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Anti-Transgender Dogwhistles

05/05/21

  03:48:00 am, by Nimble   , 1878 words  
Categories: Thoughts, Ethics, People, Science, Transgender

Anti-Transgender Dogwhistles

Like just any other conspiracy-minded movement, anti-transgender activists have come up over time with a plethora of insider phrases, jokes, symbols, images and even colour schemes to talk about their ideology and the subjects of their bigotry in public channels with plenty of winks to each other.

Many of these "dogwhistles" (the term for something that the public can't detect but members of the movement can) exist in profiles, and like bumper stickers are anywhere from subtle to garish, and many of them show up in posts and images.

Anti-transgender activists are relentless online, often posting links for each other to massively comment on, or "brigade", especially if any public body or celebrity or domestic violence shelter comes out in support of transgender people.

This is an incomplete collection of them, and this will likely be a work in progress, since they pop up with new ones over time, and explanations of their origins may take a while to source.

Some of them are highly indicative of anti-transgender ideology, some overlap with phrases and practices used commonly elsewhere but may merit a second look.

Use of any of the following is highly indicative of an anti-transgender profile:

Dictionary definitions used symbolically against trans people, from a campaign by an extremely rabid anti-trans activist, Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull

  • Adult Human Female
  • Adult Human Male
  • Picture: Woman... Noun... Adult Human Female
  • Picture: Woman... Noun... Adult Human Male

There are some really strange Freudian "theories" that are beloved of anti-transgender activists because they invalidate and sexualize being transgender

  • AGP
  • Autogynephile
  • Autogynephilia ("you're just sexually attracted to yourself as a woman!")
  • HSTS
  • Homosexual transsexuals (young trans women attracted to men, from the same bad typology)

To normalize not having to "guess" peoples' pronouns and embarrassing people with differing gender presentations, it has become a modern form of politeness to include pronouns in signatures by all sorts of inclusive people in a 'Spartacus' move. Anti-transgender activists and right-leaning people think this practice 'ridiculous' and make fun of it

  • Beep/boop/bop (making fun of the standard form, e.g. he/him/his)
  • **** your pronouns
  • Pronouns are rohypnol (using trans peoples' proper pronouns over time leaves you vulnerable to predation, according to some of them)

Anti-transgender activists hold up the simple division between sexes learned in grade school not just as an introductory observation, but as a law to invalidate transgender people

  • Biological sex exists
  • Biology is immutable
  • Biology is not bigotry
  • Sex is immutable
  • Sex not gender
  • Sex-based rights
  • #BiologyMatters

Cis is to trans as straight is to gay, and is not used as a slur, but claiming it is invalidates the way trans discourse talks about non-trans people

  • Cis is a slur
  • Don't "cis" me
  • I'm not your cister
  • Not your cis

Anti-transgender activists love to ask questions just for the sake of arguing, and one of their favourites is 'Define X'

  • Define man
  • Define transphobic
  • Define woman
  • How is it transphobic?

Some gays and lesbians are anti-transgender. Some of this is built-in prejudice, but some is from hostile campaigns whose purpose is to split the LGBTQ+ communities from each other

  • LGB (specifically removing the T, although usually removing the B in practice)
  • Lesbian not queer
  • Gay not queer
  • Get the L out/#GetTheLOut

Getting rid of 'gender' so that they can tie people to sex and invalidate trans and nonbinary people, but phrasing it like they are brave to do so

  • Gender abolitionist
  • Gender critical
  • GC (short for gender critical)
  • Gender heretic
  • #GenderFree

Gender, when it incorporates anything other than strict lines of male and female, allows for transgender people, and so ironically terming it dangerous or ideological to denigrate it or claim there is something to fear about it is another way to undermine transgender people

  • Gender cult
  • Gender is a dangerous idea
  • Gender ideology
  • Gender-identity ideology
  • Gender woo-woo

Purposefully and obtusely exaggerating and making fun of transgender identity

  • I identify as an attack helicopter
  • I identify as a horse

What bigotry wouldn't be complete without some sort of "replacement theory" like racists use, even if gay and lesbian identification has actually increased?

  • Lesbian extinction
  • Trans the gay away (a conspiracy theory where parents would somehow rather have a straight trans kid than a gay cis kid, which given that far more parents are transphobic - especially about their kids - than homophobic and homophobia without transphobia is practically nonexistent is a ludicrous claim, and yes it persists)

Anti-transgender activists reserve words of disgust and invalidation for the surgeries some transgender women undergo and words of societal ownership and tragedy for the surgeries some transgender women undergo

  • Genital mutilation
  • Mutilating healthy breasts (trans men absolutely do not view it this way)
  • Wound (referring to trans women's neovaginas, which the body does not treat as a "wound" after recovery, and a surgery which some cis women get)

There comes a moment as someone starts believing more and more anti-transgender rhetoric where they suddenly 'realize' that transgender people, or activists, or ideology, is the worst thing in the world, and the anti-trans community have a term for that

  • Peak trans(ed)

Leaning on a "fairness" narrative and partnering with conservatives, anti-transgender activists push the idea that trans women need to be excluded from playing on women's sports teams, but this ends up with trans girls being segregated and shamed in gym class at school. Sometimes based on misunderstandings of current inclusive restrictions, but more often based on assumptions, stereotypes, presumptive anger about things that don't actually happen, and outright bigotry.

Also of note: few advocates seem to actually care about or watch women's sports

  • #nothankyou (to trans women on women's sports teams)
  • Save women's sports

Anti-transgender activists lean on purity and sex essentialism and accusations of perversion to push segregating trans women into unsafe spaces - "anywhere but here" - and to maternally call home "deluded" trans men

  • Single-sex spaces

Anti-transgender activists take great pains to invalidate transgender identities, including using the wrong gendered terms or highlighting the chromosomes of the person in question

  • Lady/miss/sister to a trans man
  • Sir/mister/bro to a trans woman
  • She about a trans man or he/they nonbinary person
  • He about a trans woman or she/they nonbinary person
  • "It" about any trans person
  • TiF ("trans-identified female" term to invalidate trans men)
  • TiM ("trans-identified male" term to invalidate trans women)
  • Trans-identified

Anti-transgender activists are often offended at inclusivity in menstrual products which make them less embarrassing to use for trans men, some intersex people, and some non-binary people. Even if the inclusivity is on the side. Often, for some reason, trans women get blamed

  • Woman, not menstruator
  • Woman, not womb-haver
  • Wimpund (JK Rowling pretending to fumble for the word for 'woman' as she made fun of trans men-inclusive period products)

Similarly to the anti-gay "recruitment conspiracy", anti-transgender activists presume that transgender people must "recruit" to keep up their numbers, misquote statistics about transgender kids changing their mind, or imply that parents must be getting some Munchausen By Proxy thrill about 'transing' their kids, all in violation of everything pediatricians know about trans children

  • Groomer! (like pedophiles "groom" children)
  • Pedophile!
  • ROGD (Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria, a term made for a fake disorder because unsupportive parents "didn't see any signs")
  • Social contagion (my kid got recruited on TikTok!)
  • Trans kid = child abuse

Trans-Exclusive Radical Feminist or TERF was a term coined by a brand of anti-transgender second wave feminists - some wear it as a badge of honour, some claim the use of it is a slur

  • TERF
  • Terven

Anti-transgender activists sometimes like to imply that transgender 'activists' are like the Men's Rights Activists

  • TRAs (trans rights activist, pejoratively, like 'MRA')

Plenty of anti-transgender activists invalidate transgender people by reducing trans peoples' experience to 'wearing a costume' and building on that misinterpretation to take offense at it

  • Born, not worn
  • Man in a dress
  • Man is not a costume
  • Man is not a feeling
  • Woman is not a costume
  • Woman is not a feeling

There are numerous people who have contributed greatly to anti-transgender actions or discourse. Any time they are taken to task for this, their offence is trivialized and anti-transgender activists will put up hashtags in "solidarity"

  • #IStandWithAbigailShrier (wrote a conspiratorial book claiming trans boys are all young lesbians [even if they like men] brainwashed by the internet)
  • #IStandWithAlisonBailey (head of the virulently anti-transgender "LGB" - no T - "Alliance")
  • #IStandWithKeiraBell (Keira Bell, a rare case of "de-transition", swapped into a court case against a trans health care provider, using regrets she had about trans procedures she had as an adult to deny trans kids trans-related care)
  • #IStandWithJoannaCherry (Joanna Cherry, an anti-transgender Scottish politician
  • #IStandWithJKRowling (has written essays fearmongering about trans women and makes fun of products that include trans men - this shocked a great many of her fans)
  • #IStandWithMaya (Maya Forstater, who went out of her way to denigrate and invalidate trans people while contracting for an LGBTQ+ organization, tried to get her anti-transgender views protected as a philosophical belief)
  • #TheStanislandQuestion (Helen Staniland, obsessed with asking questions about trans women showing their penis penis penis penis to young girls)

Anti-transgender people have invented new sexualities that specifically exclude transgender people by fiat

  • #superstraight (straight but not attracted to trans)
  • #supergay
  • #superbi
  • #superlesbian

Cryptic images and iconography abounds

  • [checkered flag]
  • [cherry] (Joanna Cherry, transphobic politician)
  • [I heart J K] in their profile pic (this is almost NEVER talking about fandom of Harry Potter, just J. K. Rowling's anti-transgender writing)
  • [orange] and [black] (the colours of "super-straight/gay/lesbian" above)
  • [purple/white/green icons or flag] (the colours of the suffragette movement)
  • [red square] (maybe about 90%)
  • [spider web] (Spinster account - usually transphobic)

The following may depend on context but are definitely more common with anti-transgender advocates:

  • Actual woman
  • Actual man
  • Biological female
  • Biological male
  • Feminist, "not the fun kind" (nobody expects fun, but it should not be a code for anti-transgender bigotry)
  • LGB (if used specifically to remove the T for trans from the rest of LGB for bigoted purposes)
  • Penis haver (sometimes sass, but sometimes a parody of trans women or used to devalue trans men)
  • Transwomen (instead of trans women, when it is on purpose, to deny trans women being any kind of woman - they have fought editorial battles on this basis)
  • Vulva person (sometimes pride, but sometimes anti-transgender women wielding body parts to devalue trans women)

The following may depend on context - radical feminism tends to be exclusionary of trans women, women of colour and sex workers, and conservatism tends to be angry about deviations from the norm:

  • Anti-woke
  • Dress however you please (cf. what whatever you want)
  • Ex-SJW
  • Protect women and girls (see context - is it "from trans women"?)
  • Politically adrift
  • Politically homeless (being anti-transgender is rarer on the political left and anti-transgender activists despair about how their major 'allies' against transgender people are often too politically to the right for them)
  • Radfem
  • Radical feminist
  • Recovering liberal
  • Rights for women and girls (this particular phrasing is beloved of transphobes for some reason, although it is also used in a plain sense by the UN and others)
  • Wear what(ever) you want (reducing being trans to expression, not identity)
  • XX in their name to stand for woman (can be pride in womanhood, can be using chromosomes to deny trans peoples' identity)

Having a Harry Potter house in their hashtags is not always indicative, but it can be found with some frequency in the profiles of anti-transgender people.

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