Content Warning: This article mentions sexual assault, rape, and includes discussion of anti-transgender and white supremacist topics.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n As we discovered in part one<\/a> of this retrospective, evangelical Christian extremists are known as Dominionists, who \u201cbelieve that they\u2019re the rulers of our collective governance, society, and culture. LGBTQ+ people (or anything and anyone seen as a DEI initiative) represent the antipathy of that mandate.\u201d During the 2016 campaign trail, so much about Trump\u2019s personal life pooled out into the open \u2014 particularly how he talked and behaved toward women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is widely known that the current president has allegations of sexual abuse running since the 1970s, according to The 19th News<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By September of 2016, a court case was filed: Jane Doe v. Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey E. Epstein<\/a>. <\/em>In the case, the plaintiff alleged that the defendants raped her and assaulted her, among other horrific acts against her will, at a series of parties in the summer of 1994.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But for some reason, and until this day, transgender people continue to be labeled as threatening to women\u2019s safety, despite the legacy of elites like Trump and Epstein.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you are asking, “how could this be?” <\/em>then we need to look furthermore at the concocted controversies that brought us to this present moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To understand these last 10 years of Trumpism is to look beyond it; to survey the overlaps and expanded culture in and outside of the right\u2019s politics, white supremacy, and its patriarchal ties that work within Dominionism\u2019s domain. This expanded culture looks a lot like taking control over women, reproduction, and conversations on fertility. However, often, in order to do that, it is necessary to create a common enemy. That public enemy, galvanized by the right, is transgender people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI think that this discussion about gender is really at the center of the right wing movement. You\u2019re seeing it pop up in so many different parts of the right and you know how to essentially create a maximally misogynist political movement without alienating women voters,\u201d\u00a0Madeline Peltz<\/a>, a journalist who covers the right, told Under the Desk News (UTDN).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Peltz, formerly from Media Matters for America, just released a documentary with More Perfect Union \u2014 \u201cWe Found The REAL Reason Gen Z Wants To Be Tradwives<\/a>\u201d \u2014 and is writing a book about the future of right-wing media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Peltz\u2019s research for her book, she historically sees that some of the tradwife culture emerged in tandem with the anti-trans sentiment in the mid 2010s. Around that time, there was the rise of media outlets like The Daily Wire, or as Peltz calls it, \u201cinfluencer-forward digital news outlets pioneering personality-driven influence through social media.\u201d On these outlets, people like right-wing pundit Ben Shapiro and Jeremy Boreing (The Daily Wire’s co-founder) made a name for themselves by refusing to honor people\u2019s gender pronouns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bathrooms, in 2015-2016<\/a>, much like sports today, were at the epicenter of the argument to keep \u201cgirls and women safe.\u201d And outlets like The Daily Wire <\/em>were popularizing this rage-bait-infused concept, and the mainstream caught on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One 2015 article in<\/a> <\/a><\/em>The Atlantic<\/a>, \u201cHow Bathroom Fears Conquered Transgender Rights in Houston\u201d by Russell Burman, has a header image of a man standing with a shirt and matching sign that reads: \u201cNO Men in Women\u2019s Bathrooms: Vote NO on Houston\u2019s Prop #1.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n To this day, at least 21 states have bathroom bans of some kind, according to the Movement Advancement Project (MAP)<\/a>. Of them, eight states \u201cban transgender people from using bathrooms and facilities consistent with their gender identity in all government-owned buildings and spaces, including K-12 schools, colleges, and more.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n This directly correlates to the priorities of the heir of Dominionism and the Secretary of Education (at the time), Betsy DeVos, but it was also the platform of the late Christian nationalist Charlie Kirk<\/a>, founder of Turning Point USA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cCharlie Kirk was selling a vision of family life wherein the husband submits to Christ and the wife submits to the husband,\u201d Peltz said. \u201cSo he is describing a Christian nationalist pure life. When I was at the Young Women\u2019s Leadership Summit (Turning Point’s conference for young women) in 2025, I really felt, at that time, like I was stepping back in time to 2004, like (ironically) anti-Harry Potter panic, conservative movement right \u2014 at the height of the evangelical vote\u2019s influence.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Circulating among this Christian nationalist agenda is a carefully woven anti-trans rhetoric turned policy, something Imara Jones \u2014 the founder of TransLash Media and the podcast the \u201cAnti-Trans Hate Machine: A Plot Against Equality<\/a>\u201d \u2014 has been investigating for years now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In season two of the multi-season podcast, Jones introduces listeners to anti-transgender disinformationist Denise Caignon, the founder of 4thWaveNow, a trans-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF) website, where pseudoscience such as \u201crapid onset gender dysphoria\u201d is widely parroted. Throughout the years, fearful parents have been lured to this site and told to withhold care from trans youth under 18 in a neglect tactic called \u201cwatchful waiting.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Caignon inspired a number of others like her to coalesce amongst the right to espouse aligned talking points; [including] people who profit from anti-trans writing like the New York Times’ Jesse Singal, and the Wall Street Journal\u2019s Abigail Shrier, who represents the religious Jewish right (and whose writing brought her to Regnery Publishing \u2014 tied to [founded by] Nazi sympathizer Henry Regnery \u2014 to produce the book \u201cIrreversible Damage\u201d). The cover of the book, which highlights, incorrectly, that gender-affirming care is associated with \u201cpermanent infertility,\u201d shows a picture of a young girl with a hole in her stomach where her uterus would otherwise be. In a later season of the Anti-Trans Hate Machine podcast, Jones called this cover \u201cobjectifying,\u201d as [she] would much of the right\u2019s reductionist questioning about \u201cWhat Makes a Woman?<\/a>\u201d in mainstream outlets like the New York Times (2015-onward).<\/p>\n\n\n The Anti-Trans Hate Machine<\/p>\n \n Episode 3<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n \n
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With appalling power, this sector of the religious right in supposed crisis used Trump as an \u201cavatar\u201d from 2016 (probably before then) onward, but Trump\u2019s own ties to power unfurl another ligament for unchecked and authoritarian control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"An](\"https:\/\/translash.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/image-1-1024x576.jpg\")
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