Transgender

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/07/07/attitudes-about-transgender-issues-vary-widely-among-christians-religious-nones-in-u-s/

In fact, liberals do not even substantially disagree with the core of Trump’s policies. After all, both right-wing and liberal elites are loyal servants of empire, the latter just give it a veneer of humanitarianism. Source: https://lemmy.ml/post/36896947

Authenticity does not have to be subversive. Source: A Sophie Labele's cartoon, showing a girl with a very plain outfit doing embroidery.

And this is why the cultural normalization of Transness is important.

Being trans is something to be normalized as part of a deep cultural change. How deep? As deep as traditional third-genders or other genders are part of the tradition and religion of other cultures such as Africa and India. Trans politics in the Western world right now are strictly informed by the idea that being trans is subversive. Or it should be subversive and it ought to be subversive in order to be worthy of solidarity. The element of subversion is present in the contrary belief also: that Transness genuinely is so subversive as to endanger Western civilization as a whole.

To understand how political groups focus on Transness and understand Transness, Transness should be studied beyond its personal, legal, and medical meanings. It should be studied as an icon and as a symbol, just like advertisers and marketers are extremely aware of the meanings and connotations symbols have. So what are the meanings that Transness, the cultural symbol, carries? What would an advertiser who would use Transness as a symbol would want to convey? Youthfulness? Self-care? Strength?

As a symbol of eccentricity, it is the exemplar of personal freedom of expression, for liberals. But this does not account for cultural systems where being trans is traditional. As a symbol of christian defiance, most celebrated by atheists, it does not account for cultures where Transness has religious connotations.

As a rhetorical device, trans acceptance is tooted as the absolutism of authenticity, acceptance and secularity. It is on this account that it is exploitable as a veneer of humanitarianism. Should transness be part of our normal, conservative, religious life, it would have not these meanings. By not bearing these connotations it would be useless to Democrats, to signal acceptance and inclusion. It would be equally useless to Fascists, who decry excess, and fearmonger about Transness being the bearer of civilizational collapse. It would be useless to Left-wing intellectuals as well, who make careers out of pointing out that the "veneer of humanitarianism" is not true revolution, and thus legitimize alt-right trolls in left-wing spaces, who try to scapegoat trans people as unworthy of solidarity.

Being trans is a normal variation of human ~~sex~~ development. This is the core idea that makes christian nationalists, TERFs, racists, and nazis seethe. It is an idea they are willing to extinguish. They are ready to kill in order to suppress this idea. It is therefore an idea worth having. But what it really means is not that it is eccentric, outlandish, secular, excessive and modern (which can be very good things in and of themselves under certain circumstances). But boring, commonplace, transcedental, modest, and old-fashioned.

This is the true shift we owe to make culturally with regard to Transness. And one that is to be pursued particularly by the Left, whose occasional tendency to certify subversion in order to release solidarity, can be the seed of its eventual moral default.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/33516519

Don't Buy From Big Names With Poor Values! Shop Queer, Neurodivergent, Artist owned Businesses like The BirdHive!

Archive

They misrepresent facts to push the belief that Trump's crackdown on transgender rights was effective in eradicating the "social contagion" that to them is being transgender.

Very dangerous ideas, circulated by very dangerous people.

On Tuesday, Kaufman posted a Twitter thread declaring that “trans identification is in free fall among the young.” The graph he used to prove it, however, was fundamentally flawed—it showed students who identified as “neither male nor female,” a category that excludes most transgender men and women. In other words, Kaufmann’s supposed evidence of a collapse in “trans identification” was actually a selective chart of nonbinary students, not transgender people as a whole. The distinction didn’t matter to the far-right echo chamber. Matt Walsh seized on the claim, boasting, “Transgenderism is effectively over. We destroyed it,” while Elon Musk reposted the graph to his hundreds of millions of followers, personally thanking Walsh for “playing a major role” in the so-called victory.

Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, a legendary transgender activist, was known for many things in her community. As a caretaker, she was known for getting Black trans women off the street and housed when they faced poverty and violence. As a fierce advocate for trans rights, she was known for demanding that LGBTQ+ people focus on protecting the most vulnerable among them, like women being policed and incarcerated for trying to survive. And as a veteran of the 1969 Stonewall uprising in New York City, she was known as a queer elder who did not want the past to be used as an excuse for inaction.

Her nonprofit retreat for trans leaders, The House of gg — the Griffin-Gracy Educational and Historical Center — announced her death in an Instagram statement on Monday night. She died at home on October 13 in Little Rock, Arkansas, surrounded by loved ones, the statement said. She was 78, according to the statement, although she doubted official records of her birth and believed she was in her 80s. She was hospitalized twice this year and was recently in hospice care, following a bloodstream infection. She suffered her second stroke in 2019.

Miss Major is survived by her longtime partner, Beck Witt Major, with whom she had a child, Asiah Wittenstein Major, in 2021. She raised other children during her life, through adoption and through relationships with former partners — including Deborah Brown, who gave birth to their son, Christopher, in 1978. But her family relationships extended beyond blood; according to the House of gg, she is also survived by Janetta Johnson, successor of the Miss Major Alexander L. Lee TGIJP Black Trans Cultural Center, and her sisters Tracie O’Brien and Billie Cooper.

She was born in Chicago and grew up with two siblings, Cookie and Sargeant. She loved her parents, “despite their recurring attempts to smack the queen out of her,” according to her memoir.

In the last years of her life, Miss Major felt called to fight back against the rising tide of anti-trans legislation. She wanted to talk directly with young LGBTQ+ people and encourage them to take action. She met with them at protests and at local gay bars, at the Democratic National Convention in 2024 while campaigning for former Vice President Kamala Harris, and during her third visit to the White House in 2023. She relied on motorized scooters and wheelchairs to travel across states, by car, by plane and by Amtrak, to have those conversations. She felt called to keep going for the cause, even as traveling became difficult for her.

People supporting transgender athletes’ participation in and restriction from sports gather outside a Riverside Unified School District meeting outside Los Angeles on Dec. 19, 2024. (Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

Since taking office, President Donald Trump has signed several executive orders related to transgender people. These have included orders banning trans women and girls from women’s sports and ending federal funding for health care related to gender transitions for youth.

A new Pew Research Center survey finds that majorities of U.S. adults favor or strongly favor laws and policies that:

• Require trans athletes to compete on teams that match their sex assigned at birth (66%)
• Ban health care professionals from providing care related to gender transitions for minors (56%) How we did this

Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to explore how Americans view certain laws and policies related to transgender issues and how these opinions have changed in recent years.

For this analysis, we surveyed 5,097 adults from Feb. 10 to 17, 2025. Everyone who took part is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), a group of people recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses who have agreed to take surveys regularly. The survey was conducted either online or by telephone with a live interviewer. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other factors. Read more about the ATP’s methodology.

Here are the questions used for this analysis, the topline and the survey methodology.

At the same time, 56% of adults express support for policies aimed at protecting trans people from discrimination in jobs, housing and public spaces.

Views on these policies and several others have shifted in recent years, with Americans becoming more supportive of restrictions for transgender people, according to the survey of 5,097 U.S. adults conducted Feb. 10-17, 2025.

Related: Most LGBTQ adults expect Trump’s policies to affect gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans people negatively

A diverging bar chart showing that about two-thirds of U.S. adults support policies requiring transgender athletes to compete on teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth.

The survey also finds that more Americans support than oppose laws and policies that:

• Require trans people to use public bathrooms that match their sex at birth, rather than the gender they identify with (49% favor or strongly favor, 26% oppose or strongly oppose)
• Make it illegal for public school districts to teach about gender identity in elementary schools (47% favor or strongly favor, 34% oppose or strongly oppose)

In turn, adults are much more likely to oppose than favor policies requiring health insurance companies to cover medical care for gender transitions (53% vs. 22%).

Line charts showing that Americans’ views of laws and policies related to transgender people have changed in recent years.

Compared with 2022, Americans have become more supportive of laws that limit protections for trans people – and less supportive of laws aimed at safeguarding them.

More Americans now say they favor or strongly favor laws and policies that:

• Ban health care professionals from providing care related to gender transitions for minors (up 10 percentage points)
• Require trans athletes to compete on teams that match their sex at birth (up 8 points)
• Require trans people to use public bathrooms that match their sex at birth (up 8 points)
• Make it illegal for public school districts to teach about gender identity in elementary schools (up 6 points)

At the same time, fewer Americans now express support for laws and policies that:

• Protect trans people from discrimination (down 8 points since 2022)
• Require health insurance companies to cover medical care for gender transitions (down 5 points)

These shifts reflect changing views among both Republicans and Democrats. For example, 79% of Republicans now support making it illegal for health care professionals to provide medical care for a gender transition for minors. This compares with 72% in 2022. On the same question, 35% of Democrats now express support, up from 26% in 2022. (These figures include independents who identify with or lean toward each party.)

As was the case in 2022, there are wide partisan gaps in views of trans issues. Republicans are much more likely than Democrats to express support for policies that limit protections for trans people (by margins of 43 to 50 points). In turn, Democrats are much more likely than Republicans to support policies that safeguard trans people (by margins of more than 30 points).

Note: Here are the questions used for this analysis, the topline and the survey methodology.

Transphobe fucks around and finds out