So something I've increasingly noticed in UK political discussions is how quickly people dismiss controversial political developments as "American politics" or "American culture wars".

Whether it's trans rights, immigration, racism, sexism or broader debates about identity, there's almost always someone insisting that we're importing American problems and that Britain never used to be like this.

But why do we keep pretending the UK is somehow fundamentally different?

We're two countries with closely connected histories, shared cultural influences, deeply entrenched class hierarchies, histories of colonialism and racial discrimination, and political institutions historically dominated by white men. Why would we expect our political cultures to be completely different?

To be clear I'm not denying that American political discourse influences us lot. Obviously it does. American media, politicians and online movements have enormous international reach. But I think we can agree influence isn't the same as invention right?

The UK had racism before American social media existed. We had misogyny, homophobia and transphobia long before anyone started complaining about American culture wars. Our newspapers, politicians and institutions have been perfectly capable of manufacturing moral panics without needing instructions from Washington.

What particularly frustrates me is how this framing almost absolves the country of responsibility. Rather than examining why these attitudes already exist here, we treat them as some foreign contamination that's somehow infected an otherwise tolerant society.

It also works in reverse. When progressive movements gain attention, they're sometimes dismissed as American imports too, as though we couldn't possibly have developed their own objections to discrimination and inequality.

I think there's a wider reluctance in UK political discourse to acknowledge how much of what we criticise in America also exists here, sometimes in slightly different forms. Just don't get why are we so determined to portray these problems as uniquely American instead of acknowledging that they're also British problems...

Her post:

“Closing down gender clinics isn’t enough to end this scandal. The whole idea that trans is a type of person must be eradicated.

As long as society pretends it’s normal to want healthy body parts chopped off, vulnerable people will continue to be harmed.”

These are the people working alongside “LGB Alliance” and EHRC TERFs working hard to exterminate trans people from public life.

Her name is Mia Hughes and she’s with Genspect, an anti-trans organisation pushing propaganda and bigotry.

👂

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/781821

Video from Will Hayward's Instagram.