Why Fascists Target Gender Transition

It messes with their imagined ‘pure’ origin story for their compatriots

Image by congerdesign from Pixabay

Fascism is a fake nostalgia, invented for political purposes, celebrating a “mythic past.” Typically, it’s imagined that there were once “pure” ethnicities and languages, men were men and women were women, religion spoke the truth, and everyone knew and obeyed their place in the social hierarchy. Supposedly there was a particular way we emerged from the egg, and that’s the way we are always supposed to be. The fascist myth mourns the passing of national greatness and urges us today to reinvigorate it. In the US, recently, it goes by the slogan “Make America Great Again,” as if there were a certain period to which we’d want to return. But the story, of course, is fiction.

Here’s Why Fascists Target Gender Transition

Real quick:

If you change your body, social role, or otherwise change the gender by which others identify you, your transition marks a boundary between your past and future. It’s a personal milestone. Often, it’s a rejection of a past you don’t want (or, at least, some elements of that past) in favor of a future you do want.

This is at odds with the fascist project to celebrate the past as something that is natural, correct, and worth returning to. If we change our bodies, if we value the reinterpretation of self, if we renegotiate our social roles, if we radically challenge entire social categories, then we develop a standpoint in opposition to the fascist project. We are not trying to reclaim a mythic past; instead, we are forward-looking.

They don’t like transition in adulthood

Fascists don’t want adults to experience gender transition because it amounts to a statement that it’s OK to let go of the past—not just individually, but interpersonally and on a broader social level. If an adult has lived part of their life in one gender role, and then, one day, they encourage and expect others to recognize that they are living in another gender, it requires a cultural acknowledgment that the past doesn’t always contain truth, or not a truth we need to keep alive, and that sometimes we look to the present and future to learn the…