I recently read these articles and they resonated with me quite a bit. He articulated a lot of the concerns that have been bothering me and IMO hindering the party.
In particular the purity test idea along with the idea that they need to take a clear stand on some issues (defunding police, open borders), and a clear emphasis on economic inequality are needed, stuck with me.
This is nothing new for Barney Frank. Whether he is actually terfy or just unconcerned about trans rights (possible) or is more just a cautious incrementalist (probably the case), he has been in a fight with the more progressive wing of the gay rights movement for decades now. He’s 86 - what was progressive when he was a young man no longer is and I suspect like lot of older liberals he finds it a bit baffling to have ended up being relegated to the status of enemy-of-progress younger activists take him to be.
His argument about the sports issue - that thin, tiny wedge everybody seems to focus disproportionately on - may have some merit. Maybe. It’s certainly the most complicated topic in the whole debate. But it is such a tiny, tiny part of the whole thing really. More to the point I think his complacency about “oh, gay rights will never be rolled back” is dangerously naive
He looks like death warmed over but I suppose age and a bad heart will do that.
I’m always a bit on both sides of this sort of criticism. I think the Democrats would do better going for a more populist economic policy but I also think they really need to disavow some of the social stuff. Not all of it in that you can make an argument for a liberal “live and let live” for many of the culture issues while backing off the identity politics and a lot of crap that comes out of academia. It won’t stop random people from yammering on the Internet and possibly turning off others but the party doesn’t have to go along with it.
Thing is, there’s a reason for the term “wedge issue”. Let the Right take the wedge and they’ll just use it to gouge as deeply as possible. “Push as hard as possible and never give an inch” has been the historically most successful path for socially progressive movements.
Trying to “compromise” with the Right is how you get things like Jim Crow and segregation.
There are occasional anecdotes about some class here or there, or some professor here or there that says something slightly outrageous, and it gets blown all out of proportion, so that people think that’s what academia is all about these days.
The thing that bugs me about the “stop the identity politics” people is that this basically just means giving control of the narrative entirely over to conservatives. Democrats not talking about trans rights doesn’t stop conservatives from talking about trans rights, it just means there’s no real opposition to them when they do things like revoke their drivers license, or make it a felony for them to use a public restroom. Kamala Harris ran as far and as fast from the issue as she could, and Trump still clobbered her with that “she’s for they/them, he’s for you” bullshit.
In my experience such “so-called centrist claims” are usually just right wing claims by dishonest people. I’ve seen too many alleged “centrists” who parrot Republican policies & talking points all the time to take claims of centrism very seriously.
The party is already defined on trans rights. Running from it does nothing, unless Democrats are going to spend decades to become an anti trans party (like the Republicans changed from being the pro Civil Rights to anti Civil Rights over the course of several decades in the mid 20th).
Might as well commit to trans rights, have good arguments and good policies, and sway public opinion for the medium and long term.
In this particular issue, the problem isn’t trans people. It’s sports.
Trans people are new on the scene (in the public’s mind, anyway), and therefore the agent to be blamed for the change. But the fact is, men’s sports and women’s sports of rough proxies for two levels of ability. There are non-trans women who could be competitive in male sports, and loads upon loads of non-trans men who could be competitive in women’s sports, but aren’t good enough to be competitive in men’s sports.
We can’t get around the fact that male and female musculoskeletal biology are different enough that separating men’s and women’s sports seems basic, nor that we’ve done it that way historically.
The problem is really that sports fans want simple, not the complexity of human reality. If we divided things by ability, it would still be true that the top levels were male and that the female-dominated levels were lower down, which no one wants; restricting sports to the top levels and excluding women is also a non-starter.
But there are so many OTHER unfair advantages in life (usually coded “privilege” on the Left: wealth, race, education, gender, etc.) that I think in the end, it’s better to let the miniscule proportion of trans women compete among the other women, and just keep doing this until people get over it.
The number of actual cases certainly doesn’t warrant passing a state or federal law completely banning transgender women from competing in women’s sports. It’s something that can be handled on a case-by-case basis for those even more rare instances where a trans woman would have a clearly unfair advantage over her non-trans competitors.
Several sports have rules that concern NOT ‘being trans’ but instead, ‘having gone through male puberty’ as the dividing line.
This makes sense. It’s the changes wrought by male puberty (in general) that provide competitive advantage.
Democrats COULD say ‘being transgender should not mean a loss of rights anywhere but in sport participation when the candidate has gone through male puberty. In this we follow the working policy in sports A, B, and C.’----issue OVER.
But they probably won’t do that.
The reason Republicans have been able to weaponize the issue is that there is a corner of a reasonable concern (i.e. over competitive advantage) lurking in the midst of a whole lot of ignorant, hateful prejudice. Democrats could defuse that by being explicit about the competitive advantage question, and standing firm on supporting full human rights for every human being.
I can’t help but think about shotput as a prime example. Pretty much all elite shotputters are putting their shot somewhere around the 18-23 meter range, regardless of age or gender.
Women and middle school boys put a 8.8 lb/4 kg shot, high school boy put a 5.44 kg/12 lb shot, and college/olympic men put a 7.25 kg/16 lb shot.
That’s the difference in testosterone and muscle mass right there, when the best women in the world at a sport are worse than the best high school boys. I can’t see how it’s fair to the non-trans women in the sport to allow a post-puberty trans man to compete.
The problem isn’t trans people or sports. The problem is there’s a giant right-wind propaganda machine that constantly spews hate and disinformation, and for the last few years Republicans have turned this machine on trans people and cranked all the dials to 11.
The only way to fight that is to have people willing to shout the truth back as loudly as they can, which is why “Democrats should avoid identity politics” is such terrible advice - aside from throwing trans people under a bus, it does absolutely nothing to combat the Republicans’ lies.
I’m of the same view. IMHO, the United States is a socially-right, economically-left nation, in the sense that that’s what the majority of voters want.
Unfortunately, we end up with Democrats being socially-left but economically-right, and Republicans who are socially-right and also economically-right.
A presidential candidate with the social/moral views of Ben Sasse/David French but economic policies of Bernie Sanders and AOC would win in a landslide.