Being Transgender is Homophobic? That’s Trope, Not Truth
Breakdown of ‘A Heretic’s Manifesto’ (2023) by Brendan O’Neill
Earlier today, I published a sample of homophobic and transphobic messaging from Brendan O’Neill’s essays over the years, tracing the lead-up to his recent book, A Heretic’s Manifesto: Essays on the Unsayable. Now, I’m publishing this longer article with a detailed analysis of the book.
In case you missed my first article, I’ll tell you a bit more about his earlier messaging.
In 2013, O’Neill testified against same-sex marriage in the UK. He said “the meaning of marriage has always been decided by communities over great numbers of centuries”; that while a slight majority of the public at the time supported gay marriage, the proposal seemed to have come “out of thin air” and there had been “no public protests” to achieve it, certainly not “violent” protests as in the U.S. civil rights movement of the 1960s (as if violence would have helped to legitimate the request). Furthermore, a majority of the public didn’t find it an especially important issue, except that (contradictorily) O’Neill said it seemed to be “the main political and moral issue of our time.” He believed it was driven by “sharp-suited lobbyists…not grass-roots campaigners,” and now, in a “very rootless, very unhistorical” move…
