Refusal, effacement, and non-belonging: exploring the affective work of anti-trans/gender language games

Anti-trans/gender1 discourses have attained a significant presence in social and political life. Transphobia and transantagonism are perpetuated through explicit and implicit utterances, encoded altruistically as concerns for women’s rights, children’s safety, LGB rights – Reality itself. This paper offers a critical analysis of the language games (Lyotard; Wittgenstein) of these anti-trans/gender positions, geopolitically specific to the US, UK, and Australia. While not employing epithets or expletives, they are examples of verbal aggression, linguistic violence, and, on occasion, hate speech. The rhetorical strategies of anti-trans/gender language games are regularly re-appropriated, and via affective drift (Hsu), felt intensities shape the assumptions and actions of diverse, even ideologically opposing groups, rallying a shared hostility towards trans/gender that is enacted through discriminatory law, legislation, and policy.