Not able to sleep so spent some time following links. I can see that right-wing parties across Europe and elsewhere have leapt gratefully onto trans politics as a highly visible vehicle on which to base increased democratic success with anti democratic and homophobic aims. Having said that, there is some acknowledgment even among the academic links that there has been a democratic deficit in a progression from identifying sex as an axis of inequality (eg ‘gender mainstreaming’ - an 80s term used to promote women’s equality), towards eliminating sex as a factor in policy at all, without acknowledgement of the change - gender mainstreaming now used in articles about minority presentations outside presumed gender norms (not described or detailed).
There’s also a strong view presented that the Catholic Church is a major factor in the ‘anti gender’ movement. This appears much less true in some countries than others, though it’s not acknowledged - as an ageing history student I have noticed that knowledge of the patterns of the past in European politics are increasingly forgotten and misunderstood- eg young activists asking why there is a high number of Liberal Democrats in the west of the UK, with zero knowledge of the existence, history or political relevance of the nonconformist faiths. Certainly reading these links would make the passage this week of the further decriminalisation of abortion in the UK completely mystifying. Where an analysis prevents an understanding of events, it needs questioning.
The experience of many of us, of what feel like tattered and scarce resources for women involving a lot of queuing and patience (public toilets for example are increasingly rare post Covid, though I’m delighted to say that my local council has reopened several) being appropriated by male people for their self reported spiritual needs, while the physical reality of being female (half of all women over 35 have experienced incontinence) simply being labelled illegitimate by people who appear never to have waited for anything in their lives (see how those who dare to bait Helen Staniland on twitter claim that communal changing rooms don’t exist any more because THEIR gyms are quite clearly luxury end). It’s funny that my distress at the normalisation of transition medication and surgery resulting in increased number of very young women living with incontinence all their lives, is to me a consequence of my experience of having a female body and really quite difficult continence needs since my early 20s, but this isn’t even considered a possible political issue or something to talk about by the people writing in these links. Talking to a mainstream young man about this entire issue recently, he visibly blenched at me mentioning shit and piss (actually in relation to caring for the frail elderly in that case), though perhaps he might have seen young male activists putting bottles of piss out at public buildings to try and demand access to female resources as legitimate. The sale of genital surgery as liberation, as opposed to extreme and fetishistic body modification that is not suitable for any realistic public health system to offer and which damages female lives, is not acknowledged in these links which live only in the academic space. To me those piss protests felt exactly the same as male appropriation of any public space as a place to get their cocks out and spray urine about for their own convenience and completely under their control, ignoring anyone else’s needs or wishes completely. If a third of the female population needs fast access to accepted areas to take clothes off and pee and shit and bleed cleanly and safely, that is both a legitimate demand and simply not the same as the needs of male gender nonconforming people, who do need to see other men take action against the possibility of male on male homophobic violence in the gents. You can pee next to me should be a male slogan and seen on male politicians t shirts.
In the meantime, yes, there are too many successful right wing politicians for comfort. And where the left allows the march of commercial medicine and tries to label the reduction of legitimate resources for women as progressive, there are going to be more of them. I don’t want that.