Imagine for a moment that you were the Dem governor of the most populous state in a country that just elected an openly fascist government that is actively using a moral panic to criminalizing the existence of a highly vulnerable minority group while conducting a much broader pogrom against that vulnerable and targeted minority group; in this case trans people. What is the most pathetic, craven, cowardly, selfish, irresponsible, and openly collaborationist (with fascists) thing you could possibly do? I guarantee that no matter what your brain just came up with, it's not worse than what California Governor and potential 2028 Dem presidential nominee Gavin Newsom just did:

https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/ca-gov-gavin-newsom-completely-aligns

"On Thursday, California Governor Gavin Newsom launched his new podcast, This is Gavin Newsom. His first guest? Notorious anti-LGBTQ+ extremist Charlie Kirk. The episode covered a wide range of grievances Kirk and other far-right activists have with Newsom, touching on topics from Black Lives Matter to COVID policies. However, the issue of transgender rights surfaced repeatedly. At one point, Newsom stated he was "completely aligned" with Kirk on transgender participation in sports. He also appeared to express agreement with restrictions on medical care for incarcerated transgender people and limits on gender-affirming healthcare for transgender youth."

Yes, you read that correctly; the Dem Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, celebrated the birth of his new podcast by inviting Charlie fucking Kirk on to his show and stridently agreeing with him about various aspects of the GOP's fascist war on trans rights and by extension, their efforts to threaten the existence of trans people entirely. I'm sure some Dem apologists reading this are already calling me an alarmist, but before I explain why you can't have just "a little" fascist persecution of trans people, I'd like to make something abundantly clear. Charlie Kirk is a professional fascist propagandist, who is actively employed in the task of creating ideological arguments to support, and popular support for, a real as fuck pogrom against trans people. That's what he is, that's what he does for a living:

"Newsom’s invitation and capitulation to Charlie Kirk on his podcast will alarm LGBTQ+ advocates. Kirk has a well-documented history of extremist rhetoric and hostility toward the LGBTQ+ community. In a 2023 video, he stated, “These people are sick… I blame the decline of American men. Someone should have just ‘took care of it’ the way we used to take care of things in the 1950s and 60s, but as you have testosterone rates going down and men acting like women, well…”—seemingly advocating for violence against transgender people. Kirk has also repeatedly used the slur "tr*nny" and has encouraged its normalization. He once called transgender people “a throbbing middle finger to god.” In the last election cycle, TPUSA’s PAC, which he leads, spent millions on anti-transgender ads, making his presence on Newsom’s platform all the more striking."

Given that, hosting Charlie Kirk on your podcast in the first place is a profoundly craven and dangerous act of fascist collaboration. Enough so that even if Newsom and Kirk were chatting about the weather, he should still be forced to resign immediately from both the party and the governorship. Of course, they weren't just talking about the weather; Governor Newsom, who btw has one of the safest seats in all of US government and thus has no electoral need to pander to, again, fascists who want to criminalize and ultimately end the existence of trans people, invited Charlie on his podcast to spew transphobic propaganda in service of an active fascist pogrom targeting trans people and in particular young trans women; and then agreed with him. There is no wiggle room or nuance to be had here, Newsom just helped the fascists make trans people less safe in America and his actions absolutely *will* have a body count associated with them down the line. This isn't about women's sports, or gender care in carceral settings because those are just the wedge arguments the fascists are using to criminalize trans existence; what Newsom is doing here is agreeing in principle that trans people are a danger to women/girls, and that their medical rights should be subject to legislation - all that's left to argue about at that point is to what degree trans people aren't people and thus don't have the same rights as other Americans.

Folks, this isn't some backwater school board rep straying off script; Newsom is probably one of the five most powerful people in the entire Democratic Party and clearly has designs on the presidential nomination for the 2028 US election. If liberals want to prove folks like me are wrong when we say Dems would trade trans lives for ten suburban white votes in an election they'll lose anyway, you need to DO something about Gavin Newsom; immediately.

As a trans woman, I often find myself struggling to properly articulate the real purpose of modern Pig Empire fascism's eliminationist campaign against trans people and anyone else who doesn't fit into the heteronormative binary on which their fragile, but wholly malevolent and dominance based conception of masculinity rests.

On one hand it would be a gross misrepresentation to say that fascists, the political actors driving their movements, and the rich people paying for modern nazism don't really hate trans people and wish to eradicate the public existence of trans identities, because they absolutely do. On the other hand however it would also be a grave mistake to forget that these people foundationally "use the whole cow" and their pogrom against the existence of trans people is also intentionally acting as a type of skeleton key to justify and facilitate a larger eliminationist agenda that revolves around purging their political enemies, removing civil rights and buttressing support for important ideological planks in the fascist platform - like violent nationalism, colonial extraction, white supremacy, eugenicist ableism, patriarchal dominance and so forth.

Indeed, while the fascists certainly do hate trans people and any sort of gender nonconformity, their decision to make anti-trans hate the tip of the fascist spear in a war for control pretty much comes down to the fact that trans people aren't particular numerous, visible, or empowered in our society, which itself has been mainlining normalized transphobic ideology for decades. It's much easier to convince people to hate folks they don't know in everyday life, and the pre-existing marginalization of trans people ensures that these pogroms can be abstract and ideological in a way that greases the path for violent eliminationism more effectively. We are, to put it succinctly, an easy gateway target for fascist repression that in turn can be used to expand the sphere of fascist influence and allow for the elimination of much larger portions of the population down the line by repurposing the justifications for repressions of trans people in a very "first they came for" sort of way.

While all of this is difficult to explain to folks not directly in the fascist crosshairs at any given moment, it's not all that hard to see this principle in action when empowered fascists are able to exercise control over our laws and state structures. Which is why I was utterly unsurprised to learn that American fascists in governments all over the United States are now using their actualized anti-trans pogrom to push a eugenicist agenda designed to target the rights, protections, and threadbare support programs for disabled Americans pretty much anywhere they control the government.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/10/suit-over-gender-dysphoria-could-dismantle-disability-rights/

Suit Over Gender Dysphoria Could Dismantle New Disability Rules

"But gender dysphoria is just part of the 130-page federal rule. It also protects disabled parents’ rights in child welfare cases and prevents hospitals from using disability as a factor in determining who gets care in crisis situations, such as equipment shortages during a pandemic. It adds Long Covid to the list of conditions that may constitute a disability and strengthens protections against unnecessary institutionalization, requiring that care be offered in the least restrictive setting and, ideally, in a patient’s community.

Striking down the entire rule would have wide-reaching implications for all disabled Americans and other marginalized groups who rely on federal agencies’ interpretations of decades-old laws to enforce their rights, says Mia Ives-Rublee, senior director of the Center for American Progress’ Disability Justice Initiative. “They’re utilizing LGBTQ issues as a wedge,” Ives-Rublee says. “The attack is really about the regulatory process of the federal government, and this will impact almost every interaction that a disabled person has with the services and supports that they receive.”

As I've written many times in the past, fascism isn't ultimately a violent chud rush similar to what we say during the January 6th 2021 coup (or autogolpe if you prefer) attempt by Trump supporters, so much as a legalist doctrine enforced by empowered nazis and the state at their disposal; a sort of violent game of "Simon Says" with prison camps and pogroms. The use of politically activated anti-trans sentiment to eliminate protections for disabled people isn't a bug in the fascist program but rather an intended feature; and it certainly won't be the last legalist application of fascist ideology if this movement continues to accumulate power in our society. Cis people should of course oppose the fascist anti-trans pogrom in action because it's the right thing to do, but also because you can bet your bottom dollar that it won't, and isn't stopping after they drive trans people out of public life - you and yours may well be next.

As another trans commentator mentioned recently, I think the most telling sign that NHS England's now infamous "Cass Review" is a pile of ideologically motived, pseudoscientific trash is that anyone from outside the U.K. who has reviewed the findings and methodology of the study has identified it as a clearly political document that has no business being referenced in the context of medical care guidelines; including numerous medical bodies that deal with trans care (WPATH, USPATH), the Yale Law department, and even notable anti-trans media outlets like the New York Times. In fact, the only people who seem to regard the document as a credible review of youth trans care policies are anti-trans moral panic crusaders and the government of TERF Island (whether Conservative, or Labour.)

For more information on why that is, let's turn to a recent article in Scientific American by Cal Horton and Ruth Pierce:

https://web.archive.org/web/20240807184818/https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-u-k-s-cass-review-badly-fails-trans-children/

The U.K.’s Cass Review Badly Fails Trans Children

"While the Cass Review has been presented by the U.K. media, politicians and some prominent doctors as a triumph of objective inquiry, its most controversial recommendations are based on prejudice rather than evidence. Instead of helping young people, the review has caused enormous harm to children and their families, to democratic discourse and to wider principles of scientific endeavour. There is an urgent need to critically examine the actual context and findings of the report.

Since its 2020 inception, the Cass Review’s anti-trans credentials have been clear. It explicitly excluded trans people from key roles in research, analysis and oversight of the project, while sidelining most practitioners with experience in trans health care. The project centered and sympathized with anti-trans voices, including professionals who deny the very existence of trans children. Former U.K. minister for women and equalities Kemi Badenoch, who has a history of hostility toward trans people even though her role was to promote equality within the government, boasted that the Cass Review was only possible because of her active involvement.

The methodology underpinning the Cass Review has been extensively criticized by medical experts and academics from a range of disciplines. Criticism has focused especially on the effect of bias on the Cass approach, double standards in the interpretation of data, substandard scientific rigor, methodological flaws and a failure to properly substantiate claims. For example, although the existing literature reports a wide range of important benefits of social transition and no credible evidence of harm, the Cass Review cautions against it. The review also dismisses substantial documented benefits of adolescent medical transition as underevidenced while highlighting risks based on evidence of significantly worse quality. A warning about impaired brain maturation, for instance, cites a single, very short speculative paper that in turn rests on one experimental study with female mice. Meanwhile extensive qualitative data and clinical consensus are almost entirely ignored. These issues help explain why the Cass recommendations differ from previous academic reviews and expert guidance from major medical organisations such as the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) and the American Academy of Pediatrics."

Frankly, I don't know how much I really have to add here that isn't covered by the article itself. National Health Service England put a noted transphobe in charge of proving, against all medical evidence, that youth gender affirming care was dangerous and unwarranted, and she then manipulated evidence and used pseudoscientific arguments with no basis in reality, to reach the desired conclusion. The tragic part here is that this pile of bigoted bullshit masquerading as a scientific study is now being used to deny trans youth in the U.K. vital, even life-saving access to gender affirming care with no sign that a newly elected Labour government has any intention of stopping this travesty. In fact, NHS England has announced that they intend to conduct a similar review of *adult* gender affirming care on TERF Island; just in case you think trans people were exaggerating when we said this was all about conducting an anti-trans pogrom under the auspices of "protecting the children."

The plain truth here is that the Cass Review is a bigoted, winger fever dream full of ideological nonsense and false accusations about what gender affirming care for adolescents actually entails; but despite this reality being pointed out by literally everyone aside from motivated parties in the U.K., it's already destroying trans lives all across TERF Island.