, thanks for the comment.
It is true that there’s lot of overlap between liberalism and libertarianism. So much so that Hayek, one of the godfathers of libertarianism, is referred to by many as a liberal. My rather sarcastic way of expressing the difference between the two is that the powerbrokers of liberalism are simply dishonest libertarians. Dishonest, because if their true values were known to the public they would be un-electable. (I seem to be having a deja-vu moment here)
You said that liberalism does not deny or reject social cohesion. This is true, but their actual affirmation of social cohesion, their commitment to it, is limited. It’s limited by a set of economic principles from which no deviation is permitted. The economic framework they established de-humanises those they employ. What is an employee to a liberal? An economic resource. This resource is managed by a Human Resources Manager. What a telling title. The essential sociopathy of liberalism is contained in that title, and it’s one with which we’re all familiar.
You correctly pointed out that with libertarianism there’s a disconnect between the individual and society. And that’s where the overlap begins. Liberals, when waxing lyrical about liberty and rights, as they are wont to do, are in lockstep with libertarians.
Their so-called rights of man are the rights of man separated from other men and from the community. Liberty (in this view) is thus the right to do and perform anything that does not harm others. The limits within which each can act without harming others is determined by law. Hence that pillar of liberalism, the rule of law. And we do not find freedom in the rule of law; we find limits to our freedom. We do not find a freedom that is fulfilling and expansive and uplifting. We find a spiritual wasteland. We should not be surprised by this. The warped view of society advanced by Thomas Hobbes has shaped this wasteland. Fukuyama in the intro to his End Of History proudly paired Hobbes and John Locke as the founders of liberal thought, and Hobbes’ fanciful but false ideas still permeate liberal thinking today, eg., in publications by the Australian Liberal Party.
Again, thank you Lucy for another well-researched and referenced piece on the threat to democracy that Australia faces. As one of the groups targeted by this mob and their little war, it’s exhausting at the end of the day to come home and see what new lies, dogwhistles and gaslighting they’ve thrown around.
I hesitate to invoke that much-overused last term, but it remains completely appropriate in their case. To be told that we’re being melodramatic as they weasel their way behind the political scenes under a bastardised appropriation of feminism, trying to turn progressive rhetoric back upon itself. To be told our existing rights aren’t under threat when they absolutely have been internationally in our largest cultural neighbours, the US and UK. To divide, to reduce women to their childbearing capacity as part of a moral panic, while their friends work to eliminate any choice in the matter.
They know exactly what they’re doing and what their end goals are. They nonetheless feign ignorance and threaten SLAPP litigation against anyone that calls their leaders out on their transphobic, misogynistic and fundamentalist motivations. They know the game is up when the general public sees through the deceptions to the recycled hate. It’s telling of the kind of people these are that Russia, as of a couple of months ago, has outlawed all medical and legal aspects of transition. Youths in certain areas of the US are faced with either moving interstate, or being forcibly detransitioned in a horrific act of cruelty. The States are clearly failing when one has to enact laws to provide sanctuary for citizens against the barbarity of another.
It is utterly disheartening, and it’s only going to get worse. Jacinta Price has already mentioned that once the referendum is over, she plans to switch to the “transgender issue”. Alex Antic and the SA Liberals have predictably welcomed back Nicolle Flint, another politician pushing the same MAGA-inspired ideas as him and frequently seen in his company and that of disgraced Victorian Liberal Moira Deeming of late. I will not be surprised if she ends up as David Speirs’ deputy. The branches have been thoroughly stacked and the “dark forces” mentioned by Nick McBride upon leaving the party have been hard at work.
I’m lucky. It’s been a long time, medically, surgically. I can hide my history. Vanish from visibility. Others are not so lucky. The mental health toll I’ve seen in online spaces alone from that Seven hitpiece has been devastating. The ghouls driving all this have blood on their hands as they think themselves righteous.
Whether it’s same-sex marriage, access to abortion, deciding what books are deemed acceptable or any LGBTQ matters, the Right is totally obsessed with meddling in things that usually don’t affect them personally.
The true origin of Political Correctness wasn’t from the so-called tree-hugging Lefties but actually came from the Right during the Reagan era when they decided there should be new standards of social morality and this new era is just a further extension.
The rabid Right needs to consider the fact that 84 years ago, on September 3, Pig Iron Bob Menzies droned condescendingly to the public that it was his, “…melancholy duty to inform you… And as a result, Australia is also at war.” That was when Britain and its allies finally changed tack with a man who believed that boys’ duty was to be a soldier and that girls’ duty was to be a breeder and a feeder and established the League of German Maidens and told him to get out of Poland. He refused. Whether or not Pig Iron Menzies admired fascism is beside the point, but going to war against something you tacitly approve of is hypocrisy.
Price has even said that after the Referendum, she wants to push back against the trans movement.
Something that people need to be willing to accept when it comes to the trans movement is this. Everybody’s concept of reality varies. So, you might see a person and think they’re male, but if what they see in the mirror is not what they want to see, it is not your place as a lay member of the public to enforce your reality onto them and nor is it your right to misgender them. Think of it like this. Would you walk up to Sir Elton John and say, “Hello, Reggie.” Would you call Sir Cliff Richard Harry? If you answer no to those questions, and say you attended a school reunion and you went to school with a guy called Christian and he transitioned and said, “No, I’m Christina, now,” and you insisted upon calling them Christian, you would be disrespectful.
What most people won’t consider when it comes to trans folk is, MOST trans folk, and I’m speaking for myself here, don’t want to show you our genitalia or talk about which toilet we use, we just want to be accepted for who we are. AND there’s something else. Puberty blockers are not prescribed willy-nilly, and some members of the public are opposed to antidepressants, but if a cause of depression is gender dysphoria, cross-sex hormones will improve mental health and save lives.
Niamh – I only just saw your comment and I apologise for not responding earlier. It’s utterly grim and I am agonised by the fact that these creeps are targeting another group for misery – as is their pattern – now that refugees aren’t firing in the polls as a target. I am so furious that your lives are made a game for these rotten, power-hungry figures. I hope we are able to cut the targeting of trans people – but LGBTQIA+ people more broadly – in Australia, rather than following America and the UK’s trajectory. (I have a few other articles on the threat in the stack to educate the normies if you need any to pass along.)