The GOP anti-trans agenda is working as intended in red states, and is gaining substantial support across America under the guise of "protecting women and kids".
Clear majorities of Americans support restrictions affecting transgender children, a Washington Post-KFF poll finds, offering political jet fuel for Republicans in statehouses and Congress who are pushing measures restricting curriculum, sports participation and medical care.
Most Americans don’t believe it’s even possible to be a gender that differs from that assigned at birth. A 57 percent majority of adults said a person’s gender is determined from the start, with 43 percent saying it can differ.
And some Americans have become more conservative on these questions as Republicans have seized the issue and worked to promote new restrictions. The Pew Research Center found 60 percent last year saying one’s gender is determined by the sex assigned at birth, up from 54 percent in 2017. Even among young adults, who are the most accepting of trans identity, about half said in the Post-KFF poll that a person’s gender is determined by their sex at birth.
Alyssa Wells, 29, a behavior therapist in Daytona Beach, Fla., who participated in the Post-KFF survey, said her views have changed on this issue in recent years as she has learned more, chiefly from Christian podcasts.
“At first I was on the side of acceptance, like using the pronouns and stuff, because I want people to be kind to each other. I don’t want people fighting all the time,” she said. But she has come to see things differently. “My concern with transgender is mostly with the children.”
“We can’t vote until we’re a certain age, we can’t smoke, drink or whatever, but we can change our bodies’ anatomy and how it works?” she said. “It just doesn’t seem like that’s okay to me.” Treatments for trans youth sometimes include hormone therapies, but not genital surgery, which guidelines generally say doctors should not provide until patients are 18.
Still, as the country engages in a national debate over public policy around gender identity, interviews and other poll findings suggest that many Americans hold complicated and sometimes contradictory views on the subject.
While a majority of Americans oppose access to puberty blockers and hormone treatments for children and teenagers, for instance, clear majorities also support laws prohibiting discrimination against trans people, including in K-12 schools.
“You have a big swath of the American public still trying to make sense of this issue,” said Patrick Egan, a scholar of American politics and public opinion at New York University. “This is a battle and a debate that is unfolding in real time before our eyes, and we don’t know how it’s going to turn out.”
I disagree completely with Mr. Egan there. History tells us exactly how this will turn out, and it's already happening.
Anti-trans legislation targeting trans kids and their parents and families will be expanded to include prohibitions of gender-affirming care for trans adults as well, being regulated into impossibility the way hundreds of abortion clinics were shut down over the last five years. Pretty soon in half the states, birth certificate changes won't be recognized and trans folks will be legislated out of existence, forced into a miserable limbo where they have no rights, no legal recourse, and no hope.
There aren't "complicated and sometimes contradictory views", there is only "should trans folks be allowed to exist" and increasingly the answer is "not here." All it needs to work is otherwise good people ready to stand by and do nothing.
The poll's crosstabs make it clear there's a wide array of groups willing to sacrifice trans folks.
But hey, maybe red states will make special places for trans folks where they can exist.
You know, camps.
Where populations of these people can be concentrated.
History again, it's like we've never learned anything from it in America.
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