How Gender Crits’ “locker room panic” rhetoric greases the skids for a broader right-wing campaign against lesbians and gay men

So I wasted several minutes of my life today reading through a rambling “Gender Critical” essay om the Women’s Liberation Radio News website with the irritating title “Trans Rights are Men’s Rights; No Wonder they Clash with Feminists.”

The post comes courtesy of an Oregon Yoga teacher and homeschooling mom named Austin DeVille who says she “was politicized by radical feminism after her husband tried to become a woman.” It runs through many of the standard TERFy attacks on trans rights, including the “men’s rights” smear of the title. The idea there is that trans rights are men’s rights because trans women are really men; at no point does DeVille consider the inverse of that argument: that trans rights are women’s rights because trans men are, in TERFland, really women.

But for me the most revealing moment in the essay came when DeVille got around to making the TERF argument that trans women threaten cis women’s and children’s rights by using women’s bathrooms and locker rooms.

When I see little toddler girls changing in the locker room at the gym, it scares and enrages me to know that any man can wander in simply by pretending he thinks he’s a woman. Many men will take advantage of this arrangement just to gain access to these spaces to leer at children’s bodies. Even if they don’t act on their perversions, this is a violation and should always be considered a criminal offense. 

This is all a steaming pile of bullshit — it essentially assumes that all trans women are pedophiles, for one thing — but what strikes me about it is how easily this kind of rhetoric can be turned against lesbians and gay men. If the problem is people who “leer” at women and girls, wouldn’t lesbians be just as dangerous as faux (or real) trans women trying to catch a glimpse of female flesh?

Let’s make a few minor changes in that paragraph I just quoted and see how it looks.

When I see little toddler girls changing in the locker room at the gym, it scares and enrages me to know that any lesbian can wander in. Many lesbians will take advantage of this arrangement just to gain access to these spaces to leer at children’s bodies. Even if they don’t act on their perversions, this is a violation and should always be considered a criminal offense. 

You can just as easily change up this paragraph into a “warning” about predatory gay men.

When I hear about little toddler boys changing in the locker room at the gym, it scares and enrages me to know that any gay man can wander in. Many gay men will take advantage of this arrangement just to gain access to these spaces to leer at children’s bodies. Even if they don’t act on their perversions, this is a violation and should always be considered a criminal offense. 

That TERF logic can be so easily turned into rhetoric against lesbians and gay men shouldn’t surprise anyone. For all their claims of radicalism, TERFs are a reactionary force using reactionary rhetoric to attack a marginalized group using strategies pioneered by the far right. It’s no wonder that it’s been so easy for TERFs to find common ground with far-right transphobes and homophobes: they’re fighting some of the same battles.

It’s clear that for many of the far-rights bigots that have joined up with the TERFs the attack on trans people (and trans women in particular) is just the first stage in what they see as a broader cultural crusade against everyone under the LGBTQ+ umbrella. Come for the Bathroom Bills, stay for the end of gay marriage.

Lesbian TERFs will hardly be thrilled to see the arguments they once made against trans women being used against them. But that’s how karma works. it reminds me of this classic tweet:

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