Daily Wire host Michael Knowles's "transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely" call is eliminationist and genocidal hate speech
Knowles's usage of the term "transgenderism" is an anti-trans dogwhistle that degrades trans people and identity.
Over the last week or so, Daily Wire host Michael Knowles repeated his genocidal and eliminationist call to “ban transgenderism entirely” on his Daily Wire show called The Michael Knowles Show and on the CPAC stage this past Saturday.
On the February 27th, 2023 edition of his Daily Wire show, Knowles kicked off the week-plus eliminationist ongoing clarion call to erase trans existence.
Joe Ali at Pink News:
In an episode of The Michael Knowles Show on The Daily Wire, the host celebrated the bill banning transgender people from using single-sex spaces.
[…]
‘I Love this bill’
“This is a beautiful bill because it doesn’t just say ‘don’t trans the kids’. It doesn’t just say ‘wait till eight to introduce kids to transgenderism in schools,” Knowles said.
“Once they turn nine, that’s fine. It doesn’t just say only minors can’t – it bans transgenderism for all practical purposes in the state for everybody. And it has to. In order for women to have the right to have their own bathrooms, you have to ban transgenderism entirely.
“I love this bill because it is so much more aggressive than the other bills we’ve seen. I don’t mean to knock the other governors and in the statehouses, they’ve done a great job laying the groundwork… but this bill goes much further.”
The host went on to claim conservatives are OK with men putting on dresses, but added they shouldn’t be doing it around children. Knowles concluded by saying culture is “trying to trans the kids” – with absolutely no evidence to back up his claims.
On the next day’s edition of The Daily Wire’s The Michael Knowles Show, the host denied that trans people are real to justify an anti-trans genocide.
Embattled far-right wing Daily Wire host Michael Knowles insists when he called for a complete ban on America’s 1.6 million transgender people he was not calling for genocide – and says it would be impossible to do so because transgender people aren’t “real.”
“I got in trouble for this issue yesterday. I, your beloved host, whom everybody loves so, I got in trouble for this issue,” Knowles said Tuesday, while attacking the nonprofit watchdog group Media Matters for America which highlighted his remarks.
[…]
“It has to be the whole thing because if men have the right to behave as women and identify as women for the purposes of public life, then women can’t have their own spaces and we as a society cannot have our own standards and norms and we’re not allowed to live according to reality,” he claimed, falsely suggesting that transgender people don’t exist in reality. Later in the segment he calls being transgender “fraud.”
On Saturday, on the CPAC stage, Knowles called for the genocidal elimination of the trans community by stating that “transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely.”
Ramping up to his speech on Saturday, Knowles called for the banning of transgenderism entirely in a recent episode of "The Michael Knowles Show," adding that it wouldn't be genocide to do so as "It's not a legitimate category of being." Behind the podium on Saturday, he leveled up those initial remarks.
"There can be no middle way in dealing with transgenderism," Knowles said in his CPAC speech. "It is all or nothing. If transgenderism is true, If men really can become women, then it's true for everybody of all ages. If transgenderism is false — as it is — if men really can't become women — as they cannot — then it's false for everybody too. And if it's false, then we should not indulge it."
Continuing his Socratic rant, Knowles drove his point further saying, "For the good of society, transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely," gaining a wash of applause from those in attendance.
Over the last few days, Knowles and his supporters pushed a wafer-thin argument that he meant “transgenderism” should be eliminated but not trans people, when in fact his call to eradicate “transgenderism” is a genocidal call to eliminate trans people for existence.
Evan Urquhart at Assigned Media:
The big news in transphobia over this past weekend was that a far right commentator from the Daily Wire, Michael Knowles, called for the eradication of “transgenderism” at CPAC on Saturday, to a cheering crowd. Soon after this was reported by multiple outlets the story became bogged down by hair-splitting over whether “transgenderism” is a synonym for trans people (which it self-evidently is).
Knowles, who threatened to sue publications that reported that he wanted to eradicate trans people, explained that transgenderism can be eliminated without eliminating trans people because trans people aren’t real.
[…]
In truth, there is no such thing as transgenderism. There are only transgender people. Many trans people tried as hard as they could to avoid being trans, only to accept in the end that they could not deny themselves and survive. Trans adults have long dreamed that younger trans people might find the path to accepting themselves a little less hard than those who came before, but however difficult trans existence becomes there’s no law that can ever stop new trans people from being born. The eliminationist impulse can made things very hard on trans people, but it is doomed from the start because it is predicated on a false view of the world.
Erin Reed at Erin In The Morning Substack (02.28.2023):
The escalation of anti-trans rhetoric has coincided with a rise in anti-trans legislation. This rhetoric has become increasingly eliminationist and violent. While the idea of eliminating transgender people was once only heard in obscure far-right podcasts from pastors such as Mark Burns, rhetoric advocating for the wholesale destruction of "transgenderism" and thus transgender people, is now espoused by some of the leading figures in the Republican Party. Matt Walsh has "declared war" on the transgender community, while Candace Owens has referred to trans people as "demonic" and expressed a desire to "beat them with a cane." Charlie Kirk has suggested that transgender people should be "dealt with by men like in the 50s and 60s." Just today, Michael Knowles called for a complete ban on transgenderism, arguing that transgender people are “not a legitimate category of being and therefore cannot be the target of genocide.” This dehumanization represents a significant shift in rhetoric that must be acknowledged and condemned.A surge in eliminationist rhetoric coincides with the advancement of nearly 400 anti-transgender bills in state legislatures throughout the United States. These bills range from banning drag in public to prohibiting gender affirming care for transgender youth. Some measures also effectively ban transition care for transgender adults. A few proposals are even more extreme and yet are still seeing votes and movement.
[…]
Perhaps most explicitly eliminationist, Michael Knowles at the Daily Wire has begun calling for “ban of transgenderism entirely.” When confronted with the fact that this is a genocidal statement (explicitly so), he doubled down by stating that transgender people “are not a legitimate category of being” and thus “cannot be a target of genocide.”
Victoria Brownworth at Philadelphia Gay News:
The religious and political right wants to erase LGBTQ people. They want a mass conversion movement to de-gay and de-trans kids (and, where possible, adults). There is now an endemic belief that LGBTQ identities are bad for society and must be eradicated early.
[…]
Knowles says several times that “You have to ban transgenderism entirely. You can’t just ban it for the kids. It’s got to be entirely.”
That’s erasure at an almost eugenicist level.
But the primary story of the conference and its aftermath is the full-throated embrace of eliminationist rhetoric directed at trans people. There was wide, nearly unanimous support for Knowles from conservatives, including fellow Daily Wire transphobe Matt Walsh, Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk, Pizzagate conspiracy theorist and neo-Nazi collaborator (and CPAC speaker) Jack Posobiec, and others.
Knowles and his supporters claimed he was making a distinction between an ideology and a group of people. This is a distinction without a difference in this context, and any attempt to “eradicate” “transgenderism” is a de facto call to eradicate transgender people. Schlapp and the entire conference are enthusiastic participants in the escalating persecution of trans people. They’re not even bothering to hide behind a hollow disavowal. It’s all out in the open.
GLAAD’s Media Reference Guide on “transgenderism” and why the term shouldn’t be used:
TERM TO AVOID:
"transgenderism" "gender ideology"These are not terms used by transgender people. These terms are used by anti-transgender activists to dehumanize transgender people and reduce who they are to "a condition" or a "dangerous ideology" that threatens "free speech."
BEST PRACTICE:
Refer to being transgender instead, or refer to the transgender community. You can also refer to the movement for transgender equality and acceptance.