This Is Why We Can't Have Productive Conversations on Gender Identity
The aftermath of the 2024 presidential election has far too many folks on the left scratching their heads, wondering why they were unable to defeat President-elect Donald Trump.
Unfortunately for Democrats, it appears most of their politicians and media figures still don’t get it. This is especially true when it comes to transgender issues.
Yet, at least some seem to understand what happened, at least when it comes to gender identity and how Trump used it to expose how radical the left has become.
In an op-ed titled “On Transgender Issues, Voters Want Common Sense,” New York Times columnist Pamela Paul examines how gender identity played into the recent election and how Trump used it to garner support from those the left would immediately call transphobic.
Paul references several ads circulated by the Trump campaign noting how extreme Harris is on the issue. The ads slammed the candidate for supporting “taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners” and “illegal aliens.”
During the closing weeks of the election, Republican campaigns spent over $65 million on ads ridiculing, among several candidates, Kamala Harris for supporting 'taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners' and 'illegal aliens,' all ending with variations on the tagline: 'Kamala Harris is for they/them. President Trump is for you.'
The author also noted how Trump “attacked the idea of letting transgender girls and women play on female sports teams, and implied that children were having gender surgery in classrooms.”
Paul argued that Trump’s claim about kids going to school and undergoing “gender-affirming” surgery as “absurd,” but acknowledged parents’ concerns that teachers and school staff are helping students socially “transition” to the opposite gender while concealing their actions from parents.
Trump’s charge that children are undergoing gender transition surgeries in school is obviously absurd. But his words may have struck a chord with those who disagree with school districts that have teachers and administrators hide from parents that their children have adopted new gender identities. As The Times reported last year, one mother of a 15-year-old only accidentally discovered her child’s public school had been covering up the fact that for six months, her child had been going by a new name and using the boys’ bathroom.
The author also noted how political concerns have seeped into the science regarding gender ideology.
To cite two recent examples, one prominent advocate of gender-affirming care suppressed her own government-funded research because she feared it might be “weaponized” against her agenda, The Times reported. Meanwhile, Rachel Levine, the assistant secretary of health and human services chosen by President Biden, worked to get a transgender organization to remove age limits from its proposed guidelines for surgeries, including mastectomies and hysterectomies for minors, because she said they would give fuel to political foes, according to recently released court documents. After this disclosure, the Biden administration released a statement saying it opposed such surgeries for minors.
In the piece, the author acknowledges that progressive gender ideology does not resonate with the majority of Americans, who can still see that men cannot become women and vice versa. She noted that most people do not want government-run schools to be used to indoctrinate their children into gender ideology.
"A Washington Post poll found that 77 percent of Americans do not want teachers discussing these ideas in kindergarten through third grade and more than half oppose trans identity being talked about even in middle school,” she wrote.
Paul urges Democrats to adopt a more nuanced approach to gender issues instead of simply trying to cajole, coerce, and compel people to go along with it. Instead, she suggested recognizing that most Americans have different views on issues like gender ideology and that Democrats should focus on common-sense policies that might work for everyone.
Here’s the thing: Paul is correct, but progressives don’t care about anything she said in the op-ed. The author and others on the left have pointed out that the gender identity issue affects a small percentage of children, which is why they take issue with Trump and other opponents of the ideology mentioning it in political spaces.
Yes, it does affect a small percentage of children today. But people fear it will grow worse as progressives continue trying to influence young minds to believe they can be born in the wrong body. This fear is not unfounded, given what we have seen going on in government-run schools and medical clinics. There is a full-on effort to promote gender ideology to children that must be addressed.
Many detransitioners have told their stories of being pushed into “gender-affirming care” by medical professionals who refused to look at other alternatives before relying on treatments that can cause irreversible damage when it has not been established that this model provides benefits for the mental well-being of these children.
Moreover, forcing female athletes to compete against biological males who believe they are women is not only unfair but dangerous. Everyone with an IQ higher than my shoe size knows this. But folks on the hard left don’t want nuance. They don’t want to protect women or children. They have an agenda to advance no matter who it harms. Their goal is to reshape American society. Part of this desire involves reshaping how we view sex and gender.
In light of this, it is clear the last thing these people want is for people to have nuanced discussions about gender. They would rather use government or societal forces to compel the rest of us to go along with the charade, which is why folks like Paul will be ignored or shoved off to the side. Until we defeat the ideologues, we can’t have productive conversations about this.
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