Journal Club: Transphobes Just Want a Strong Leader
A 2024 study takes a look at the link between anti-trans beliefs and desires for authoritarianism.
by Veronica Esposito
Authoritarian politics has experienced a resurgence in places like Russia, Hungary, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States, which has gone hand in hand with harsh hate campaigns against transgender people. The UK in particular once led the way in support of trans rights, as its Gender Recognition Act easily sailed through Parliament in 2004, but now the nation has curtailed the rights of trans people like few other nations, ending trans inclusion in sex-designated areas and eliminating all transition care for minors.
Across the same time span, right-wing politics in the UK have flourished, with the advent of Brexit and the rise of the Reform Party to be the nation’s third-largest, with 14.3% of the vote in 2024. Might these phenomena be linked?
In their paper, “The Influence of Authoritarian Beliefs on Support for Transgender Rights in the UK,” researchers Anna McLean and Paul B. Stretesky offer empirical evidence that authoritarian politics and anti-trans hate do indeed go hand in hand. The research joins a growing body of evidence linking authoritarian views and anti-trans politics.
McLean and Stretesky found that authoritarian views were very strongly correlated with anti-trans sentiments, making UK citizens prey to anti-trans campaigns waged by powerful celebrities, non-governmental organizations, and even liberal and conservative governments. Chillingly, McLean and Stretesky also register that across 24 Western nations, a full 31% of the population espouses authoritarian beliefs, showing a rising danger for trans people across much of the world.
Interestingly, this research indicates that, while support for the rights of LGB individuals and racial minorities is associated with an increase in support for trans people, support for women’s rights is actually associated with a decrease in support for trans people. The authors speculate that this may be due to hateful campaigns that have painted trans women as taking rights away from their cisgender sisters.
How exactly did McLean & Stretesky reach their conclusions? The researchers surveyed 690 UK citizens, split evenly between male and female and with an average age of 39 (roughly equivalent to the UK 2022 census). To gauge participants' political views, they used a widely accepted test of right-wing authoritarianism created by researcher Bob Altemeyer in 1996. The measure asks respondents to rate their level of agreement with statements such as “There is absolutely nothing wrong with nudist camps,” “Gays and lesbians are just as healthy and moral as anybody else,” and “What our country really needs is a strong, determined leader who will crush evil, and take us back to our true path.”
McLean & Stretesky then crafted their own questionnaire regarding beliefs about trans people by drawing from recent surveys from major polling firms such as YouGov, as well as statements made on Twitter and Facebook by leading anti-trans activists. They controlled for seven variables that might have led to false results—among these were trust levels in politicians, overall support for the rights of oppressed groups, and various demographic characteristics of those surveyed.
This paper joins a 2017 research paper by Patrick R. Miller and colleagues that surveyed 1,020 Americans on their beliefs about authoritarianism and trans people. Miller et al. found reasonably low opposition to multiple cornerstones of trans rights, such as having the proper sex on IDs (28.6% opposed), military service (24.6%), legal protections (11%), and insurance coverage of gender-affirming care (37%). These findings make the paper a fascinating time capsule of general support for trans people at a time before the anti-trans moral panic had spread widely throughout U.S. society and government.
As with McLean & Stretesky, Miller et al. found a strong correlation between authoritarianism and anti-trans sentiments. Interestingly, the paper also concluded that there was greater support for trans legal equality than for “body-centric” aspects of trans rights—that is, the autonomy to represent gender with one’s body and to utilize medical care to alter it. The authors theorized that authoritarian sentiments and feelings of “disgust” were leveraged to reduce support for bodily autonomy for trans people.
Because of this, they conclude that advocates for trans rights should not shy away from discussing the realities of trans bodies:
For some in the general public, it may be considered taboo or offensive to discuss the bodily aspects of transgender individuals, especially when it involves transgender persons who alter their bodies via hormone therapy or surgery. But our study suggests that, regardless of what some might prefer, these bodily considerations are likely in the minds of average Americans as they think about transgender rights—and their comfort with the body politics of transgender persons will shape their support for transgender rights through psychological mechanisms such as disgust sensitivity and authoritarianism.
These studies demonstrate that support for trans rights must be grounded in a strongly anti-authoritarian politics and a fearless readiness to speak frankly about trans people. Unfortunately, in the U.S. the Democratic Party has shown little willingness to do either, only tepidly engaging President Trump on his blatant attempt to consolidate power and rarely voicing any real support for the bodily autonomy of trans people. This follows other regimes with authoritarian ambitions, such as that of Viktor Orbán in Hungary, which under his rule has amended that nation’s constitution to ban public events by LGBTQ+ communities.
The research also indicates that supporters of trans people should attack the myth that the rights of women and trans people are opposed. This should not be a tall order: there are indications that anti-trans sports laws are impeding cis women’s participation in sports, and cis and trans women are both harmed by authoritarian attempts to control women’s bodies. It remains to be seen if liberal politicians in the U.S will come out in support of trans rights or, as in the UK, drop farther into the anti-trans authoritarian rabbit hole.
Veronica Esposito (she/her) is a writer and therapist based in the Bay Area. She writes regularly for The Guardian, Xtra Magazine, and KQED, the NPR member station for Northern California, on the arts, mental health, and LGBTQ+ issues.