Back in the 00s, the anti-LGBT culture war targeted primarily gay people, and it primarily used religious arguments. The Bible condemns homosexuality, marriage is a sacred institution, it’s a violation of Christians’ rights to make their churches marry gay people, &c.
Clearly, it didn’t work. During the 10s, when gay marriage was legalized, conservatives were dealt a pretty decisive blow on their anti-gay agenda, and so they shifted from targeting the LGB to targeting the T (they always targeted trans people, of course, but they really ramped it up during the 10s). With this change in focus came a shift in rhetoric. The right-wing certainly does argue for oppressing trans people on religious grounds, but you’re a lot more likely to hear them use scientific-sounding justifications. They’ll talk about chromosomes, about anatomy, about how “biologically there are only two genders,” about “people trying to put their feelings above objective reality.” They’ll throw around words like “rational” and “reason.” This of course ignores all kinds of actual science, such as the degree to which gender is culturally constructed, the existence of intersex people, how gender affirming care is the only dysphoria treatment shown to be effective, and a thousand other things. It’s anti-scientific to its core, but it can fool a casual observer into thinking it’s scientific if it’s telling them what they want to hear. It’s a bigotry for a materialist age, palatable to bazinga brains and nu-atheist Redditors, and maybe it’s just anecdotal, but it seems to me to have more traction among a younger, hipper crowd than the religious arguments ever did.
I can’t help but wonder if this pivot was concocted in some right-wing think tank somewhere.
This is also how you get people being able to use wedge issue shit like transgender women in sports and “being deeply concerned about protecting children” to allow transphobia to flourish. It sounds like such a good-faith, logical concern rooted in a solid sense of rationality to your average person who knows jack and shit about trans people, so there surely can’t be any harmful rhetoric going on behind that, right!? All this and the “scientific” mumbo jumbo you’re referring to is combined to make trans people look like a fringe bunch of “crazies” who don’t deserve basic human consideration to so-called “normal people.”
I hate those two wedge issues. You couldn’t engineer better ones if you tried. They fucking work, which is the worst part. My (usually pretty decent) mother, who has two trans children who she loves, started trying to talk to me several months ago about how there might be fairness issues with trans women in sports. It was so hard to maintain my composure and argue her away from that deeply shitty “worry” rather than just yell at her and tell her to never bring it up again, which is what I wanted to do. But, of course, we look like we’re overreacting and, yes, crazy, if we say “that’s a bullshit unreal worry, never say anything like that in my presence again”. It is a bullshit unreal worry, but it sounds just reasonable enough to clueless cis people that we can’t dismiss it out of hand. I fucking hate it so, so much.
And, of course, the “worries” around childhood transition perform the same function! Luckily no one in my life is susceptible to that one, but I know a lot of people are. And again here you can’t just say “childhood transition is great, shut the fuck up”. That’s the truth, but it doesn’t sound like the truth to your average cis person.
I feel like the childhood transition stuff is a sidestep, a deflection. Toddlers are poking around touchscreen computers before they can talk, that seems like a much more pressing “think of the children” moment. Not that I expect any nation in the english-speaking world to handle that with any sort of thoughtful or measured approach…
I just point out they’re OK with childhood transition for cis kids. That sometimes works on liberals at least.
What are you talking about?
Puberty?