LGBTQ+ People Are Not Going Back.

I'm tired of trans people being excluded from what "American" means.

This is part of an action proposed by Julia Serano. You can read the original call to action here.

I believed, in the days after the election, that Democrats would call out the densely-bankrolled transphobic campaign run by the Republicans as the cynical, cruel and transparent attempt to scapegoat a small minority of Americans to sway voters it was.

I don’t know why I believed that. Magical thinking? Stupidity? I don’t know. But I did. And instead, we got:

“The Democrats have to stop pandering to the far left,” Rep. Tom Suozzi, D-N.Y., told The New York Times on Wednesday. “I don’t want to discriminate against anybody, but I don’t think biological boys should be playing in girls’ sports.”

“Some Democrats blame party’s position on transgender rights in part for Harris’ loss”, NBC News

“…then-Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa told a local radio station that “you can support transgender rights up and down all the categories where the issue comes up, or you can understand that there’s certain things that we just go too far on, that a big bulk of our population does not support.”

“Some Democrats blame party’s position on transgender rights in part for Harris’ loss”, NBC News

“Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone rather than being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face,” Moulton said. “I have two little girls, I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”

“Democrats wrestle over role of transgender rights in election”, The Hill

Inherent in these sentiments — and explicit in Moulton’s - is the construction of trans people as not only gendered Others outside the boundaries of acceptable gender and sex, but also national Others, not-Americans, a group of people whose lives and concerns — beyond their expression and experience of gender— is strange, foreign, out of step with “normal” citizens, and unworthy of consideration.

To them, we are not normal. We are not American. For these Dems, many Dem voters and the numbers of queer people who count themselves along the “LGBT without the T” movement, that means it’s time to throw trans people under the bus, run them over, and ride into (presumably) a future sunset where they stand a better chance of nabbing a trans-less electoral victory.

It’s an unacceptable path forward. Trans people are America, too.

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In an election where the price of eggs became commonly positioned as a concern against menacing trans people lurking in bathrooms and locker rooms and the post-election Monday quarterbacking has focused mainly on positioning supporting trans people as ignoring the “pains of the working class,” the reality that trans folks experience economic strain goes ignored.

A KFF/Washington Post survey on trans folks found that a larger share of trans adults surveyed (57%) live on incomes below $50,000 than their non-trans counterparts (45%). The share of trans adults who were unemployed (14%) was almost double the share of unemployed non-trans adults (8%).

“But cisgender folks have families!” you might be saying. The survey also found that trans adults and non-trans adults were almost equally likely to have a child under the age of 18 living in the home.

Trans folks are also more likely to experience homelessness than their cisgender counterparts. A National Alliance on Homelessness survey in 2019 found that 63% of transgender adults and 80% of gender non-conforming adults were unsheltered, compared to 49% of cisgender adults.

And while federal and state politicians use transgender access to gender-affirming care as a political tool, transgender folks are experiencing disparities around healthcare that have nothing to do with accessing gender-affirming care. A CAP20 fact sheet on healthcare for transgender adults finds that:

• 60 percent of transgender adults report having poor mental health at least one day in the past month compared with 37 percent of cisgender adults.

• 54 percent of transgender adults report having had poor physical health at least one day in the past month compared with 36 percent of cisgender adults.

• 28 percent of transgender respondents reported postponing or avoiding necessary medical care in the year prior to CAP’s survey for fear of experiencing discrimination, including 22 percent of transgender respondents of color.

• 40 percent of transgender respondents reported postponing or avoiding getting preventive screenings in the year prior to CAP’s survey due to discrimination, including 54 percent of transgender people of color.

• Nearly 1 in 2 transgender respondents, including 68 percent of transgender respondents of color, reported experiencing some form of discrimination or mistreatment at the hands of a health provider in the year prior to CAP’s survey, including care refusal, misgendering, and verbal or physical abuse.

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This notion that supporting transgender people at the most basic level — supporting their access to legal and safe gender-affirming care and rejecting policies that discriminate against trans people in housing, employment, healthcare, etc. — is somehow limiting or distracting Democrats from supporting “working Americans” is fundamentally flawed. Trans people (and queer people more generally) are not American exceptions, living lives somehow detached from the concerns of “normal” Americans. Trans people are facing the same economic hardships and pressures. Honestly, trans people are facing more pressures, because American transphobia places additional obstacles in the way of relieving those pressures for trans people.

86% of LGBTQ+ voters voted for the Democratic nominee for president. If the Democrats want to continue to rely on the queer vote, we should demand a few things from them:

• Abandoning transgender people, their safety and their citizenship is unacceptable.

• Adopting the transphobic rhetoric about transgender people used by the Right is unacceptable.

• Allowing the incoming administration to demonize, belittle and legislate trans people into oblivion while saying and doing nothing to try and stop it is unacceptable.

• Continuing to place the concerns and needs of trans and queer people alongside the needs of other communities and treating the needs of these people as a part of supporting Americans is essential.

We are not going back. We are not going back to a time when we are ignored, shoved into the background, made small, made invisible.

As a tangible action you can do today: Contact your Congressperson, your Senators, and even your local leaders and tell them you will not accept any backpedaling on LGBTQ+ issues, specifically transgender rights.

And tell them if they do backpedal and abandon the trans community, you will take your vote elsewhere next election.