Infamous arsehole Matt Walsh has been saying the quiet bit out loud: speaking outside the US Supreme Court yesterday, the far-right clown vowed that “we are not gonna rest… until transgender ideology is entirely erased from the Earth.” He’s not the first to say that; last year Michael Knowles told the US Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that “transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely.” There are many such examples from the US right, the Christian right and the UK anti-trans movement too.
Helen Joyce, one of the key figures in the UK anti-trans movement, has spoken openly of her belief that the number of trans people should be reduced and that any trans person, even if “happily transitioned”, is a problem that society must solve: “the fewer of those people there are, the better”. All the key anti-trans groups and many of the key anti-trans activists in the UK have pledged their support for a campaign that calls for the elimination of “the practice of transgenderism”. The founding document of the anti-trans movement, Janice Raymond’s 1979 book The Transsexual Empire, says that “I contend that the problem of transsexualism would best be served by morally mandating it out of existence.”
By “transgender ideology”, Walsh means transgender people. By “transgenderism”, Knowles means transgender people. By “the practice of transgenderism” the campaign means transgender people. By “transsexualism”, Raymond meant transgender people.
The only way to eliminate “transgender ideology” or “transgenderism” or “transsexualism” is to eliminate transgender people.
And that’s the strategy.
“The fewer of those people” there are, the better.
When you understand that that is the goal, the connections between the different strands of the anti-trans strategy become chillingly clear.
Removing life-saving healthcare for trans teens increases the suicide rate; the same applies with adults and ensures that there are “fewer of those people”.
Removing legal protections from trans people unless they medically transition and then ensuring that nobody can access medical transition ensures that there are “fewer of those people”.
Banning trans women from using women’s spaces or competing in women’s sports, part of the wider goal of pushing trans women out of society, means there are “fewer of those people” in that society.
If that means that some trans women can be bullied back into the closet, well, that means “fewer of those people”.
And if some of those bullied people are bullied into taking their own lives either suddenly or more slowly, well. That means “fewer of those people” too.
The anti-trans movement is usually better at PR messaging than Walsh; he’s an extreme outlier in that his brand is built on saying the supposedly unspeakable. But he and the politer bigots of the UK anti-trans movement may not express it in the same way, but they share the same goal: they won’t rest until transgender people are “entirely erased from the Earth”.