Honestly Examining Trans Issues from the Perspective of Free Speech and Liberty
Plus, the right suddenly doesn’t believe in freedom anymore?
Welcome back to my series on building the conservative case for trans acceptance, where I will look at how trans people and trans issues should be accommodated from the perspective of long-standing values.
Today, I want to examine trans issues from the perspective of liberty. Individual freedom has long been an important part of the social contract of the English-speaking West, going all the way back to the time of the Magna Carta. Therefore, any truly conservative take on any issue must seriously uphold individual freedom. The aspects of freedom most relevant to the debate over trans issues appear to be free speech, and medical freedom.
Talking about the interaction between free speech and trans issues, I guess the phenomenon of trans activists trying to shut down voices opposed to their demands would be the first thing that comes to mind for many people. As a supporter of free speech, I agree that this is totally unacceptable, whatever the reason. Allowing people to voice their genuine concerns is part of any sound process of reform, and initial proposals for change often have to be modified in some way to satisfy those having concerns, in order to build the broad consensus needed for reform to happen. This is a very legitimate and necessary process, even if it is not always a pleasant experience for all. However, I also need to remind everyone that the loudest activists don't represent all, or even most, trans people. Many of us sincerely want to participate in the aforementioned process, and don't want to circumvent it via cancel culture.
Which brings me to what I broadly call the 'trans skeptical' coalition, made up of the religious right, gender critical feminists and other people who are frustrated about trans activism one way or another. While some trans skeptics also want a free and fair debate, this clearly doesn't apply to their movement overall. The religious right is out to shape an anti-trans narrative, by painting trans people in general as unreasonable extremists, because they want to 'win' the culture wars rather than to come to a reasonable compromise. Gender critical feminism often seeks to not just defend the importance of biological sex, but rather to completely invalidate the concept of gender identity entirely, because of its own ideological obsessions. Republican and Conservative strategists and influencers also seek to inflame and polarize the trans debate, for the benefit of their own parties. When faced with these bad faith, anti-trans forces, the trans community understandably gets defensive, which makes it harder for moderates like myself to argue for embracing good faith debate within our community.
The 'trans skeptical' coalition also has its own problems with free speech. I've seen multiple instances where moderately trans skeptical journalists come up with their own proposals for compromise (which, in fact, often end up very similar to my own proposals), only for them to be slapped down by the extremists on their own side. These extremists have made it clear that they, too, are not interested in any compromise. Their behavior also signals a fundamental intolerance towards views that are different from their own, even if it is coming from their side. This behavior is actually widely accepted as normal on the trans skeptical side, and I think it puts peer pressure on the moderates to keep quiet about their own views on workable compromises. This makes it even more difficult to form a coalition of reasonable people in a middle, to truly talk about the concerns we each have, and to hammer out an acceptable compromise for all. The hardliners on the trans skeptical side only contribute to less productive dialogue, and more division and polarization, just like the most extreme trans activists. For the trans person who wants a more reasonable and constructive approach, both sides are just as unhelpful and frustrating.
Finally, I want to talk about the issue of medical freedom. It is a long-standing norm that adults, in consultation with their doctors, should reasonably be able to make decisions over their own health. I believe this is one of the most important pillars of our liberal social contract, one that we need to prioritize for protection from being eroded. Recently, a few Republican controlled states, mainly in the Southern US, have proposed, or even enacted, onerous restrictions on accessing trans health care, that apply to adults. There have also been proposals to ban medical transition up to age 25, which cannot be justified in a legal system where people are generally considered to be adults at 18, because it would create a dangerous precedent. Finally, there are also several well known cases of extremists who actually want to ban all medical transition for adults, who have been welcomed into the trans skeptical coalition. Even if their extremist position is unlikely to become policy, it still signals that trans skeptical circles are accepting of those with essentially fascist views on trans health care. In fact, trans skeptical circles are often more accepting of these extremists, who have been able to openly voice their most extreme views, than moderates who want to actively hammer out compromises. This also means that extremists would likely have more say in shaping trans skeptical policy stances, which I think is why we are starting to see unreasonable restrictions on adult transition being proposed in some places. This makes many trans people legitimately worried, which just leads to more polarization, more tribalism, and less constructive dialogue. If the trans skeptics aren't willing to police their own radical fringe, then I really don't think it is fair for them to criticize the trans community for failing to do the same, as if the problem only exists on one side.
It’s like the right suddenly doesn’t believe in freedom anymore?
Much has been said about the Harris-Walz campaign’s decision to make ‘freedom’ a central theme of their campaign. Some have described it as snatching the word ‘freedom’ from the Republicans, who have been using it extensively for many years. The Democrats’ use of freedom this year is unsurprising, given their focus on abortion and reproductive rights post-Dobbs. However, I think what many people failed to notice is that the Republicans have decided not to talk about freedom much this year. That the Democrats have decided to frame their campaign in terms of freedom doesn’t prevent Republicans from doing the same. There have always been competing progressive-leaning and conservative-leaning cases for freedom, and the Democrats running on a particular progressive case for freedom doesn’t prevent Republicans from running a conservative case for freedom to compete with it. Rather, it is the Republicans’ choice, and their choice alone, to de-emphasize freedom.
In fact, the absence of ‘freedom’ from the Republican campaign this year would be a stark departure from their usual offerings, even if the Democrats didn’t decide to emphasize freedom. Ronald Reagan, the most popular Republican president of the 20th century, built his entire brand on a particular conservative understanding of freedom. His most famous quote is ‘freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction’, and The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation has a ‘Ronald Reagan Freedom Award’, the most recent recipient being Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Even Bush-43, who actually restricted civil liberties as part of his War on Terror, nevertheless talked a lot about freedom. He called his 2003 Iraq War ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’, and his supporters invented the term ‘freedom fries’. Bush’s embrace of the word ‘freedom’ despite restricting civil liberties is also proof that one can indeed campaign on freedom even whilst limiting it, and voters aren’t likely to worry too much about the hypocrisy. Even Ron DeSantis made ‘freedom’ a big part of his 2022 re-election campaign, despite the controversies over Don’t Say Gay and the War on Disney showing that he’s not really that into freedom. The point here is, ‘freedom’ has become a reflexive branding exercise for many Republicans, and they are not afraid to use it even when they haven’t truly embraced it, and their base will still happily drink the kool-aid. This of course also means that, despite the post-Dobbs abortion bans in many states, there really is nothing to prevent the Republicans from running hard on ‘freedom’ this time. Dobbs or no Dobbs, whatever the Democrats do, nothing can prevent the Republicans from running yet another freedom-centered campaign.
I think the Republicans not running on freedom this year has to be seen in the context of the recent evolution of the right, more broadly speaking. When Trump was last in the White House, the right was still all about freedom. In particular, given the rise of left-wing cancel culture during that period, right-aligned influencers talked a lot about the lack of free speech on the left, particularly on college campuses. Religious freedom was another one of their favorite talking points, especially in the context of how personal religious belief could interact with gay marriage. When talking about these things, the right would often say that they are just standing up for classical liberal values. Yet around 2021, there was an abrupt change. One by one, right-wing influencers began blaming liberalism, including classical liberalism, for the rise of the ‘woke’ left. They painted a picture where classical liberal values would inevitably lead to the ‘woke’ left, despite it not making sense at all, and going against everything they were saying just a year or two ago. One by one, they began to embrace an authoritarian, conformist version of nationalist ideology, often tinged with very reactionary religious views, the kind that could have come straight out of The Handmaid’s Tale. Of course, they stopped talking about themselves as classical liberals or libertarians completely. In short, a major section of the right was losing its belief in freedom, and doing so very, very quickly. I mean, even a simple reform like gay marriage took about 20 years for the majority of the public to accept. The point is, change naturally comes slowly. Yet a significant number of people on the right were giving up their former commitments to freedom almost overnight, and doing so in a way that frankly looks like it was coordinated. It seems that Reagan was way too optimistic about freedom always being just a generation away from extinction: in some circles, it can go extinct within a year or two. Something very significant, and potentially very horrible, was happening here, I thought.
Trying to dig deeper led me down the rabbit hole of the authoritarian-populist New Right, and their dangerous ideas. It was sort of familiar for me. After all, I had been here before, just a few years earlier, when my frustrations with left-wing cancel culture led me to discover the interlocking network of thinkers and ideas around postmodernism and critical theory. While I had known about the work of Curtis Yarvin and the neoreaction movement for about a decade, I was surprised to know that it has been becoming really influential in some circles. In particular, I was surprised, and indeed terrified, that a Republican candidate running for US Senate that year, by the name of JD Vance, was publicly talking about Yarvin’s ideas in a positive way. (Little did I know that he would go on to become Trump’s VP pick!) I was also surprised to learn about the ‘postliberal right’, a collection of right-wing thinkers who really, really hated all of classical liberalism, all the way back to John Locke, and actively wished for ‘regime change’ in the West. And then, there were the New Right activists who liked berating Republicans who ‘still worshipped Reagan’ for ‘not knowing what time it is’. These people clearly don’t believe in freedom, and they want to take over the right, and then the whole West. And worryingly, Trump himself seems to be listening more and more, as evidenced by his decision to choose JD Vance as his running mate, as well as the general de-emphasis on freedom in his campaign this year.
In politics, almost nothing is accidental, and even the most subtle of shifts could be very important.
TaraElla is a singer-songwriter and author, who is the author of the Moral Libertarian Manifesto and the Moral Libertarian book series, which argue that liberalism is still the most moral and effective value system for the West.
She is also the author of The Trans Case Against Queer Theory and The TaraElla Story (her autobiography).