The fascist right's war on trans existence is both opportunistic and ideological, and as such it is not bound by imaginary lines on a map. As this piece notes, the all-too-often bipartisan support of an anti-trans pogrom in both the US and Britain is having a distorting effect on Canadian politics as that country approaches its federal election.

https://xtramagazine.com/power/politics/right-obsesssion-trans-people-election-272578

We must be ready to counter the right’s obsession with trans people

"The 2025 Canadian federal election campaign is underway, and it arrives in a moment where it seems like conservative media and politicians just can’t get enough of trans people. They’re seemingly addicted to discourse about pronouns and bathroom access. They’re fixated on high school girls’ volleyball, gender markers on passports, puberty blocker prescriptions or even haircuts. They accuse their opponents of forcing “radical gender ideology” onto young people, as they strip away peoples’ rights to healthcare and self-identification.

The first part of this century saw progressive politicians campaign on expanding LGBTQ2S+ rights—see: Obama-era expansions to marriage equality or Canada-wide “X” gender markers—while their right-wing opponents largely remained silent. But the script has flipped. Now, Donald Trump has won an election on the back of campaign ads like “Kamala is for they/them” and turned questions about the very existence of trans people into a Day One executive order. We’ve seen bad science like the Cass Review in the U.K. guide public health policy in that country and beyond, and U.K. prime minister Keir Starmer campaign on restricting trans women from women’s spaces. Yes, the current anti-trans movement was born in the United Kingdom and United States, but make no mistake: it has found roots in Canada too.

Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre has embraced much of the anti-trans discourse from abroad. Last year, he spoke out against puberty blockers for young people and trans women in women’s spaces, arguing that “female spaces should be exclusively for females, not for ‘biological males.’” And this January, following Trump’s inauguration, he parroted the U.S. president’s stance about being aware of “only two genders.”

Reading this piece through the lens our present anti-trans context in America was difficult, because it reminded me of a time only years ago when the anti-trans pogrom and the fascist right's obsession with genitalia was still a marginal issue and our society, spurned on by an establishment that doesn't give a damn about trans people, missed a golden opportunity to stand up for trans rights and shove these weird nazi underpants police into the proverbial locker. Although I won't claim the Canadian ruling class cares any more for trans lives than the UK and US establishments do, it's very clear to me that the reason Canadian public figures in the fascist movement have to play a double game of admission and denial around the subject of trans rights is because the political establishment in Canada has at least made a stab at defending trans people's right to exist in society; with the exception of s few governments in fascist controlled areas. Indeed as recently as the fall of 2024, three "conservative" parties in Canada fought provincial elections on the back of anti-trans propaganda and all three of them lost.

This contrasts of course with the British and US experience, which has seen bipartisan support for anti-trans policies and the complete surrender of the mainstream "liberal" center on the issue of trans rights. This capitulation to fascist arguments about why trans people don't deserve the same medical and participatory rights as cis people do has in turn not only accelerated the anti-trans pogrom, but perversely allowed fascist political movements to win entire elections on the backs of drummed up moral panics about trans people. The Canadian example, so far, demonstrates that the only way forward that doesn't end in both trans eliminationist politics and victory for fascist political forces at the ballot box, is to fight back against the anti-trans narratives driving these moral panics. Which is probably a lesson we shouldn't have to learn from Canada in the US at least, because our fascists were losing elections fought on these subjects too until the liberal establishment decided to abandon trans people to our present fate.

Of course, I would strongly advise Canadians not to get too confident in their country's support for trans rights, precisely because of our American experience. If the rise of the anti-trans pogrom that helped put Trump in office did nothing else, it demonstrated that these freaks aren't going to just go away because they lost the debate on trans rights a few times; it takes constant vigilance and pushback to keep these nazis in the weirdo genital inspector box where they belong.

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