Who is to blame? Last week, this question dominated nearly every discussion of Vice President Kamala Harris’ devastating loss to Donald Trump. The answer has often been skewed by the Democratic Party and its media machine’s tendency to see all the good and bad in the world through vulgarly delineated demographic categories.
In a gossip column disguised as a serious political investigation, New York Times reporter Maureen Dowd accused Harris of wasting her breath on “promoting transgender rights” and identity bromides. . Despite the campaign’s surprisingly modest stance on the identity-based issues that determined Harris’ nomination in 2020, the hosts of MSNBC’s Morning Joe embraced Dowd’s message while simultaneously He supported similar statements from Councilors Seth Moulton and Tom Suozzi. He criticized the party’s support for “pandering to the far left” by allowing “boys” to play women’s sports.
The bottom line here is that many prominent liberals now believe that the widely broadcast “Kamala is for them, President Trump is for you” message is more than an ugly election tactic. It means that it is. Rather, it was just the clearest sign that the Democratic Party had abandoned the needs, desires, and beliefs of its voters in order to impose ugly, inverted gender norms from the top down.
There are many good reasons to doubt this narrative, the first of which is that public attitudes toward transgender rights are by no means static. Not so long ago, it was actually relatively popular. In 2016, only 35% of Americans supported legislation that would force transgender people to use restrooms and locker rooms that match the gender assigned to them at birth.
In fact, only 44 percent of Republicans supported such legislation, compared to 80 percent today. From then to now, conservative forces have repeatedly failed to win ballot referendum battles, federal lawsuits, and battles over state laws that target transgender people’s right to simply exist in public spaces. .
That truth is a critique of neoliberal identity politics and the uniqueness of a traditionalist, heterosexual, working-class household that resembles the cast of Leave It to Beaver and shares the gender politics of the time. Definitely shocking to people who tend to juxtapose imaginary visions of. Of course, even mid-twentieth century gender politics were far from fundamentally anti-queer. Rather, they were formed by a fiercely anti-communist scapegoat of supposedly weak-willed homosexuals who spread like a cancer throughout the federal bureaucracy of the Harry Truman administration. So even if trans issues were not well understood by a significant portion of the electorate in the 2010s, expanding social tolerance and civil rights was not preordained to be so polarizing.
What has changed in just a few years? Turning to Florida’s Ron DeSantis administration, Republican lawmakers have created an anti-trans sex panic over the “grooming” of public school teachers and counselors that disregards the rights of parents, and has launched widespread attacks on teachers’ unions and public education funding. Figured out a way to streamline the attack. Transgender rights are one thing, but the specter of a pedophile teacher and forced gender reassignment are clearly two different things.
In one particularly innovative expression of trans panic politics, conservative politicians and think tank propagandists have begun to denounce the “gender identity industry,” which exploits the bodies of innocent children and adolescents for profit. He is depicted as having a troubled heart. In its view, transgender rights are not simply a call for equality under the law, but a covert accumulation strategy by Big Pharma and Big Tech. These industries profit from lifelong patient-consumers who buy their medicines and convert susceptible teens through the unbridled influence of social media, the conspiracy alleges. There is.
If hospitalization were no longer a precursor to bankruptcy, perhaps socially conservative voters would care less about transgender people sharing in the benefits of public goods.
Mr. Trump himself incorporated this quasi-populist rhetoric into his campaign, calling for “investigate whether big pharmaceutical companies and big hospital networks intentionally concealed and sacrificed the horrific long-term side effects of gender reassignment to get rich.” ” and vowed to investigate. Vulnerable patients. ” A week before voters headed to the polls, J.D. Vance appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast and told a story about the collusion between gender-affirming psychiatrists and drug companies to squeeze profits. The presence of Caitlyn Jenner, who has accused liberals of allegedly “indoctrinating” transgender youth, at Mar-a-Lago on election night provided some cover for the Trump campaign, and provided a measure of cover for Big Pharma and the government. It justified the Trump campaign’s stance of protecting children from. It obscures the Republican plan for transgender people.
In a similarly conspiratorial note, Christopher Rufo argues that “business is booming” in the gender-affirming care industry, as evidenced by a research hospital developing a robot-assisted vaginoplasty machine. ‘ he warned. Such fears about what Rufo calls the “castration machine” line up neatly with the conservative movement’s promise to restore masculinity. Thus, by shadowboxing these and other supposed threats, the right promises to save endangered men from their own emasculating fears. If many men feel like they’re losing out on all fronts – with diminished prospects of earning a living wage, what some genuinely feel is a threatening shift in gendered social frameworks. An understandable sentiment, given that — why can’t we expect a strong response? Could it be exploited by the right?
The power of this broader populist framework for transgender rights works by obscuring the fact that corporate America’s brief flirtation with “woke” reform has subsided dramatically over the past two years. are. Nowhere is this more evident than in the tech industry, where Silicon Valley billionaires are lining up to kiss the Republican Party’s ring.
Less than seven years after winning the Human Rights Campaign’s 2017 National Equality Award, Jeff Bezos trashed the Washington Post’s endorsement of Harris and immediately congratulated Trump on his election victory. That other tech CEOs, including Mark Zuckerberg, were quick to bow before the man who had just recently threatened to imprison them suggests that President Trump may not be able to monitor or silence his supporters. It only further fueled the idea that he was back to defeat those who tried to oppose him, or in other ways.
Nine years since Trump descended from that gaudy golden escalator, such populist posturing has made the Republican Party a party dedicated to wielding brutal cultural backlash to achieve upward economic redistribution. Instead, it was surprisingly effective in promoting itself as a champion of the underdog. Democrats have done their own pernicious role in obscuring the origins and strength of today’s anti-trans agenda.
In 2012, then-Vice President Joe Biden famously described the fight against trans discrimination as “the civil rights issue of our time.” What a different world it would have been if Democrats had combined their historic actions with something other than half-hearted measures on worker rights, industrial policy, and public goods.
What if the Biden administration’s lawsuit against state bans on gender-affirming care for transgender youth doesn’t follow through on the administration’s decision to roll back COVID-19 Medicaid expansion and quietly privatize Medicare through Medicare Advantage? Would it have happened? What if we had at least heard full-throated support for Medicare for All instead? The program could easily have included trans anti-discrimination protections and health benefits. If hospitalization were no longer a precursor to bankruptcy, perhaps socially conservative voters would care less about transgender people sharing in the benefits of public goods.
Consider also the Trump campaign ad accusing the Biden administration of providing gender-affirming surgical care to prison inmates and “illegal aliens.” This charge derives its strength, in part, from long-standing bipartisan support for mass incarceration policies and their ideological consequences, which demonize the accused as irredeemable and unjust. I pulled it out. The same goes for immigration. Earlier this year, Biden sent a tough immigration bill to Congress, put together by Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, before Trump persuaded his supporters to deny the president his congressional victory. I dared to propose this to Congress.
Given the bipartisan nature of the effort—just listen to Tim Walz’s repeated support for the bill during the Vice Presidential debate—opposition to immigrant access to trans health care , expanding from a larger effort by both parties to source information from illegal aliens. About voters’ pain, the reasons for their anger, and their sense of economic and social insecurity. And in both cases, accusations that taxpayer funds are being wasted reinforce the idea that the government can do nothing but waste money, while raising questions about where that money has gone. will provide the answer.
We do not have political organizations or movements that can make non-identity factors a condition of support rather than an added bonus.
As always, nonprofit organizations that call themselves LGBTQ rights movements share responsibility. Even the National LGBTQ Task Force, billed as a “progressive” and “grassroots” movement, holds meetings adorned with ads celebrating sponsorships from Coca-Cola, Comcast, and Gilead Pharmaceuticals. This election cycle, the class nature of the movement can be seen in the fanfare surrounding Sarah McBride of Delaware, the first openly transgender person in Congress. McBride’s dizzying obsession with the novelty of her identity as a future lawmaker appears to have outweighed her work on family and medical leave policy and support from labor unions as a state representative.
Such prioritization reminds us that we lack political organizations and movements that can make these non-identity elements a condition of support rather than an added bonus. Of course, this will require something other than the existing identity-based coalitional approach that defines both nonprofits and street activist groups. It will require the construction of something new that may eventually compete with working class organizations and the democratic machine that they organize. The concern has long served as a junior partner to the dominant sector of social justice nonprofits, funded by business groups and wealthy donors.
Given that no such organization currently exists, we sadly need to remain vigilant about how much corruption the current set of “progressive” nonprofits will soon sanction. There is. Recall that 20 years ago, the human rights movement, and in particular Mr. McBride’s former employer, reached an agreement with Congressional Republicans. We will support then-President George W. Bush’s efforts to privatize Social Security if he signs the Employment Nondiscrimination Act into law. . Even if LGBTQ advocacy nonprofits attempt similar maneuvers over the next four years, we see any modest support for transgender rights as nothing more than a class agenda that benefits an indifferent liberal elite. It would be very difficult to blame voters. The pronoun “they” this time refers to the ostensibly gender-normative majority, the opposite of Harris’ preference for the illegitimate transgender “they/them.”
Importantly, Democratic leaders and their donors have responded to the increasingly widespread view that transgender rights are incompatible with, or even hostile to, politics that benefits the majority rather than the minority. This means that they certainly have a great responsibility. The point made by the chatty class is correct, but the reason is wrong.
More than just rhetoric, this is a frightening effect of the party’s diminishing ability to provide enough comfort and security to thwart the strong’s promises of economic and cultural renewal. In that sense, the blame does not lie with this year’s Democratic campaign consultants, but with 50 years of allowing workers to wither away while replacing working-class voters with wealthier suburban white voters. . The scapegoating and bitterness that may soon be revealed will stain the soul of every centrist voice of reason that condemned social democratic reforms yesterday and condemns transgender people today.
