From “Ideology” to “Mutilization”: Trump’s War on Trans People

 Donald Trump is now using the made-up word "mutilization" to generate support for his transphobic policies. The real reason is not any threat from trans people.

Photo: Getty

Does this Trumpian nonsense matter? It does. The point is to repeatedly associate the term transgender with "transgender ideology" and now "mutilization" (or "mutilation", which is proper English and at term used by the Attorney General), and do this to the point were weak minds immediately make the same association every time the topic of transgender rights comes up.

A related catchphrase is "Transgender for Everybody":

“They’re fighting for men in women’s sports. They’re fighting for transgender for everybody,” Trump has said. “Everybody go out, get your kid a nice operation, and change the sex of your kid.”

Trump is not very smart, but he is good at one thing: bullying. He knows exactly what buttons to push in order to mobilize the hatred of the masses in such a way that their feelings forward his interests.

The main objective here is not to harm trans people per se. Trump was not a rabid anti-trans activist before he decided to become a fascist dictator. The goal is to use transphobia to distract Americans from the Epstein files, the tanking economy and the Iran war.

There seems to be one thing most Americans do agree on: You should not abuse children.

Sure, a lot of right wingers traumatize their queer children all the time, but in their twisted minds this is not abuse, but protection. But you must, as an American politician, never be seen as someone who harms kids.

Trump is, of course, already exposed as someone who abuses children. Maybe the Attorney General has managed to hold back the smoking Epstein gun, but there is a lot of smoke, and people know it.

By pretending to protect kids against transgender activists he wants Americans to see him as a protector of children and not as the sexual predator he clearly is.

Trump's mad Truth Social Post (click on it to enlarge.)

Republican politicians and party officials often use “fetish,” “lascivious,” “grooming,” or similar language about trans identity or social transition, while using “child abuse,” “mutilation,” or “experimentation” for the medical-care debate.

But we have also seen examples of them mixing the arguments. Darcy Schoening of the Colorado Republican Party argued for instance that a child wanting to transition was suffering from a "fetish". Ray Blanchard and his toxic "autogynephilia" theory was hovering in the background.

Attacking trans kids for being "autogynephiliacs" is probably not a winning formula in this context. The point is after all to present trans kids as innocent victims, and you do not do that by sexualizing them, at least not in a Republican context. However, it is possible to label trans activists and trans-positive caretakers as "paraphiliacs".

That will probably be the next step for Trump, and we have to prepare for it.