A pitch for middle ground on Trans rights
There's increasing support for a gender binary among independents, and even Democrats. What it means for the future of trans Americans.
A new national survey of 5,000 Americans released this week by the Public Religion Research Institute found that the number of people who believe there are solely two genders is *rising* – ticking up six percentage points to 65% in the last two years, with independents and Democrats accounting for the largest swing toward that opinion.
This subtle but not insignificant judgement shift arrives during a period when questions around evolving definitions of gender identity have been thrust — purposefully, and oftentimes callously — into the political inferno, offering up irresistible catnip for the brooding culture warriors inside cable news studios and under capitol domes.
The ascension of Ron DeSantis as a national political figure has assuredly heightened sensitivities and awareness around gender fluidity. It was the Florida governor turned presidential aspirant who, in 2021, signed legislation prohibiting transgender student athletes from playing sports on teams that correspond with their new identity.
It fits neatly into his narrative that Florida is where “woke goes to die.”
And conservative legislatures across the country have followed suit, consumed by the growing acceptance, particularly among young people, of the ability to change one’s sexual identity.
In March, Idaho banned trans youth from using bathrooms that don’t correspond with their birthed gender. In April, Indiana outlawed gender transitions and other types of medicinal therapies for children. Tennessee is now moving on a law that would block trans people from changing their gender on official documents like their driver’s license and birth certificate.
President Biden has positioned himself as an ally of trans youth, condemning the wave of anti-trans legislation during a Pride Month event just last week. But he’s been less specific about the particulars that are bound to pop up during his re-election.
Widespread acceptance of trans people and trans culture is taking longer than it did for gays and lesbians, because they’re even a smaller set of the population (1.6 million of 336 million Americans self-identify as trans, amounting to fewer than half of 1 percent of the entire country).
Trans issues are more confusing and sometimes counterintuitive, even to gay people. (Is a male who transitions to/or identifies as a female who is sexually attracted to cis-females, now considered a lesbian?)
Democrats as a whole, for the most part, have settled on a full-throated, but inexact defense of the trans community, resting on their ability to once again frame their Republican counterparts as bigots.
“You were not ‘assigned female at birth,’ as the activists would prefer us to speak and think. Your parents labeled you a ‘a girl’ (by convention) because you were born female (by nature).’
— Damon Linker
But as the culture war gets hotter and the questions become trickier, generalities won’t be enough.
Fellow Substacker Damon Linker, a senior fellow at the Niskanen Center – a nonpartisan public policy hub in Washington – recently outlined a deeply compelling adjustment Democrats should make on their blanket support for trans rights, one that resists the maximalist position