Social media just now is littered with Republicans chirping about their latest moral panic: transgendered people (in particular, trans women).
Let’s set aside for a moment those elected Republicans who are so repugnant that they don’t actually believe in their own propaganda, but are willing to destroy lives anyway in the quest for a political advantage. They merit no thought, beyond Vonnegut’s admonition from Mother Night: you are what you pretend to be.
Instead, consider the true believer, whether an elected official or your offensive uncle on Facebook. Sure, this person was no doubt ranting about critical race theory a month ago, praising the virility of the Russian military two months ago, and huddled in a ball fearing the “caravans” a year ago. But just because they are reeds bending to the wind of every organized outrage doesn’t mean they aren’t also true believers, entirely convinced each time.
What strikes me is the very particular focus of the trans moral panic: children and athletes. The folks who plan such outrages (and don’t doubt for a moment that such folks exist) are no fools, and they understand that for the movement to achieve its goal, they need victims. Whether they are trying to strip basic human rights from a marginalized group, or put a bunch of Republicans in office—either way, they needed to convince the true believers that they are the ones in the crosshairs.
Consider the anti-gay crusades of previous decades. Their argument was not exactly that gay people are bad (though that was certainly part of it), but rather that gay people were threat to straight people: the “gay agenda” will ensnare your kids and undermine the “moral fabric” of the nation, and then we’re all doomed. (They glossed over the causal mechanisms here.) Eventually, though, enough gay people came out that this threat began to seem silly. Cousin Andy or Aunt Betty wasn’t a threat. They weren’t part of an “agenda.” But they were real people being denied basic rights.
So now the right has moved on to attacking trans people, and in the quest to convince Bill from Kansas to care about the issue, they have to persuade him that he’s the real victim here. So they’re back to talking about kids, banning even the mention of gender identity in schools, and prosecuting those who give health care to trans kids, the assumption being that those trans people are trying to rope your innocent little Billy Jr. into wearing a dress. Won’t somebody think of the children!
At the same time, they’re talking about sports. Think of the poor girls on the 7th grade volleyball team, crushed by the irresistible masculinity of that trans girl on the other team. Unfair! What fragile (real) girl could possible stand against a (real) man? What if that poor (real) girl was your daughter? Won’t somebody think of the children?
Setting aside the hateful misgendering, we could talk for pages about the implied sexism in the assumption that of course a boy would beat a mere girl. We could also go on about the confused doublethink that enables Republicans to consider trans women to be “sissified” men, while still considering them so masculine as to be beyond all competition.
Instead, I’ll just suggest that what Republicans surely fear the most is not that a trans woman dominates her sport, but that she fails to do so. What would that say about male superiority, after all?
Rhetoric & Running 