On the psychology of transphobia and the logic of extremist anti-trans activism

The extreme anti-trans activism we see today is about much more than gender diversity. The transphobia is driven by a deep and irrational fear of the unknown, a fear extremists can exploit.

Aug 13, 2024

Over at Crossdreamers I have published an article that looks at how transphobic activism and fascists anti-trans politics grow out of a nearly irrational fear of change and an unknown future.

This fear grows in times of economic uncertainty. This is not necessarily an effect of becoming poor, but rather an effect of the fear of losing social status.

The social contract of modern capitalism is that the citizen provides their labor and their time and society delivers safety and wealth in return – if not now, so at least some time in the future.

This contract has been broken, and the belief in a prosperous future brought by innovation and trade is weakened. So the fearful hold on to a fantasy of a glorious past, where everything is predictable and where their own tribe get the safety and wealth they desire.

At the core of this fantasy is the idea of a stable and prosperous nuclear family, where cishet women marries cishet men and get cishet kids and a cishet dog.

This family model, established to ensure the power of men over women, is threatened by the very existence of gay and transgender people. This is why it makes sense for them to make trans people scapegoats for their own perceived misery.

There is hope, however. In the US defenders of democracy have managed to promote a new narrative, where it is politics based on hate that are seen as “weird”, and compassion and a belief in a better future is “normal.” There is room for trans people within that narrative.

Read the article “Today's anti-trans activism is about so much more than transgender people” over at Crossdreamers.