There’s an iconic Mariah Carey lyric from 2009 that has echoed in my mind a lot lately while reading the news: “Boy, why you so obsessed with me?”
Carey is, of course, singing about a persistent suitor who just won’t quit. But in the news cycle of 2025, the “boy” is the conservative media and political machine. And the “me” is, well, trans people at large. Once again, I have to ask: Why are they so obsessed with us?
The 2025 Canadian federal election campaign is underway, and it arrives at a moment where it seems like the conservative media and politicians just can’t get enough of trans people. They’re seemingly addicted to discourse about pronouns and bathroom access. They’re fixated on high school girls’ volleyball, gender markers on passports, puberty blocker prescriptions, or even haircuts. They accuse their opponents of forcing “radical gender ideology” on young people as they strip away people’s rights to health care and self-identification.
The first part of this century saw progressive politicians campaign on expanding LGBTQ2S+ rights—such as Obama-era expansions to marriage equality or Canada-wide “X” gender markers—while their right-wing opponents largely remained silent. But the script has flipped. Now, Donald Trump has won an election on the back of campaign ads like “Kamala is for they/them” and turned questions about the very existence of trans people into a day-one executive order. In the UK, we’ve seen bad science, like the Cass Review, guide public health policy in the country and beyond, as well as Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s campaign on restricting trans women from women’s spaces. Yes, the current anti-trans movement was born in the UK and the US, but make no mistake: it has found roots in Canada too.
Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre has embraced much of the anti-trans discourse from abroad. Last year, he spoke out against puberty blockers for young people and trans women in women’s spaces, arguing, in his words, that “female spaces should be exclusively for females, not for ‘biological males.’” And this January, following Trump’s inauguration, he parroted back the US president’s stance about being aware of “only two genders.”
While the major parties have largely been quiet on LGBTQ2S+ issues so far in the campaign, we’ve already seen certain corners of the right-wing media machine trying to create discussion about Prime Minister Mark Carney’s family. The far-right outlet Juno News (founded by columnist Candice Malcolm and Rebel News alum Keean Bexte earlier this year) recently ran a “story” claiming to “expose” Carney’s adult child Sasha as trans. The reporters for the story, Cosmin Dzsurdzsa and Alex Zoltan, suggest Carney is somehow “hiding” Sasha and their experiences accessing gender-affirming care in the UK, and that is somehow, by extension, a reflection on Carney’s capabilities as a parent and potential prime minister.
Predictably, the story was picked up on X and circulated by various familiar faces of the anti-trans movement, including Canada’s own “Billboard Chris,” or Chris Elston, who is known for harassing LGBTQ2S+ people and allies at protests.
That story wasn’t confined to the far-right internet either. When I posted a TikTok video for Xtra about the lack of cabinet positions speaking to LGBTQ2S+ issues, many viewers posted comments suggesting that Carney’s kid’s existence counts as proof of his support for trans communities. Writing for his newsletter, political journalist Justin Ling called the Juno News story a “low point” of the campaign before it even began. “It is a violation of the unspoken rule that politicians’ kids are off-limits. And, on top of that, the story is factually wrong—an example of the sloppy faux-journalism employed by these anti-trans bigots in the name of a crusade.” (Ling points out that the Juno authors wrongly state that Sasha Carney received gender-affirming care at the UK’s Tavistock and Portman gender identity clinic—which Sasha has explicitly said did not happen.)
It is also another example of right-wing media using misinformation or speculation to stoke moral panic around trans rights. (It doesn’t matter to these outlets that puberty blockers have been proven time and time again to be safe or that there is no evidence that cis men are masquerading as trans women in bathrooms.) Poilievre and other conservative politicians—even when not explicitly endorsing these narratives themselves—seem content to let them fester into electoral wedge issues, something the well-meaning “just asking questions” crowd can latch on to.
Last year, Saskatchewan premier Scott Moe claimed that there was widespread desire for his school pronouns policy—which would forcibly out kids to their parents if they used a different name or pronoun at school—yet later admitted to not hearing from a single parent whose kid actually hid their gender at school. Action4Canada, a right-wing group that was instrumental in the Freedom Convoy, took credit for getting the policy introduced in Saskatchewan, claiming to have sent more than 10,000 emails to Moe and then education minister Dustin Duncan via an online petition.
Last year, Alberta premier Danielle Smith justified banning trans women from women’s sports by citing a video she saw online of a—to quote her words—“much stronger transgender female” body-slamming another player. The problem? The video in question actually featured a cis athlete. The misinformation that it involved a trans player was boosted by far-right media.
That’s how wedge issues work in elections. This obsession with trans people preys on very specific fears people across the political spectrum hold: the safety of women and children. The hyperfixation on young trans people suggests kids are being taken advantage of by some sort of big, bad gender ideology agenda. The fixation on trans women in women’s spaces preys on the patriarchal desire to protect and coddle cis women—or at least appear to be protecting them.
Remaining silent on these issues—or, worse, validating them in any way—is not a winning strategy for liberals and progressives. The right will continue to weaponize these insecurities, and the only viable defence is strong, committed support for queer and trans communities that dispels this fear and reminds voters that feminism is trans inclusive. The big, malicious movement trying to take advantage of kids is actually that of conservative voices, and if other parties actually want to show allyship and earn the votes of LGBTQ2S+ people and our allies, they need to say or do something to combat the outright misinformation being spread.
Otherwise, as we saw in the US, as long as that keeps working for the right, the right is going to keep on pushing its agenda. The obsession continues.
This story was produced in collaboration with Xtra Magazine.
