I think she was talking about two things: changing public opinion, and maintaining/growing rather than shrinking the Democratic coalition. The first of those isn’t really making a distinction between D and R voters. I guess it would be like gay marriage, where registered Ds were and are far more likely to approve of it, but there is still a split on both sides.
Here’s what she said (bold is Ezra Klein, normal text is McBride):
And on Democrats, as already mentioned, she talks about not driving away the people who agree 90%, and also about how counterproductive it is to attack people who vote the way you want, but don’t use the right language:
But she’s not saying to only pretend to be liberal (in the ‘opposite of illiberal’ sense) to achieve your goals. That wouldn’t have impressed me at all. She’s saying liberalism is necessary and good:
This is exactly what I have seen and experienced in the last few years. The left - progressives - tried to stop that debate, they demanded everyone get in line and talk like them, think like them, never question. And when they lost their power to control the conversation, it all burst out, including the opposite kind of extremism.
The next part is also very true:
This is an opportunity for the left, if they can pull themselves together enough to take it.
Said it before: Running to Not Lose is not running to win.
Yes! For decades it was just what happened and nobody’s business but the specific person(s) in that bathroom at that time if they even noticed and cared. “Transsexuals”, as it went then, were known to exist, as a relatively rare group, and it was understood that we just politely did not make a scene about it in public. Then one fine day it’s an imminent threat all around.
It ultimately comes down to this: Transgender people will not compromise our civil rights for any reason.
You support limited rights for us as well, so it’s not surprising that you agree with her. Would you say to Martin Luther King Jr. that he should just stop his fight for civil rights and that he should just wait until public opinion hopefully shifts over to his views eventually? We won’t get anywhere by letting cis people dictate how much they actually consider us the gender/sex that we are vs. what we were assigned with at birth. I am a woman and deserve to be in the same facilities and play on the same teams as other women, and I won’t let anybody, including a trans politician who wants to sell us out, say otherwise.
And my view is far from the minority in the trans community, which is why McBride has very little support from us at this point.
You absolutely are a woman, because woman is a social construct. That social construct does not correspond 1:1 with the slightly different social construct for which gendered sports were created. That’s because in 99% of contexts we care whether someone is a “man” or a “woman” due to the socially constructed differences between those two categories; but with sports, the differences we are concerned with are physical.
You can declare that anyone who disagrees with you on this is “selling out trans rights”, but the vast majority of Democrats disagree with you (and of course, so do the overwhelming majority of Americans overall).
Sarah McBride is doing infinitely more for trans rights than anyone who refused to vote Democrats over this.
Gender is not a social construct, it very much biological. Gender expression is a social construct as it varies from society to society, but I am a biological woman. And if the “vast majority” of Democrats believe otherwise (and that is a blatant exaggeration), then the strategy isn’t to acquiesce to their beliefs but to show why those beliefs are wrong and discriminatory. McBride just wants to give up, which is perfectly fine with you.
Got it, you’re using this term differently than the vast majority of people who use it (to inadvisably sub in for “cis woman”, in my experience). i didn’t catch that on first read.
ETA: I responded on trans athletes, then realized it’s off-topic, so spoilered
Summary
But are you aware of the arguments for why some might see athletic sports as a special case?
People who have gone through puberty with high testosterone (and without androgen insensitivity) are going to have e.g. a larger skeleton than those who haven’t, and taking hormones later in life can only do so much.
IMO it should be up to the sporting bodies, with the advice of gender researchers; the same as lots of other decisions they have to make on eligibility. I don’t think the government should either compel or ban trans athletes.
No, I am using it correctly. I am just as much of a biological woman as a cis woman. I don’t let cis people dictate who I am. And that is also not a minority view among us. We are not males who feel that we are women in some social sense, we are female.
The term “biological woman” is equally socially constructed to the term “woman”, so yeah, you can use it that way if you want, and if enough people do then other people might actually know what you’re talking about when you do it.
But for that same reason, “What is a biological woman” is an equally tiresome waste of time to the “what is a woman” debate, so please, let’s not derail this thread with it.
One thing to learn from the civil right successes is that they were often carefully planned out events. They weren’t just people spouting off emotionally or acting spontaneously. The successful events like sit ins and marches were carefully orchestrated events where much thought was put in to how to act and how to deal with the expected fallout. They understood the environment they were in and tailored their actions in a way to guarantee the most success. That kind of thought and planning is frequently missing from many current social movements. As such, they have trouble making progress and may backfire.
For instance, people will say they want to ban guns, but there is little thought about how that would be accomplished in the real world. I cringe when politicians running for office say they want to ban guns. First, they don’t have a plan or the political support to get it done, so it’s almost certainly going to be a failed promise. And second, a policy like that will rile up the opposition in a way that can strengthen gun rights. The opposition will come out in force to protect their gun rights, and if in large enough numbers, will vote in politicians who are even more pro-gun than before. It’s fine to have a long term goal of banning guns, but if the real world reaction is not taken into account, it can be counterproductive. Instead, a series of smaller policies should be considered that have a chance of passing and are small steps forward towards the ultimate goal of banning guns. That way progress is made and the opposition does not come out in a force strong enough to push things backwards.
I am tired of people telling us how the appropriate way to protest, fight back, or advocate for our rights. You do nothing but give ammunition to the people who want to keep us subjugated. I’m done with this goddamn thread…
And they will do it in the dumbest way possible, like the 1994 AWB or the NY SAFE Act. This isn’t a gun control thread, but I have never seen a proposal that seems to even understand the basic functionality of firearm design. It always winds up either banning cosmetics or attempting to ban an entire class of action which I can’t imagine would get past Heller. Find a way to stop pistols in the hands of the public and then you might actually have a law that would cut down on most gun deaths.
I’m curious as to whether Zohran Mamdani’s NYC Democratic mayoral primary victory has strengthened or changes any of the opinions for those of you who have posted in this thread. What do you think other Democratic candidates can learn from it?
There are many paths to success. And many paths to failure. In my opinion, the progress made by those riots were partially due to society being more accepting of gay rights at that moment. Obviously they weren’t planned out. If a similar riot happened a few decades earlier, likely the outcome would have been much more negative. I don’t think a riot is a good model to use as a path for social progress. Maybe it will work, but maybe it will also fail spectacularly.
That was a time of lots of social change. There was a movement to be more accepting of new ideas. Accepting new ideas about gay rights was like new ideas about sexuality, social roles, drugs, etc. There was more of a movement to be open to social change at that time. Moving gay rights forward was in line with the other social movements at the time. That wouldn’t have been the case back in '49. Back then, society was much more rigid. A gay riot probably wouldn’t have progressed gay rights at that time. It probably would have pushed it back.