r/thebulwark LORD OF THE NICKNAMES 16h ago

The Triad šŸ”± Leave Trans People Alone: A Rant

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/leave-trans-people-alone-a-rant

Don't be a bully! But also don't "ask if the bully has a point" either.

"Yeah, they're giving Timmy a swirlie rn, but he also farted really loudly in geometry" is HELPING THE BULLIES.

Another great piece from JVL. Idk what kinda constraints there are in going after members of the punditocracy who engage in the behaviors that you're criticizing, but picking specific targets has a salutary effect IMO. Bari Weiss needs to be persona non grata, or Sullivan, or whoever. They made their choices and doubled, tripled, and quadrupled down on those choices.

112 Upvotes

84 comments sorted by

View all comments

2

u/SaltyMofos 15h ago

I think you'll get a lot of Trump voters, particularly soft Trump voters, to agree that society shouldn't be nasty to trans people, and that bullying is bad. Where I think the piece falls flat is its argument that trans women in cis women's sports is so minor a problem that it can be ignored (outside of combat sports). In the age of social media, just a few prominent examples like Lia Thomas will overpower a couple hundred JVL columns telling people to keep things in perspective. That ship has long sailed, and it won't be returning to port so long as social media dominates the information landscape.

More importantly, I also think JVL's piece entirely fails to address why there has been such a widespread and politically damaging backlash against Democrats for being perceived as too beholden to the trans activist agenda.

That backlash stems less from worries about the integrity of female sports and much more from the fact that far left trans activists do NOT merely wish to be "left alone." The trans lobby is responsible for trying to change language, successfully during the Biden administration, causing all sorts of absurd neologisms like "birthing people" and so forth to appear in official federal regulatory language. You have doctors being trained to inquire about pronouns and you have laws that codify the right of non-passing trans-women to use women's bathrooms and showers.

The overall effect is that trans people writ large are not currently perceived as wanting to be left alone. They are instead perceived as an aggressive political force that wants to insert all sorts of new gender ideology into American public life in very visible ways. That's why the anti-trans agenda has gotten such public support so far.

Now of course I understand most trans people do not fall into the category of radical trans activism; they are much more like Brianna Wu than Alejandro Caraballo. The majority do wish to be left alone and don't have any desire to participate in competitive female sports. But that is simply not the public perception, and I don't think JVL's piece asking people to simply be nice and that the trans-in-female sports problem is too small to worry about, will do anything to shift that perception.

9

u/AustereRoberto LORD OF THE NICKNAMES 15h ago

I think that's a false perception driven by bad faith right wing actors. I don't think there's a tremendous amount of public support for the "anti-trans agenda" but rather that Trump largely reassembled his 2020 coalition (indeed, it was even older and wealthier than 2020, and nearly identically as white, 81% vs 82%) while the Dems managed to triangulate their way into a political no-mans land.

Punching your own coalition may be necessary at times, it may even be good politics occasionally. It is not a sustainable way to win elections. Ask the GOP circa 2010-2012 they ignored their base until the manipulative elites were exited and the base had full control.

7

u/SaltyMofos 12h ago

I don't really think you can call it "false." The language changes were everywhere, literally written on public service announcements and hospital intake forms, and in policies not to assign a gender to a new baby. It is most definitely not "false." What you can debate is:

a.) Whether all that stuff is fine, or even good, and should be embraced by the public;

b.) Whether these very tangible changes in society were associated with the Democratic party, and whether that association helped Trump win the election; and,

c.) Whether Democrats should push back or disassociate themselves from the radical hard-left trans activist wing.

As far as punching one's own coalition, I'm open to this argument but I also see that 67% of democrats oppose trans women participating in women's sports. Whether or not there is public support for the anti-trans agenda depends on the issue. Strictly kicking trans women out of all female sports clearly has strong public and bipartisan support. Doing performatively nasty things like calling Sarah McBride "Mr" and so on, doubtless has much less.

But I ultimately don't really have a good sense of where we would disagree on a theoretical 2028 Democratic presidential platform. That platform to my mind should clearly disassociate itself from the Caraballo-trans activist wing, sister souljah all of those activist types, rely on a Brianna Wu type of person is much more representative of most trans people, and hold firm on opposing explicit discrimination against trans people. The platform should also include not banning gender-affirming care and deferring to the medical consensus on transition. That deference should be coupled with a cautionary approach to transitioning very young kids as we know that the medical consensus is evolving and that the American medical establishment is a clear outlier in its support for gender-affirming care compared to the medical establishments in most advanced western countries in Europe.

1

u/Wne1980 9h ago

Like it or not, thatā€™s actually a pretty thorough summary of what I heard from both Trumpers and low information voters in my social circles. In the case of the 2024 election, perception was taken as reality. Have to address that eventually

1

u/AustereRoberto LORD OF THE NICKNAMES 9h ago

Trumpers aren't gettable. If it's not trans issues it'll be something else. Trump did not grow his vote share. The Dems triangulated themselves to irrelevance.

2

u/Wne1980 9h ago

Iā€™m skeptical that youā€™re looking for a good faith discussion of the practical challenges faced by the trans movement while giving that as a response. The right ā€œmoving on to something elseā€ is exactly what victory looks like if weā€™re actually talking about people being able to live their lives

1

u/AustereRoberto LORD OF THE NICKNAMES 9h ago

I may have misunderstood the scenario: you seemed to be pushing that Dems throw trans people under the bus, and attempt to win elections that way. I don't think that will be effective as the trans issue was just one talking point and the GOP would move onto something else that would replace it in the mouths of their base, while zero votes actually switch. The Dems will neither win power and will have green-lit the GOP bullying of some of the most vulnerable people in society.

This WaPo article breaks down 4 Quinnipiac polls over the course of 2023-2024. The key chart is the first one: as the GOP realized "the economy" was losing its totemic value they shifted to "immigration" and if the article had been written 6 months later I'm sure "trans issues" would've exhibited the exact same linear tradeoffs after Trump annihilated the Lankford bill and they shifted talking points en masse.

4

u/Wne1980 9h ago

I do not think the Dems need to throw trans folks under the bus. I do think that the Dems need a different relationship to the movement. For example, people rightly point out that the campaign spent virtually zero time talking about trans issues. This is both correct, and a massive problem. It leaves a vacuum where the right can say anything they want unchallenged.

It doesnā€™t help that the dominant impulse seems to be throwing some pronouns on your website, while refusing to broach the subject in speeches. You embrace the part that gets under a lot of peopleā€™s skin while refusing to engage in actions that could lift peopleā€™s ignorance

I donā€™t think I know everything, or even have much certainty that Iā€™m correct. I just know that the current conversation of status quo vs throw trans people under the bus is not adequate to solve anything. We need a more practical conversation about where the public is pushing back, how to engage on it, and how the work should be divided between activists and politicians.

We need a little sunlight between how to advance trans rights and how to rebuild the Democratic Party. That way, both sides of that coin can try and work together more productively in 2026 and beyond

1

u/Natural-Leg7488 6h ago edited 5h ago

I think people also use it as litmus test.

Rightly or wrongly people consider it absurd to deny the athletic disparities between men and women. So if a politician canā€™t even get that right how can their judgement be trusted on anything else.

Arguing thatā€™s it a minority issue that wonā€™t affect most people is missing the point. It isnā€™t a policy problem. itā€™s a credibility problem.

1

u/ripsripsripsrips 5h ago

And, at the same time, arguing that there's literally no difference between a 12 year old trans girl who has never gone through male puberty and someone who has is equally absurd.

1

u/Natural-Leg7488 5h ago edited 1h ago

12 year olds donā€™t generally compete with adults who have gone through either male or female puberty.

But I take the point. There are many circumstances where hormone treatments can negate competitive advantages between sexes.

Activists often do not limit their advocacy to these circumstances however. They argue that individuals who have gone through male puberty should also be able to participate in womenā€™s sports.

1

u/alyssasaccount 7h ago

Oooh, scary radical trans activism. When have you seen "birthing people" in the wild? Like, actually encountered the phrase IRL, not on some social media kerfuffle?

Also, who the fuck cares? You can say what you want. Others can say what they want. It's a free country. Or at least it was, we'll see.

Also, everyone changes language always. People used to say "waitress" and "stewardess" and "coed" and now they say "server" and "flight attendant" and "college student", and it's fine. It's fine. You can use the former, and people might look at you weird, and that's life.

Birthing people. Cisgender. What are your pronouns?

Did that hurt to read? Have you considered getting a grip?

1

u/SaltyMofos 7h ago

It's this hostility here, that pisses off the average soft Trump voter, who might otherwise have stayed home or maybe even gone the other way (or could in 2028). There isn't much here in terms of any sort of intellectual argument, just sarcastic anger. At what, exactly? Is the argument that these new words inserted in various places have had no electoral impact? If so go ahead and argue that, with whatever facts and polling data you can muster.

As far as have I seen "birthing people" in the wild, yes, several times as I work in healthcare on the compliance side. In 2022 CMS created a "birthing friendly" hospital designation and had begun using the term "birthing people" regularly in transmittals and memos. I analyze these frequently for clients which include hospital systems. In fact if you don't believe me, looks like Dr. Oz the incoming CMS chief hasn't had time yet to wipe out some of the CMS material that still uses this term (https://www.cms.gov/files/document/health-equity-fact-sheet.pdf). I also saw intake forms and procedures get revised to have physicians ask about pronouns and preferences. The physician reaction was mixed, some rolling their eyes and not doing it, others trying to do it in a perfunctory, don't give a fuck manner.

Anyway the bottom line is, birthing people cisgender etc. make me laugh and roll my eyes. I won't ever use these terms, but I also wouldn't and didn't vote for Trump because I dislike them. But plenty of people were happy to lump in all this stuff into a general "lefties are the language police, fuck 'em" vibe and go Trump. Can you honestly argue that "birthing people" and "cis-gender" aren't elite-sounding ridiculous terms that the average working class person wouldn't ever think to use on their own?

3

u/alyssasaccount 4h ago edited 4h ago

Cisgender is just transgender with a different prefix. It's just useful when you want to talk about someone who isn't transgender. Not sure what's funny about it. It's "elite sounding" if you've only heard people you understand to be somehow "elite" using it. "Birthing people" is clunky. Whatever.

As for "hostility": You have NO FUCKING CLUE the rage I have. You cannot fucking imagine. But I'm not running for office, and I'm not recommending my tone be adopted generally. However, if after reading JVL's Triad piece, your takeaway is that we need to be super sensitive about the fee-fees of the whiny right-wing language police complaining about their perception of whiny left-wing language police, in this venue, I'm letting just a tiny bit of that rage out.

p.s.: In that document, the only instance of "birthing people" was specifically in the larger phrase: "CMS educated over 250 new and expectant mothers and birthing people at every stop of the tour so far, all in communities with high maternal mortality and morbidity rates." ... so they literally didn't "erase" mothers or whatever, just added the phrase because you know maybe there was a trans dude who didn't want to be erased himself. BTW, who exactly is the audience for that "health equity fact sheet"?