Spinning a Conspiracist Web to Support Anti-Trans Protests
CW: transphobic imagery and rhetoric
“WOKE PARENTS”, screams the top line of the meme above an angry woman’s face, “wont [sic] spank their kids but will cut their nuts off.” The meme is just one of a flood posted to the Facebook group, 1 Million March for Children, a hub for organizing the series of anti-trans protests that took place across Canada on September 20. Another set of protests is currently being planned for October 21.
Memes like this aren’t simply vulgar jokes about political foes. For Million Marchers they highlight the urgent stakes of “tak[ing] a stand to protect children from gender ideology”: preventing life-altering genital surgeries from being performed on children fallen prey to the Queer Agenda.
Canada has seen a recent explosion in transphobic activism, much of it centred around the notion that children are surgically transitioning in record numbers. Federal Conservatives appear eager to fan the culture war flames, passing multiple anti-trans motions at their recent convention, most notably one to ban “medicinal or surgical interventions” for transgender people under 18. Delegate Scott Anderson presented the motion in stark terms, decrying cruel parents who would “genitally mutilate their child”; his motion is surely a common sense measure, since “it’s not way out there to make such a move illegal until the child reaches the age of adulthood”.
It seems hard to disagree, except the entire premise is based on a lie. A grotesque lie that is nonetheless easy to disprove. So easy in fact, that the only way to sell this lie is with the propagandist’s favorite tool: constant repetition, drowning out the facts with a steady stream of emotionally manipulative lies at top volume.
So where’s the lie? Quite simply, genital surgeries for the purposes of gender transition are not performed under age 18. Canada follows the Standards of Care published by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, which unambiguously state that “genital surgery should not be carried out until patients reach the legal age of majority”.
Indeed, despite the recent flurry of published commentary lamenting the speed at which transgender children are being “rushed” into irreversible genital procedures, none has produced a single shred of evidence for this phenomenon. Because it’s a lie.
But why is it such a compelling lie? Its success is grounded in our evolutionary drive to protect children from harm, a feeling provoked and then weaponized by transphobic “groomer” narratives. It’s long been observed that the most enduring misinformation is that which feels true or has a core grain of truth, even if overall it’s factually incorrect. The inherent vulnerability of children to all manner of harm is undeniable, something most adults feel on a deep level.
An example is the recent movie Sound of Freedom, which depicts child sex trafficking as a cinematic world where brawny heroes dramatically rescue young victims. Its central idea is based on a heart-rending truth: children are indeed sexually exploited the world over, yet the reality is far more banal than the Hollywood-ized, QAnon-influenced version onscreen. Still, many are drawn to the fantasy of rescuing children, and that emotional resonance can overwhelm the truth.
The lies spun by the anti-trans protesters under the hashtags #HandsOffOurKids and #LeaveOurKidsAlone are thematic cousins of the popular QAnon hashtag, #SaveOurChildren, which itself hearkens back to a centuries-old lie. The QAnon fever dream of children being harvested by elites for their adrenochrome is the modern version of the medieval European lie accusing Jews of murdering Christian children to extract their blood. Entwined within these lies is another one framing gender transition as a shadowy Jewish conspiracy to trigger mass infertility and white genocide.
So persuasive are these interwoven lies that they trump apparent facts. This is why protestors oppose the fictional genital surgeries that aren’t happening instead of the actual genital surgeries performed on (often very young) intersex children. Indeed the activism of intersex adults who call for child bodily autonomy seems totally unknown to the Million Marchers. Reality would distort the lie.
Using the human drive to protect our young is the well-trod path of another type of propagandist: the anti-vaccine activist. Similar themes emerge about child exploitation by a cabal of bad actors – this time not extracting but rather injecting so as to sicken and entrap within Big Pharma’s malicious game.
Anti-trans and anti-vaccine messaging overlaps, as in memes claiming that vaccines are “transing kids” or are a plot to trigger the Great Replacement through infertility. Robert F Kennedy Jr, founder of the aptly named anti-vaccine organization Children’s Health Defense, recently entered the political fray around gender, suggesting (without evidence) that environmental pollution causes gender dysphoria in children.
A lie is most compelling when it’s supported by a network of other lies, just as each thread of a spider’s web is reinforced by the branching collective. As a family physician I have seen the impact of rising anti-vaccine activism as well as transphobic sentiment in my practice. Patients seem more inclined towards suspicion of vaccines, and they also seem more comfortable making transphobic remarks (sometimes accompanied by Daily Mail articles printed for my edification).
After a few years of fairly widespread COVID conspiracism, it has become less far-fetched to imagine that any particular medical treatment (especially a controversial one) is a plot to “groom” and poison children. And as this web of lies about gender transition spreads across the country, it ensnares the entire transgender community, the vast majority of whom are adults and already disenfranchised in our health care system. The only escape is to tear apart the lies one by one and face the rise of anti-trans bigotry armed with truth and compassionate humanity.
