Did You Know Facebook Has Sixty Genders? Trans*Humiliation as a Performative Politics of Right-Wing Women

Abstract:Beatrix von Storch, Frauke Petry, and Alice Weidel manage their queerness as conservative female politicians in a right-wing party by engaging in a form of performative politics I call trans*humiliation. Trans*humiliation mixes gleeful attempts to humiliate with a pedanticism that aims to make sense of the revulsion and confusion produced by visibly queer bodies as well as abstract discussions of gender and sexuality as a spectrum. Despite the politicians' attempts to manage their identities by using anti-genderist strategies and trans*humiliating tactics, their appropriation of a masculine subject position does not protect these politicians from losing their elite positions as the Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany) becomes more radical.