We Need A Better Defense Of Trans People

In the Right's perpetual campaign to bash liberals, anti-trans sentiment has been an extremely effective weapon. Voters who might otherwise agree with Democrats on just about every issue imaginable are nevertheless driven away from their own best interests when Republicans brand everyone to the left of themselves as being in favor of Drag Queen Story Hour, or trans female athletes competing in sports, or 13-year-olds receiving double mastectomies, or whatever other outrage-porn the Right Wing Media Machine decides to push next.

Nearly all political analysts have cited one particular commercial aired by the Trump campaign. That commercial played a clip of Kamala Harris saying that she supported gender-affirming care for inmates in California, and from there associated this with her wanting to give such care to illegal immigrant criminals. "Kamala is for they/them," the ad said. "Donald Trump is for us."

We laughed at this. But it worked.

Now, the response to the accusation was actually pretty solid. Federal prisoners were offered gender-affirming care during Trump's administration too. On Fox News, Kamala called this "throwing stones while living in a glass house." Also, under Kamala's term as California AG, only two inmates ever received such treatment. TWO. The total number of inmates to receive any such medical treatment as of December 2022 was only 20, and since ICE has a policy of incarcerating illegal immigrants as briefly as possible, it's almost certain that none of those was an illegal immigrant.

Yet none of this gained any traction. Nothing resonated. Part of this, of course, is because the Right Wing Media Machine has utterly taken over. But the other part is simply this:

We need a better defense of trans people!

I feel I'm uniquely qualified to bridge the gap on this particular issue. I'm a gen-X'er, part of that older generation which truly struggles with understanding the whole trans thing. What's more, I was once a fundamentalist Christian, ticketed for the ministry throughout my youth (though I've done a 180 since). Admittedly, the whole subject still seems a bit odd to me. Thus, as a self-described "Christian in recovery," I can clearly relate to how the anti-trans arguments resonate with believers. To their mindset, gender fluidity is utterly and monstrously alien. I understand how certain people, belonging to a community so traditional that short hair/skirts on women are still frowned upon, will almost certainly look upon "transality" (for want of a better word) as insane in the extreme, and those who accept it with tolerance, doubly so. For them, their pronouns are, "What the fuck are you even talking about?!" and "Get the hell away from me!"

So I fully comprehend how well the cards are stacked against us. We can't even try to mount an argument without automatically being seen with suspicion and revulsion.

But here's an attempt anyway:

Back in 2004, the issue that swept George W. Bush into a second term was opposition to gay marriage. It, like gender fluidity, filled conservatives with utter revulsion. But only several years later, by 2011, the issue was largely settled. The vast majority of Americans slowly came to accept gay marriage. Why? It wasn't just because of a 5 to 4 Supreme Court ruling which legalized it. It was because young people, many of whom had gay friends or were gay or bisexual themselves, rebelled against their elders. Usually, such social rebellion loses and the next generation settles into middle-aged capitulation. But this time, the youth movement won. The parents who rejected gay marriage came to accept it, based largely on wanting to accept their own children and their far-out opinions. Until, that is, those opinions stopped seeming quite so "far-out."

The trend lines are similar today, 20 years later. The youth of America, Millennials and Gen-Alpha mostly, are so strongly pro-trans that they will brook no argument on the matter. (Which is part of why Kamala didn't take a stronger mitigating stance regarding gender-affirming medical care. She knew if she offended the youth vote, she didn't stand a chance.) That insistence, like the one of 20 years before, will turn the tide of public opinion.

But that's tomorrow. For today, the argument is simply this:

Fundamentally, being trans is just like being gay.

Well, not just like being gay, naturally. But what I mean is, someone with gender dysphoria is born, not made. Yes, as humans, there is a spectrum. Yes, the nature-vs-nurture arguments abound. Yes, there are borderline cases. But for the most part, when a person's rebellion against their birth-gender is 1) consistent, 2) persistent, and 3) insistent, it's nature.

When society sees a trans person as having a condition on-par with being a gay person, the hard-won tolerance gay people have largely achieved comes along for the ride.

But my argument has a second part to it: We also need to finally loosen the fuck up! We'll never get anywhere if we regard those with an innate revulsion towards trans people as nothing but fools and morons. That kind of attitude never convinced anyone of anything. Indeed, it will just entrench the opposition further.

I'll use myself as an example, here. You see, I really don't know what to do yet about the problem of female trans athletes competing in sports. I freely admit I'm still trying to find a good solution to that one. (If I find one, I'll let you know.) But I've encountered so much blowback for this temporary middle-ground that I truly wonder about my friends on the Political Left. Can't I even take some time to process?

We'll never get anywhere if we can't even have a discussion.

Or then there's this one, already almost 10 years old: Back in 2015, on the podcast version of this blog (which I might resurrect someday, who knows?), I made a seemingly low-key joke about Caitlyn Jenner. My wisecrack at the time was, now that Bruce is Caitlyn, she's a woman over the age of 60. And as we all know, the media just doesn't talk about celebrity women over the age of 60. Therefore, to be truly fair to Caitlyn as a woman, the media must completely shut up about her.

That was reasonably funny. I got a few laughs. But I also got so much blowback about it that I'm still stunned. Apparently, Caitlyn has been the brunt of so many trans jokes that the pro-trans side drew a line in the sand: No joke about her, no matter how low-key, was even allowed to be funny. On the one hand, I see their point.

On the other hand, we will NEVER win any election again with an attitude like that!

So that's my take: Use the trans-like-gay angle as a jiu-jitsu move, using its weight to pull the opposition over to our side.

That, and don't treat people like absolute dirt for having a contrary opinion.

But that should go without saying.

Don't agree? Change my mind.

Eric

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