By Stephanie L. Weippert @stephanieweippert.bsky.social
Do you know anyone who is trans? Most likely not. According to the Household Pulse Survey1 barely over 1% of people in the United States are trans, using the CDC definition of a “gender identity [that] differs from the sex they were assigned at birth2.” Left handedness is ten times as common3, for example.
Obama’s administration expanded Title IX protections to include trans people in 2016, which Trump’s administration rescinded.4 But if trans people are rarer than left-handedness and many people will never meet a trans person in their lives why is this the big political issue? Fear of the unknown.
Fear is a great motivator in us humans. We will do things when scared that would never happen if we weren’t terrified. History has many examples of how fear caused communities to persecute and often kill helpless people. Republican donors poured millions of dollars into political campaigns that used scary untruths about this tiny sliver of the population in order to scare voters into voting for Republican candidates, often to combat information about their Project 2025.5
Following the 2024 elections, the first trans congressperson was elected from Delaware, Rep. Sarah McBride. Even before Rep. McBride could be sworn into her seat, Rep. Nancy Mace filed a resolution targeting Rep. McBride, which the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson granted. He declared that all single-sex bathrooms in the U.S. Capitol building would be reserved for "individuals of that biological sex."6 Rep. McBride has done her best to rise above this issue, calling it a distraction, which it is.
Rep. Mace claims that as a sexual assault survivor she does not want to see male reproductive organs in the woman’s bathroom, but I happen to be a cis woman who has used public restrooms all of my life and never have I seen anyone’s privates in a bathroom, not even anther woman’s. Let me reassure you that woman’s restrooms have stalls around every toilet and unless you stick your head under the wall, you aren’t going to see anything. I promise.
Trans people are such a tiny percentage of the population that finding statistics of trans “sexual predators” are an exercise in frustration. From Maine to Hawaii, state officials have responded to requests for data that there isn’t any.7
Historically, the Nazis of pre-WWII Germany promoted lies about the “decadent and degenerate gay men” in society to scare average Germans enough to vote in Hitler8. It worked then, and sadly, it appears to be working today in the United States.
5 https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why-anti-transgender-political-ads-are-dominating-the-airwaves-this-election
6 https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-capitol-bathrooms-be-restricted-by-biological-sex-houses-johnson-says-2024-11-20/
7 https://www.mediamatters.org/sexual-harassment-sexual-assault/15-experts-debunk-right-wing-transgender-bathroom-myth
Excellent points. The hate is just to divide and demonize. The cruelty is the point, as is most everything the right does.