Ableism and Anti-Trans Rhetoric

Ableism, mentalism, and sanism all play a major role in the anti-trans rhetoric we currently see being used by conservatives. Despite this, I feel that they often go under-discussed and unnamed in conversations about trans issues. I would like to do my part to rectify this by briefly going into a few of the ways these issues connect based on what I have observed of conservative talking points.

First off, some simple definitions: Ableism is the oppression of disabled people in general and physically disabled people in specific. Mentalism is the oppression of mentally disabled people. Sanism is the oppression of mentally ill people.

All of these are related, and all of these are heavily utilized in anti-trans rhetoric by conservative activists. Fear and revulsion toward disabled brains/minds/bodies is invoked incessantly by conservatives when talking about trans people.

. . .

Anti-trans activists frequently invoke a fear and revulsion toward medicalized bodies. A body that is on medication, or that has been through surgery, or that is “disordered” in any way, is seen as a lesser, repulsive body. This is the language through which the bodies of trans people who have gone through medical transition are discussed by conservatives.

A trans person who uses hormone therapy is described as a “life-long medical patient,” seen as lesser for being on and requiring a medication. Trans peoples’ surgically modified bodies are described as “mutilated,” and framed as objects of disgust.

Trans people commit the ultimate sin of choosing to have a “disordered” body. The right way of living, in the conservative mind, would be to grit-teeth one’s way through the discomfort of dysphoria without relying on medical care to fix it.

The revulsion towards trans people’s bodies is also connected to the oppression of intersex people. Conservatives view all intersex people, regardless of how they seem themselves or what they want, as physically disordered and as needing to be made “normal.” When trans people transition, we choose to have bodies that are seen as closer to those of intersex people. Bodies that conservatives see as inherently disordered and inferior.

Conservative legislation against trans healthcare for minors frequently include exceptions for surgeries performed on intersex children. Medical treatment is, to them, a tool to force “normalcy” upon people, rather than something for people to freely choose for their own well-being.

Conservatives have also been increasingly merging with the “natural medicine” crunchy, neo-hippie types, which tend to reject many medical interventions. These ideas are, implicitly or explicitly, often eugenicist. Trans people who medically transition are seen as rejecting their “natural fate” by choosing to live with medically augmented bodies rather than suffering and dying by “letting nature take its course.”

. . .

Anti-trans rhetoric also frequently relies on a fear of mentally ill people. Trans people are understood as being mentally ill, and therefore in need of either forcible “fixing” or total removal from society. Trans people are described as dangerous and unstable, as delusional, and therefore as undeserving of autonomy and dangerous to the public.

They sometimes invoke a sort of tough-love type of idea. That trans people simply don’t know our own identities or experiences, and that we must be forcibly reality checked and set straight. The reality is that this sort of attitude is wildly unhelpful and cruel regardless of whether the person being subjected to it is mentally ill or not.

A little personal anecdote from my distant memories:

As a tween, I tried listening to Christian talk radio. This was probably a mistake, and even at the time when I still considered myself religious I found myself mostly hate-listening. It was either that or vacantly half-listening to sermons and Bible readings. However, it allowed me observe conservative rhetoric at a time when a particular event was happening: the fight for and eventual legalization of gay marriage.

Around this time, the religious right was realizing that the whole anti-gay thing might be heading towards social unacceptability, and began to pivot hard towards attacking trans people full time. A frequent topic of discussion was the idea that trans people are mentally ill.

The conclusion of their little rants alway seemed to be that trans people were, in fact, mentally ill, and that this meant that trans people’s minds needed to be coercively “fixed.” This also meant, to them, that the open presence of trans people in public was a problem, the same way some people see the open presence of schizophrenic people in public as a problem. A nuisance at best, a threat to “normal people” at worst. The impression I got from this was that these people were itching to start throwing people into asylums for the rest of their lives.

A phrase they used often was someting along the lines of “the problem is not the body, but the mind,” as in, rather than allowed trans people to medically transition, they should instead be subjected to coercive psychiatric treatment. Conversion therapy. I remember them speaking as if this was some sort of lost common sense.

. . .

Transphobic rhetoric also frequently invokes mentalism. Some people have observed a connection between trans identity and Autism. Many Autistic people feel that Autism affects their sense of identity and their relationship to gender.

Conservatives assert that we Autistic people lack interiority and full personhood. They view us as incapable of understanding ourselves and as undeserving of bodily autonomy. Our trans identities are seen as a sign of how stupid we are, that we must have been tricked somehow, and our Autism is seen as a reason to ban us from medically transition or ever being allowed to make choices for ourselves.

These ideas are often weaponized against Autistic trans youths, overlapping with the ways that children and adolescents are also not seen as having full personhood.

. . .

Also present in a lot of transphobic rhetoric is a focus on the authority of doctors. Both trans people and disabled people of all kinds tend to have a complicated and frequently hostile relationship with medical authorities, as is to be expected in a relationship between authorities and the people they wield that authority over.

This is not recognized by conservatives. Rather than understanding trans people as a group of people in conflict with medical authorities, a group of people that often has to find alternative ways to get medical care outside of the legal medical system, conservatives view trans people as objectified byproducts of the medical system. Not people, but blank vessels for the whims of scheming doctors.

This, again, connects with the “natural medicine” conservatism, for which the only problem with the medical system is that it provides medical treatments that they view as “unnatural” and “unnecessary.”

. . .

I would recommend any person who wants to understand anti-trans rhetoric to look into disability activism, and ultimately to see trans peoples’ struggle against oppression as connected to the struggles of disabled people. Sometimes I see trans people respond to these connections by attempting to distance transness from disability and frame them as completely unrelated issues. I feel that this is a mistake.

We must recognize that these issues are connected, that all oppression is connected, and work together toward a world where all of us are free, and all of us have the choice to access medical care that we want and need without the threat of unwanted and coercive treatments.