Fox News Demonstrates Common Anti-LGBTQ+ Propaganda Technique
Transference of animus
If you have read George Orwell’s 1984, you may recall that the Party’s propaganda ministry used a common thought-control technique: teaching people to conflate two distinct concepts to undermine their ability to distinguish between them. This technique served various propaganda functions. One of these was what we may call transference of animus, the process of associating a target concept with the negative perceptions already attached to a separate concept involved in the conflation.
A simplistic example of the technique might be always to use the word “bad” whenever the word “rich” is used, supposing we want to adjust the connotations of the target word “rich”. Thus, we would never simply refer to a “rich person”, but only to a “rich, bad person”. By dint of repetition, both the terms and their meanings come to be inextricably linked in the speakers’ and the hearers’ minds.
This technique is widely used in the present day, both by governments and private actors. In this essay, I will look at one way it is used in anti-LGBTQ+ propaganda, in reference to the phrases “sexualization of children”, “gender ideology indoctrination”, “normalization of LGBT lifestyles”, and variations of the same.
By way of background, it is a common talking point of the anti-LGBTQ+ political right to object to inclusion of LGBTQ+ topics, or even passing reference to their existence, in early childhood formal education, on the grounds that such inclusion will “sexualize children”, “normalize LGBT lifestyles”, and indoctrinate children in “gender ideology”. Florida’s recently passed “Don’t Say Gay” bill provides a typical example of the general theme.
An important component in the effectiveness of this message is its success in associating “gender ideology” and “LGBT lifestyles” — already perverted caricatures of the realities to which they are meant to refer — with the widely and justly deplored phenomenon of “sexualization of children”.
As is so often the case, an opinion from Fox News will provide a sufficient example of journalistic sleight-of-hand. I will quote some relevant bits, but you can read the whole thing here[i] if you’re in need of an emetic.
The opinion piece starts off in an alarmed and salacious tone:
“How old were you when you had sexual intercourse for the first time?” “Have you ever had oral sex?” “The last time you had sexual intercourse, did you or your partner use a condom?”
No, these are not inquiries traded by adults pondering the safety of a consensual encounter. All these are questions being asked of 12-year-olds by their public school district. You read that right.
The shock effect of this opening sets both the topic and the tone of the entire essay. It’s about sex. It’s about sexual activity. It’s about inappropriate sexual activity. It’s about the invasive interrogation of children about intimate sexual experiences, at an age when they may not even understand what is being asked.
The authors very soon admit that the survey in question was “supposedly anonymous, and parents have the right to opt their children out,” but the groundwork has been laid. They go on to elaborate the sexual theme in more explicit terms, bringing in concepts such as obscenity, pedophilia, and violence:
[…] local mother Stacy Langton drew attention at a school board meeting to books in her son’s public school library that describe, in obscene detail, “pedophilia… fellatio, sex toys, masturbation, and violent nudity.”
By now, the reader’s mind is predisposed to disgust, horror, and moral indignation on behalf of “the children”. Everything is ready for the ol’ switcheroo:
Unfortunately, the scandal of sexualized education extends nationwide, far beyond the suburbs of Northern Virginia. In September, a Texas mother found a book in her child’s middle school library depicting anal sex. In North Carolina, sixth graders studied an image featuring a sexually explicit act for an art class assignment. A Vermont elementary school disseminated a survey asking fifth graders about their sexual history and “gender identity.” Indiana parents expressed outrage at library books for very young children such as Sparkle Boy, which features a cross-dressing toddler, and “Call Me Max,” in which a kindergarten girl asks a teacher to refer to her by a male name.
Notice how the authors artfully segue from anal sex through cross-dressing toddlers to transgender kindergarteners without missing a beat. And just like that, trans kids are associated in the reader’s mind with anal sex, violence, and pedophilia.[ii]
After a brief digression to explain that this deplorable state of affairs is the outcome of a nefarious project that began as early as 1912, the authors make sure to nail down the main point. So enthralled are they by their own narrative, they can’t help stretching the Gender Unicorn a bit beyond its reality:
Starting as early as preschool and kindergarten, kids are being exposed to “the Gender Unicorn,” a purple cartoon image featuring hearts and rainbows resembling the PBS dinosaur Barney. Rather than teaching letters and numbers, however, this unicorn directs children to self-select their gender identity and sexual preference.
The sexualization of children — training children to sexually objectify themselves, before they even have a concept of sexuality that goes beyond basic plumbing — is a real issue, one that should be of concern to anyone who cares about children. But normalization of LGBTQ+ life experience in schools is an entirely different topic. Whether through ignorance, misguided self-interest, or simple malice, reactionary parties (mostly but not exclusively on the political right) have managed to craft a seductive narrative that conflates normal, essentially benign variations in human experience with vicious exploitation of children.
The hypocrisy of the effort is even more obvious than its methods. Insofar as normalization of LGBTQ+ experience in schools amounts to sexualization of children, children are already being sexualized from birth, even in the absence of such normalization. As soon as they are out of the womb, children begin to be indoctrinated in cis-hetero roles and expectations. As soon as they get to school, the indoctrination intensifies, coming not just from their teachers but from their peers. Their entire experience is delineated and prescribed in sexual terms. This fact is sufficiently obvious as to require no demonstration.
In summary, LGBTQ+ antagonists work to fan the flames of hatred using a plausible but well-understood propaganda technique. This is not the only technique in their repertory, by any means. But it does figure prominently in current anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric.
[i] Terry Schilling, Mary Vought. 2021. “A Message from Parents to Schools — Stop Sexualizing our Kids.” Fox News Channel Opinion. November 23. https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/parents-schools-sexualizing-kids.
[ii] Although the most explicit target of this opinion piece is transgender experience, this is probably only because it is currently perceived as more vulnerable than gay, lesbian, and bisexual experience. The same type of argument is still routinely explicitly deployed in respect to sexual orientation in other venues.
