Queer Liberation Isn’t Over, James Kirchick
Writing for The Atlantic, James Kirchick seems to think the struggle for queer liberation is pretty much over in the US. The more you read, the clearer it becomes that James just doesn’t think the trans community is worth fighting for.
Opinion by Alyssa Steinsiek
As usual, something very nasty is brewing over at The Atlantic.
Arguing from his highly enlightened position as a white gay cisgender man, writer James Kirchick has dragged out his proverbial soapbox and climbed aboard to inform us all that, fantastically, the fight for LGBTQ+ rights is over. At least in America. At least for gay cisgender people. At least for white gay cisgender people. At least for white gay cisgender men.
Okay, so that’s a lot of caveats. Let me break his piece down a bit more thoroughly so I can explain to you just how annoying, wrong and braindead Kirchick must be to have declared a triumphant victory over the struggle.
Kirchick kicks his piece off by going for GLAAD’s throat which, contrary to the feelings I’ve expressed for James so far, I agree with wholeheartedly. While I do frequently cite GLAAD’s various high quality reports and lists of anti-LGBTQ+ goings on from celebrities, journalists and pundits, an investigative piece by Emily Steel published in The New York Times on the first of this month makes it very clear that the current state of the organization is abysmal. In so far as the trans community is concerned, GLAAD has only very recently made efforts to represent and advocate for us. It wasn’t so long ago that they were praising The Simpsons for a deeply transphobic episode that sorta kinda said “go lesbians!”
Yes, that is a personal grudge.
Where Kirchick first loses me is his insistence that GLAAD’s work as a media watchdog organization is pointless because of “the proliferation of LGBTQ characters on our screens, largely sympathetic coverage in mainstream media, and the ubiquity of same-sex couples in advertisements and commercials.” This proliferation, he says, flags that GLAAD and organizations like them have “achieved their mission.” In an era where most queer characters on television and in film are still subject to the Bury Your Gays trope, and the number of high value productions featuring trans character is plummeting.
He goes on to describe the LGBTQ+ liberation movement as “[having gone] tragically adrift,” because “LGBTQ people earned the right to serve openly in the U.S. military, get married, and not be discriminated against in housing and employment.” Never mind that former president Donald Trump has vowed to reinstate his overturned ban on transgender troops should he win a second term. Forget that trans people continue to face absolutely staggering amounts of discrimination in housing and high rates of homelessness.
A pattern emerges: Kirchick seems to enjoy saying “LGBTQ+” when the only people he is speaking for or about are cisgender lesbian and gay people.
It becomes clear what he wants to talk about when, next, he unveils the heart of his piece, his belief that lesbian and gay rights are “related but fundamentally different” from the trans rights movement. To believe this you must, of course, pretend you don’t know how many transgender people are also gay and bisexual. Hint: It’s a lot!
Now that I think about it, James Kirchick does not strike me as a guy who has a lot of transgender friends, so maybe he doesn’t know.
Diving directly into extremely common anti-trans rhetoric most commonly parodied by openly transphobic pundits and ideologues, Kirchick begins his next bout of transcribed diarrhea by suggesting that gender-affirming care for trans youth is bad, actually. He brings up the common far right talking point about European nations supposedly eschewing GAC, which we’ve already pointed out is very misleading. The source he cites to back up his claim that evidence supporting GAC for trans youth is “weak” is, hilariously, another Atlantic article written by known anti-trans journalist Helen Lewis uncritically praising The Cass Report, which… come on, dude.
Perhaps most egregious in Kirchick’s disgusting anti-transphobic rant is his belief that “many gender-distressed and gender-nonconforming children grow up to be gay.” Mind you, he isn’t talking about trans kids who grow up to be gay trans adults, he’s repeating the easily debunked myth that gender dysphoric kids often grow out of their dysphoria or desist from identifying as transgender as they get older. His source? A 2018 paper authored by, among others, Riittakerttu Kaltiala. If you’re a regular reader, you know Kaltiala as the head of Finland’s gender clinic in Tampere, where doctors ask children extremely inappropriate and upsetting questions about their masturbatory habits, use highly problematic and widely discredited methodologies, and work as hard as they can to stop trans youth and teens from getting access to the treatments they desperately need.
Not the most reliable source for information about trans people.
Kirchick goes to bat for JK Rowling, in spite of Rowling’s prolific overtures against the trans community in recent years. He defends Jesse Singal’s credentials as a reporter by referencing the man’s most infamous work, an article he wrote for The Atlantic that received a truly remarkable volume of critique and pushback, both within the trans community and without. Why is Kirchick defending the likes of Rowling and Singal, and even Pamela Paul? These people are very well known reactionaries who obsessively attack the trans community.
I’ll tell you why: James Kirchick’s writing makes it clear he is part of a small cadre of white gay cisgender men who plainly do not care about, or even outright detest the existence of, trans people. He doesn’t think the Lavender Scare—a McCarthy era ousting of queer folks from the US government—could possibly have impacted any trans people. He happily supports the openly anti-trans UK Labour Party. He’s vocally pro-Israel, and frequently promotes blatant anti-Palestine garbage using his Twitter account. This little boohoo baby is even out here crying about the reclamation of the word queer!
Put simply, the guy sucks! He’s bad and wrong about everything! Well, except for the spirit of his closing statements. As he ends his terrible, stupid article that should never have been written, much less published, Kirchick opines about the myriad underfunded international and niche LGBTQ+ charities that deserve your money much more than GLAAD or the Human Rights Campaign.
On this, we agree. Everything else Kirchick has to say? Take a pass.
Alyssa Steinsiek is a professional writer who spends too much time playing video games!
