On the Carceral Ideology Underpinning the Anti-Trans Movement

In most global contexts, anti-trans politics align with rightwing populism and are part of wider attacks against LGBT+ rights, gender equality, reproductive justice, and sexual freedoms. The international “anti-gender” movement has roots in conservative, Christian, and ultra-nationalist groups and targets a range of issues including abortion, contraception, sex education, same-sex marriage, and trans health care—all in the name of protecting “traditional values.” In the United States, for example, opposition to trans rights splits sharply along party lines, with Republicans far more likely to take anti-trans and anti-gender positions than Democrats.

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Likewise in Europe, far-right leaders such as Viktor Orbán in Hungary and Giorgia Meloni in Italy have spearheaded crusades against so-called “gender ideology” and include anti-trans positions within their wider agendas. In Latin America, right-wing figures like Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Christian evangelical groups in Peru, Costa Rica, and Colombia have similarly championed the anti-trans and anti-gender cause. Across the globe, anti-gender campaigning is frequently tied to right-wing nationalism, white supremacy, and assertions of patriarchal power.

In contrast, the gender critical movement in Britain is more singularly focused on trans issues and crosscuts left-right political divides. While anti-trans sentiment has long been present in Britain, the specific rise of an organized gender critical movement is relatively new. It initially emerged within leftwing feminist and lesbian circles who objected to proposals to expand trans rights. Dovetailing with conservative groups who also objected to gender reform, and amplified by media outlets invested in culture-war disputes, the gender critical movement has since gained support across the political spectrum. Gender critical subgroups now exist within all major British political parties—Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat, Green, and Scottish Nationalist—with the exception of the Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru.

The anti-trans backlash is not only impactful for trans and gender nonconforming people; it shapes how all people navigate gendered spaces, services, and public life.

While political commentators frequently conflate different anti-trans positions in Britain, branding them all “TERFs” on the one hand or right-wing neo-fascists on the other, in reality these campaigners occupy a range of political positions. Some gender critical figures are firmly right-wing and anti-feminist, even when deploying the language of women’s rights. Others, including high-profile Conservative Party politicians, endorse gender critical politics from a conservative feminist position. Many key gender critical advocates come from the left. A Woman’s Place UK, for example, was founded in 2017 by trade unionists and other left feminists. Though disbanded in 2024, A Woman’s Place UK played a prominent role in early gender critical organizing. It explicitly described itself as left-wing and had supporters from a range of left organizations, including the longstanding anti-violence organization, Southall Black Sisters. These feminists generally position themselves as “pro-women” rather than “anti-trans.”

Other groups, such as Fair Play for Women, For Women Scotland, and Sex Matters, position themselves as non-partisan and include members across the political spectrum. The LGB Alliance and Get The L Out, who also espouse gender critical views via separation from the wider LGBT+ community, similarly claim nonpartisan positions but also publicly eschew both left and right politics.

Anti-gender conservatives and gender-critical feminists both oppose what they describe as “gender ideology,” but from different political positions. Conservatives uphold “traditional” gender norms, advocating for sex “complementarity” (i.e. distinct roles and identities for men and women). They blame changing gender norms for a range of social ills. In contrast, gender critical feminists view “gender identity” as reinforcing stereotypes of what men and women should be (i.e. women as “feminine” and men as “masculine”). They worry that, instead of accepting a range of expressions and sexualities, “gender ideology” encourages “masculine” women and girls, particularly lesbians, to become men and “feminine” men and boys to become women.

Gender critical feminists also argue that using the category of “gender” rather than “sex” obscures biological differences, and hampers efforts to collect accurate data on equality measures, such as unequal pay, crime rates, and health, even though both sex and gender data categories are fraught with empirical challenges. Fundamentally, gender critical feminists see trans rights as a threat to women’s equality and gay rights, whereas conservatives oppose gender and sexual equality altogether.

Although gender critical feminists and lesbians often feature prominently in the media and public disputes, they represent a minority perspective in Britain. Opinion polls show that non-trans lesbians and bisexual women are among the most trans inclusive demographics. In fact, many of the newer gender critical groups emerged precisely to challenge the more longstanding feminist and women’s organizations that had adopted trans inclusive positions.

The range of anti-trans perspectives in Britain is also evident in ongoing debates amongst gender critical feminists about whether to work with right-wing groups. While some feminists reject these alliances outright, others advocate strategic collaboration—echoing similar, contentious alliances in the past, including those between feminists and conservatives who aligned to oppose pornography and prostitution during the “sex wars” of the 1980s and 1990s.

British gender critical campaigning exemplifies a growing trend of “political diagonalism,” where unexpected alliances across the left and right are forged less by shared goals than a common enemy. These coalitions do not require left feminists to embrace conservative ideology or conservatives to adopt feminist positions; rather they claim legitimacy and mobilize wide support by positioning themselves as ideologically diverse.

Conspiracy theories have been central to this dynamic as widespread misinformation on social media has drawn in new gender critical sympathizers across the political spectrum. Online claims that “big pharma” is funding the “trans lobby,” that pornography is causing people to become transgender, or that trans women have “male pattern criminality” circulate widely and attract supporters who might otherwise reject anti-trans rhetoric. When repeated by academics, think tanks, and celebrities, these claims gain credibility. Trans historian Jules Gill-Peterson describes this as “the laundering of conspiracy,” whereby fringe claims are repackaged into seemingly reasonable and “common sense” arguments.

This diagonalism is further enabled by the flexible use of terms like “gender” and “gender ideology.” Because these concepts have no fixed meeting, they can act as an empty signifier that different groups can fill with their own meanings and anxieties, from fears about social change to opposition to feminism, allowing alliances to form across divergent political agendas.

Many British gender critical feminists also frame their politics as born from disillusionment with the left. They describe feeling abandoned by left political parties, trade unions, and women’s organizations, or displaced by younger generations who embrace trans inclusive feminism. Many describe feeling “politically homeless” as a consequence of their views on trans issues and as justification for why they have turned to right-wing media platforms or formed unconventional alliances. Gender critical feminists have forged a sense of shared identity through their perceived marginalized status while simultaneously claiming to speak for a majority of ordinary people.

So how have these gender critical groups in Britain, with such vast ideological differences, become aligned? Who or what is the “shared enemy” that brings these strands together in diagonal formations? And why are these alliances so powerful?

This book argues that safety concerns—and the specific incitement of fears of gender-based violence, sexual danger, and harm to women and children—have been a central framework for uniting divergent anti-trans groups. Gender critical campaigners across left and right, conservative and feminist alike, gained momentum by presenting trans rights and “gender ideology” as an acute danger to non-trans women and children. These claims about safety are integral to the story of how gender-critical campaigners built cross-political support in Britain.

While newly formed gender critical groups, like Fair Play for Women, initially campaigned around questions of “fairness,” “dignity,” and “women’s rights,” they soon found that framing trans rights as a safety threat to women and children proved a far more effective tactic. These “trans danger” arguments gained prominence in public debates around reforming the Gender Recognition Act. Opponents of gender recognition reform argued that self-identification would allow predatory men to access women-only spaces and harm women. Campaigners began to actively associate gender self-identification with sexual danger and risk. Keeping trans women out of women’s spaces therefore became a central focus for gender critical campaigners and a key strategy for mobilizing fear.

By tapping into concerns about gender-based violence and invoking a sense of women’s shared vulnerability, gender critical groups channelled wider fears of harm into anti-trans positions. Their emotional appeals drew on longstanding cultural tropes that cast trans and gender-diverse people as deviant or dangerous, amplifying public anxieties about trans rights, despite a lack of evidence for such claims.

The moral panic that ensued is now a defining feature of the contemporary British gender wars. However, the political underpinnings of that panic are rarely identified and challenged. At the center lies carceral safety politics—logics that turn fears of violence into justifications for punitive responses. These dynamics have given transphobic claims a veneer of legitimacy under the guise of protecting women and children. They play out repeatedly across the debates: dividing the world into innocent victims and dangerous others, casting harm as an external threat from dangerous others, pathologizing individuals and groups rather than addressing structural conditions of harm, and seeking safety through identity policing, surveillance, and punishment.

Carceral safety politics in Britain are not confined to the gender critical side. They are often mirrored by trans rights advocates. Because trans rights are framed as a danger to women and children, with trans women portrayed as “sexual threats,” trans advocates have counter-claimed that they are the real victims, not perpetrators. Trans advocates rightly highlight the high levels of discrimination, harassment, and violence faced by trans communities to argue for greater protection from harm. These claims are not wrong, but within the wider frame of safety politics, they too can play into carceral politics.

We are witnessing how anti-trans feminists are increasingly intertwined with the acceleration of right-wing and reactionary politics more broadly.

For example, in response to widespread hostility, many trans organizations endorsed Scotland’s 2021 Hate Crime and Public Order Act, which introduced new offenses for threatening or abusive behavior intending to stir up hatred on the basis of transgender identity, age, disability, religion, and sexual orientation. Though framed by the government as providing “greater protection for victims and communities,” in reality the legislation simply enables longer prison sentences (up to seven years) for “inciting” or “stirring up hate.” Such measures rely on the carceral assumption that harsher punishments will deter violence, despite strong evidence to the contrary. After the new law came into force in 2024, a large number of vexatious complaints were launched in protest, and gender critical and trans campaigners argued over which group most needed the law’s protection.

Both gender critical feminists and trans activists have become locked in endless battles around safety and danger, victim versus perpetrator. These disputes pivot on questions of who is most deserving of support and protection and who is most dangerous and needs to be excluded. Identity becomes the grounds for protection, and surveillance, control, and exclusion the remedy for danger. In doing so, these conflicts obscure deeper structural conditions of harm and divert attention and resources from more effective violence prevention strategies.

These disputes are inevitably a trap because carceral politics do not keep us safe. They pit marginalized groups against one another and channel fear into demonization, surveillance, and punishment. What is needed is a vision of safety that is not build on dividing the “deserving” from the “underserving,” but on creating conditions where safety is possible for all.

What has unfolded in the British gender wars should not be mistaken for a debate that is only about trans rights or identity politics. At stake are broader questions about which social norms and moral values should guide public policy. These conflicts—and the growing reliance on litigation to settle them—carry significant implications for law, policy, and culture, both in Britain and internationally. The anti-trans backlash is not only impactful for trans and gender nonconforming people; it shapes how all people navigate gendered spaces, services, and public life. These issues impact us all.

Equally troubling is the export of Britain gender critical politics and strategies abroad.90 Gender critical groups formed in the UK are setting up international chapters, forging global links, and sharing resources. The LGB Alliance, formed in 2019 to separate lesbian, gay, and bisexual interests from trans rights, claims chapters in sixteen countries around the world. Likewise, the Women’s Declaration International (WDI), which also originated in the UK, has grown to more than forty international chapters with supporters across 160 countries. As trans organizer Nim Ralph observes, a “British version of anti-trans feminism is spreading worldwide, mostly in settler-colonial nations like the U.S., Australia, and Canada.”

This transnational anti-trans and anti-gender organizing is reinforced by the flows of global funding. US-based Christian groups, already funding anti-LGBT and anti-abortion campaigns at home, are now supporting anti-gender initiatives abroad. Anti-gender funding from the United States to Europe has increased significantly in recent years. These international collaborations increasingly bring liberal and left feminists together with far-right actors, under the banner of protecting women and children from “gender ideology.”

Across different international contexts, the consequences of the growing anti-trans backlash are clear. The United States, for example, has seen a dramatic rise in bills attempting to block trans people from accessing health care, education, sports, and legal recognition. In 2015 there were nineteen anti-trans bills tabled in the United States, and in 2020 there were sixty-six. By 2025, the number had skyrocketed to 1,020 anti-trans bills across forty-nine states. While initially led by right-wing conservative and religious organizations, these campaigns now draw active support from gender critical feminists. We are witnessing how anti-trans feminists are increasingly intertwined with the acceleration of right-wing and reactionary politics more broadly.

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