“Respectable” anti-trans rhetoric attempts to hide its fuel in the fire, but like gay panic and anti-immigrant propaganda, it’s not hard to figure out what’s powering this project by observing how it works in the world.  The plan is to depict a whole class of people as predatory monsters, and to label anyone who objects to this an enabler of monsters—the underlying premise is not hard to grasp, however much heat is applied to it.

If we find ourselves wondering why such obvious nonsense can still be effective, we might want to look at the current state of discourse around The War Against Terror (TWAT) for clues.  It’s fundamentally absurd that people who supported a 20-year war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people are in a position to publicly barrack those who objected to the war now that only the body count remains.  The “humanitarian” pretext for the invasion has been exposed yet again for the brutalising farce it was, and yet this same pretext is being used as a cudgel to beat the opposition with.  Such an approach insults the senses; it can only hope to maintain itself through full spectrum repetition.

If there’s less cash in anti-trans propaganda than there is in the pro-war variety, there’s still cash in it.  Similarly, if there’s less universal support for this campaign in the press, the UK commentariat are working hard to make it otherwise. You get this in high level Guardian hand-wringing, and in more local coverage such as The Scotsman’s write-up of the Doctor’s Bar non-event. “Group gets thrown out of bar” is up there with “Drunk takes piss in alley” in the novelty stakes, but – as with all “respectable” anti-trans rhetoric – this article is framed to present trans people as being a malevolent threat to safety and freedom in the straight world: “You can’t even go out for a drink anymore if you’re a woman.”

All of this is as predictable as it is stupid. The fact that the article, as originally published, misgendered a member of the bar staff throughout and attributed a joke twitter bio—one that echoed the hate speech of anti trans activists—as earnest self-description… This is where the ends makes themselves explicit in the means.

Let’s frame the incident another way: a group of anti-trans activists went to a bar with at least one trans employee, where they then proceeded to hand-out anti-trans propaganda. When they were asked to leave, they kicked up a fuss so severe that the proprietor called the police. Once they were escorted off the premises, they parlayed their aggression into headlines about how they were being oppressed and made some frankly bewildering legal claims…

…about which the less said the better.

The plan is to make public life untenable for trans people and anyone who would support them. We must resist this wherever we encounter it, and we must have no illusions about what is being asked.