Evan Urquhart

It's a very "first they came for" situation and trans people are the ones they're coming for first, but we're not religious conservatives ultimate target. We're no more than a stepping stone for them to get at cis woman.

Think about it: In several states the religious right is trying to make it illegal for a doctor to prescribe particular treatments (hormone blockers, hrt, certain surgeries) to their patients (trans youth).

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. In what other situations do conservatives want to criminalize doctors and deny treatments?

If you said abortion, you're half right. They also want to limit or, if possible, remove all access to birth control.

OK, abortion and birth control. Surely that's all. Au contraire, mon frere. The use of anti-trans organizing to sneak traditionalist anti-women's equality ideas into the mainstream wouldn't dream of coming for your legal abortion and legal birth control and leaving it there.

Conservatives believe that biology is destiny, and that a woman's destiny is to be a wife and mother. They believe that the female sex is the weaker and should be protected by, but also subordinate to, the male. Are you starting to get it?

By pushing anti-trans attitudes that focus on biology, they're able to target women with anti-feminist, biological essentialist attitudes, without cis women realizing they're the real target.

Their focus on procedures that make trans men infertile (this is always talked about in the context of fertility of "girls" and "daughters"), reinforces the idea that womanhood must always aim for motherhood. For them, it is the only legitimate purpose and role for a woman.

At the same time (but louder) they stress women's vulnerability to male predators in bathrooms, and their athletic weakness compared to cis male athletes. They pretend this is about trans women. It is not. It's about reinforcing cis women's inherent vulnerability and weakness.

Added all together, we have a coherent worldview: Women are their biology and nothing more. They are weaker than men and in need of male protection. Their purpose in life is motherhood, and the state has a role in maintaining their fertility regardless of their wishes.

This is an ideology that masquerades as scientific truth, built on misleading half truths. Nothing about the biological ability to carry a pregnancy entails a moral responsibility to do so, much less that it is one's only legitimate purpose or function.

Female bodies are, on average, shorter and less muscular than male bodies due to the action of a specific hormone, testosterone, on mammalian biology.

Nothing about THAT implies that... well... ANYTHING. It doesn't mean women are unable to protect themselves, physically, that they can't participate in athletics without segregation, or that sexism stems from biology and can never be eradicated. ALL of that is soc, not bio.

Am I saying that the religious right doesn't really hate trans people, that it's all a ploy to hurt cis women and they don't really care about us at all? No, they hate us. They'd be happy if every one of us is closeted, criminalized, or dead.

But they're not idiots. They're EXTREMELY politically savvy. No one should forget that. They know we're a small group & measures against us are mostly symbolic. They know their real enemy is feminism and their real goal is for cis people to return to traditional gender roles.