As I write this, I am watching the Detroit Lions game against the Dallas Cowboys with my son. Football is not my thing. That is an understatement considering it perpetuates misogyny and toxic masculinity. But my 15-year-old son loves it. Watching football with him and listening to him patiently (usually) explain to me what is happening is a way to spend time with him and learn more about his interests.
My son is, well, very much a dude. Two moms raising a son who is so stereotypically masculine has led me to think a lot about gender over the years. Nature vs. nurture and all that. I believe that gender is a social construct and that it is not healthy for society at large to demand prescribed gender roles and identities. It is damaging to teach boys that they shouldn’t cry or to teach girls that they have to be pretty above all else. I also believe that someone’s gender identity and expression is firmly none of my business. It is not my job, or desire, to be the gender police. It is my job to treat other humans with decency and kindness whenever possible. And that is what I have tried to teach my son.
Republicans, however, have nominated themselves to be the gender police. They are absolutely obsessed with gender. They believe that there are only two genders, that there are defined gender roles for males and females, and that there is a masculine or feminine ideal when it comes to gender expression. Any deviation is wrong.
This belief system fuels the fight against reproductive rights. The role of a woman is to be a bride, and then a wife, and then a mother, by any means necessary.
It also fuels the Republican focus on transgender people who they are more than happy to demonize to score political points. And as we get closer to election day, the attack on transgender people keeps getting more and more vicious.
During the football game’s commercial break, I watched a campaign ad attacking Vice President Kamala Harris and her support of transgender people. It was, quite frankly, awful. The ad claims that Harris “supports taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners and illegal aliens.” The ad ends saying, “Kamala’s for they/them. President Trump is for you” as images of people who are presumably transgender, or at least not gender-conforming, flash across the screen.
The ad, of course, lacks context. Every political ad does. There’s only so much you can cram into 30 seconds. According to FactCheck.org, part of the basis for the ad’s claim is a 2019 ACLU questionnaire Harris responded to about transgender rights.
“I support policies ensuring that federal prisoners and detainees are able to obtain medically necessary care for gender transition, including surgical care, while incarcerated or detained,” she said.
To which I say, so what? Advocating for medically necessary care for prisoners isn’t a radical stance. It’s a humane one.
Unfortunately, Republicans do not say so what. Disgraced former president Donald Trump is leaning on anti-transgender hate heavily in his public comments and rallies. And it makes me sick and sad.
At a Sept. 23 rally in Indiana, Pennsylvania, Trump said, “[Harris] even endorsed free sex changes…for illegal aliens in detention centers all over our country at taxpayer expense.”
He’s also said repeatedly that kids go to school and come back home days later having had a sex change.
There are so many huge issues to deal with in this country and Republicans have shown absolutely no interest in addressing these issues. They are hyper-focused on a very small and very vulnerable population of people and, by extension, their families. When the most powerful people in the country are pointing at transgender people as a clear and present danger, hatred and violence follow. And transgender people are in the crosshairs right now.
Republicans cannot run on making lives better for Americans, because they have not done that and aren’t interested in doing that (unless you’re very rich), and so they run on fear. The fear of immigrants, the fear of transgender people, the fear of anyone who isn’t cis and white. Everyone else can get fucked.
Will this anti-trans ad attacking Harris gain Trump some votes or lose Harris some votes? I don’t know. Most people’s minds are made up at this point. Many people have already voted. I have. But the ad definitely shows that Republicans think that attacking transgender people is a winning issue. Let’s hope they are wrong.