Everyone knows that the political right is full of transphobes and climate deniers, but are you aware that Republicans are using transphobia as a tool to obstruct climate action? The genocidal campaign against trans rights ignores huge bodies of scientific evidence, like climate denial, and actively serves to turn people against other science-backed facts, like climate change.
Harmful transphobic disinformation has been debunked time and time again, and there are dozens of major medical groups that “recognize the medical necessity of treatments for gender dysphoria and endorse such treatments.” Furthermore, research has shown that denying trans people gender affirming healthcare has such costly, negative health outcomes that insurance companies often cover trans healthcare simply to save money.
In his landmark ruling this week, U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle blocked Florida’s ban on gender affirming care for minors and stated clearly that “Florida’s decision to ban the treatment is not rationally related to a legitimate state interest.” Hinkle reviewed the widely accepted treatments for gender dysphoria and determined that, “at least as shown by this record, not a single reputable medical association has taken a contrary position.”
Despite this overwhelming body of evidence, right-wing disinformers, from Twitter trolls and owners to Tucker Carlson to Republican lawmakers, all spread hateful falsehoods about trans people in the same science-denying way they lie about climate issues.
These transphobic lies have serious consequences: The American Civil Liberties Union has identified 118 anti-trans health care bills across the US among a slew of other proposed anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in the 2023 legislative session alone. Republicans have silenced transgender Montana Democratic State Representative Zooey Zephyr and likely contributed to an increase in hate crimes against trans people.
So, right-wing disinformers reject science when it comes to both climate change and trans rights, but it’s also important to remember that these are not simply parallel issues: Right-wing disinformers deliberately use transphobia to undermine climate action.
This April, right-wing disinformation group The Heritage Foundation released an article filled with projection that distracts from the climate crisis by accusing Democrats of denying the science on trans issues, a standard rhetorical troll. “Forget climate change,” the article declares. “These Democrats are the true science deniers—deniers of biological reality, genetics, XX/XY chromosome science…”
The conservative campaign against environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investment considerations has also clearly used transphobia to obstruct climate solutions. At this week’s House Oversight Committee hearing on ESG, Rep. Becca Balint (D-VT) shot down transphobia and stated, “It feels like every single hearing that I am in, whether it is in Oversight or whether it is in Budget or whether it is in a subcommittee, the witnesses find a way to bring in trans children into whatever conversation we’re trying to have here.”
And that's probably true, because right-wingers don’t actually have any factual arguments for why companies should be prohibited from considering environmental, social, and governance-related financial risks, they pivot to hateful and false claims about trans kids.
It's hard to overstate how saturated conservative, fossil-fueled media is with anti-trans content. There are multiple transphobic pieces of content every day from every single website that also runs climate disinformation as "news."
So while we usually talk about a new topic every day, there is so much more to discuss that we’ll pick this topic back up on Monday. We’ll continue by exploring the rhetorical tactics that right-wingers use to disseminate false claims about both climate change and trans rights (and immigration and racism and sexism and unions…)
