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.
Well obviously. It was never about children, because gender affirming care doesn’t involve surgeries or hormones for children. Those were all lies feeding into an anti-trans narrative so they could push for more drastic changes.
Start with children, because no one in their right mind would want to see children suffer, and then move on to the rest. After all the trans people are dealt with, they’ll come after the gays, and then the women and people of colour.
Only thing I’d dispute here is the “after that” part — republicans and conservatives in general are already coming for LGB, women, and minorities. Transphobia is their smokescreen / highest priority, rather than a first step. If they succeed (I hope not!) that will result in more of their energy going into attacking the other marginalized groups, rather than starting to attack those groups.
If they succeed (I hope not!) that will result in more of their energy going into attacking the other marginalized groups, rather than starting to attack those groups.
They already have. They were largely successful in their crusades against Target and Bud Light, which has emboldened them to use their thinly veiled threats of violence to push their agenda even more. I mean, we now have Republicans criticizing the Barbie movie because of they way a map is drawn in one of the background scenes. Or something.
The Barbie movie. Barbie. You know, the plastic children’s doll. Yes. That one. According to Republicans, the Barbie movie is a secret vessel to indoctrinate children with CCP propaganda. I wish I was joking.
This is what the Republican party has come down to. Everything they don’t like is a conspiracy theory that needs to be eradicated.
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?
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’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.
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 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
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.
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.
It was never about the children.
Not just it never was, it never is. Anytime you hear anyone saying something should be done to protect the children, they’re almost certainly not being honest. It’s the oldest play in the book, and it still works.
I think they are thinking of protecting the children.
They think they’re protecting the (straight cis) children from trans people. I.e. the only children they actually care about. (And maybe that excludes non-white children, too).
But that’s the issue, they only care about specifically “protecting” their kids from the scary crossdressers and penis scissors, but give a free pass for those same kids to be fetishized at a beauty pageant, molested by a church youth group leader, turned into Swiss cheese by a gunman, or exploited left and right by corrupt businesses withholding essential goods or re-instituting child labor.
The hypocrisy is that they claim they want to protect children while letting them suffer from all these other problems, which are entirely unaddressed and sometimes directly promoted by the RWNJ governments they vote for. Because it’s not really about protecting their kids; it’s about hurting strangers they’re instructed to hate.
Your religion does not prohibit me from anything, it prohibits you. Learn the difference.
And it’s not even about Trans Adults, or Trans Kids, or other LGBTQA+ groups, or any other small marginalized group that really doesn’t have a real political power.
What it is about are sociopathic assholes that want political power and money, who are using the bigotry of simple minded assholes to create “boogie men” that only the sociopaths can “fight” to protect the bigots’ children. When the last “boogie man” has been defeated, there WILL ALWAYS BE ANOTHER that requires the bigoted to vote for the sociopaths to “protect them” yet again. These groups, LGBTQA+, are targeted because there are not enough of them, or they are so marginalized already, that they are unable to push back effectively in the political arena (actually don’t think that is true for LGBTQA+ as a whole, as long as they fight together).
It’s LGBTQA+ now, next it will be some other group that poses a “threat to society”. In 1930’s Germany, this marginalized group were the Jews and, if you read your history, you know how that went. With 4,000,000 Jewish men, women, and children killed. All so that some sociopathic assholes could have power and money.
If you really want to see this in action, read about Germany’s history in the 1930’s.
It is sick, it is disgusting and it is happening in the United States RIGHT NOW.
There are no appropriate apologitics for this type of behavior, PERIOD THE FUCKING END.
How to fix what is going on? If you are of age (18 in the U.S.) to VOTE, then make sure you go to EVERY FUCKING ELECTION you are eligible to vote in. There are a LOT more elections going on, than the Presidential and and mid-terms. You are on the internet, the list for all elections you are eligible to vote in is easily available with a simple search with your favorite search engine.
Tl,Dr: If you are over 18 in the US… GET OUT AND VOTE! It may not be cool, or rad, or whatever the current thing to say is, but if you do not want a future where politicians are living in your uterus and bedroom, VOTE. Especially if you are in the younger generations (Gen Y and Z). Full disclosure, I am a Gen X’er with Silent Generation Parents (pre-Boomer generation).
Voting in Red States is extremely difficult for anyone that has a job and family. That is by design to make sure only the Conservatives vote.
It’s difficult, but not impossible. The GOP counts on making it just difficult enough to add a barrier that will discourage the least interested voters (and particularly in locations where their voter base isn’t located). We still can combat those barriers. Eg, if your state has passed voter ID laws, spread the word well ahead of time and help people get ID. If your state has shitty placement of polling stations, help arrange transportation. Make sure people know about legal protections afforded to them for taking time off work to vote.
And above all, simply encourage voting and dispel misconceptions about “mY vOTe dOeSn’T MattER”. Most people who don’t vote are eligible, have means to do so, and aren’t working the full stretch of polling station hours. They don’t vote because they simply don’t care or are discouraged.
But it is about those groups, it was us first targeted by the Nazis and now it’s us first on the chopping block again
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_für_Sexualwissenschaft
In the state of Florida, it is illegal for school teachers to tell their students WHICH books the Nazis chose to burn first.
Elections aren’t going to save us. I will make sure to vote against anybody who has the slightest whiff of engaging in this anti-trans hysteria, but you could hardly describe this place as a democracy to begin with. The desires of the people have absolutely nothing to do with what gets enacted as public policy in this country.
We need to prepare as if the state will do NOTHING to protect us, and treat any counterexample as a pleasant surprise.
Red won the election in 2016: Abortions no longer a civil right nationwide.
Blue won my state in 2020 and 2022: Abortion a right again. (Staewide)
Elections do have impact. Republicans won the election in 2016, so we see their will writ large. Vote, vote, vote, or it will only ever get worse.
