I’ve never been able to see the right-wing’s attacks on trans people as anything but a desperate attempt to recycle their efforts against gay marriage. They lost, pathetically, on that one; despite their best efforts to make gay people miserable or shriek about GROOMERS!!!! nobody’s likely to buy it who isn’t already a homophobe. But hey, trans people? Start screaming GROOMERS!! about them and how they’re stealing all the athletic trophies and maybe that’ll get people riled up. For the record, while I’m sure their bigotry is sincere, anti-LGBTQ bullshit has also been valuable for getting people to the voting booths and whipping up donations. Those are factors too.
But the effects of all this are deadly serious. Sometimes deadly violence. Sometimes denying trans people exist (ditto here). Harassing child athletes (related quote: “Under transphobia, your gender is not determined by your anatomy or your self-definition, but by the dumbest, meanest creeps in your vicinity.”). Spreading bullshit, like Sen. Tuberville claiming there are girls sports teams made up entirely of boys. (For some sensible thought on trans athletes, here’s Chanda Prescod-Weinstein). Or petty shit, like renaming the USS Harvey Milk.
A bill in Arkansas would legalize anti-LGBTQ discrimination. Fascist administration propagandist Karoline Leavitt lies the Felon’s war on Harvard is about “Apprenticeships, electricians, plumbers—we need more of those in our country and less LGBTQ graduate majors from Harvard University” Because skilled blue-collar professionals can’t be LGBTQ in her fantasy world, I guess. A bill going to the Texas governor would ban LGBTQ clubs in schools. The RAINN hotline is removing LGBTQ resources in an act of pre-emptive compliance. Though some Democrats are speaking up on the right side of the issue.
And as always, there are the whiny whiners outraged that if you’re anti-gay or anti-trans you’ll suffer … criticism!
The thing is, the religious right, and Republicans in general, have zero credibility on this topic. They’ve been wrong, over and over again. Remember when the cry was “if gay marriage becomes law, it will destroy straight marriage?” Or how if gay marriage is legal, inevitably it will become a crime for Christians to preach against LGBTQ rights? Oops, wrong again. Nor does supporting gay rights make you pro-pedophile. Nor are gays more likely to prey on children than, say religious conservatives. Nor are they responsible for America’s low birth rate. The right-wing remains obsessed with fighting drag shows, never mind that America’s been laughing at drag for decades without any harmful effects.
Fred Clark at Slacktivist once pointed out that the black church in America has a much better track record on how to apply the Bible to racial issues than white Christians, millions of whom embraced both slavery and segregation. Perhaps people should listen to gay Christians and gays in general rather than conservative hatemongers.
The ignorance of those hatemongers does not, unfortunately, take away the power they have to hurt LGBTQ people. And I doubt anyone who needs to read this will, in fact, be reading it. But it’s worth saying just the same.
Honestly, I’m not convinced their bigotry is sincere, in that I don’t think they believe the lies they’re spreading. They want a chance to hate someone in a righteous fashion. They’ll believe and repeat whatever lies justified their innate cis “superiority,” since it’s honestly the only superiority most of them possess. That and — for most of them — their white skin.
For the men, their penis.
I think it’s a mix. Some sincere loathing, a boatload of rationalizations they choose to believe to justify the loathing and for some of them the grift — one religious-right fundraiser said campaigning against gay marriage was a massive cash cow for them.
And some of it, “every accusation is a confession.” The dudes horrified by their own homosexual urges or convinced since they’re into kids, everyone else is.
And, as Fred Clark says, lying to themselves this is all about fighting groomers lets them imagine themselves virtuous.