Gallup recently published a list of what Americans consider the most pressing issues as they choose the next president. Unsurprisingly, there is no overlap between Republicans and Democrats on the top five.
Republicans say they are concerned about the economy, immigration, terrorism and national security, crime and taxes.
Democrats are concerned about American democracy, Supreme Court nominations, abortion, healthcare and education.
Transgender rights — for or against — are nowhere to be seen among the top concerns of voters in either party. In fact, of more than 20 issues the pollsters asked about, transgender rights ranked dead last in importance to voters overall.
So why has former President Trump’s campaign been spending tens of millions of dollars on inflammatory ads attacking Vice President Kamala Harris’ support for transgender rights?
Since the beginning of August, Trump and other Republicans have reportedly spent more than $65 million on anti-trans ads, concentrating on the battleground states — although even here in deepest-blue California, I can’t turn on my television without seeing them.
“Kamala supports taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners,” a disdainful narrator says. “It’s hard to believe, but it’s true. Even the liberal media was shocked Kamala supports taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners and illegal aliens.”
A series of edited images shows Harris with transgender people, including Adm. Rachel Levine, the U.S. assistant secretary for health, and a drag performer named Pattie Gonia, and actors playing inmates in the series “Orange is the New Black.”
“Kamala is for they/them,” the ad concludes. “President Trump is for you.”
As the Harris campaign and others have pointed out, the ad is misleading. Federal policy, including under the Trump administration, has allowed incarcerated transgender people to receive gender-affirming medical care. Only two federal prisoners have ever received gender-affirming surgery, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and FactCheck.org.
In other words, this is a nonissue.
For months, Trump has made unhinged claims about children going to school one gender and coming home another. I originally presumed that he was awkwardly referring to the debate over whether schools should be forced to tell parents that their nonbinary or trans children are “out” at school, or “social transitioning.” But no, he has repeatedly claimed that schools are actually sending children to get gender-affirming surgeries without their parents’ consent. (I can’t believe I even had to type that.)
Trump’s campaign of fear against transgender people — because that’s what it is — is disgusting, disingenuous and dangerous.
“When I see these ads, I think of Trump’s first term,” said Heron Greenesmith, the deputy director of policy at the Transgender Law Center. “Just the cruelty. They are nasty and mean and they punch down.”
So what exactly is going on here? Is it as simple as demonizing a vulnerable group of people to score political points in a close race? Or is it something deeper?
“What Republicans are seeing or feeling is that people are anxious about the future,” M. Gessen said in a conversation about the ads with a New York Times opinion editor last week.
“They’re anxious about their economic future,” said Gessen, a nonbinary journalist who frequently writes about LGBTQ+ issues. “They’re anxious about their social future. And it can all be boiled down to this anxiety about one’s children — that one’s children are going to come home from school one day and speak a different language than the parents or use a different name and generally be a stranger.”
This explains the moral hysteria over gender-affirming care for minors that has spread across the country’s red states. At least 22 states have passed bans on such care for transgender and nonbinary minors; five have even made it a felony. And at least 70 clinics that provided gender-affirming care have closed since 2021, according to research published in the Journal of the American Medical Assn.
There’s no law against lying in political ads, but I’m guessing Trump’s inane ramblings about school sex-change operations are too bizarre even for his ad makers. Picking on transgender incarcerated people and migrants must have seemed like the next best option. But the message is always about fear.
“I mean, the fear works on certain people,” said Greenesmith, who is nonbinary. “It works on people who are primed already to look for ‘in’ groups and ‘out’ groups. But the majority of Americans support the right of folks to live in their gender and have autonomy around their healthcare, and support folks being protected from discrimination over things we don’t have control over.”
This presidential campaign is going to be over soon. But the damage Trump has done to transgender people — by fomenting fear, by scapegoating, by “othering” — will most assuredly live on.
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