John Oliver pointed out that some of some of the same players involved in another phony war, the war against ‘Critical race Theory’ (‘CRT’) have volunteered for action in the current war by conservatives against trans gender rights. This is the latest battle and for the same reasons. Conservatives see an opportunity for advancement of personal agendas in a the phony war. Many of the participants in the CRT battle were doing it as a wedge issue to promote school choice.
One of the main characters in the CRT skirmish has now joined the new trans war, namely Chris Rufo. He specifically said he was taking the same “reporting” he did with CRT to “gender ideology.” Rufo said he wanted to give parents “the media narrative, kind of justification, or validation or substantiation of their concerns.” Rufo was arming parents with arguments they could use in the cultural war…” to give them the language they can use to speak of it with confidence so that they can speak about it directly, and they can speak about it with the requisite level of aggressiveness.” Rufo’s language makes it clear that he see himself as a drill sergeant in the culture war.
Rufo claimed that the gender claims were all part of the “radical gender theory” and that combatants should start referring to the phrase “trans stripper” in lieu of “drag queen” because it has “a more lurid set of connotations and shifts the debate to sexualization.”
According to John Oliver,
“In the conservative playbook that tactic is a really big one–linking the discussion of gender identity sexual predation and teaches grooming students. A related tactic is arguing that the rise in numbers of children identifying as trans is due to social contagion. It is just a mass delusion, a trendy fad that is rapidly spreading among young people.”
The practitioners in the culture war that few things riles up their supporters more than sexual paranoia. Stoking fears about sexuality is a guarantee of conservative support. It is about as fool-proof as stoking fears about race.
Contrary to the typical position of conservatives in Canada and the US, historians are documenting the lives of transgender people through history. This is not something new. It is not a fad. As National Geographic, not exactly a left wing rag, reported, “There’s ample evidence of gender variance throughout human history. As far back as historians have found evidence of transgender people, we have found transgender children.” This is not just a modern fad stoke by liberals.
Conservatives have claimed there has been a rapid rise in children identifying as trans, and that is a very common perception, but it is a misconception. As Julia Serano pointed out, when you look at a chart of left-handedness among Americans in the 20th century you see a huge spike when Americans stopped forcing children to write with their right hands. After that there was a plateau. That does not mean everyone suddenly became left-handed. It really just means that people were free to be whom they wanted to be. And isn’t that a wonderful thing? Conservatives, again, claim to be in support of freedom when they are among the most relentless of foes against freedom. When people are free to choose, as they should be, a significant number of people chose to exercise that freedom and decided to change their gender. By far the most do not!
The only thing spreading like wild fire is hysteria.