At a summit hosted by far-right anti-LGBTQ group Moms for Liberty, former President and current Presidential hopeful Donald J. Trump uttered the following:
“But the transgender thing is incredible. Think of it. Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation,” said Trump. “The school decides what’s going to happen with your child and you know many of these childs [sic] 15 years later say, what the hell happened? Who did this to me? They say, who did this to me? It’s incredible.”
I feel like I should not need to park how false this is. It should be obvious. No one is giving kids transgender-related surgeries at school. Nor were they giving them 15 years ago, as this paragraph seems to imply. The whole thing is utter hogwash.
Trump’s comments are just the latest ramping up in an anti-trans culture war stoked by falsehood.
Consider the narratives around trans issues in the last few years. Transgender women are going to assault you in the restroom. Transgender women are transitioning just to get a clever advantage in women’s sports, such as swimming, or, oh, chess. Trans people, the LGBTQ+ community, and your schools want to transition children for deviant purposes. Drag queens are performing sex acts in front of children.
Each of these are fear mongering nonsense, at the same level of drugs in the Halloween candy, or migrant caravans coming to your hometown. No one is transitioning to assault anyone in a restroom when putting on a coverall and holding a mop will guarantee easier access. Likewise, no one is going to go through the onerous process of transition for a “sports advantage” that quickly vanishes once you start hormonal treatments anyway. Drag Queen story times are akin to — and I mean this entirely complimentary, I promise — having a clown or a costumed character read a book. It is only as sexual as you, an adult, might impress upon the proceedings.
Oh, and as for people wanting to transition children, no, we don’t wish to do that — but we do hope that a trans child gets to survive to adulthood in a fairly hostile world, and expect to see them supported.
No one, however, is caring about the truth right now. The mainstream media isn’t reporting on Trump’s blatant lies, including those around trans lives. The Los Angeles Times, for example, did not include that quote in their coverage, providing a headline that read, “Trump questions acceptance of transgender people during Moms for Liberty gathering.” Other outlets were just about as charitable to his comments on trans lives, if he even brought them up at all.
Meanwhile, states continue to push bills against trans lives, courts continue to allow those bills to go into effect, diminishing the rights of transgender people nationwide — and pundits continue to spew lies about trans lives.
As a trans person, it makes these very anxious times to live in. If you spend some time in trans community spaces right now, you’ll see many pushing hard to get their medical needs attended to before November, while others do all they can to get their birth certificates and other documents updated in advance of a potential Trump victory. We lived through that before, and we are not quite frankly, sure if we’ll make it through again.
We’ve never lived a very privileged existence. When TIME magazine declared the “transgender tipping point” in 2014, it was due more for our appearance in popular media like “Orange is the New Black,” rather than any far-reaching political gains. We still lack some pretty fundamental rights, even as state after state removes our ability to update our identity documents or prevent us from accessing healthcare.
We have had some allies who have stood behind us in the past, but those are becoming thinner on the ground. Companies, pressed by the right, are scaling back diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts around race, gender and sexuality, in many cases thanks to the vaguest threats against their bottom lines. I’d call it the “Bud Light” or “Target” effect, after these brands were rocked by violent protests of even the weakest attempts to show support for trans and LGBTQ+ lives.
This brings us to the Democratic Party. With the nomination of Harris after Biden dropped out of the race, we have seen a sea change in interest in the message of the Democrats. The party is electrified, and a supercharged Democratic National Convention showed a party fired up and ready to back the Harris and Walz ticket.
But besides a few trans faces in the roll call, and a handful of messages that included the phrase “LGBT,” transgender issues went unspoken. In an election that will likely see the first trans person elected to Congress, future Representative Sarah McBride was not asked to speak — and in a year where trans issues have been all over the lying lips of the GOP’s candidates, the Democrats have chosen to lie by omission, leaving trans rights forgotten in a time of crises.
I’m sure this is deliberate, with the idea that avoiding controversial topics will help ensure a victory. It’s not like Gaza was mentioned either, after all.
Yet, when one of the two people who might be president is more than happy to lie about your local elementary school providing gender surgeries, we need the other candidate to push back against that lie.
We crave honest — and vocal — representation amid an ocean of lies.
Gwen Smith is waiting on one last piece of documentation. You can find her at www.gwensmith.com.
