Vlad Vexler, who is normally known as a well informed and sensible political commenter, now wants to sacrifice the defense of trans people to save the climate movement. A nonexistent problem becomes trans erasure in a new 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. [Update: The video has been taken down].
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 indistinguishable from "biological women" (which is a dubious and unscientific term in itself). What trans activists and their supporters are saying is that trans women are women and that they should be given the same human rights protection as everyone else. They should have the same right as everyone to live their lives in peace and with the same liberties 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. What extremists do 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. None of the "problems" presented in the article reflect serious, real, on the ground challenges for the climate crisis movement, as I see it.
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, even though some disagree with some policies. (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 a woke socialist plot because the progressives fight against racism and transphobia. They see it as a "radical left" policy because they believe environmentalists will destory 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.
There is a tendency in contemporary media to fall into the "bad people on both sides" trope, presenting pro-trans and anti-racist activists as extremist on one side of the spectrum and right wing extremists on the other. In the middle you have - according to this narrative - sensible and pragmatic people who know how to compromise and make things work. I guess Vlad and Rupert see themselves in this role.
Are there transgender and Black militants? Sure, but they are not the problem here. The fascists, the religious fanatics and the gender critical TERFs are. In my experience the trans community and the civil rights movement represent colorful and creative diversities of life experience and opinions.
These people are, because of the oppression they experience, more "woke" than many others - in the sense of being awake and aware of the oppressive properties of our social systems. But if that makes them extreme, I would say that we need more of this kind of understanding, and not less.
Sure, you might think you can get some of the more prejudiced "moderates" and independents down from the fence by not talking about transphobia and racism. I don't think that will work well. The moderates are not likely to support extreme racism or anti-trans policies in the first place. They are more likely listen to economic arguments, like "electrification brings new jobs", and ecological arguments, like "clean energy alleviates the climate crisis and brings us clean air."
Jews, Bolsheviks and "gender ideology"
The MAGA war against trans people and people of color is very similar to the Nazi war against Jews, in that they both construct imaginary cults that are promoting an imaginary "ideologies" 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 did believe that Jews represented a threat to his German Reich. And some Trump activists truly believe that trans women are a threat to their kids.
But make no mistake about it: such 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 impossible 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. This is not a drill. This is reality, right now.
If you want to beat the fascists, you do not compromise with this kind of evil. You fight back, relentlessly.
So yeah, I find it weird that a man like Vlad thinks that it makes sense for "progressives" to make compromises regarding the human rights of trans people and people of colors in order to please people who clearly know very little about any of these groups. Because if they did know what these groups are going through, they would go out of their way to help them.
The democratic establishment has decided not to die on the hill of fairness and justice for all on the assumption that this will derail their chances of winning. Making transgender people a bogeyman has apparently worked because despite polls showing most people have much bigger issues on their radar, many politicians are afraid to take principled stances on a human rights issue which should be obvious. Respecting 1,5% of the population shouldn't be rocket science and yet it is for some.
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