Judith Butler Knows What Makes Transphobes Tick

[Jessica_Rose]

Judith Butler Knows What Makes Transphobes Tick

https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/lifestyle-buzz/judith-butler-knows-what-makes-transphobes-tick/ar-BB1l92Nq?ocid=windirect&cvid=d9cd8ecce25943eabf6b6ea6310feb95&ei=25

Story by Wren Sanders (April 2024)

To be trans in the United States today is to live with a preternaturally high tolerance for the absurd. It was just a few years ago that conservative lawmakers in Ohio were faced with the mortal and economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic and chose to turn the state's legislative focus to the "issue" of five transgender girls, out of some 400,000 high school athletes, competing in youth sports. Hundreds of anti-trans bills later, it seems abundantly clear, if not painfully obvious, that there must be something deeper than rank transphobia fueling the right-wing fixation with our bodies and lives. But what, exactly? Is it personal insecurity? Simple fear of difference?

The philosopher Judith Butler has spent the last several years searching for the roots of this gender panic. In their latest book, Who's Afraid of Gender? (out now from Farrar, Straus and Giroux), the famed critical theorist frames the scourge of anti-trans legislation here in the U.S. as just one tentacle of a global neo-fascist crusade. The "anti-gender ideology movement," as Butler calls it, exists everywhere from Bolsanaro's Brazil to Putin's Russia to the TERFs of the United Kingdom and beyond. And though it may take slightly unique forms, the movement is united in its posing of "gender" not so much as an identity, but as a conceptual container — a "phantasm," as they put it — for the perceived erosion of traditional (read: white, cis, and patriarchal) models of family and society...

[LoriDee]

I don't know the total number of athletes in schools in South Dakota, but we only had one that was transgender. And yet Queen Kristi Noem issued Executive Orders to ban transgender athletes from girls' sports. The NCAA then informed the Queen that since her policy violates the NCAA policy of inclusion and non-discrimination, they would no longer hold any competitions in this state. The legislature panicked because our state lives off sales tax revenue (no state income tax). The state would lose millions of tourist dollars. Queen Kristi gave in and dropped the EOs.

All over ONE transgender athlete in school sports.

[Oldandcreaky]

I think climate change drives transphobia. Our future is so uncertain, so the return of fascism and its promise of certainty, as in "Only I can fix this problem," is driving transphobia. A central tenet of fascism is othering. We're the others. Not even a rich TERF like Rowling is immune to the coming climate reckoning.