Transphobia is fueled by the fears of the fearful, as are most kinds of bigotry. The fearful are people who want to protect themselves from the unpredictability of life by retreating into some kind of imaginary "normalcy."Any person who does not follow the rules given within this "Fortress of Normalia" is seen as a threat who must be eradicated.
If we want to understand transphobia, we need to understand these fears.
A darkness has fallen over our democracies. The mood is very much like in Europe in the 1930s. At that time evil and cynical politicians used Jews as the scapegoats needed to take control of society. Everything bad was, according to this narrative, caused by a secret cabal of Jews who controlled Hollywood, world banking and communism.
Racism was and is a key tool in any totalitarian handbook, since it ensures that the dominant, default, "race" remains in power. Racism is still a potent weapon wielded by those who seek control.
The current enshittfication of our societies is, like the previous one, also powered by the desire to defend traditional gender roles, which - according to this belief - is anchored in both nature and God's will. This sexist nonsense is an essential part of the word view of conservative extremists like Trump, Putin and Orban. Trans people are seen as a threat to this "natural" order. That is why it makes sense to persecute them.
From Hitler to Trump
This need for traditional gender conformity explains why one of the first things the Nazis did when they came to power in Germany was to destroy Magnus Hirschfeld'ts Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin.
Magnus Hirschfeld's science and practice called for a humanization of gay and transgender individuals. Hirschfeld did not see queer and trans people as mentally ill, but rather as natural variations of humankind. His work reflected an increasing tolerance of LGBTQ people in a city like Berlin.
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| Magnus Hirschfeld (the one with glasses) with friends. |
The Nazis, however, believed in the gospel of strong white men dominating everyone else, and that world view required a strict adherence to traditional gender roles, where men rule and women raise children and serve men with adoration in their eyes.
Controlling science
This kind of nationalistic traditionalism was not only based on cultural norms and accepted behaviors; it was also based on pseudo-scientific ideas about the natural order of things.
Eugenic research was seen to "prove" white superiority over people of color. A lot of researchers studying sexuality and gender let their own prejudices label everything that did not follow the vanilla script of submissive woman loving dominant man as sexual perversions. Gender variance was just a sign of such perversions.
