Kathleen Hayes is an American writer and anti-transgender activist. Hayes believes the trans community is a “cult.”
Background
Hayes bas born in ~1968 and attended University of California, Berkeley. While there she joined the Spartacus Youth League, a revolutionary communist organization that espoused Trotskyist philosophies. Via Washington Post:
Kathleen Hayes, a Berkeley alum now working with the Spartacus Youth League, pauses from her task of passing out copies of the Workers Vanguard newspaper. She finds the disc disgusting: “The idea that the university that tried to squelch free speech is now putting up a monument to free speech is priceless. This is hypocritical. We know they can run anyone whose views they don’t like off campus.”
She said in 2022,”Since quitting in 2016, Iâve devoted myself to trying to better understand how and why so many leftistsâincluding myself all those yearsâimbibe and express antisemitism.”
Hayes earned a master’s degree at Birkbeck, University of London, in 2020. Her thesis was âMarxism, the âJewish Questionâ and the Holocaust: The Spectre Behind Contemporary Left Antisemitism.â
Her essay âAntisemitism and the Left: A Memoir,â was published in Fathom in 2021. At the time, she planned to work toward a doctorate.
Anti-transgender activism
In 2022 she presented a paper titled âPunch a TERFâ and âSmash the Zionistsâ: Misogyny and Antisemitism in the Contemporary Western Left:
Authoritarianism thrives on a dialectic of love and hate. Lonely, spiritually thirsty people in a fragmented modern world turn to authoritarian groups and movements not only for a sense of belonging and meaning, but what they experience as love. The exquisite comradeship the authoritarian group provides can only be enjoyed against another group, one deemed righteous to hate. That authoritarianism invariably fosters prejudice was best understood by the Frankfurt School, who noted that âthe authoritarian must [their emphasis], out of an inner necessity, turn his aggression against out groupsâ. They also found authoritarians hated predictable clusters of groups: their typical rightwing antisemitic subject also hated black people, foreigners and gays and had retrograde views about women.
Today many of the same illiberal, authoritarian âprogressivesâ who spew antisemitism support a misogynist rampage in the form of transactivism. Much as anti-Zionist vitriol is really directed against all Jews, transactivistsâ threats against âTERFsâ implicitly target all women. Both campaigns are driven by perverse claims about âprivilegeâ. For the authoritarian left, (âZionistâ) Jews and (âcisgenderâ) women are âoppressorsâ, so hating them is not only just, but obligatory. Raceâthe suggestion that both groups are âwhiteââplays an essential role. The contemporary struggle against antisemitism therefore calls for also grappling with the threatening, bizarre, overtly anti-materialist offensive occurring on the terrain of gender.
She posted a similar piece in Quillette titled “Gender Ideologyâs True Believers.”
References
Heni, Clemens (August 20, 2022). Ukraine, Holocaust trivialization, transphobia and tolerating the âAmerican Nazi Partyâ in the pro-Israel scene? https://clemensheni.net/ukraine-holocaust-trivialization-transphobia-and-tolerating-the-american-nazi-party-in-the-pro-israel-scene/
Hayes, Kathleen (September 13, 2022). âPunch a TERFâ and âSmash the Zionistsâ: Misogyny and Antisemitism in the Contemporary Western Left. Conference: 21st Century Antisemitism https://londonantisemitism.com/conference-21st-century-antisemitism/
Boudreau, John (July 28, 1992). Up against the scrawl. Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1992/07/28/up-against-the-scrawl/1d731e33-1992-486c-b299-d60786510ada/
Staff report (February 12, 1988). “Smash Metzger’s Klan Terror!” Workers Vanguard https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/workersvanguard/1988/0446_12_02_1988.pdf
Staff report (April 1, 1993). Berkeley Spartacus Youth Club Protests “Right to Life” Bigots. Workers Vanguard https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/workersvanguard/1993/0573_09_04_1993.pdf
Hayes, Kathleen (May 19, 2022). Gender Ideologyâs True Believers. Quillette https://quillette.com/2022/05/19/gender-ideologys-true-believers/
Hayes, Kathleen (July 2021). Antisemitism and the Left: A Memoir. Fathom https://fathomjournal.org/antisemitism-and-the-left-a-memoir/
Hayes, Kathleen (September 21, 2022). From Trotsky to Torah. Tablet https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/holidays/articles/trotsky-to-torah-rosh-hashanah
Resources
Quillette (quillette.com)
Twitter (twitter.com)
Jewish Journal (jewishjournal.com)
Facebook (facebook.com)