The real reasons for the anti-LGBTQA bills in the US
The transphobic laws of American states reflects a fear of the future and a longing for an idealized past that never existed.
Alejandra Caraballo has compiled a legislative tracker for anti-LGBTQ bills, which can be found here. It is a depressing spreadsheet, for sure, but it is necessary to make the sheer aggressiveness of the Republican attacks against trans and queer people visible.
Right now there are 27 bills banning gender affirming care, 15 bills banning trans people from sports, and 6 bills banning drag.
So why are the Republicans doing this? Here are some tentative answers:
1. The Party has been taken over by nationalist extremists who have no vision of a better future. They have no real policies. Instead they try to mobilize supporters by presenting some idealized past (MAGA!) that never existed and which was not that great in the first place. The idea is that this longing for simpler times will appeal to those who live in fear of the future.
Putin’s aggressive anti-LGBTQA policies reveals a similar need for a cultural distraction.
2. The Republicans have, for all practical purposes, lost the Millennials and Gen Z. Since they have no policies that can appeal to them, they will have to mobilize the older generations, which tend to be more conservative. When people get older, they become more invested in the status quo. They think they have more to lose, and they find the younger generations harder to understand.
3. Like the anti-gay activism of 20th century, the anti-transgender activism of the 21st is based on a made up threat scenario. LGBTQA-people threaten “American values”, exemplified by the nuclear family understood as a married cis/straight couple with a couple of kids.
This ideal family represents traditional gender values, which are seen as the basis for American white culture. As the acceptance of gay nuclear families shows, queer people are not really a threat to the nuclear family. People are free to make one, and the majority do. The number of queer and trans people is so low that it is hard to see them as a threat in the real world. But this is not about the real world.
Drag queens are seen as a threat to the traditional nuclear family, because they play with gender roles the traditionalists see as God given or defined by nature. Photo: Alessandro Biascioli.
4. Racism, homophobia and transphobia are deeply embedded in culture, in language, in media, in religious tropes, which means that a lot of people have adopted these prejudices without thinking much about them.
If your parents and your friends have show disgust when queer and transgender people are mentioned, you are easily conditioned into feeling the same fear and disgust.
The most effective medicine against this is exposure, i.e. for the fearful to meet marginalized people and see them for what they truly are: Real People. This is why the Republicans want to force all LGBTQA people back into the closet. As long as they are not revealed to be real and complex people, the anti-LGBTQA propaganda will have an effect.
Some have asked me why the gender critical TERFs, which are supposed to left wing feminists, go along with this. The answer is simple: The TERFs are either part of this reactionary movement themselves, or they have invested so much in finding an identity in a sexist world like this present, that a new world is seen as a threat to that identity.
So for the good news: The reason the Republicans in the US and similar extremists in other parts of the world, are playing this card, is because they know they are losing. The Republicans do not have the majority of Americans behind them. The extremism makes them lose national elections. Putin is losing his war. They need to do this now, before the new, more tolerant, generations take over. This is the tipping point, and they know it.
This is why queer and trans people and all good people, from the left to the right, need top keep on fighting the good fight.
Photo: H. Armstrong Roberts
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