Radical Feminists and Conservative Christians Team Up Against Transgender People

Jay Michaelson has a good discussion of the collaboration between right wing extremists and religious fanatics on the one hand and the transphobic fringe of radical feminism (TERFs) over at The Daily Beast.

He points out that this is nothing new. They have been allies before in attempts at social control, as in the fights against pornpgraphy and sex workers.

These days TERFs quote Christian fundamentalists, while Christian fundamentalists make use of material produced by TERFs.

Both sides are invested in upholding a strict gender binary, as it defines their identity and their fundamental view of the world.

Michaelson writes:

But the alliance with anti-transgender forces on the right has further reaching implications. The rhetoric itself is vitriolic, and surely has contributed to the increase in reported violence against transgender people, including a record number of murders in 2015. But it also has led to numerous anti-transgender laws, most notoriously North Carolina’s absurd, evidence-free, and dangerous crackdown against transgender people using bathrooms that correspond to their gender identities.

The rhetoric surrounding North Carolina’s law is couched in the language of TERFs: transgender women, in particular, are described as being men in disguise, either because of a psychological disorder or a pathological desire to assault women. Conservative religious writings likewise deny the existence of transgender people as a category; last year, for example, the Southern Baptist Convention said that trans people do not exist.

This despite the lived experience of millions of transgender people, and the scientific consensus among the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, and the American Psychiatric Society that gender dysphoria is a real condition that can be addressed and remedied. (Many trans activists, it should be noted, resist this medical diagnosis, since it can stigmatize transgender people as disordered.)

You can read the rest of his article here.

Note that most radical feminists support transgender people, as do many Conservatives outside the US.