Part of: Religion and Queerness
Abstract:
New York-based Mayday Health recently released billboards in Kansas, U.S.A., emblazoned with the phrase “GOD MADE TRANS PEOPLE” on a backdrop of a blue sky and cross (Figure 1). Billboards with religiously- and politically-infused semiotics are common in Kansas. However, trans-affirming billboards are not. In 2023, Target pulled the work of Erik Carnell, a gay trans artist/designer from London, partly due to public furor toward the (false) claim that Target was selling Satanic products in its Pride Month lineup. Among the contentious, but not-actually-sold-at-Target, pieces from Carnell’s brand Abprallen, was an enamel pin he designed with a goat, crystals, and the now famous phrase “Satan respects pronouns” (Figure 2). These two multimodal texts—the billboard and the pin—likely differ in their target audiences. Both, however, share the use and the re-appropriation of religious elements that are embedded in and across anti-trans texts and discourses, which are in turn intertextually and interdiscursively linked to Christian religio-political texts/discourses.
This paper examines the role of multimodal religio-political rhetoric in resisting anti-trans discourses. Using “texts” (broadly construed) like those exemplified above as our objects of analysis, we focus on how trans folk and trans allies intentionally and strategically appropriate Christian and Christian nationalist phrases and imagery, regardless of their own (a-)religious affiliations. Our analysis draws from two methods of critical discourse studies, situated in relation to trans linguistics (Zimman 2020, 2021): the discourse-historical approach (Reisigl & Wodak 2001, 2009) and the sociocognitive approach (van Dijk 2008, 2009, 2014), which have been used together in previous analyses of other religio-political discourses (AUTHOR). Our goal in blending these approaches in relation to trans linguistics is multifaceted. On the one hand, this enables us to perform a hermeneutic analysis that highlights aspects of language use in relation to co-textual elements as well as broader social and historical considerations (the discourse-historical approach). It also recognizes the intersubjective mental models of discourse participants (the sociocognitive approach). While a substantive body of critical discourse-analytic work has traditionally focused on the discursive production of discrimination, hegemony, and other forms of power abuse (e.g., anti-Semitism, right-wing populism, fascism) (Reisigl, 2017), we seek to highlight agency in the disruption of these things, in and through the discursive strategies whereby trans people are (self-)empowered. Through our analysis, we also connect the forms of critique associated with the discourse-historical approach to the impetus toward social and linguistic justice that shapes trans linguistics (Zimman 2020).
This work highlights how mental models are contested, negotiated, and maintained through multimodal public discourse. Our analysis treats these texts as creative repurposings of familiar text types, crafted in such a way as to leverage Christian language and iconography in support of trans rights. They are sites where trans disbelonging is resisted and transformed, and where trans belonging is enacted. Religious and religio-political (particularly Christian and Christian nationalist) discourse are thus diversely appropriated for similar teleological purposes, for example: making transness legible (the billboard example), or refashioning negative elements for positive ingroup meaning (the pin example).
