The ‘culture wars’ are far from the first time that the conservative obsession with controlling the uncontrollable, out of fear for the unknown, has had the potential to destroy countless lives.
In December, the Tory’s finally got around to publishing the draft of their much-promised guidance for teachers regarding transgender and gender-questioning pupils in schools across the country. The document, unsurprisingly, tells us nothing new about the party’s stance on trans issues, which have found themselves at the centre of the so called ‘culture wars’ that politicians on both the right and the left seem to have decided should be the defining political issue for the next ten years or so. Nevermind that the world is burning or that the UK government has been on such a relentless assault on free speech that protestors charged with crimes as non-existent as obstructing a road are now being handed six-plus months in prison; the main issue of our time is very clearly the fact that a child may, in 2024, wish to try on a uniform that wasn’t quite designed for their anatomy. Or perhaps these arrests are exactly the sort of thing that the increasingly radical right across much of the west would claim as their noble efforts to fight the woke agenda. Or maybe not, I’m not sure; the far-right’s thrashing U-turns back and forth on whether the best solution is to have an authoritarian government or no government at all is so convulsive that even the leaders of these movements seem to be getting confused. In fact, one of the only things the right does seem to be able to gain some consistency on is a universal distaste for those who don’t seem to see masculinity and femininity and male and female as quite as rigid as they do; even if their neoliberal ideology is at its very core founded on the principle of getting everybody’s noses out of everybody else’s business.
In every conversation around the growing presence of transgender or gender-non-conforming individuals in our cultures, social media inevitably finds itself centred in the question of how this community, long kept in the shadows and superficially shown only as a punchline in bottom-of-the-barrel pop culture, seemed so suddenly to burst forth and steal the centre stage. No matter whether you approach these conversations from the political left or right, as a member or ally of the trans community, or as a so-called ‘gender-critical feminist’; or, if you like, as an out-and-proud bigot — social media is undoubtedly a factor that must be considered carefully. There have been many thousands of revolutionary developments that have changed the way humans live their lives throughout history, but perhaps never before has one single anthropological change so radically reshaped the structure and content of human society since we first learned to talk. And yet its effects on us as a species are so direly unknown. How does social media impact the way we run our bodies and the way our brains can, and do, think? There seems to be a growing consensus that our reliance on the internet for almost every single aspect of our lives may not be entirely benevolent (shockingly), but as for the extent of the damage, only time will really tell. And this is where the sides diverge. Because if there’s one thing that humans are spectacular at, it’s prematurely overreacting to something which we do not fully understand. Enter stage right; Donald Trump, Javier Milei, Geert Wilders’, and, in an increasingly desperate clawing for party approval, Rishi Sunak. It’s an all too familiar stage in an all too familiar theatre. There are many radicals throughout history who once trod the same boards in a desperate, frightened struggle for power; on both the left and the right. But watching hoards of stiff ageing men struggle to control the worlds mental health by chasing phantom causes, guessing at treatments, and deciding what should and shouldn’t warrant empathy — based not on science or talking to the people in question, but instead built purely on their own predisposed biases — brings to mind a particular U.S President, and a particular war on drugs.
Frankly, I don’t care what your political or moral standing is regarding the use of recreational drugs. Whether you’re a boot-cut hippie or a die-hard Nixon fan, you can’t pretend that the war on drugs has been anything other than a resounding failure. Around 3,127 deaths a week are reportedly the result of drug poisoning from illegal substances in England and Wales alone, according to the Office for National Statistics; and that’s to say nothing of the social and economic devastation across the world, though in particular in the US, caused by an opioid epidemic spearheaded by the entirely legal distribution of the Sackler families unquestioned miracle painkillers. On-going to this day, the sheer extent of governments obdurate refusal to consider the facts and practical solutions of drug-related deaths and dangers is both deeply upsetting and comical to the point of self-satire. While it’s well established that the biggest threat to life for drug users is not the drugs intentionally taken but, rather, the substances contaminating them; in 2024 safe-spaces where users can get their products tested before doping are still deemed to be the radical and rare forefront of productively tackling drug risks in many countries. It is proven that the most effective method of helping addicts, providing rehabilitation, and preventing relapse is — and I’m sure this comes as an incredible surprise — actually treating addiction; and yet work cited by the American Public Health Association suggest only 11% of incarcerated addicts in the US receive any treatment whatsoever.
The stubbornness of international governments in confronting the issue of drug use and abuse for what it is, rather than a more convenient view of drugs as an entirely malevolent and corrupting evil, has created a list of the dead longer than anyone will ever be able to count. Somewhere high up in the millions would be my guess. And yet now policy makers, many of whom have likely never spoken in depth to a trans person and many more of whom have scarcely read a book on subject, are bringing this obdurate stubbornness to the culture wars. There’s a child wanting to try out a different name? We must inform the parents! Nevermind that queer individuals make up a higher percentage of homeless youth in the UK than any other demographic, or that, according to Akt (a charity dedicated to supporting LGBTQ+ youth) 77% of these individuals believe that their coming out was the primary cause of their homelessness. And what’s that? 1% of people who undergo gender affirming procedures regret it? Well then, by all means, let’s make it harder and harder for the other 99% to access it until you might as well ban the thing! Thank god the Tories are there to safeguard the free speech of primary school teachers, who, faced with a frightened, lonely child having an existential crisis twenty years before their brain has fully developed, can follow the immortal words of wisdom from Nancy Reagan. Because you must remember folks. Faced with an unknown; something that could expand the horizons of anthropology, philosophy, sociology, etymology, and could help another uncountable sum of people: you can just say no.
Pomelo 
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