I am posting this on the International Trans Day of Visibility 2023 in love and solidarity with all people resisting the violences of gender, often with their own lives. May we do all we can to fight to protect them.
Political transphobia has been on stark display over the last two weeks in Australia and Aotearoa (New Zealand) as professional anti-transgender hate speakers have been holding events in both countries. In Melbourne, the British anti-trans agitator, Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull (aka Posie Parker) whose trip to the region was funded by the right-wing organisation, CPAC whose recent convention in the US saw anti-trans rhetoric on full display, stood with neo-Nazis on the steps of the parliament.
In Week 3 of The Racial State, we looked at the operational structures of whiteness and white supremacy. In Week 4, the theme was race, gender and sexuality. We looked at the intersections between gender as a colonial construct, certain forms of white feminism, and white supremacy as an ideology and political movement.
The author Maddison Stoff wrote an article for Overland Journal on the links between gender essentialism and white supremacist ideology in light of recent events. I invited Madison to talk about her article as a way both to situate these events in the overall context of political transphobia in Australia, and to further elaborate on the ideas in her superb article.