Trans Panic, Anti-Gender Mobilisations, and the Far Right

In recent years scholarship has increasingly recognised mobilisations against trans people, especially as part of the broader phenomenon of anti-gender mobilisation. However, transphobia remains poorly integrated into the broader literature on anti-gender and far-right politics. This paper, as part of the edited volume on anti-trans politics, anti-gender mobilisations, and the far right, offers suggestions on how this integration can happen, with multidisciplinary approaches, and attentive to ongoing developments and historical roots, international dynamics, and national contexts. We centre this discussion around the concept of trans panic, and its entanglement with reactionary agendas. This notion of trans panic simultaneously highlights the episodic quality of current mobilisations, as well as the deep historical roots of racialised trans misogyny. Rather than being peripheral, trans panic connects to core issues of far-right projects, such as the naturalisation of gender hierarchies, patriarchal control over women’s bodies, and the stability of gender categories as such. At the same time trans panic connects key issues of the far right to mainstream conceptions of sex and gender, playing a key role in the radicalisation of mainstream political discourse, particularly against trans and gender diverse people.