A WaPo Poll Found That Significant Majorities Support Pro-Trans Policies, But Reported The Exact Opposite by Parker Malloy (The Present Age) on May 8 2023
WaPo polling found most people (57%) didn’t think being transgender was a real thing, but also that most believed trans people should receive protections regardless:
- 71% of adults support laws banning discrimination against trans people by medical professionals.
- 72% of adults support laws banning discrimination against trans people from getting health insurance.
- 69% of adults support laws banning discrimination against transgender people in K-12 schools.
- 73% of adults support laws banning discrimination against transgender people at their jobs and workplaces.
- 74% of adults support laws banning discrimination against transgender people in housing.
Fascists and religious extremists are imposing their hateful views on all of us, against our common values. Forced birth is not popular. Discrimination against trans people is a minority viewpoint.
Corporations are driven by profit and simper into pathetic compliance at the merest whisper of manufactured exploitative outrage from fascists, but the rest of us don’t have to go along with it.
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May Anti-Trans Legislative Risk Map by Erin Reed (Erin in the Morning) on May 20, 2023
This map illustrates a stark divide. Nearly all states with any potential for passing harsh anti-trans laws have done so… On the other hand, states with a low likelihood of passing such laws have enacted highly protective legislation, including refuge/shield laws that block extradition and investigations into care from out of state.
Civil liberties should not have to be bought. Americans in all states deserve the freedom to express their gender identity and choose whether or not to have children, but people in the typically more affordable states are losing theirs; the unaffordable coastal states are primarily the ones protecting their residents.
I was chatting with a friend about the vague idea of moving to another state, half jokingly mentioning New Mexico as an option. He has a trans sister and pointed out that we live in one of the most protective states for trans people and other civil liberties.
I agree that I don’t want to move somewhere I’m liable to lose my bodily autonomy (something conservatives care a lot about when it involves them wearing a mask to protect others, and not at all for other people existing). However, the conservative goal is obviously to come for the blue states too. We are not safe just because we live on the coast in a state that passed the minimum humane threshold of recognizing trans people’s humanity, because with a bought and paid for conservative activist Supreme Court (literally *cough Clarence shitbag grifter Thomas cough*), evangelicals’ goal is elimination of rights for trans people, LGBTQIA+ folks, women, and anyone who’s not Christian — everywhere. Their aim is control at a Federal level.
Trans people are uncommon enough, and trigger discomfort in enough people, that they’re an easy first target for oppression. But make no mistake, religious extremists will not stop with trans folks. Their views of hatred and expressions of violent control are an existential threat to a liberal, diverse society. If they can pretend a person being queer is somehow an inherent threat to “children’s impressionable minds,” (while they circle the wagons to protect actual pedophiles and assaulters) so too will they portray the very existence of Jews and Muslims and atheists in the public sphere. They are already trying to control factual historical information about racial oppression; their aggressive book bans are already starting to expand to attacks on libraries and universities themselves as bastions of vulgar ideological brainwashing. Any ideology or identity they dislike is under threat, and they dislike everyone unlike themselves. They are losing on the demographic front, but they don’t care about winning through ethical or legal means, only that their views win, period.
We need to support the trans and non-binary people in our communities and in other states in whatever ways we can — and confront toxic masculinity and oppressive gender norms everywhere.
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