Topic: Transgender children’s rights discourses in international authoritarian movements

Research question: How are debates over transgender children’s rights in education deployed by far-right authoritarian movements?

Background:

In recent years, the conflict over the rights of transgender children and youth has moved from a relatively niche debate largely confined to sexual and gender minority advocates, parents of transgender minors, medical practitioners, education and child welfare workers, and religious groups to prominent battles waged on the front pages of major newspapers, television documentaries on major networks, social media sites, the floors of legislatures, and the streets of many cities. Education has become a flashpoint, with the rights of transgender students debated in every aspect of schooling: policy, curricula, pedagogy, school leadership, comprehensive school health, infrastructure, and extracurricular activities.

Primarily, the debate has centred on the needs and interests of transgender students, which have often been set up as conflicting with the needs and interests of other students, parents, and even transgender children themselves. However, the battle over the rights of transgender students has implications for democracy and human rights beyond the rights of a specific child population or even balancing the rights of some children against those of other children.

This paper examines how transgender students have become an early target in a larger effort to undermine the rights of all children and an instrument in the international movement to destabilize democratic systems of governance and establish (or re-establish) authoritarian regimes that threaten human rights, peace, and international efforts on threats such as climate change and biodiversity loss.

While much international attention has centred on the context of the United States and the United Kingdom, these rights discourses are not limited to one country; while they are locally inflected, they connect to a broader international social movement network on the far right, spreading through both mainstream and alternative media as well as social media sites. Currently, 31 European countries have anti-discrimination laws protecting sexual and gender minorities that affect education (UNESCO, 2023); however, various local policy contexts may shape how these laws are applied when it comes to minors and only 21 countries have strategies to address school-based bullying and discrimination against sexual and gender minority students. Legislative and policy debates are also taking place across Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, led largely by right-wing governments.

Rather than debating the legitimacy of transgender children’s identities, this paper examines how the rights of some children are being used as a wedge by actors whose goals are far larger than reshaping rules around which bathroom a child can use or which sports they are allowed to play.

Theoretical framework:

Childhood can be understood as a kind of structure: it has developed out of social and cultural forces as well as biological influences (Castaneda, 2001; Qvortrup, 2009). Using a childist approach (Wall, 2019), I examine how children are taken up as symbolic objects (Kjorholt, 2013) in international authoritarian movements on the right. In particular, these movements mobilize childhood as a signifier for purity in political discourses, reflecting Shotwell’s description of purity as a means to make claims on what is normative, good, and to be pursued (2016).

The lens of childism is both a way of conceptualizing social theory and a research approach (Wall, 2019); similar to feminist scholarship, childism offers a theoretical foundation for critical discourse analysis (CDA). CDA, as compared to other forms of discourse studies, is grounded in critical theory’s orientation on not only understanding and explaining but also on critique and social change (Wodak & Meyer, 2009). CDA functions at the intersection of language and social structure (Blommaert & Bulcaen, 2000) and is particularly interested in questions of political discourse and ideologies (van Dijk, 2005; Blommaert & Bulcaen, 2000). In Fairclough’s dialectical-relational approach (DRA) to CDA, discourse is disambiguated by making a distinction between meaning-making as part of a social process, the language of a field of practice, and a way of construing aspects of the world (Fairclough, 2010, 2013). DRA offers a resolution to some of the issues that arise from discursive approaches in policy studies. Policy as discourse has several possible meanings that may be in contention with one another (Bacchi, 2000); however, DRA offers a means to address this contention by considering both text and social context. As with other forms of CDA, DRA is best used in combination with theoretical and analytical resources from various social sciences. In particular, it contributes to and works alongside political, economic, and sociological analysis in the realm of policy studies, bringing together textual analysis with social analysis and critique. Using Fairclough’s approach, I examine policy discourses across Europe (including the UK), Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the US to identify how transgender children’s rights are discursively mobilized by authoritarian movements.

Childhood is taken up by far-right authoritarian movements as both a symbolic space and a mechanism to mobilize and attract movement participants. The debate over transgender students’ rights in schooling acts a wedge issue and draws in new movement participants who might not otherwise align themselves with far-right activists. Legislation and policy intended to target transgender children has broader consequences for children’s rights to privacy, association, expression, and self-determination, affecting rights protections for all children. Further, as a wedge issue, these debates can boost electoral success for far-right candidates, offering a route to increasing political power for authoritarian movements. These discourses are transnational and both spread across and reinforce international authoritarian movements that pose a risk to democratic institutions and human rights.

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