First The Good News

There was a new poll just published that shows where we need to do work.

Most Americans support anti-trans policies favored by GOP, poll shows

The Washington Post

By Laura Meckler and Scott Clement

May 5, 2023

Clear majorities of Americans support restrictions affecting transgender children, a Washington Post-KFF poll finds, offering political jet fuel for Republicans in state legislatures and Congress who are pushing measures restricting curriculum, sports participation and medical care.

Most Americans don’t believe it’s even possible to be a gender that differs from that assigned at birth. A 57 percent majority of adults said a person’s gender is determined from the start, with 43 percent saying it can differ.

We need to counter the Republican lies, most people think that we are giving hormones to nine year old’s. They believe that we pumping them with puberty blockers that cause lasting damage to the children they just hear the word “blocker” and think the worst. We need to educate them!

While a majority of Americans oppose access to puberty blockers and hormone treatments for children and teenagers, for instance, clear majorities also support laws prohibiting discrimination against trans people, including in K-12 schools.

The Post-KFF poll was conducted in November and December, before state lawmakers introduced more than 400 anti-trans bills this year, up from about 150 bills in 2022 according to a Post analysis of ACLU data. It is not clear how the surge of anti-trans bills will affect public opinion or whether new laws targeting drag shows and gender-affirming care for adults will be popular.

This is the message we need to push… it is our rights that are being taken away for us. That our freedom of speech is being denied. That it is our right to assemble is being taken away from us.

One of the big unanswerable questions is whether public opinion around transgender issues will shift over time as it did around gay and lesbian rights. Some experts see parallels between the two issues, particularly as conservatives center their efforts on children and schools. Early backlash against gay people also focused on allegations that children would be harmed.

But certainly for now, the new Post-KFF poll finds, Republican lawmakers have the wind at their backs on much of their anti-transgender legislative agenda.

We can’t win this battle…

More than 6 in 10 adults in the Post-KFF poll said trans girls and women should not be allowed to compete in girls’ and women’s sports, including professional, college, high school and youth levels.

So lets deflect it and shift the focus off of sports on to human rights.

We have to get smart! We have to shape our messaging to areas where we have support.

These more nuanced views were also expressed in focus groups on trans issues with swing voters conducted by Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank, said Lanae Erickson, the group’s senior vice president for social policy and politics.

“This is all very new to the American public, so unlike some of the other cultural issues, these opinions are not set in stone,” she said.

As in the Post-KFF poll, Third Way’s research found significant concerns over sports participation and medical treatments, though Erickson said views would shift when focus group participants were presented with specific scenarios. Voters in the Republican base are animated by these topics, she said, but independents have given them far less thought.

“This is not abortion. This is not even marriage equality. People have not talked about the details. The more you talk to people, the more they change,” she said.

She added that independent voters know a lot more about what it means to be transgender than they used to. Five or 10 years ago, she said, people would talk about drag queens or the movie “Tootsie,” a comedy about an actor pretending to be a woman to get cast in a soap opera. Now people understand better that being transgender relates to one’s internal sense of gender identity, Erickson said.

Education! Education!

We need to go for the moveable middle, don't get into arguments with MAGA, thank our supporters but work on converting the moveable middle! It is them we have to convince, we are never going to change the right-wing conservatives so don't even try.

I was always wishy-washy on the Trans Day of Visibility but I have changed my view of it to positive. But now I think just by being in the grocery store, the shoe store, just by walking down a street.

I go to the senior center. I go to the big box hardware stores, and I go to the little town hardware stores. I go to restaurants with trans friends, I go to restaurants with lesbian friends, I go to restaurants with my family, and I go to restaurants by my self.

I remember one time dog sitting in Maine for my brother and I went to lunch at a little restaurant at the end of the lobster pier. I was sitting their eating my lobster when a family from South Carolina came on the deck looking for a place to sit with their family. They asked if they could join me at the picnic table where I sat alone, when my lobster came they wanted to know how to eat it. They never had lobsters before, as I was eating my lobster I explained to them how to eat the “sea-bug.” I could see the point where they or rather their children “clocked” me as trans but they were more interested in eating the lobster than me.

We need to be “in their face!”

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[RANT]

Have you noticed how some people just hate our guts, they say that they have “no problem with people who are gay or trans just don’t stick it in my face.”

Well that my dear is transphoblic and homophobic.

• Just by wanting our spouses name on a cake it is “in my face!”
• Just by holding hands it is “in my face!”
• Just by me standing in line at a grocery store it is “in my face!”
• Just by demanding our rights just like everyone it is “in my face” and we want “special rights!”
• A friend says what she misses most after her spouse transitioned was falling asleep on her shoulder on a train without getting stared at because she is “in their face!”

Well I will tell you… I will always be “in your face” because I want our names on cakes, I want us to be able to hold hands and sleep on the shoulder of their spouse, I will stand in line at a grocery store.

So get your transphoblic and homophobic a** out of my face!

[/RANT]