Those seeking to consolidate power often make it a sport to pick on a small group of people, claiming that the small group wields disproportionate power and is out to transform your children into something you don’t want (and probably don’t understand).
In the 1950s, the boogeyman was communism. According to some, the communist professor teaching your “child” (because 18-year-olds are not adults apparently, except for military service) was out to demonstrate that capitalism was bad and prep your child for the revolution. Literature, such as the American Legion cover shown here, flourished.
In his famous memo, Justice Powell lamented that teachers seeking to groom students for communism were a minority, but somehow more powerful than the majority: “Such faculty members need not be in a majority. They are often personally attractive and magnetic; they are stimulating teachers and their controversy attracts student following; they are prolific writers and lecturers: they author many of the textbooks; and they exert enormous influence — far out of proportion to their numbers — on their colleagues and in the academic world.”
Sorry, rest of the faculty, you are apparently NONE of those things.
Then the boogeyman became Critical Race Theory and DEI. Critical Race Theory does have a description and definition that exists in the legal academy. But that isn’t the boogeyman. Instead, as Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick proclaims, “Last session, we banned CRT in kindergarten through 12th grade because no child should be taught that they are inferior to others due to their race, sex, or ethnicity. In 2023, this should be common sense but the radical left’s drive to divide our society is relentless.” In other words, CRT, taught in some law schools, became code for any instance of taught history in which white people acted badly. Teaching about slavery, massacres of native tribes, the Voting Rights Act, and the like were now “CRT.” Teaching it is “woke,” as opposed to historically accurate. Again, Dan Patrick with the agenda: “This session, there was no question that we would ban the teaching of CRT in Texas universities. Liberal professors, determined to indoctrinate our students with their woke brand of revisionist history, have gone too far.”
Now, the boogeyman is a particularly small group of people lacking power: The transgender community. The UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute estimates that 0.8% of the population identifies as trans, while approximately 3% of the population aged 13 to 17 do so. As a total, 1% of the population identifies as transgender. Easy target for hateful legislation.
But the overblown controversies and reporting make their population seem larger and more politically powerful. You can’t have a weak boogeyman, after all. YouGov’s poll suggested that the average American’s uneducated guess was that the transgender population hovers around 21%. This is no accident: Studies show that a group’s perceived size creates what is in essence a bias that increases fear.
This is nothing new. The media is quick to latch on to the unfounded political rhetoric to help foster a bogeyman and feed it like a virus to an undiscerning population.
It therefore comes as no surprise that transgender people have come under attack for the most ridiculous reasons. What about bathrooms? What about women’s sports? I would imagine surveys show that people think transgender people only play sports and live in bathrooms. Sigh.
According to Translegislation.com, 125 pieces of legislation targeting the trans community have passed, with over a 1,000 proposed. Just for comparison (in terms of targeting innocent groups of people who have done nothing to deserve it), pre-World War II Nazi Germany passed 400 decrees and pieces of legislation related to Jews, according to the Holocaust Encyclopedia. (Side note: I can’t wait for the hate mail — HEY, did you just call our legislature Nazis? Did you? Did you?? No, I didn’t. But you seem to see the parallel just fine.)
Overamplification of a group’s power creates the notion that the group is a “problem.” Because they exist. Because they want inclusion. Because they seek understanding. Because they are human beings. But the very real problem is that the group is the target of attack and those attacking spin it that the attacked are the attackers.
Universities have been part of the problem. In Texas, for example, university administrations have turned on their students and professors. Texas A&M (undefeated in football and apparently in hostility to academic freedom) fired a professor and demoted a dean, all because the professor was teaching a children’s literature course and some of that literature has notions of more than two genders. The University of Houston Graduate School of Social Work canceled a required course, “Confronting Oppression and Injustice.” Apparently confronting oppression and injustice is now illegal in Texas. And the University of Texas is considering adopting President Donald Trump’s University Compact. Other universities have also canceled courses, scrubbed websites, consolidated departments, and are otherwise cowering in fear (when they aren’t hiring the very people who have sought to create hatred, distrust, and confusion in search of a boogeymen). Texas state legislators are searching through syllabi looking for mention of trans, enabled by university syllabus programs like “Simple Syllabus.”
You would think that professors would be allies. And you would often be wrong. One professor got rich for refusing to use a trans student’s pronouns. Others, perhaps emboldened by legislative and university hostility toward trans persons, make their biases clear in a variety of ways. The fabled notion that all academics are leftists and Marxists enables the marginalization of groups who themselves are surprised when their purported woke faculty turn out to be just like the rest. Studies exist about the experiences of transgender students in the classroom. TL;DR: Professors are not woke.
And as universities bend the knee towards false notions of academic freedom, they do so without consideration of its effects on making lives for some of their students worse. In a world in which “institutional neutrality” becomes the norm and in which all viewpoints are held in equal regard, effects are not examined. “I have a right as a trans person to freedom and happiness” is held in equal regard with “trans people should have no rights.” And university policies are frequently siding with the latter sentiment, despite purported “neutrality.”
All of these attacks, from the Red Scare to the Trans Scare, have one thing in common. A myth of a powerful force that will disrupt society and destroy America somehow. In reality, each myth is the tool used for some group to leverage their way into academia to disrupt education and empower themselves at the expense of society, education, and the targets of their ignorant attacks. Universities do not see that the attacks on trans people are ultimately attacks on the universities themselves.
In short, in a search for a boogeyman, there is a lot of blame to go around as higher education continues to get attacked vicariously as vulnerable populations get attacked directly. There is much to be learned from all of this, assuming the university administration doesn’t ban our learning from it. Even so, this lesson in discrimination, hate, and fear falls harder on some more than others.
LawProfBlawg is an anonymous law professor. Follow him on X/Twitter/whatever (@lawprofblawg). He’s also on BlueSky, Mastodon, and Threads depending on his mood. Email him at lawprofblawg@gmail.com. The views of this blog post do not represent the views of his employer, his employer’s government, his Dean, his colleagues, his family, or his doppelgängers, or pets.
The post The Transgender Boogeyman appeared first on Above the Law.
