Prediction: The Right Wing is Coming for Feminism
Transphobia is a useful wedge, but the Christian right is champing at the bit to let loose on another target. They want to roll back all of women’s equality, and enforce a drastic cultural change on the population.
by Assigned
The evangelical Christian news site The Christian Post today has a fascinating article by Brandon Showalter that bills itself as exposing “the roots of the trans movement.” If you’re familiar with the far right you might expect this to be an anti-semitic conspiracy theory, but the piece is more interesting, and we’d also say more accurate than that.
The roots of the trans movement, both according to this article and in our opinion, is feminism.
The Right will be openly at war (again) with feminism by 2024
Analysis is about helping your audience know what to expect, to have a sense of what’s coming in the future. At Assigned, we believe in being up front in what we’re saying, not hinting at it. This means our readers can judge how much faith to put in us by looking through our track record. And so, we’re saying this: While the midterm elections we’re currently preparing for will continue to lean on anti-trans hate as the cultural wedge issue du jour, by 2024 attacks on feminism as being responsible for the movement for trans acceptance, made in the name of protecting cis women from trans women, will become frequent.
Why do we think so? The right’s hatred of trans people is sincere, but on some level they understand that trans people are a relatively small and vulnerable target. The big goal is reversing women’s equality in the name of religious zealotry. The Christian right wants women out of the workplace, subservient to men, and would be quick to take away basic rights such as the right to vote if they thought they had any chance to get away with it.
This group of zealots is impatient, and they’re tired of using a thin veneer of feminist language to excuse their anti-trans talking points. As quickly as possible they’re going to drop the pretence and go after their white whale, which is and always has been women’s equality.
Our prediction’s right IF:
The right widely adopts this pose of blaming feminism for transgender acceptance and rarely or never mentions feminism as a reason to oppose trans rights by 2024. I will be able to find 10 examples of articles that do this in the 6 months before the 2024 presidential election.
Our prediction’s wrong IF:
I can’t find 10 articles, the increase in openly anti-feminist rhetoric is more modest or never materializes.
No contest IF:
A major issue like a war, a depression, or a new pandemic so dominates the news cycle of the 2024 election that culture war issues drop off the radar and aren’t either side’s main focus.