Donald Trump had recently finished a familiar riff about banning gender transition surgery for children when the former president, speaking to an audience of Evangelical voters, moved on to something new: a policy that would affect transgender adults.
“I will ban all taxpayer funding for sex or gender transitions at any age,” said Trump, receiving thunderous applause at the Faith & Freedom Coalition conference in Washington last month. The Republican leader, who moments earlier had also pledged to reinstate a ban on transgender men and women serving in the military, paused for several seconds to soak in the crowd’s adulation.
It’s the kind of moment — and the type of policy — increasingly common on the GOP presidential campaign trail this year.
What is their fixation on this? Why does this issue matter out of all the other issues that they could be bringing up right now?
Nothing is more delicious to conservatives than a small, powerless group who do not fit into the so-called social norms to attack as a scapegoat. Perfect for distracting their supporters from all of the fuckery and wanton neglect that conservative parties pursue, and perfect for whipping up emotional fervour in the mind of those who cling to conservatism out of fear of difference.
Other groups & causes which conservatives tend to target may willing to jettison the needs of a tiny group for their own ends if they can get their own ends met, and fracturing solidarity is incredibly useful, if not essential, to conservative goals.
As such, people who are seeking treatment for gender dysphoria are the perfect target for the GOP to rail against.
Hate disguised as truly held belief is a helluvah drug.
Edit: Also, fuck assholes that think this way and fuck Donald Trump.
It’s utterly bizzare. Spend 10 minutes browsing YouTube shorts and you’ll see an absolute torrent of transphobia, with many users outright calling for violence and murder, and YouTube does nothing.
They don’t have the abortion debate anymore, the gay debate is a bit too mainstream to end well, the gun control debate is always there but not particularly in focus, and they don’t have the states (yet) to repeal the 13th.
So what to rile their base up with? Transphobia and calling their enemies pedophiles, the latter of which is kinda par for the course, but the former is a relatively new patch on the ol’ hate quilt.
Transphobia and calling their enemies pedophiles, the latter of which is kinda par for the course, but the former is a relatively new patch on the ol’ hate quilt.
Transphobia was always on the list, but they didn’t need to start beating that drum because they had abortion as their boogeyman of choice. Once that got taken off the table, Transphobia just became the most convenient thing to make as the new boogeyman.
And once they’re done with that, it’ll be a new marginalized group. I haven’t heard any members of the GOP pick on kids with cancer lately, but I’m sure they have their sights set on eradicating this bunch of freeloaders looking to leech off our healthcare system too, or something.
Starting to think the right just loves to be mad at something. Yelling and controlling is what they’re after, not actual change
The modern republican electoral ecosystem is sustained through rage and hatred. Their entire campaign strategy is built around the assumption of having a target of some form. Republican voters are simply not able to be activated to go vote (and to stay voting republican) in sufficient quantities without a rage-hate target.
Republicans fundamentally need something to target and hate and be rage filled about. Whether it’s gay marriage, Obamacare, abortion, ebola (remember that in 2014? forgotten the day after the election), immigrants, mask mandates, critical race theory… They need something, anything, no matter how illogical, unethical, or completely incoherent it might be. They do not care about any of those negative details.
Trans people became the conservative rage-hate target of the moment. They throw everything at the wall and this was the target that stuck for the present day.
Republicans are fueled by hate. Issues do not matter to them. Hate and anger matter to them.
Not true, the most popular issues in politics (jobs, roads, economy) used to be the strongest in GOP messaging. This kind of culture war nonsense gets more views on news shows, but polling shows people care about money, healthcare, education, and security more than anything else when it comes to actually voting.
The “dog caught the car” in the Supreme Court abortion ruling. The GOP can no longer use abortion as a wedge issue, because the issue is, essentially, resolved. They got what they said they wanted.
But the GOP always used abortion as a wedge issue, to drive people to polls to vote against their otherwise best interests because “Democrats will kill babies!” or similar.
The GOP is desperately looking for a new wedge issue and an enemy. And like most fascists do, they look to a marginalized group to demonize that doesn’t have the ability or numbers to fight back. They appear to have settled on trans people for the moment.
It’s not about actual trans people, it’s about making their base mad about something so they’ll vote ( R ).
They’d like to hate on gays like in the good old days, but that’s no longer socially acceptable. Trans folks are the next best thing.
