They/Them

For better or worse, a lot of Americans still don't understand the full scope of transgender rights. Is this the hill that Democrats die on?

This is an extremely tough topic to skate and very contentious for people, and I am not transgender, so automatically I think a lot of my views on anything might be thrown out by half the people that stumble across this article someday. Still, I will try.

Quick Personal Anecdote

I am pretty sure my mom voted for Reagan back in the 1980s, probably tied to the semi-elite financial position of my parents then. Since then, she’s become more liberal or “bleeding heart,” and absolutely came to hate Trump. That said, she still would ask me sometimes: “What is happening with the kids and the gender?” It is very easy to dismiss this as some out-of-touch Boomer, which might be accurate. But to me, her questions about that while still hating Trump always reflected that it’s a point of confusion for many Americans. They already see chaos with homelessness and crime and the cost of a Costco run, and they want to feel some type of stability. Then they see news stories about younger kids changing their gender — however true or untrue or wholly-reported those stories may be — and it causes chaos for them, because they aren’t aware of the concepts and terms and how transgenderism has been around for generations, but was always a “suffer in silence” issue.

And the pre-eminent example of the confusion would be…