This is a good outline of TQ+-supporting Democrats' attitudes on the issue, but why shy away from the reasons the majority of voters, including lifelong Democrats like me, reject the demands to prioritize gender identity over sex in law and policy?
1. Legitimate civil rights movements do not seek to destroy the hard-won rights of other historically marginalized groups.
Redefining "woman" and "girl" to mean subjective, self-identified feelings instead of members of a material sex class puts an end to specific accommodations for female Americans: not only female-only sports and locker rooms but also domestic violence shelters, prisons, and more.
To take these accommodations away from women is to treat women as somehow an oppressor class of men, illegitimately keeping from them rights to which they are entitled.
Most of us can see that it is not a civil right for a male person to undress in front of women and girls as they undress; to be locked in a prison cell with a woman; or to sleep in the same room as an unhoused woman taking shelter for the night.
Further, redefining same-sex attraction as "same-gender attraction" is making it impossible throughout the Western world for lesbians and gay men to meet in spaces of their own without heterosexuals.
As same-sex attracted women, lesbians bear the brunt of this intersectional attack. That is why it was a lesbian radical feminist, Julia Beck, ousted from Baltimore's LGBTQ Commission Law and Policy Committee by the efforts of a male trans activist who called her support for single-sex incarceration for women "violent." It is why courts have ruled that lesbians in Victoria, Australia, may not have meet in public without admitting male "lesbians."
2. Legitimate civil rights movements seek to persuade others, not to crush all dissent by shouting down public meetings, issuing violent threats on social media, and making people fear for their livelihoods and even their safety. The more people see trans activists humming and howling to drown out parents at NYC school board meetings---or physically assaulting feminists gathering to speak about women's rights---the less TQ+ looks like a civil rights movement and the more it looks like male aggression against women.
(Trans identified females are a whole other story, but this comment is already far too long).
I left out an important point when it comes to old-school Democrats rejecting TQ+ for its homophobia: huge proportions of the kids and young people being encouraged to medicalize as "trans" are the kids who, left to go through puberty without intervention, would grow up to be lesbians, gay men, and bisexual people.
Clinicians at the UK's Tavistock GIDS noted that the *majority* of the patients they saw were same-sex attracted and joked darkly that there would be "no gay people left at the rate [the clinic was] going."
Many of the lesbians and gay men who fought for their rights from the 70s to the 00s see the medical "transition" of children and young adults as a massive eugenic effort to "trans away the gay."
Democrats are supposed to be the party *supporting* LGB people to grow up safe and equal, not telling them that there is something wrong with them that must be altered even to the point of sterilization and anorgasmia.
THANK YOU! This point cannot be made too often. It underscores the paradox behind trans allies’ panic over “trans kids.” To Democrats, trans kids (an imaginary group) epitomize the plight of trans people in a supposedly transphobic society. What Dems don’t know or won’t admit is that most “trans kids” would grow up to be gay or lesbian if not indoctrinated into gender ideology. What about Democrats’ professed support for gay rights?
"Democrats see the fight for trans rights as an extension of other past civil rights struggles, where they believe they were on the “right side of history” and conservatives were on the wrong side."
The Dems conveniently forget that Eugenics was a "progressive" cause, as was the forced sterilization of "undesirable" people. But I digress.
"Most recently, they won the fight for same-sex marriage rights, and eventually, many Republicans even came around. So, the thinking goes, why would this time be any different?"
Here's why it is different: the proponents of same sex marriage rights did not demand that ALL churches must perform same sex weddings. They did not break into church services, call all the church members Nazis, and vandalize the altar. If gay marriage activists had behaved like trans activists, we would still not have same sex marriage rights in this country.
Gay rights was accepted because allowing gay people access to normal activities in society didn't prevent anyone else from participating in those activities equally. Same-sex marriage also does not infringe in any way on the rights of heterosexual couples to be married and live their lives the way they want to. This is one of the critical differences between gay rights and so-called "trans" rights as the Left is trying to force upon society today. Transgender people have been around for several decades now, but the previous generation was happy to live their lives out as their preferred gender and blend in, for the most part, without asking anyone else to make special accommodations for them. Today, too many transgender people and their cheerleaders on the Left want to force the vast majority to change their lives to accommodate unreasonable demands, including actual risk to women from men pretending to be women, and so of course there is hard pushback. As there should be. As said in the article, women are losing their spaces, their sports, and even their safety because of men pretending to be women, at least some of whom are claiming a female identity just so they can access women's spaces to harm them.
And no one should be conducting dangerous social and irreversible medical procedures on children, period, hard stop.
Another difference is that same-sex attraction is real whereas most people who claim to be trans are not, especially girls, teen girls and young women.
I thought we already had a sexual revolution fifty years ago. Everyone is free to be however the heck they want to be, preferably in the privacy of their own bedroom thank you very much. The problem is requiring me to be a participant, I'd rather not. Don't require me to use special vocabulary or otherwise pretend something is other than what is obvious to my own eyes.
Democrats embracing trans issues are, and will remain, stuck in a political wilderness. Time was when sensible, moderate Democrats like former President Clinton could bridge the party's differences on issues like gays serving in the military with his "Don't ask, don't tell" compromise language. Today's Democratic progressive Left wing is neither sensible nor moderate in the opinion of the vast majority of Americans, who correctly refuse to let the science be compromised to the Left's pliable notions of "truth."
Until the Democratic Party frees itself of this smug intolerance, it may have no future.
"The number of transgender athletes competing at least at the college level is very small, which reinforces the idea for many Democrats that the right is just looking for someone to bully. Why else would they care about such a small number of people?"
The question could easily be reversed: if such a tiny percentage of trans women demand the "right" to unfairly compete against women, why undermine the entire cause of trans rights by prioritizing them? That's what the Dems have done, and they have not only harmed their party, they have harmed all trans people.
The number of men pretending to be women competing in women's sports is not small. One of the international sports organizations counted about 900 medals in women's events that were won by men pretending to be women. That's 900 women who did their best and could not possibly win against a stronger, faster, bigger biological male. That's not a small number either, and it represents lost opportunities for those women that they will likely never get back. The window for peak athletic performance is usually very short.
One woman getting a traumatic brain injury is one too many. Democrats demanding women be "nice," yet risk getting their teeth bashed in on the field, is a hard no. And it's an insane demand. I didn't serve and I can't have veteran rights no matter how depressed that makes me.
Our daughter, who has worked years to become a world class ultra runner, set a Guinness World record last year.
She ran 32 miles a day, with breaks no longer than 5 minutes, for 200 straight days. That is not a typo.
If her record is beaten by a woman, then we will all celebrate that woman's achievement. But if it is beaten by a trans woman, then we will believe she was cheated out of her incredible and mind-boggling achievement.
Yet many (so called) Progressives would allow this trans woman to "break" our daughter's record.
So we, 50-year voters for Democrats, knowing this, have become Independents. When Democrats get Progressives out of the party we will be back.
Fascinating! As a democrat I think this piece was very insightful. It’s just consistently surprising to me how many one issue voters there are on this topic on both sides
"This means, in their view, that whether a trans woman (someone born male) participating in women’s sports is “fair” is beside the point because it opens the door to excluding a minority group, which is wrong." Yeah, we get it: it's perfectly fine to throw women and girls under the bus to protect the "right" of any minority to treat us like second class citizens. Roger that: MAGA.
This is consistent with the behavior of The Groups on every other issue as well. It is in their nature. The normal Democrats (if they haven't all defected) must take their party back.
Here's the thing. Democrats have formed the idea that Conservatives want someone to pick on. However, I have the opposite view. Democrats seem to come up with a group, fight for a right, get that right and then search and search for a new group to keep their funding coming. They've had so many wins they are now bringing out groups for a second round, like black Americans. Or homeless. Or drug addicted. Or homeless, drug-addicted minority transgender people. They don't seem to care that they also have chosen to bully and pick on groups such as moms and women and female athletes and white men.
The reason it’s so difficult is because it’s such an emotionally explosive issue, and even disagreeing in good faith and with as much compassion as possible will likely get you yelled at, at best. I think the equivalent for Republicans is if they all stood up in unison and unequivocally said, “Joe Biden won the 2020 election, Mr. President.”
I do think Dems will move away from their left swing on this issue over time, it’s just not going to be as fast as many of us would like. I hope the same for Republicans, for the sake of our democracy. If we’re only going to have two parties in this country, they need to be as healthy as possible.
Yes, it is an emotional issue, but it's not the regular people who are making it so. The hard Left, who openly embrace "queer theory", are the ones pushing trans everything on the rest of us. Queer theory explicitly calls for tearing down all social norms and replacing them with the weirdest, most out-of-the-mainstream ideas possible, with the goal of creating anarchy. Look it up. Normal people are trying to preserve some kind of social order so that our country can continue to function. One of the queer theory themes of trans, that isn't talked about as openly as the rest of it, is their goal to normalize pedophilia.
And compared with queer theory, trans, and the rest of the Leftist program, Republican opinions about the 2020 election are irrelevant and a mere distraction to your argument.
Thanks for your comment. I agree it’s the fringe on the left that is causing all the uproar. I don’t know much about Queer Theory, but I’m sure it’s pretty out there. Suffice it to say I don’t have much interest in learning about it, at least insofar as it stays on the frige and doesn’t become mainstream, which seems likely.
That said, it also seems you’re misunderstanding my central point, which is this: the issue that causes the most uproar when pushed back against for the Democrats is trans activism, and the issue for Republicans would be pushing back against Trump’s narrative of election denial. The point is the amount of feathers an issue ruffles for each party, not that the two issues for the Right or Left are the same.
If Dems were truly concerned with trans kids , when the issue arose, they would have proposed a compassionate compromise. Covid dropped $200 billion extra dollars on schools, much has yet to be spent.
Build a handful of single stall restrooms with showers and lockers. Then add a 3rd category for individual sports. Trans athletes from multiple schools can come together, to form athletic teams, the same way multiple small private schools band together to create sports teams, when they lack sufficient athletes. Trans teams could then compete against other trans teams.
Trans athletes could participate in athletics, while female spaces remain exclusively female. Yet I am unaware of a single Dem that has proposed such an answer.
This issue is a large issue, but the numbers may actually be small. Forget about the low numbers are professional trans athletes the real issue is young girls in middle school high school and amateur athletics that are being put at a disadvantage with this nonsense trans. Females should be able to repeat against. The Democrat party will die on this issue. Donald Trump gets away with everything else
I agree with you. Interestingly though, I also think this issue has swung traditional republicans to the far right in reaction. Neither perspective has been moderated from what I have seen.
Has there ever been a “civil rights” issue where the more people were exposed to it, the more worse it got? Same sex marriage became normalized for people long before it became “legal” via the Court. “Transgenderism” is a mental illness. No one can be “born in the wrong body”. It’s a metaphysical argument bordering on being a religion. People who suffer from this mental illness are unfortunate. But the Democrats have gone beyond tolerance or acceptance - many treat “trans” people as nearly infallible heroes who we all are supposed to unquestionably worship - the constant flag waving, the cascade of new “holidays” and “”days of remembrance”. The demand that “trans women ARE women”. It took on a delusional totalitarianism that is very very offensive and unrelenting. Renaming all normal people as “CIS”, as if the “trans” is the normal state and the rest of us 99.8% are the outliers is not helpful either. These are mentally ill, often emotionally unstable, often autistic, often self loathing gays, who somehow seem to have been given the keys to society and the Democrats did it, unquestioning, using the full weight and coercive force of every level of government within their reach. I’ll never vote for another Democrat because of this issue. And I’ve always been a lefty. Oh, and that’s just the adults. Doing any of this crap to kids is barbaric.
What people who consider themselves good trans allies don’t know or won’t accept is that the distress so many gender-confused young people are suffering isn’t a symptom of being trapped in the trans closet, so to speak. They insist that’s the case, but they are mistaken.
Instead, youngsters’ belief that they are the wrong sex (or gender, whatever that means) is the symptom of an underlying emotional problem. Fix the problem and the symptom goes away.
However, members of the healing professions have made the decision that adopting this model and looking for the underlying problem is anathema. Trans activists have given them many ways of explaining why they follow this approach, but they can be reduced to the notion that it would harm the individual.
Thus, mentally ill people are being marched down the path to a panacea in the form of a so-called sex change that will not resolve the underlying problem and may compound it. Eliza Mondegreen’s Substack has scores of examples of such people.
The Dems "see intraparty discussions about the need for moderation on trans issues as tantamount to throwing a vulnerable group under the bus. Given the party’s historical commitment to protecting these groups, there can be very little appetite for anything even remotely resembling this." But throwing women and girls under the bus is perfectly fine. Yeah, we get it. That's why we voted for Trump. He's a bastard, but at least he knows we exist.
Underpinning this argument is a fundamental difference in the way conservatives and liberals see the world. Liberals view the world as inevitable progress toward an ever-receding utopia. This makes liberals easy prey for the more radical leftists they generally make common cause with. This emerged during the French Revolution and the later Commune. In those cases, the liberals eventually turned on the leftists and crushed them. The Bolsheviks were more disciplined and Lenin codified their role as the Vanguard of the Proletariat. They persisted much longer and completely wiped out the liberals before falling to their own inefficiency and corruption. The Groups are the modern Jacobins and Bolsheviks and are leading the liberals to disaster.
Conservatives view the world in a cyclic fashion and unless extremely provoked figure, "this too shall pass".
The message for the Democrats is Remember Thermidor. Guillotines will not be necessary.
This is a good outline of TQ+-supporting Democrats' attitudes on the issue, but why shy away from the reasons the majority of voters, including lifelong Democrats like me, reject the demands to prioritize gender identity over sex in law and policy?
1. Legitimate civil rights movements do not seek to destroy the hard-won rights of other historically marginalized groups.
Redefining "woman" and "girl" to mean subjective, self-identified feelings instead of members of a material sex class puts an end to specific accommodations for female Americans: not only female-only sports and locker rooms but also domestic violence shelters, prisons, and more.
To take these accommodations away from women is to treat women as somehow an oppressor class of men, illegitimately keeping from them rights to which they are entitled.
Most of us can see that it is not a civil right for a male person to undress in front of women and girls as they undress; to be locked in a prison cell with a woman; or to sleep in the same room as an unhoused woman taking shelter for the night.
Further, redefining same-sex attraction as "same-gender attraction" is making it impossible throughout the Western world for lesbians and gay men to meet in spaces of their own without heterosexuals.
As same-sex attracted women, lesbians bear the brunt of this intersectional attack. That is why it was a lesbian radical feminist, Julia Beck, ousted from Baltimore's LGBTQ Commission Law and Policy Committee by the efforts of a male trans activist who called her support for single-sex incarceration for women "violent." It is why courts have ruled that lesbians in Victoria, Australia, may not have meet in public without admitting male "lesbians."
2. Legitimate civil rights movements seek to persuade others, not to crush all dissent by shouting down public meetings, issuing violent threats on social media, and making people fear for their livelihoods and even their safety. The more people see trans activists humming and howling to drown out parents at NYC school board meetings---or physically assaulting feminists gathering to speak about women's rights---the less TQ+ looks like a civil rights movement and the more it looks like male aggression against women.
(Trans identified females are a whole other story, but this comment is already far too long).
I left out an important point when it comes to old-school Democrats rejecting TQ+ for its homophobia: huge proportions of the kids and young people being encouraged to medicalize as "trans" are the kids who, left to go through puberty without intervention, would grow up to be lesbians, gay men, and bisexual people.
Clinicians at the UK's Tavistock GIDS noted that the *majority* of the patients they saw were same-sex attracted and joked darkly that there would be "no gay people left at the rate [the clinic was] going."
Many of the lesbians and gay men who fought for their rights from the 70s to the 00s see the medical "transition" of children and young adults as a massive eugenic effort to "trans away the gay."
Democrats are supposed to be the party *supporting* LGB people to grow up safe and equal, not telling them that there is something wrong with them that must be altered even to the point of sterilization and anorgasmia.
THANK YOU! This point cannot be made too often. It underscores the paradox behind trans allies’ panic over “trans kids.” To Democrats, trans kids (an imaginary group) epitomize the plight of trans people in a supposedly transphobic society. What Dems don’t know or won’t admit is that most “trans kids” would grow up to be gay or lesbian if not indoctrinated into gender ideology. What about Democrats’ professed support for gay rights?
"Democrats see the fight for trans rights as an extension of other past civil rights struggles, where they believe they were on the “right side of history” and conservatives were on the wrong side."
The Dems conveniently forget that Eugenics was a "progressive" cause, as was the forced sterilization of "undesirable" people. But I digress.
"Most recently, they won the fight for same-sex marriage rights, and eventually, many Republicans even came around. So, the thinking goes, why would this time be any different?"
Here's why it is different: the proponents of same sex marriage rights did not demand that ALL churches must perform same sex weddings. They did not break into church services, call all the church members Nazis, and vandalize the altar. If gay marriage activists had behaved like trans activists, we would still not have same sex marriage rights in this country.
Gay rights was accepted because allowing gay people access to normal activities in society didn't prevent anyone else from participating in those activities equally. Same-sex marriage also does not infringe in any way on the rights of heterosexual couples to be married and live their lives the way they want to. This is one of the critical differences between gay rights and so-called "trans" rights as the Left is trying to force upon society today. Transgender people have been around for several decades now, but the previous generation was happy to live their lives out as their preferred gender and blend in, for the most part, without asking anyone else to make special accommodations for them. Today, too many transgender people and their cheerleaders on the Left want to force the vast majority to change their lives to accommodate unreasonable demands, including actual risk to women from men pretending to be women, and so of course there is hard pushback. As there should be. As said in the article, women are losing their spaces, their sports, and even their safety because of men pretending to be women, at least some of whom are claiming a female identity just so they can access women's spaces to harm them.
And no one should be conducting dangerous social and irreversible medical procedures on children, period, hard stop.
Another difference is that same-sex attraction is real whereas most people who claim to be trans are not, especially girls, teen girls and young women.
I thought we already had a sexual revolution fifty years ago. Everyone is free to be however the heck they want to be, preferably in the privacy of their own bedroom thank you very much. The problem is requiring me to be a participant, I'd rather not. Don't require me to use special vocabulary or otherwise pretend something is other than what is obvious to my own eyes.
Oh, and leave kids and women alone.
Democrats embracing trans issues are, and will remain, stuck in a political wilderness. Time was when sensible, moderate Democrats like former President Clinton could bridge the party's differences on issues like gays serving in the military with his "Don't ask, don't tell" compromise language. Today's Democratic progressive Left wing is neither sensible nor moderate in the opinion of the vast majority of Americans, who correctly refuse to let the science be compromised to the Left's pliable notions of "truth."
Until the Democratic Party frees itself of this smug intolerance, it may have no future.
"The number of transgender athletes competing at least at the college level is very small, which reinforces the idea for many Democrats that the right is just looking for someone to bully. Why else would they care about such a small number of people?"
The question could easily be reversed: if such a tiny percentage of trans women demand the "right" to unfairly compete against women, why undermine the entire cause of trans rights by prioritizing them? That's what the Dems have done, and they have not only harmed their party, they have harmed all trans people.
The number of men pretending to be women competing in women's sports is not small. One of the international sports organizations counted about 900 medals in women's events that were won by men pretending to be women. That's 900 women who did their best and could not possibly win against a stronger, faster, bigger biological male. That's not a small number either, and it represents lost opportunities for those women that they will likely never get back. The window for peak athletic performance is usually very short.
One woman getting a traumatic brain injury is one too many. Democrats demanding women be "nice," yet risk getting their teeth bashed in on the field, is a hard no. And it's an insane demand. I didn't serve and I can't have veteran rights no matter how depressed that makes me.
Our daughter, who has worked years to become a world class ultra runner, set a Guinness World record last year.
She ran 32 miles a day, with breaks no longer than 5 minutes, for 200 straight days. That is not a typo.
If her record is beaten by a woman, then we will all celebrate that woman's achievement. But if it is beaten by a trans woman, then we will believe she was cheated out of her incredible and mind-boggling achievement.
Yet many (so called) Progressives would allow this trans woman to "break" our daughter's record.
So we, 50-year voters for Democrats, knowing this, have become Independents. When Democrats get Progressives out of the party we will be back.
Fascinating! As a democrat I think this piece was very insightful. It’s just consistently surprising to me how many one issue voters there are on this topic on both sides
"This means, in their view, that whether a trans woman (someone born male) participating in women’s sports is “fair” is beside the point because it opens the door to excluding a minority group, which is wrong." Yeah, we get it: it's perfectly fine to throw women and girls under the bus to protect the "right" of any minority to treat us like second class citizens. Roger that: MAGA.
"Overall, Democrats sincerely believe their views on these issues are morally good and that their opponents are bad-faith actors. "
Newsflash: Republicans ALSO sincerely believe their views on these issues are morally good and that their opponents are bad-faith actors!
So maybe the Dems could stop calling all Republicans fascists and Nazis and Racists. Just a thought.
This is consistent with the behavior of The Groups on every other issue as well. It is in their nature. The normal Democrats (if they haven't all defected) must take their party back.
Here's the thing. Democrats have formed the idea that Conservatives want someone to pick on. However, I have the opposite view. Democrats seem to come up with a group, fight for a right, get that right and then search and search for a new group to keep their funding coming. They've had so many wins they are now bringing out groups for a second round, like black Americans. Or homeless. Or drug addicted. Or homeless, drug-addicted minority transgender people. They don't seem to care that they also have chosen to bully and pick on groups such as moms and women and female athletes and white men.
The reason it’s so difficult is because it’s such an emotionally explosive issue, and even disagreeing in good faith and with as much compassion as possible will likely get you yelled at, at best. I think the equivalent for Republicans is if they all stood up in unison and unequivocally said, “Joe Biden won the 2020 election, Mr. President.”
I do think Dems will move away from their left swing on this issue over time, it’s just not going to be as fast as many of us would like. I hope the same for Republicans, for the sake of our democracy. If we’re only going to have two parties in this country, they need to be as healthy as possible.
Superb piece written very even handedly, Michael!
Yes, it is an emotional issue, but it's not the regular people who are making it so. The hard Left, who openly embrace "queer theory", are the ones pushing trans everything on the rest of us. Queer theory explicitly calls for tearing down all social norms and replacing them with the weirdest, most out-of-the-mainstream ideas possible, with the goal of creating anarchy. Look it up. Normal people are trying to preserve some kind of social order so that our country can continue to function. One of the queer theory themes of trans, that isn't talked about as openly as the rest of it, is their goal to normalize pedophilia.
And compared with queer theory, trans, and the rest of the Leftist program, Republican opinions about the 2020 election are irrelevant and a mere distraction to your argument.
Hi Deborah,
Thanks for your comment. I agree it’s the fringe on the left that is causing all the uproar. I don’t know much about Queer Theory, but I’m sure it’s pretty out there. Suffice it to say I don’t have much interest in learning about it, at least insofar as it stays on the frige and doesn’t become mainstream, which seems likely.
That said, it also seems you’re misunderstanding my central point, which is this: the issue that causes the most uproar when pushed back against for the Democrats is trans activism, and the issue for Republicans would be pushing back against Trump’s narrative of election denial. The point is the amount of feathers an issue ruffles for each party, not that the two issues for the Right or Left are the same.
If Dems were truly concerned with trans kids , when the issue arose, they would have proposed a compassionate compromise. Covid dropped $200 billion extra dollars on schools, much has yet to be spent.
Build a handful of single stall restrooms with showers and lockers. Then add a 3rd category for individual sports. Trans athletes from multiple schools can come together, to form athletic teams, the same way multiple small private schools band together to create sports teams, when they lack sufficient athletes. Trans teams could then compete against other trans teams.
Trans athletes could participate in athletics, while female spaces remain exclusively female. Yet I am unaware of a single Dem that has proposed such an answer.
This issue is a large issue, but the numbers may actually be small. Forget about the low numbers are professional trans athletes the real issue is young girls in middle school high school and amateur athletics that are being put at a disadvantage with this nonsense trans. Females should be able to repeat against. The Democrat party will die on this issue. Donald Trump gets away with everything else
The Democrat party is dying on this issue. It's a suicide.
I agree with you. Interestingly though, I also think this issue has swung traditional republicans to the far right in reaction. Neither perspective has been moderated from what I have seen.
Has there ever been a “civil rights” issue where the more people were exposed to it, the more worse it got? Same sex marriage became normalized for people long before it became “legal” via the Court. “Transgenderism” is a mental illness. No one can be “born in the wrong body”. It’s a metaphysical argument bordering on being a religion. People who suffer from this mental illness are unfortunate. But the Democrats have gone beyond tolerance or acceptance - many treat “trans” people as nearly infallible heroes who we all are supposed to unquestionably worship - the constant flag waving, the cascade of new “holidays” and “”days of remembrance”. The demand that “trans women ARE women”. It took on a delusional totalitarianism that is very very offensive and unrelenting. Renaming all normal people as “CIS”, as if the “trans” is the normal state and the rest of us 99.8% are the outliers is not helpful either. These are mentally ill, often emotionally unstable, often autistic, often self loathing gays, who somehow seem to have been given the keys to society and the Democrats did it, unquestioning, using the full weight and coercive force of every level of government within their reach. I’ll never vote for another Democrat because of this issue. And I’ve always been a lefty. Oh, and that’s just the adults. Doing any of this crap to kids is barbaric.
What people who consider themselves good trans allies don’t know or won’t accept is that the distress so many gender-confused young people are suffering isn’t a symptom of being trapped in the trans closet, so to speak. They insist that’s the case, but they are mistaken.
Instead, youngsters’ belief that they are the wrong sex (or gender, whatever that means) is the symptom of an underlying emotional problem. Fix the problem and the symptom goes away.
However, members of the healing professions have made the decision that adopting this model and looking for the underlying problem is anathema. Trans activists have given them many ways of explaining why they follow this approach, but they can be reduced to the notion that it would harm the individual.
Thus, mentally ill people are being marched down the path to a panacea in the form of a so-called sex change that will not resolve the underlying problem and may compound it. Eliza Mondegreen’s Substack has scores of examples of such people.
The Dems "see intraparty discussions about the need for moderation on trans issues as tantamount to throwing a vulnerable group under the bus. Given the party’s historical commitment to protecting these groups, there can be very little appetite for anything even remotely resembling this." But throwing women and girls under the bus is perfectly fine. Yeah, we get it. That's why we voted for Trump. He's a bastard, but at least he knows we exist.
Underpinning this argument is a fundamental difference in the way conservatives and liberals see the world. Liberals view the world as inevitable progress toward an ever-receding utopia. This makes liberals easy prey for the more radical leftists they generally make common cause with. This emerged during the French Revolution and the later Commune. In those cases, the liberals eventually turned on the leftists and crushed them. The Bolsheviks were more disciplined and Lenin codified their role as the Vanguard of the Proletariat. They persisted much longer and completely wiped out the liberals before falling to their own inefficiency and corruption. The Groups are the modern Jacobins and Bolsheviks and are leading the liberals to disaster.
Conservatives view the world in a cyclic fashion and unless extremely provoked figure, "this too shall pass".
The message for the Democrats is Remember Thermidor. Guillotines will not be necessary.
This is very well articulated. It would be great to get it in front of some influential Dems.
Very well. the main point being, the harder one sides pushes, the harder the other side will push back.