A nation voting between fear and hope

Tuesday’s Erin in the Morning reported on something worth celebrating: Voters firmly rejected a candidate who campaigned on anti-trans hate. From Virginia to New Jersey to New York City, pro-trans and pro-equality candidates won by wide margins, delivering a stunning rebuke to those, including Democrats, who tried to wedge transgender people into the issue. As Erin said, “Victory is won not by surrender, but by guilt.”

In recent years, transgender people have been caught up in a manufactured storm as we have created effective political theater. The same strategy that turned immigrants, homosexuals, and women seeking health care into wedge issues has taken on new life targeting transgender people. And like all culture wars, the goal of this war is to distract, to keep voters angry at each other rather than the system failing them.

I often hear well-meaning people talk about the need to find a “balance” in these discussions, that is, to weigh competing interests in a pluralistic democracy. That’s true in a sense. But balance does not mean deciding whose humanity is up for negotiation. Power should not come at the expense of the civil and human rights of others.

That’s why I believe that transgender concerns need not dominate discourse, but they should never be abandoned. They deserve to be quietly and decisively upheld as part of a broader moral and democratic ethic.

If more people understood the human cost of sacrificing transgender people for political expediency, we might find a better way. They will understand that being transgender, the act of transitioning and authentically living, is not a special interest or social experiment. It’s freedom of expression. It’s free. It is the pursuit of happiness. And any attack on the rights of transgender people means an erosion of the rights of all Americans.

I wish everyone could see it too A treasure trove of leaked emails It shows exactly how “toilet”, “children” and “sports” were grouped together to focus on political weapons. These problems were solved locally with compassion and common sense for decades, until strategists realized they could divide the nation. This is a true crime podcast. (Actually, TransLash Media’s “Anti-trans hate machine” He has done extraordinary research tracing how these campaigns radicalized even moderate and liberal Americans to embrace far-right issues. )

If people really understood how this machine works, how far-right strategists deliberately manipulate fear and misinformation toward the goal of creating a Christian nationalist state, they might realize that the threat is not transgender at all. It is a cynical manipulation of our sympathies, beliefs, and ideals in order to maintain a kind of power structure that almost no one in this country actually wants.

Human rights in horse trading have been a feature of American politics since at least the late 19th century. At the time, white women’s suffrage sold out black voters to secure a fragile foothold in power after Reconstruction, but ironically, this power was never fully realized. After Stonewall, we’ve seen gay rights leaders distance themselves from trans activists and civil rights leaders sideline Bayard Rustin, the gay architect of the March on Washington, for fear of losing mainstream support. Each time, the logic of fate says that liberation can be negotiated piecemeal, that someone can be left behind now and rescued later. And people wonder why the left can’t get anything done.

Certainly, the negotiations could have been better with the strength of a diverse group. Transgender people, who make up just 0.7 percent of the population, cannot weigh heavily in any political deal and are not worth the taxpayer dollars that fund hundreds of bills aimed at restricting our freedoms. But the fact that selling each other out will never work for anyone is an existential lesson that we must ultimately learn if we want true progress. At this point, you have nothing to lose by going the other way.

Maybe more people already understand it than I think. At least more people seem to be recognizing that and voting accordingly. We live in hope.

Still, I won’t lie. This year has been a cruel year. Everything I had feared unfolded faster and worse than I could have imagined. We never thought that transgender people would literally be called “domestic extremists,” or that people we once considered heroes like Governor Gavin Newsom would join us as scapegoats.

I had to learn new skills that I never wanted. It’s a way to protect my privacy and physical safety while the country loudly considers whether I should be registered as a terrorist for existing crimes, teaching people basic etiquette for transgender people, and participating in a movement that secures our place in the American Dream.

Once I got over most of the shock, fear, and anxiety of it all, I had a realization I wasn’t expecting. “I can handle anything now.”

It’s a strange kind of encouragement tempered by intense sadness and deep disappointment. But “power is what matters,” right? If the far right, and the everyday liberals who pre-agreed with them in abolishing trans rights, have taught me anything, it’s that I’m far more powerful than any fated way they can imagine to stop me or my community.

Because freedom of expression, freedom, and the pursuit of happiness are not only the founding principles of this country, they are the heartbeats of transgender people across all eras and cultures, and will never go away. You can oppress us, legislate us, or rename us as blackmailers. But we will never perish, so you only reveal how powerful we really are through your trials.

To our friends who want to make progress just like we do. Stop wasting your energy trying to silence us. Embrace us and harness our power to achieve goals that are important to all of us.

scott turner schofield The actor, author, producer, speaker, and trans activist transitioned 25 years ago and followed his calling to become an advocate.