In January alone, South Carolina and Oklahoma introduced bills to block people younger than 26 from getting gender-affirming healthcare - which seems to contradict the conservative talking points of “parental rights” and characterizing healthcare for trans kids as “child abuse.” Facts vs. And it’s not just children being targeted. Several states have already banned gender-affirming healthcare for people under 18 - care that can be lifesaving. This incident reinforces that journalists must examine the language being used by people who promote the stripping away of basic human rights. The latter happened in the 2010s, when so-called trans-exclusionary radical feminists, or TERFs, employed “transgenderism,” as writer Julia Serano described in a 2015 blog post, “in a way that confuses the state of being transgender with a potentially dangerous political ideology” - a usage that Knowles echoed at CPAC. The term “transgenderism” was actually used by trans activists in the 1990s and early 2000s, but as language evolves, words are both reclaimed by communities and coopted by oppositional forces. “Similar hate speech about ‘eradicating’ human beings has been used by extremists throughout history.”
“‘Transgenderism’ is a phony term made up by anti-transgender activists and used to dehumanize transgender people and target them, their lifesaving healthcare, and access to society,” Sarah Kate Ellis, the president and CEO of GLAAD, told Rolling Stone. The word was used at CPAC, the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, by the Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles, who said during his March 4 speech that “transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely.”Īfter his words at the conference were characterized as sounding genocidal, Knowles attempted to claim that he was not calling for an eradication of transgender people when he said “transgenderism must be eradicated.” But turning an experience intrinsic to the lives of trans people into a noun doesn’t separate it from those people, whose rights and safety are currently under mounting attack. If you saw the word “transgenderism” trending on social media last weekend and felt a sinking feeling in your stomach, you’re not alone.
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