How trans panic steals from horror films

[marmar]

How trans panic steals from horror films
Fake victims like Riley Gaines evoke the little girls of "The Exorcist" and "The Conjuring"

By Amanda Marcotte
Senior Writer
Published October 27, 2025 6:45AM (EDT)


(Salon) On paper, former swimmer Riley Gaines is a puzzling choice for MAGA’s appointed “victim” of trans people. Gaines has built an entire career on a single incident when she was a college swimmer, when she tied for fifth place during the 200-yard freestyle at the NCAA swimming championship in 2022.

As a senior at the University of Kentucky, she finished in the middle of the pack with Lia Thomas, who had drawn national attention for being trans. Logically, Gaines’s woe-is-me tale doesn’t make much sense as a moral outrage over trans women in sports. Four other swimmers outswam Thomas, which seems to be proof against conservative claims that trans women have an unbeatable advantage. Nevertheless, Gaines portrays the moment as when her “dreams” were “shattered,” but most people would hardly use such heavy language for the difference between tying for fifth place versus having that also-ran trophy by yourself.

Despite the underwhelming facts of her tale, Gaines turned her unmemorable swim meet into the entire foundation of her career as a MAGA figurehead. She never had the chops to be a professional swimmer, but she has done well as a professional victim, devoting her life not just to eradicating trans women from sports, but to opposing trans rights altogether. Gaines compares trans women to rapists and pedophiles, and claims that LGBTQ rights activists wish to “fully eradicate women as a whole.” She even calls trans people and their allies “demonic” and aligns queer rights with Satanism.

Such language isn’t metaphorical for Gaines or her audience; she means it quite literally. The trans panic currently gripping the Christian right is an extension of the Satanic panic that took hold in the 1980s — a worldview that owes little to reality or to the teachings of Jesus. Instead, it’s rooted in the visual and emotional language of horror films, especially the more reactionary tales of demonic possession, such as “The Exorcist” and “The Conjuring.” These followers unabashedly argue that “transgenderism” is a tool of Satan and that acceptance of gender non-conforming people is a form of demonic possession. ...................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/10/27/how-trans-panic-steals-from-horror-films/

[Dave Bowman]

1. She doesn't sound unhinged at all.

[area51]

2. k&r n/t