Trans Justice Fights Trans Moral Panic

Abstract

Between the summer of 2019 and the summer of 2021, a violent discussion about trans rights took place in Spain. This paper argues that the discussion can be understood as an instance of ‘social problems work’, more specifically as part of a moral crusade or a moral panic episode. Implicit in this is the idea that there has been an over-reaction to trans recognition and trans equality laws, publicly presented as a major social problem. This paper also provides legal arguments against the fears voiced in the discussion, by summarizing relevant ECHR case-law that agrees with an alternative feminist account of trans rights that de-pathologizes gender-identity self-determination. The paper thus suggests that a ‘cultural war’ over gender identity has been ignited and has yet to be fully fought and won.

Trans Women and/in Sport: Exploring Sport Feminisms to Understand Exclusions

“…We are facing what can be described as a backlash (Hines, 2020;Itani, 2020;Vincent, Erikainen & Pearce, 2020) against trans women in/and sport. This backlash has been explained through moral panic (Mestre, 2022;Miles, 2022;Pepin-Neff & Cohen 2021) as a response to progressing trans rights, inclusion and equality. The current sport policy shifts reflect yet another phase of control and exclusion of bodies that do not live up to white western-constructed ontological and epistemological ideas of sporting womanhood.…”

“…The debates have caught the lens of the media; mediated often-hostile coverage of single-sex services and single-sex spaces are now familiar in the UK and elsewhere with writers referring to transgender moral panics to explain the backlash (Mestre, 2022;Miles, 2022;Pepin-Neff & Cohen 2021). This socio-cultural populist context, including a move to the far right (Butler, 2021), has been viewed as influencing antitrans policy and practice within sport (Hines, 2020;Itani, 2020).…”