The Far Right has used Trans people to whip up support through mechanisms of bigotry and anger. This is obvious - however it seems that the use of Trans people as a scapegoat and as a support winning tool is on the out. Still being used - but less.
So I did a quick check - went on the Fox News website, my favorite propaganda machine, and looked for articles that explicitly referred to trans people in the headline.
Zero from a quick scroll. So I clicked on some articles, I found some great headlines and articles for racism as well as lots referencing migration - I then found an article for trans issues in the opinion section of the website.
Not that a 20 minute flick through a website counts for much. But it did serve to back up a hunch I have about how the far right is moving its propaganda around and seemingly its plan, to focus on the Economy and Immigration.
I also noticed this with Lemmy, where every Trump comment or plan is dumped in various communities and pushed to the front page - arguably it makes a pretty good log for Trumps activities. I made this post after seeing a comment about Trans issues from Trump. The first one in a short while.
Obviously, I’m not saying that trans people aren’t high on the fascist scapegoat list, they very much still are.
It’s also clear that I haven’t done anywhere near enough watching of Fox news, and Elon Musk to conclusively say this. So I want peoples opinions - at this point I’m curious as to how other people feel the media is focusing on transgender people. If I get enough comments I’ll attempt to put together a more thorough post, as they will give me a better starting point.
Ok that is a great link actually, so the agenda against trans people continues obviously, Although noticably the rate of change in the year to year trans bills has decreased significantly, jumping from 75 to 185 from 2022 to 2023 but staying at about 185 for 2024. That is probably what gave me the hunch, I was expecting this year to be twice as bad as last year and in fact it’s only slightly worse.
That would indicate a loss in momentum for the transphobic policy line, although This could just be a point of inflection like in 2022 and that will see another surge in 2025.
But yeah overall that lines up with what I thought was going on, although I was more optimistic than the data shows, thinking that transphobic policy had gone down this year.
Is 185 not already high enough? It seems odd to characterize “anti trans (healthcare) bills stayed essentially stagnant at ~185” as anything other than “that’s a shit ton of discriminatory legislature aimed squarely at trans people’s access to healthcare.” Also, unless I’m reading that website very wrong, that’s only healthcare bills. The total targeting trans people is in the 600s for 2023 and 2024, with a 9% increase from 2023 to 2024.
Trump made headlines just yesterday for fresh comments promising anti trans executive actions on day one of his presidency. I truly can’t figure out the logic behind this post. Anti trans legislation isn’t going anywhere, it’s increasing actually, and no one should think that Republicans are focusing any less on trans people today than they were a week or a month or a year ago.
I’m all for seeking sources of joy and optimism, but ignorance to reality isn’t a viable path forward.
