Repressive moralism: World making and petty fascism in transgender politics

Journal article

Wagner, W. and Hayes, N. 2022. Repressive moralism: World making and petty fascism in transgender politics. Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-021-09670-4
AuthorsWagner, W. and Hayes, N.
AbstractThe past decade has seen a shift in the way that minorities exert their influence in society. Where in previous decades the emphasis was on winning the hearts and minds of the population at large, a recent strategy has been to ignore general public discourse and only to target specific influential bodies. In this paper we use the example of transgender issues to analyse the socio-psychological dimensions of this approach. We show how some groups promoting these issues eschew a wider social discourse and debate in the mass media, and how their strategy rests on a self-construction as victims of the hetero-normative society, with a concomitant appeal to moral rather than factual argumentation. This is combined with a programme of aggressive challenge to opponents through social media, and sometimes direct action, which effectively closes discussion on the topic. We conclude that these methods have much in common with the oppressive politics of fascist rule. [Abstract copyright: © 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.]
KeywordsVictimisation; Tolerance; Transgender; Culture wars; Moralism; Communication
Year2022
JournalIntegrative Psychological & Behavioral Science
ISSN1936-3567
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.1007/s12124-021-09670-4
Official URLhttps://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs12124-021-09670-4
Publication dates
Online06 Jan 2022
Publication process dates
Accepted21 Nov 2021
Deposited24 Jan 2022
Output statusPublished
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https://repository.canterbury.ac.uk/item/902zv/repressive-moralism-world-making-and-petty-fascism-in-transgender-politics

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