Did you know that the world-famous existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre wrote about transphobes, identifying the bad-faith way transphobes attack trans people? Did you know that he even identified the derangement of personality upon which transphobia is sustained?
Well, here it is:
Transphobic Rhetoric
Never believe that transphobes are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since we believe in words.
Transphobes have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert.
If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past. It is not that they are afraid of being convinced. They fear only to appear ridiculous or to prejudice by their embarrassment their hope of winning over some third person to their side.
If then, as we have been able to observe, the transphobe is impervious to reason and to experience, it is not because of their conviction is strong. Rather, their conviction is strong because they have chosen first of all to be impervious.
Transphobic Aggression
Transphobes have chosen also to be terrifying. People are afraid of irritating them. No one knows to what lengths the aberrations of their passion will carry them–but they know, for this passion is not provoked by something external. They have it well in hand; it is obedient to their will: now they let go the reins and now they pull back. Transphobes are not afraid of themselves, but they see in the eyes of others a disquieting image-their own-and they make their words and gestures conform to it.
Having this external model, he is under no necessity to look for his personality within himself. He has chosen to find his being entirely outside himself, never to look within, to be nothing save the fear he inspires in others. What he flees even more than Reason is his intimate awareness of himself. But someone will object: What if he is like that only with regard to trans people? What if he otherwise conducts himself with good sense? I reply that that is impossible.
Transphobic Self
The transphobe has no illusions about what they are. They consider themselves to be average and basically mediocre when it comes to gender. But you must not think that the transphobe is ashamed of their mediocrity; they take pleasure in it; I will even assert that they have chosen it. He has made himself a transphobe because that is something one cannot be alone. The phrase, “I hate trannies,” is one that is uttered in chorus; in pronouncing it, one attaches himself to a tradition and to a community-the tradition and community of the mediocre.We must remember that a man is not necessarily humble or even modest because he has consented to mediocrity. On the contrary, there is a passionate pride among the mediocre, and transphobic activism is an attempt to give value to mediocrity as such, to create an elite of the ordinary. To the transphobe, the interrogation of sex and gender is transgenderism; he can thus disdain it in all tranquility, like all the other virtues which trans people possess.
The True Man and Woman, rooted in state and country, borne along by tradition, guided by tried customs, does not need intelligence. Their virtue depends upon the assimilation of the qualities which the work of a numerous generations has lent to the gendered objects which surround him or her; it depends on inherited gendered being, not in gender one makes. The transphobe has a fundamental incomprehension of the various forms of modern gendered being. These are abstractions, entities of reason related to the abstract intelligence of transgenderism.
Transphobic Rubes
Thus I would call transphobia a poor man’s snobbery. And in fact it would appear that the rich for the most part exploit this passion for their own uses rather than abandon themselves to it –they have better things to do. It is propagated mainly among the middle classes, because they possess neither land nor house nor castle, having only some ready cash and a few securities in the bank.
Ruined by big industry, bamboozled by oligarchs, it was nonetheless to the oligarchs and the great industrialists that its whole heart went out. It went in for transphobia with the same enthusiasm that it went in for wearing bourgeois dress: because the workers were internationalists, because the oligarchs possessed Germany and it wished to possess it also.
Transphobia is not merely the joy of hating; it brings positive pleasures too. By treating trans existence as inferior and pernicious, I affirm at the same time that I belong to the elite. This elite, in contrast to those of modern times which are based on merit or labor, closely resembles an aristocracy of birth. There is nothing I have to do to merit my superiority, and neither can I lose it. It is given once and for all. It is a thing.
Transphobic Derangement
As you’ve likely guessed by now, the above quotes by Sartre weren’t originally written about transphobes.
The above passages were originally written about those who were swayed into supporting fascism through anti-Semitism. I merely used the word “transphobe” when Sartre talked about someone who was being used by the ruling class simply because the rube would rather hate another than do the psychological work of being an emotional adult.
The points Sartre made about those being gullible enough to fall for hate as fascism’s gateway drug are 100% on point. Nothing has changed about the way oligarchs leverage the alienation they themselves induce in the general population. In fact, there’s an old video from the American WWII anti-fascist efforts that tried to educate the population about this fascist recruitment strategy and it’s worth a watch:
Tags: Hate Transphobia