Maggie Nelson, essayist: ‘Trump is using trans people as scapegoats; these are repressive tactics that will spread’

It’s been several years since Maggie Nelson last visited Spain. But a high school boy’s question from her time there keeps echoing in her head: “He asked me why fascism was so bad for freedom,” the author recalls. That was in 2021. She was on a book tour for On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint. “There was a lot embedded in that question… and even though I noted several things in my answer, I realized they weren’t really landing,” Nelson tells EL PAÍS, while sitting in a café in the Highland Park neighborhood of northeast Los Angeles.

Nelson, 52, is a professor at the University of Southern California. She’s also the author of a dozen books. Perhaps her best-known publication is The Argonauts (2016), a memoir that blurs the line between genres to recount her life with the gender-fluid artist Harry Dodge. The book touches on the transformation he underwent while Nelson was pregnant with their child.

In 2024, Nelson returned with a collection of essays titled Like Love. It brings together interviews and texts with the wide-ranging style that resulted in her being named a 2016 MacArthur Fellow. Its pages feature trans writer and activist Eileen Myles, as well as critiques of the literary works of Ben Lerner and Natalia Ginzburg, among others. The title takes its name from a phrase used by Hilton Als – the influential critic and art curator who writes for The New Yorker – while the compilation deepens Nelson’s exploration of the link between art and thought. This is something she previously addressed in Bluets (2009) – a poetic reflection on the color blue – or The Art of Cruelty (2011), where she continues Susan Sontag’s critical tradition of depictions of violence in culture.

Nelson’s meeting with EL PAÍS took place on a rainy morning. The conversation inevitably turned to Donald Trump and the war that the president has declared on the LGBTQ+ community.

Question. Like Love contains 31 essays and took 20 years of work. What unites the pieces?

Answer. Intergenerational exchange. I talk about my mentors and what I’ve learned from the people who came after me. I address transgressive works of feminism, queer theory and art. They reflect a particular sensibility. It’s a social portrait of being alive.

Q. One of your first connections with art was through poetry. Yet, you write that you stopped writing poetry when you moved to Los Angeles.

A. I kept up the project of writing something you might call “poetry” in the broadest sense, even though I no longer write poems. I’m interested in using the most effective tools to construct discourse… thinking about ideas and contrasting them with the sound of my sentences. That work, for me, is poetic.

Q. You had the idea for On Freedom before Trump’s first presidency. How much has changed since then?

A. The questions that made me uncomfortable back then seem very useful to me now. I noticed this in the past: I grew up in a very right-wing environment and the word “freedom” was used for everything. But Trumpism is no different from other dynamics associated with authoritarianism, which makes you think things like: “I will subjugate my freedom to a strong man who will, you know, take care of things for me.” It’s a mistake to miss the opportunity to talk about freedom. As James Baldwin said, real freedom is very difficult to carry. And I think I’ve met very few people — and none of them are Americans — who’ve truly desired it.

Q. Today, one particular group has hijacked that conversation. How do you view Trump’s attack on non-binary and LGBTQ+ people?

A. It’s a horrifying spectacle. On the one hand, it feels familiar: I grew up in the age of AIDS [when] there was talk about putting gay people in camps. Some people would rather have had dead children than gay children. [LGBTQ+] people are being scapegoated today. And these repressive tactics will spread. It’s hard for people to notice when they’re so unfamiliar with non-binary or trans people.

Q. This must be the first administration to prioritize the targeting of trans people.

A. It’s clearly an obsession of theirs. And, you know, I go back and forth. There are a lot of smart people who talk about it as classic scapegoat theory: pick on the smallest group of people who are the most misunderstood. But then, there’s a part of me that thinks [the Trump administration is] onto something, because the destabilization of gender roles has been a major [goal] of queer and feminist theory for a long time. There’s been a lot of progress in that area.

Q. Are you surprised by how far the culture war has gone?

A. The other day, I was talking to someone at the university where I teach. And they’ve been instructed that no grant applications that have the word “woman” in them will be funded. That goes beyond anti-woke. What are we supposed to do? Think like white men forever? [There’s this] anger at the idea that other kinds of people exist in the world. Masha Gessen has written extensively about this. And it’s part of a conversation that’s been going on within the movement for a long time. Are we too vigilant? Are we too focused on language? But nothing in this debate has been about the power of the state. Now, Trump and his team have this power… and they’ve shown that they have no qualms about using it for censorship. That’s a much greater threat.

Q. As a public intellectual, do you find it difficult to stay hopeful?

A. I don’t feel hopeful. I feel sad and very worried, even though I believe most people didn’t vote for a total destabilization of American life and the economy. Communities need each other now more than ever. The right thrives on people feeling disconnected and alone.

Q. Is there a possibility of resistance?

A. The only good that can come out of it is a total reconstruction of the left. Kamala Harris’ highest approval ratings were among college graduates, white academics and women like me. This isn’t a criticism of her voters, but of the corporatism and hypocritical cowardice of the Democratic Party. I think, for the last month, everyone was horrified at where the Democrats were. Now, it’s kind of like, well, what are we gonna build? Because they’re not building anything. It’s just gonna take time.

Q. Is Trump’s emphasis on stripping away LGBTQ+ rights actually an opportunity?

A. There are many people who think the Democrats went too far in talking about trans rights. That’s a bunch of crap. Good leaders can involve people in issues they don’t understand with integrity, in a didactic way. And, if you’re not willing to do that, you’d better get out of the way. If the answer is to not talk about this issue and be tougher on immigration… [that’s nonsense]. We need people who can explain the issue better.

Q. One of your essays is about Judith Butler, who was one of the developers of queer theory. They discussed this subject extensively in their book, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (2004).

A. They were living in New York during 9/11. [That book] was published shortly afterwards. They achieved what good intellectuals do: reframing the ideas and feelings people were experiencing in a way that helps you understand them. Butler integrates political theory with psychoanalysis. Their essays move you: [they manage to] address grief and connect it with the reactionary response that led to an unjustified war being declared over the pain that New York felt. You can see this with Trumpism. It’s this kind of faux strength… it’s a psychotic, sociopathic reaction to vulnerability. It wreaks havoc on other people.

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