Abandoning Trans Rights is Not a Path to Victory

I have a confession to make: I’m the reason the Republicans won both the Presidency and Congress. It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me. I’m very sorry about this and I promise to exist less next time.

By this I am referring to the emerging theme that support for transgender people is what tanked Democrats this election, or at least significantly contributed to their loss. During the 2024 election season, Republicans spent at least $215 million on anti-trans attack ads across multiple races, hoping that if they make trans rights scary enough and tie Democrats to it tightly enough, then it’ll nudge enough voters their way. This bet was so widely and intensely made that a prescient Washington Post article published on November 1, “The 7 most likely scenarios for Election Day,” predicted that a Trump rout might “cast a spotlight on the role of transgender rights.” Waking up November 6 and seeing the amount of red on the map, what came next was predictable.

Award-winning political cartoonist Michael Ramirez released a piece accusing Democrats of many excesses, including “gender theory” and “pronouns.” Pulitzer-Prize winner Kathleen Parker opined that “[f]ew people like the prospect of mass deportations, but most would surely like an end to the uncontrolled siphoning of taxpayer resources to house, feed and fund transgender surgeries for illegal migrants.” (Nevermind that an August Pew Research poll found that 56% of voters, and 88% of Trump supporters, said they supported mass deportations, and that there are no significant funds being expended on “transgender surgeries” for undocumented individuals). New York Times opinion columnist Pamela Paul argued that the ads resonated with Americans who think Democrats have gone too far to the left on transgender issues, and therefore they should roll back gender education in public schools and stop supporting medical interventions for minors. The New York Times ran a story entitled “How Trump Won, and How Harris Lost,” noting that the anti-transgender attack ads worked in tandem with other ads Republicans ran to make Kamala Harris look “unserious, foolish and outside the political mainstream” and that one particular anti-transgender ad on its own seemed to move voters nearly 3 percentage points towards Donald Trump.

Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton (D) weighed in on the discussion, saying that Democrats have avoided talking about “the challenges many Americans face,” such as not wanting their young girls to be “run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete.” After receiving criticism for this, Moulton doubled down, calling it “kind of weird” when people put pronouns in their email signatures and complaining that “all of a sudden, we have to change all our values to meet the needs or demands of one very small minority group.” Representative Tom Suozzi (D-NY) echoed this sentiment, saying “[w]e all need to take a deep breath and wake up… The Democrats have to stop pandering to the far left… I don’t think biological boys should be playing in girls’ sports.”

Of course, transgender issues aren’t typically presented as the sole reason that Democrats lost. The economy is, rightfully, getting a large chunk of the blame. As are failures to reach out to demographic groups such as Latinos and Black men, and the lack of a compelling vision for America. But while fixing these would make things better—a better economy, a wider base with more people feeling like the Democratic Party cares about them, and a positive, uplifting sense of purpose about where the country is going—regressing on transgender issues would not. People being weirded out by pronouns in email signatures is not an issue. Minors receiving healthcare with the consent of their guardians and healthcare providers is not an issue. Transgender women participating in women’s sports is, believe it or not, not an issue. And it certainly shouldn’t be an issue when people in the state’s care receive standard medical care. Do we really want to be in a place where you will not receive adequate medical treatment for as long as the state detains you?

There’s a sense that changing tack on transgender issues is less a 180 and more a matter of aligning populace and elite. This is the angle Pamela Paul took in her aforementioned opinion piece. She writes, “[r]ather than try to push Americans in a direction they clearly oppose, Democrats would be better off endorsing nuanced and humane alternatives.” Less turning back the clock and more getting everyone on the same page after the elite sprinted far left. This is not the case.

In the past, transgender healthcare has been far less accessible and the culture much less hospitable. Numerous clinics across the world have reported an increase in the number of people being treated with hormonal or surgical transition care, and there’s a general feeling that transgender people are more accepted now than in the past. While it would hurt to reverse course on these matters, the direction the country is taking, and the direction the Republicans who ran the millions of dollars in attack ads want to take the country in, is far worse. While a lack of access to healthcare is bad, it is much worse that people are being prosecuted, threatened with loss of their professional licenses and massive fines, for providing healthcare. While not being allowed to participate in sports is unfortunate, intimidation by armed officers of the state when a transgender minor tries to participate in sports is worse.

Last year, Trump promised he would have the FDA investigate if transgender healthcare causes “extreme depression, aggression and even violence,” adding “I think most of us already know the answer”—a clear threat of using the federal government to ban care that transgender Americans rely on. He also promised to strip federal funding from hospitals that provided transgender healthcare to minors, which, if implemented, would essentially ban all hospitals from offering it, regardless of what the doctors and their patients decide is best. This is only a small selection of what Republicans have done and what they’ve said they plan to do. They are not planning on rolling back the clock a little; they are planning on introducing a far more authoritarian and punitive regime than the country has seen in a long time.

In the face of this, it would be a monumental moral failure for Democrats to turn their back on transgender people. Republicans are not even meeting the most minimal standards of decency: Their most famous ad, with the tagline “Kamala is for they/them,” implied that Admiral Rachel Levine is an imprisoned criminal. Another set of ads featured images of a grandmother who played sports for two years ending a decade ago, making her the face of “biological males” overrunning women’s sports and upending her private life. (Never mind that she never was that good). 

But even moreso, it would be a startling strategic failure. In response to apparently successful attacks by Republicans on the border, Democrats tried to moderate on immigration. Voters did not respond; 53% trusted Donald Trump more on immigration than they did Harris, and out of those for whom immigration was their main reason for voting, 90% voted for Trump. If moderating on the border didn’t work, it’s unclear how rolling over on transgender issues would.

Additionally, while small, LGBTQ+ voters are a devoted bloc: LGBTQ+ voters were second only to Black women in terms of demographics which broke the largest for Harris, with 86% of LGBTQ+ voters voting for Harris. Transgender people in particular organized in greater numbers this election than they ever have before; per a Advocates for Transgender Equality email, they alone managed to gather nearly a thousand trans people to phonebank for the Harris-Walz campaign, hosted a virtual rally, mobilized state and local organizations, and engaged in the largest-ever GOTV operation for transgender Americans (who already vote at higher rates than their cisgender counterparts). Amidst a nationwide shift towards Republicans, Sarah McBride, a transgender woman, won a state-wide election in Delaware to the House of Representatives, outperforming Kamala Harris in the process. Similarly, Zooey Zephyr, another transgender woman, won her election to Montana State House of Representatives District 95 by a larger margin than any of her predecessors. Coming at it from the other direction, multiple Republican candidates who went all-in on transgender issues lost their elections. This all tracks with the reality that the economy and democracy were the most important issues to voters this election, by a large margin.

Right now, Republicans are ruining lives, and they promise to ruin more. Voters have publicly, loudly proclaimed that they’re unhappy with the state of the economy first and foremost. The moral and the smart thing to do would be to provide as much resistance to the GOP’s agenda as possible and to create a program for the economy that will satisfy the American people. Abandoning transgender people is immoral, illiberal, and a poor strategic move. After all, in what world is turning on an extremely loyal and activated demographic the right decision? Time is short and coalitions are critical. If Democrats are willing to truly face their failures and not scapegoat some of their most engaged supporters, we might just be able to find our way past this election.

Featured image is Protest Military Trans Ban, by Ted Eytan