On Michael Knowles, “transgenderism” and genocidal rhetoric

If someone were to call for Judaism to be “eradicated from public life entirely,” would you doubt their genocidal intent?

Michael Knowles of the Daily Wire made an inflammatory speech at CPAC yesterday, calling outright for “transgenderism [to] be eradicated from public life entirely.” When appalled trans activists and others called his thinking genocidal, he denied it. When Rolling Stone ran a headline saying he had “Call[ed] for Transgender People to Be ‘Eradicated,’” he threatened to sue for libel–and the publication changed its headline to “CPAC Speaker Calls for Transgenderism to Be ‘Eradicated.’” See, because he didn’t say “transgender people,” he said “transgenderism.”

Is Knowles doing anything more than playing word games? He certainly has played with words in the past. When earlier this week, he declared on his podcast that we need a “ban [on] transgenderism entirely,” he told critics that this wasn’t a call for genocide because trans people “are not a legitimate category of being.” Of course, if trans people aren’t a thing, it’s not clear why one would need to “ban … transgenderism” in the first place.

Here’s what Knowles’ said at CPAC, in which he redefined “transgenderism” as an assault on “the rights and customs of many people” and portrayed the eradication of “transgenderism” as a defensive move. “There can be no middle way in dealing with transgenderism. It can be all or nothing,” he declared.

If transgenderism is true, if men really can become women, then it’s true for everybody of all ages. If transgenderism is false — as it is — if men really can’t become women — as they cannot — then it’s false for everybody too. And if it’s false, then we should not indulge it, especially when that indulgence requires taking away the rights and customs of many people. It if is false, then for the good of society — and especially for the good of the poor people who have fallen prey to this confusion — then transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely — the whole preposterous ideology, at every level.

Now, Knowles may not have called explicitly for trans people to be rounded up and put in death camps, but his intent is clear: to make it impossible for trans people to live as trans people in public life.

Again, let’s look at the example of Judaism. If one were to eradicate Judaism from public life entirely (without rounding up and killing Jews), this would mean dismantling every Jewish institution or organization, banning the Torah, making Bar and Bat Mitzvahs illegal, converting every Jewish person to another religion (or no religion) against their will. This would be an enormous and barbaric act of cultural violence, a cultural genocide.

Similarly, to eradicate transgenderism from public life entirely (without rounding up and killing trans people) would mean dismantling every trans institution or organization, destroying every gender clinic, banning books and films, and TV shows, and forcibly “detransitioning” every trans person by denying them gender-affirming treatment, taking away their hormones, and forcing them to wear the clothes of the gender they were assigned at birth–except perhaps behind closed doors at home, with the blinds drawn so no one could see. Again, this would be an enormous and barbaric act of cultural violence, a cultural genocide.

It could also mean mass death if trans people committed suicide rather than be forced to live life as someone they’re not.

So even if Knowles hasn’t literally called for trans people to be put in death camps, his rhetoric certainly qualifies as genocidal.

It would be one thing if Knowles were an isolated example on the fringes of politics. But his rhetoric has been seconded by others on the right. And more to the point, trans eliminationism is rapidly becoming part of the Republican party’s unofficial platform, with hundreds of bills introduced in states nationwide limiting LGBTQ+ rights and, in many cases, making it more difficult for trans people to simply exist in public. There are bills banning gender-affirming treatment–for adults, not just for children. There are bills banning drag that are worded so loosely that they could make it illegal for a trans person to sing a song in a park. Bathroom bills are making it a sex offense for trans people to be in a public bathroom if a child is present–effectively making it impossible for trans people to use the correct bathrooms at all. Books so much as mentioning LGBTQ+ people, are being removed from school libraries. And so on and so on.

Michael Knowles has simply made the ultimate goal of all these bills more explicit.

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