Right. This agenda has been on the slate succesfully in school board, county/city council and state assembly races – where local decisions are made on what can happen, be mentioned or be read about in schools and what is or is not done with or for minors.
I wonder is some of the failure is due to the absurdity of some of the claims that were made. Claims that no reasonable person could believe, as they were so far out there. In the buildup to the election, I saw comments in right-wing sources such as the following:
“In elementary school, teachers have been instructed to make your sons want to be girls, and your daughters to want to be boys.”
“Boys are being encouraged to become girls so they can play girls’ sports, in order to have a better chance at getting a college scholarship.”
“Did you know that in _____ [pick a jurisdiction], boys as young as ten years old can get a sex change without their parents knowing?”
These, and similar, remarks are just so absurd that, as I said, no reasonable person could believe them. Unreasonable people, such as those in the right-wing echo chamber, have no problem with believing them however. Still, it looks like the majority of American voters are reasonable people, who were not going to fall for such absurdities.
Anyway, might this be a factor in the failure of trans-bashing politics?
…“failure” is relative. Trans-bashing politics may not have translated into taking the Senate, but that doesn’t mean trans-bashing politics has disappeared. It just means that it isn’t headline news for a few weeks, or months, or even years.
You can’t act like this is all over. Because right now in places like Florida and Alabama and Arizona and Tennessee its still business as usual.
The “unreasonable people” number in the millions. And they still have plenty of power and aren’t going to be stopping any time soon.
plenty of people care. my mormon family who donates tens of thousands of dollars to anti-LGBT lobbying cares a lot. the people who threatened to kill my partner and ran her out of her hometown cared a lot. it’s not our fault that so many cishet liberals stick their head in the sand and pretend it isn’t happening.
democrats were more than willing to ship trans rights up the river earlier this summer until Roe was overturned and they didn’t need to. NYT and other mainstream liberal media have been more than willing to tell trans rights activists to STFU if they think it benefits them electorally somehow.
+1
must be at least 5 characters
Right wing dark money groups in the US have poured millions into a worldwide campaign against LBGTQ groups.
How would that work with the trans population only being around 1%? Are you counting knowing a public figure is trans as knowing? Or are you saying personally knowing?
Because it would surprise me if, for example, people that live rural in the mid-west each personally know someone who is trans. I wouldn’t be surprised if many of them do not know a Black person or a Jew, other than in passing. It’s incredibly white in those areas. If you take out the larger cities, it’s possible those states would be over 90% white and conservative.
I hit 60 this year and I’ll agree. Over all, it just doesn’t seen to be a big deal to anyone other than a vocal minority. I’m temporarily 
in a deep red state and the gay/trans bashers tried to take over the school board. Not one of them got over single digits.
Most people personally know way more than 100 other people. Last I checked, the typical figure was somewhere around 1000.
True, but populations tend to clump. And just because you know someone in that sense doesn’t mean you know their transgender status. Don’t forget the whole monkeysphere stuff, where we have about 150 close friends. I would presume the other 850 are more people you run into enough to know their name.
I think that a lot of people know trans people, but don’t realize that they know trans people.
Unless you knew them pre-transition, how would you know? The fully transitioned people I know fully present as the gender they identify with. I know this isn’t universal, but it’s common. Most people don’t talk about their genitals conversationally. When you meet a new co-worker or neighbor, you don’t ask them about their genitalia.
My trans nephew recently relocated for a new job, and moved with his wife to a new city. I bet he’s met a bunch of new neighbors and co-workers, and I’m thinking most of those people have no idea that the short new guy with a beard and tattoos and a pretty wife is trans.
So if you think you don’t know anyone that’s trans, don’t be so sure. You just might.
I’m not sure what that has to do with anything. Even if you actually knew 1000 people, that doesn’t mean any of them have to be trans. And nobody knows 1000 people. You may be able to name 1000 people, but you certainly don’t know that many. Knowing implies you actually interact with someone, like see a movie or do a bar night. Maybe invite each other to your birthdays. Just because I have some small talk with the supermarket cashier every week doesn’t mean I know them.
As mentioned not everyone who is trans is “out”.
FWIW I know for sure I’ve met personally two trans people in very different environments and from very different backgrounds, though one of them I lost direct contact with before she openly transitioned. The other, I met long, long after she did, already an older person and she has since passed. But in the case of the first, had we not had mutual friends, I would have never been aware.
Sure, but the odds are that you don’t. The simple fact that there are so few trans people makes actually knowing one a kind of long shot.
For instance, I’ve lived in NY for a few decades and some of my in-laws are in show biz in a pretty big way. When I first arrived in NY I hung out a lot with my producer BIL, and thru him met a lot of gay/trans stage actors, often hanging out in gay bars at night. Over all the years up to today, I’ve probably met thousands of gay people and hundreds of trans people. I would in no way claim that I knew that many people. Even with all that exposure, I really only know a handful of trans people and a couple of dozen gay people.
Of course not, neither is everyone who is gay or nonbinary. Jumping to the conclusion that they must be one of these minorities rather than hetero or even asexual is bucking the odds.
Of course it’s possible to know 1000 people, without any of them falling into any particular 1% demographic. But it’s going to be very uncommon. And I’m pretty introverted, but I still have way more than 100 people I have significant interaction with.
This. I’m dating a pretty trans woman who recently moved to a rural area. She knows all her neighbors and none of them know she’s trans. So technically they all know a trans person, but they don’t really.
But you also work at a school, don’t you?
I would say that, as a kid I knew 1000 people, but not remotely as an adult.
Unfortunately I believe you are correct. Just ancedotal father of a who takes testosterone, had top surgery at 17, and is now a big man on campus of his senior year at high school.
I have even known members of the LGBTQ+ community that don’t get on the barricades for trans rights. Somehow, they seem to think that right wing nutjobs will be satisfied with merely “outlawing” being trans, and won’t continue until everyone that isn’t a conservative white American hetro male is in jail.
I’m with China_Guy and Swords_To_Plowshares The Republicans failed because they underestimated the importance of Roe V Wade, and because a large percentage of their base is sick of Trump. If the only issue was ‘Democrats want to put men in girls locker rooms and on girls teams’ they would have won by a landslide. To believe otherwise is laughable and dangerous.
This is true, whether they know it or not.
It’s an extremely online view of politics. These candidates wants to have it both ways where they accuse the other side of forcing trans people onto society when the only people who never shut about trans people are the conservatives. The conservative media eco-system would have you believe trans people are everywhere and are a menace to society as opposed to a small minority who are just like everybody else going about their day.