Trans bodies as security threats: ‘gender critical’ lesbian activists in the UK and Germany

Inga Nuethen and Christine Klapeer conduct a critical frame analysis of current discursive strategies adopted by TERF actors. Focusing on data from prominent lesbian (or lesbian-led) ‘gender critical’ groups in the United Kingdom and Germany, the authors argue that, in these discourses, trans bodies are conceived as security threats to lesbian bodies, thereby turning issues of political contention into existential problems that require ‘urgent’ and ‘extraordinary’ countermeasures. Nüthen and Klapeer interpret this discursive shift as a process of securitization of trans bodies which draws on essentializing understandings of the body and entails the rejection of trans rights in order to promote a “(re-)purification and cis-gendering of lesbian bodies, identities, and histories.” Thus, the authors unpack the punctual frame alignments between ‘gender critical’ and conservative or right-wing anti-gender mobilizations.