This week on Yeah Nah Pasaran! we talk to Fran Amery [X/Twitter]. Fran is a feminist researcher, senior lecturer in politics at the University of Bath and the co-author, with Aurelien Mondon, of ‘Othering, peaking, populism and moral panics: The reactionary strategies of organised transphobia’ (The Sociological Review, April 16, 2024), which:
shows that organised transphobia is promoted using similar strategies and politics as the wider reactionary movement which has become increasingly mainstream. In particular, we outline the transphobic process of ‘othering’ based on moral panics, which seeks to construct, homogenise and exaggerate a threat and to naturalise it in the bodies and existence of the ‘Other’. Reactionary politics rely on authoritarian tendencies and strategies which aim to remove the rights of certain communities, and as such threaten wider demands for equal rights. They claim to speak on behalf of ‘the people’, in this case often (certain) women, against an elite which seeks to grant unfair rights and privileges to a mostly silent and silenced minority, even though said rights are precarious and limited, and power is rarely on their side. Rather than a bottom-up movement in defence of women, what we refer to as ‘organised transphobia’ is a top-down movement that relies on prominent platforms and privileged access to shaping public discourse to divert attention away from the real struggle most women and LGBTQ+ people are facing conjointly.
See also : Protecting children in ‘gender critical’ rhetoric and strategy: Regulating childhood for cisgender outcomes, DiGeSt – Journal of Diversity and Gender Studies, Vol.10, No.2 (2023) | Press release: The Cass Review is bad science and should not be taken seriously by policymakers, TransActual, April 11 (April 20), 2024 /// Trans Safety Network | The Vatican says gender theory threatens human dignity – but Judith Butler believes the ‘threat’ is social change, Louise Richardson-Self, The Conversation, April 9, 2024 /// Who’s Afraid of Gender?, Judith Butler, Allen Lane/Penguin, 2024.
4.30pm, Thursday, April 25, 2024 /// 3CR /// 855AM / streaming live on the 3CR website
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