Vlad Vexler, who I have normally found to be a well informed and sensible political commenter, went into the "let's sacrifice trans people on the altar of climate change" trap in a recent video.
Vlad Vexler is a Russian born British philosopher, political analyst and YouTube essayist, best known for his commentary on Putinism, democracy, populism, authoritarianism, political philosophy and culture. In the video he is talking to Rupert Read, a British philosopher, environmental campaigner and public intellectual.
Are trans people scaring good people away?
It is a bit disturbing to see two cis white men talk intellectually about sacrificing Black and trans people on the altar of climate change victory, as if these were somehow completely different topics, and not the end result of a coherent and systemic world view that makes the exploitation of both nature and people seem natural and benign.
In an article over at Resilience, an environmental and social-change publication run by the Post Carbon Institute, the two of them put it this way:
'Second, calls to “center the Global South” translated into expectations that Western participants should express collective guilt, defer to non-Western voices and adopt hyper-‘progressive’ immigration positions that command relatively little civic support across the West. Third, a similar dynamic emerged over trans rights, with members often expected to affirm contentious claims – for instance, that trans women are indistinguishable from biological women across all contexts, including sport, prisons and debates about male-on-female violence. As a result, even those broadly supportive of racial justice, global justice and trans rights could feel excluded unless they endorsed the approved formulation.'
No one says that trans women are are indistinguishable from "biological women" (a dubious and unscientific term in itself). What trans activists say are that trans women are women and that they should be given the same human rights protection as everyone else.
Indeed, given that trans people represents a small marginalized group targeted by fascists and fundamentalists, pro-democracy humanists have to pay special attention to their needs, because what extremists to their favorite scapegoats, tell us a lot about their overall strategy for achieving hegemony. Every argument made in this paragraph reflects the anti-trans movement's attempt to dehumanize and scapegoat trans people.
Vlad even plays the "I like trans people, but...." card in this video, promising to defend trans people in the future. He would have had more credibility if he had made a knowledge based, compassionate, defense of trans people first.
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| Vlad Vexler and Rupert Read |
Supporting trans people does not undermine support for green politics
The MAGA regime is not persecuting trans people because it makes them popular.
The fact is that the great majority of Americans sympathize with trans people or they do not care about the issue at all. (Nor do they like the extreme violence against immigrants.)
Trump persecutes trans people because they represent a challenge to traditional gender roles. Fascists need to uphold these gender roles if they are to bring us back to that imaginary patriarchal past when men where men and women knew how to obey.
MAGA people are scared people who will only feel safe if everyone becomes like them. This mentality makes them climate change deniers. They believe changing the energy economy will threaten the return to a perfect past powered by fossil fuels and the jobs associated with them.
They do not see the fight against climate change as woke socialist plot because the progressives fight against racism and transphobia. They believe the left will take away their dreams of a good and steady income and safe streets.
If you give in to MAGA fears, you weaken the pro-climate movement
If you give in to their fears and signal that there is something sinister about anti-racist and pro-trans activism, you pour fuel on their fever fantasies about "woke leftist radicals" promoting a "radical gender ideology". This will not make them support a rational climate policy.
Sure, you might think you can get some of the "moderates" and independents down from the fence, but they are not likely to support extreme racism or anti-trans policies in the first place. They listen to economic arguments, like "electrification brings new jobs", and ecological arguments, like "clean energy alleviates the climate crisis and brings clean air."
The MAGA war against trans people and people of color is very similar to the Nazi war against Jews, in that they both construct an imaginary cult promoting an imaginary "ideology" aimed at destroying the lives of the "common folk". It used to be Marxism and Bolshevism. Now it is Marxism and "gender ideology".
Hitler actually believed that Jews represented a threat to his German Reich, and some Trump activists truly believe that trans women is a threat to their kids. But these hate campaigns also function as scare tactics aimed at distracting people from the real threats, like war, economic exploitation and - these days - climate disaster. By turning those who defend trans people and black people into the problem, Vlad and Rupert play right into the hands of the haters. That is bad tactics and bad ethics.
Trump is now step by step making it possible to live as a trans person in the US, in the same way Putin has already done in Russia. They are aiming at a total erasure of trans existence, forcing all transgender back into the closet. If you want to beat the fascists, you do not compromise with this kind of evil. You fight back, relentlessly.
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