Barnes: ‘Just Think Why’ Some Don’t Want Their Marriage to Turn Gay!

Journalist Hannah Barnes gets in a dig against same-sex marriage

Tucker Lieberman
10 min read4 days ago

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someone putting a ring on someone else’s hand. a question mark is superimposed. we cannot infer these people’s genders.
Ring by Katarzyna, question by VintageSnipsAndClips, both from Pixabay

Three days ago, The New Statesman published a thousand-word opinion by the anti-trans writer Hannah Barnes. The article is called “Labour’s women problem: Keir Starmer must accept that JK Rowling is right.”

If you’re already familiar with why anti-trans tropes are wrong, scroll down to “An Implied Devaluation of Same-Sex Marriage” to see why I think this particular anti-trans article is also homophobic.

Labour’s women problem: Keir Starmer must accept that JK Rowling is right. New Statesman headline with a photo of JK Rowling and an illustration of writer Hannah Barnes
The opinion in the New Statesman.

A Standard Anti-Trans Formulation

The tired anti-trans argument: If trans women have rights, cis women don’t

This version of anti-trans rhetoric reinforces the idea that trans people’s existence somehow threatens everyone else’s existence or at least throws everyone else into confusion, and thus that the rights of trans people unavoidably conflict with the rights of people who aren’t trans. Transmisogynistically, it centers on the idea that trans women’s presence in society undermines…

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Tucker Lieberman

Editor for Prism & Pen and for Identity Current. Author of the novel "Most Famous Short Film of All Time." tuckerlieberman.com