The left is getting killed on the trans sports issue [1] [2]
Do you have any data backing this? And what analysis goes with the data?
Don’t let me be misunderstood: Rights are not defined by majorities, otherwise you could have a white majority voting on the humanity of black people, and wolves voting on the right of sheep not to be eaten.
On the other hand, the public’s views are heavily conditioned by misanthropic, anti-democratic propaganda, that shifts the window of acceptable discourse, and excludes people from a set of fundamental freedoms that cisgender people take for granted. As a consequence, the ubiquitous genocidal discourse against trans lives, if left unchecked leads (and this is by now not a prediction but a historical fact) to erosion of rights of women, blacks, indigenous, disabled, and every other citizen. Because these freedoms are not “special” to trans people, but are mere extension of legal scholarship and the rule of law. The ongoing American fascism is not an overreach of “legitimate concerns” but it is profoundly, structurally embedded in challenging the legitimacy of trans people. This is why TERFism was initially deemed “unworthy of respect” by British courts: because it goes against TONS of legal precedent.
Long story short, in the times of “Der Stürmer” you could have said that the majority of German did not think Jews should be married to Germans. So what? So much for the argument that we should sacrifice human rights of ANY group because they are unpopular.
ALL protections exist so that UNPOPULAR groups enjoy the rights that the majorities take for granted. Outside that logic there is only fascism.
It is much like segregation (which, surprise, is coming back again) and apartheid: The Feelings of uneasy white people sharing bathrooms and sports with black people, are of no importance whatsoever, because, simply, segregation is dehumanizing and unjust.
By extension, what you suggest is morally corrupt and inhumane, and it is deeply fascist in its very conception.
Now, we are arriving at the data. Bear with me.
You people hand-wave a fucking lot when you suggest that trans rights are so unpopular that they have lost you elections, when there have been multiple arguments that Democrats barely touched on the topic, apart from being loosely against killing trans people in pogroms and LUKEWARM at that. So your argument amounts to little more than “Fascist discourse is more trendy so let’s do that instead”, which is not JUST the Ratchet effect: it is “being complicit to actual genocide”.
So you HAND-WAVE about an IMAGINARY regular person (who is that fucking nazi?) to whom we must bow under all circumstances? Fuck that populist tactics, and fucking educate people.
But does this IMAGINARY nazi-enabling regular Joe even exist?
And what studies you cite for him not being able to revise being a shit person
Views differ even more widely along party lines. For example, eight-in-ten Democrats say they favor laws or policies that would protect trans individuals from discrimination, compared with 48% of Republicans. Conversely, by margins of about 40 percentage points or more, Republicans are more likely than Democrats to express support for laws or policies that would do each of the following: require trans athletes to compete on teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth (85% of Republicans vs. 37% of Democrats favor); make it illegal for health care professionals to provide someone younger than 18 with medical care for a gender transition (72% vs. 26%); make it illegal for public school districts to teach about gender identity in elementary schools (69% vs. 18%); require transgender individuals to use public bathrooms that match the sex they were assigned at birth (67% vs. 20%); and investigate parents for child abuse if they help someone younger than 18 get medical care for a gender transition (59% vs. 17%).
Which is from Pew which others like you like to point to as a general “trans rights unpopular with our voter base”, but if you actually read you will see that you can even find a small percentage of Republicans that are not vehemently against trans rights. And let’s not forget that the percentage of Democrats against trans rights would be very much different if Democrat’s media outlets weren’t fucking complicit in amplifying genocidal “gender critical” misanthropy, and there weren’t a score of fucking “leftist” intellectuals adopting their talk points, when there was ZERO voice given to the marginalized trans scholarship. So, this consent you talk to is manufactured by complicit Democrats to start with.
You would not make this argument unless you wanted to appeal to the Republican voter base, but doing so only shows that it is voter trends that guide your politics and not principles, and in fact, you are willing to enable crimes against humanity to appeal to a fascist voter base. This is unscrupulous and misanthropic.
Instead of succumbing to extremely well-funded racist and nazi propaganda, a principled political advocate with such means and resources as the Democrats could help alleviate what is a systematic attack to decent society and inclusive democracy. Therefore, your advocacy ultimately paints the Democrats as a manufactured opposition, and essentially a fascist party, once it does not stand for human rights, as it never were.
Centrists should be actively considered agitator agents for fascism at this point. Like, have you clowns even considered that your voter base might want you to grow a fucking spine and stand up for human rights, with trans rights front and center? Because I only see your democratic voter base being alienated by your flirt with fascism.
In the original response, this “Trigger Warning” was prepended Trigger Warning: Get a pack of Kleenex and load your favorite Daily Wire playlists to have handy, because this is not going to be a light read for a self-proclaimed intelligent centrist. ↩︎
The discussion in question: https://lemmy.ml/post/27381625 , and the comment in question: https://lemmy.ml/post/27381625/17379633 ↩︎
Huge props for putting this together. There is no consensus on eradicating trans people from society, and to assume that position is to out yourself as one of the 87% of Republicans who do agree with criminalized gender expression. Fucking insane we have to have this conversation “as leftists” when the overwhelming majority of the democratic BASE is opposed to passing laws openly discrinating against LGBTQ+ people.
It’s agitation, from outsiders. We need to stop letting this shit slide.
I’ll add two points that may be somewhat redundant but I think are key to understanding this logic.
The first is that Americans (this is in the context of the US) are politicalky incoherent and, generally, politically illiterate. This is exaggerated in polling, as the ways in which questions are framed can drastically change the results, even if the policies are identical. If you say, transphobically, “should we protect women by ensuring biological men [sic] cannot participate in women’s sports?” they will frequently agree. If you say, “should we allow trans teenagers to participate in sports aligning with their gender?” the results might flip. And when you focus in on individuals and the impact, even more people suddenly have a pro-trans position, like when someone is banned from participation and explains how it impacted them. If we understand that Americans have basically zero political understanding and are not in the habit of critically examining their own ideas, then we can really think about what these liberals are doing when they begin suggesting triangulating to the right: rather than coherently organize for liberation, to take the politically incoherent and educate them, they are saying to cede this to the right, to allow transphobes to build transphobic consciousness instead. The polling and results mean nothing on this topic, as the public has little to no understanding and can be swayed.
The second point is to focus on tailism. In short, tailism is an epithet from the left (early uses from Lenin) that allege the left should emerge from the tail end of political economic development, which ends up meaning the movement itself should follow what is popular qua some (usually unstated) definition. Tailism is an advocacy against agitation and forming coherent lines that may seem unpopular at first, and therefore amounts to an advocacy for absorbing reactionary thoughy into your organization, as you are, per tailist thinking, merely meant to be a reflection of the working class rather than thoughtnct and strategic political tendency advancing a cause. While the Democratic Party is thoroughly capitalist, imperialist, and primarily reactionary, these “centrists” (embarrassed reactionaries) are engaging in tailism in their own liberal microcosm. In this view, politics is not a struggle for a political project, like trans liberation, but an attempt to “win” to fight “the enemy” by adopting supposedly right wing “popular” views that are often not even popular. This may seem inconsistent, because on one hand the tailist is trying to triangulate what is popular but on the other is often very wrong about what is popular, but this is because they are fundamentally just looking to rationalize their push for reactionary positions, in this case transphobia. They are reacting to the left and their advocacy for trans rights and attempting to pin blame for “centrists”’ failures onto the marginalized and their advocates. Put simply, they want to punch left and move right. Not coincidentally, their material interests align rightward with capital.