It doesn’t take much to piss off conservatives these days. In fact, all you need is to be a trans or queer person insisting upon having rights, or a woman exercising bodily autonomy.

In one bizarre recent episode, far-right weirdo and podcast Elijah Schaffer posted a picture of a woman before and after getting a pixie cut, with the caption: “females who do this should be arrested.” The post quickly garnered thousands of likes from people who apparently agree that hairstyle choices should be subject to litigation. Because it’s not as if we have any huge, looming systemic problems to solve in this country!

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Activist Erin Reed was quick to point out the absurdity of someone like Schaffer deciding to come after a woman for what she decides to do with her hair. If you think that the far right will stop at taking away the rights of trans folks, think again.

“Remember that anti-trans and anti-queer activism is not just about trans and queer people,” Reed wrote. “It’s about any gender nonconformity whatsoever.”

It’s true. People like Schaffer—who have built platforms off of referring to women as “females” and talking about what they should and shouldn’t to better appeal to the male gaze—aren’t just crusading against the rights of queer and trans people to express themselves. Whether they’re aware of it or not, they seem to be implicitly arguing for a return to “traditional” gender that perhaps never actually existed.

The good news is that support for this kind of thinking is on the decline.

But things aren’t changing fast enough. If people can rally support around the idea that women shouldn’t be able to do what they want with their bodies even on a superficial level, it’s hard to imagine a future where abortion pills remain accessible and Roe is eventually reinstated.

This counts as a sobering reminder that bodily autonomy is everyone’s issue, and if we lose this fight, no one will remain unaffected.

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