This interview, conducted by Fran Amery, is based on Sandra Duffy’s recent article ‘Moral panics and legal projects: echoes of Section 28 in United Kingdom transgender discourse and law reform‘ published in Gender and Justice.
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First of all, could you tell us why you describe the current anti-trans moment as a moral panic?
Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to this interview series.
Moral panics are characterised by “a condition, episode, person or group of persons emerg[ing] to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests” (Cohen, 2011). These persons are frequently referred to as “folk devils,” a term which Cohen defines as “visible reminders of what we should not be.” So there are two things implicated in that – the visibility of the target, and a stigmatisation of the target as undesirable.
If you look at the last ten years or so in the United Kingdom, trans people have become highly visible in a way they never were before. That is not to say that they did not exist previously – they did, of course, and have throughout history. But through coordinated campaigns by anti-trans activists, media figures, and persons of influence up to and including sitting parliamentarians, trans people have emerged as a go-to culture-war flashpoint. Then there is the stigmatisation – trans people are not characterised as regular members of society, but as outsiders and deviants. Think of the rhetoric around ‘groomers,’ ‘men in dresses’ waiting to pounce in the ladies’ toilets, and apparently violent trans activists menacing soi-disant vulnerable feminists at protests.
The two aspects combine to become a perfect breeding ground for a moral panic wherein all that is wrong in current society gets tied to what Judith Butler calls ‘the phantasm of gender.’ By that, they mean the concept of ‘gender’ as a nebulous thing which can take many frightening guises and come to include everything one doesn’t like about society. (Abortion? Gender! Homosexuality? Gender! Transness? DEFINITELY gender.) Trans people are the living embodiment of the gender phantasm and therefore they become this inflated and fear-inducing figure over which cisnormative society panics.
In the article, you connect the current trans moral panic to the gay moral panics of the 1980s and 1990s that gave rise to Section 28. Could you tell us more about the parallels here and how they help shed light on the present moment?
To understand this you do have to do a quick recap over the social conditions which led to Section 28. Rapid social upheaval, widespread inequality, societal unrest, and a C/conservative government led by people willing to scapegoat a minority if it meant rendering the rest of the population orderly by giving them someone else to rebel against. Sound familiar?
I’m not being facetious in asking that – it literally does sound familiar. It’s unlikely to be a coincidence that those in power are more than happy to feed and sustain a moral panic against a small marginalised population if it is likely to distract from broader social conditions of inequity and unhappiness. The rise of British transphobia went supersonic during the Covid pandemic and into its lengthening dusk. It was accommodated by government and the media, just as the Thatcher government was happy to allow and encourage the gay moral panic which gave rise to Section 28.
I explore this more in the article of course, but I think the direct parallels lie in the social conditions which foment moral panics and the political will to give them legal effect – which leads me to the next question.
The article points out that the law is frequently deployed in response to moral panics – a fact that has since been thrown into sharp relief by the recent Supreme Court ruling that sex is defined ‘biologically’ for the purposes of the Equality Act. Is this another case of the law intervening to ‘uphold normality’?
Yes, absolutely. Society, of course, operates on normative systems that extend up to and beyond the law, but juridical power is the ultimate prescriptive force for normality. The intervention of the law crystallises what is happening in society and compels people to follow it – think of all the teachers who had to closet themselves under Section 28 for fear of losing their employment.
The Supreme Court ruling in Scottish Ministers is likely to have a similar effect. If it is given full effect in law, trans people, afraid of running foul of the law, are either going to have to live in stealth and be afraid of being outed every time they use a bathroom, or be compelled to use the wrong bathroom for their gender. It is entirely an outrage, from a community point of view. From a moral panic point of view, however, it is a logical conclusion to the general consternation over trans life which has been whipped up over the last few years.
Moral panics are dangerous. Section 28 showed us this, and we clearly haven’t learned. It’s time for us to step up and stop this one in its tracks before more trans people get hurt.
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Dr Sandra Duffy (they/she) is a member of the RPRN and a lecturer at University of Bristol Law School, where they teach human rights and health law. Sandra’s research focuses on the regulation of gendered identities by law, including where this interacts with anti-gender movements and transphobic politics. They are currently writing their first monograph.
Sandra Duffy will be taking part in our panel on anti-gender politics in the UK on the 8th of May 2025. More details here:
https://reacpol.net/antigender-politics/
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