“Exterminate All the Brutes”: Colonial Logic and the War on Transgender People in America
History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.
I’m about to get spicy in an unusual way. You wouldn’t expect a book about nutmeg to punch you in the gut, but here we are.
I’m currently reading Amitav Ghosh’s The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis and having my mind blown - this is an essential book about colonialism, exploitation and the violent ideologies that justified mass extermination and exploitation of marginalized communities in the past. All of this told through the story of a tiny round little unassuming nutmeg—wrapped in layers of history, soaked in blood and once valuable enough to drive empires to slaughter.
Ghosh lays out how Western powers have historically framed entire populations as expendable, their destruction either a tragic necessity or a moral good.
Reading it, I kept thinking: this is precisely how today’s right-wing politicians and their misguided voters talk about trans people.
It’s all there—the dehumanization, the lies about their desire to “protect children,” the claims that trans existence itself is unnatural, dangerous or a sign of social collapse. And just like colonial powers justified genocide with legal trickery and moral panic, today’s GOP is turning transphobia into policy at an alarming rate. Nowhere is this more obvious than in our (former) home state of Texas, where Governor Greg Abbott and his bootlicking legislature have made it their mission to legislate trans people out of existence.
This isn’t hyperbole. This isn’t alarmist. This is genocide. If history teaches us anything, it’s that when a government starts treating a group of people as a problem to be solved, the results are catastrophic.
The GOP’s Playbook: Dehumanization, Moral Panic and Erasure
In The Nutmeg’s Curse, Ghosh dissects how colonial powers justified mass extermination. In one chapter, he draws from Sven Lindqvist’s Exterminate All the Brutes, which takes its name from a chilling line in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness—a stark admission that colonialism was never about enlightenment or progress, but about domination and extermination. The book explores how European empires justified genocide by dehumanizing entire peoples—a strategy echoed in modern authoritarian attacks on marginalized groups.
They framed Indigenous and enslaved peoples as:
Less than human. The term "brute" was used to strip people of agency and worth. Today, we hear conservatives call trans identities “delusions,” “grooming” or “a social contagion.”
A threat to the social order. The colonizers argued that Indigenous people and enslaved Africans had to be "civilized" or eliminated. Today, right-wing whacko media warns that trans people are corrupting youth, destroying womanhood and endangering Western civilization. Sigh.
A problem that will solve itself. Colonial powers claimed certain populations were simply destined to die out. Today, conservatives push policies to make trans life unbearable—banning healthcare, restricting public existence, forcing people to detransition—then claim trans identities are inherently unstable.
If you don’t see the echoes of history here, you’re not paying attention.
The Heart of Darkness + Epicenter of Transphobic Fascism
Texas Republicans, led by Gov. Abbott and the unfortunate AG Paxton (who in turn are led by the pocketbooks of theocratic-lusting Texas billionaires Tim Dunn, Farris Wilks and Dan Wilks), have been methodically stripping trans people of rights, protections and even the ability to exist in public life. It’s why my family was forced to flee - but we all know that Texas was simply a test case for national rollout in this disastrous second Tr*mp administration.
After hundreds of millions of dollars in transphobic ads were spent in the 2024 election cycle, we have arrived to a reality that feels ripped from a dystopian novel—one where the federal government is openly criminalizing trans existence and emboldening stochastic violence against an already marginalized community.
Texas was the blueprint, but now the erasure is nationwide, carried out with the full weight of an administration hellbent on legislating trans people out of public life entirely
Just a few lowlights of state and federal transphobic fuckery, if you need the reminder:
Investigating parents of trans kids for child abuse if they provide gender-affirming care—medical care that every major health organization supports. This doesn’t count the state bills (which did not pass) brought to the capitol to charge supportive parents as felons and have their parental rights stripped.
Banning trans kids from playing sports, using bathrooms and even learning about their own existence in school or in public libraries.
Blocking life-saving healthcare for trans adults and criminalizing doctors who provide it.
Trying to force detransition by “reverting” legal name changes and canceling IDs with correct gender markers. This week we even heard of state lege discussing a ban certain haircuts for non-gender conforming people.
Attempting to ban trans adults from serving in the military and removing VA healthcare services for trans veterans.
Honestly, I don’t feel like typing anymore examples even though there are SO damn many, because they are atrocious and I want to throw my laptop…
This isn’t about ‘protecting kids’ or ‘supporting women’ or standing up for so-called ‘traditional values’—a phrase that has become a thinly veiled dog whistle for white Christian supremacy and should feel like ashes in your mouth at this point. It’s really about making life so unlivable for trans people that they leave or… well, you know.
That is exterminationist logic.
History Has Taught Us This Before
Every human rights atrocity started with dehumanization and legal exclusion.
This is how Indigenous genocides unfolded across North America. This is how the Holocaust began. This is how the internment of Japanese Americans was justified during World War II. This is how Jim Crow laws codified racial segregation. This is how apartheid was enforced in South Africa.
This is how every single authoritarian regime consolidates power—by finding a group to demonize, a minority to blame, a community to expel.
We have been warned. We have lived through this. Over and over again.
To quote the poet Warsan Shire: “Later that night I held an atlas in my lap, ran my fingers across the whole world, and whispered, where does it hurt? It answered, everywhere, everywhere, everywhere.”
It hurts everywhere right now in the map of our lives. It truly does.
Big love to my trans friends and family. You deserve better than us.
