How Trans People Can Survive Under Trump

We need the public on our side. There is no other way.

Photo by Jonathan Kemper on Unsplash

Note: Please forgive the blunt and emotional language used in some parts of this article. I am truly concerned about where we are at the moment. I feel like it is not time to mince our words anymore.

Since the re-election of Donald Trump, there has been a lot of panic about what will happen to trans people in the next four years. These fears are also not unfounded. While Trump himself has only campaigned on certain trans-related issues (e.g. opposing trans women in women's sports and some of Kamala Harris's pro-trans policies), and these issues are not likely to endanger the health and wellbeing of most trans people, the same cannot be said of many of his core supporters. Anti-trans people in the populist right have been known to want to 'eradicate transgenderism' from public life, and some have even said things like, in their ideal world, medical transition would be banned for everyone. This stuff is truly terrifying to hear for every trans person. It also doesn't help that draconian anti-trans policies have been enacted in several Republican states, that have made the lives of trans people very difficult. Florida, Trump's home state, has perhaps gone the furthest, with severe restrictions on obtaining hormone therapy even for adults, which anecdotally has caused many trans adults to seek medical care in other states. There are legitimate fears that these draconian laws could be enacted on a national level with a Republican trifecta in the next two years. Such laws might even rapidly spread to other countries, given America's international influence.

So far, the trans community's responses have been maladaptive, to put it mildly. There seems to be two main responses. The first is a deep despair that trans rights are a lost cause for a generation, and that a 'trans holocaust' might even happen. The second is a romantic fantasy that the trans community could survive on far-left tactics inspired by anti-fascist activism in the 20th century. There's also a paranoid fear that certain Democrats are betraying trans rights, just because they have called for some reasonable moderation. Somehow, fear of severe persecution is co-existing with the kind of ideological purity that can only be afforded in very good times. Instead of alternating between demanding trans utopia and fearing trans hell, let's face the reality here: firstly, there won't be a trans holocaust, no matter what. Nobody is going to put trans people in concentration camps. Secondly, if you think Seth Moulton and Matt Yglesias are the enemy of trans people, then you've completely lost touch with reality. Thirdly, yes, some Republicans might want to 'Make America Florida' in terms of trans rights, and if that actually happens it would be really bad, but there are still ways to stop it from happening. Finally, what is going to save us is not romantic ideas about how to 'resist fascism', but rather, the most mundane yet most important work in any democracy: winning over the support of the majority of the public.

The bitter truth is that, if we are to survive the next four years, and possibly a bit more than that, we would need the public to be sympathetic to us. Here's the logic: firstly, Trump is widely known to be a populist, and populists don't do things that are unpopular with the general public. This is the reason why Trump has ruled out a national abortion ban, and disavowed Project 2025. If there is widespread opposition to anti-trans policies, I'm sure that Trump will not sign them into law. I can almost guarantee this, even though I'm no fan of Trump. Moreover, given that the Republicans are only going to have a narrow majority in both the House and the Senate, it would be very difficult for them to pass any unpopular laws, because only a few defections in either chamber would be enough to defeat a bill. A realistic assessment gives me confidence that, as long as the public is willing to stand with trans people, right-wing culture warriors will not be able to do much harm. The problem right now is, we haven't been very good at getting the public on our side. We really need to change this as soon as possible.

In fact, the warning signs that we were failing to get the general public on our side first appeared six years ago, during the UK's trans rights consultation in 2018. We objectively lost that consultation badly, even though trans activists wouldn't admit it back then. I remember thinking that, if we couldn't win in liberal Britain, famous for getting gay marriage done with little fuss, and under a Conservative government too, we simply wouldn't be able to win anywhere else. It was because of this worry that I began to speak out on trans issues in public again, after avoiding this topic for a decade. (Remember, it was normal for trans people who transitioned in the 2000s to drift away from the community and trans issues after a few years, when such issues became less relevant in their lives). Having left the trans conversation behind, I wouldn't have come back to it if I didn't feel the absolute need to do something to stop this trainwreck. When I say my anti-woke stance is partly inspired by my fear about the future of trans rights, I truly mean it. The woke stance of many trans activists is hurting public support for us. There is no way to put this less bluntly. If only the trans community saw the warning signs clearly back in 2018, we might not even have to have this conversation right now. But here we are, and I truly fear it might be the last chance to save our future.

On the other hand, my insistence that we distance ourselves from queer theory and take a much more moderate stance on basically everything has been unpopular with many trans activists. Unlike me, they drew a very different conclusion from the 2018 British consultation: that the UK was uniquely full of TERFs (gender critical feminists) and therefore uniquely susceptible to anti-trans sentiment. In other words, they thought trans rights was defeated in the UK because of a specific ideology (gender critical feminism), and all they had to do was to defeat that ideology. This was how the UK became known as 'TERF island' in certain trans circles. They clearly did not recognize that their program was being rejected by the general public, which had nothing to do with the ideology of gender critical feminism at all. Their distorted view of what was happening in Britain also arguably pushed them to embrace postmodern feminism and queer theory, because these ideologies provided arguments against the core tenets of gender critical feminism. In other words, they were effectively seeking to fight one form of radical feminism with another form of radical feminism. Meanwhile, they completely ignored the fact that this would not be helpful for gaining the support of moderates at all.

Some people, especially those of my generation, have compared the current moment in terms of trans rights to 2004 in terms of gay marriage. That year, not only did Bush-43 win re-election on a platform of opposing gay marriage and possibly enshrining a ban on gay marriage in the US Constitution, many states also passed their own constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage. However, what we need to remember is what happened afterwards. Supporters of gay marriage recognized that they had been heavily defeated, and that they needed to work hard to win over the public, by making a moderate, reasonable case for reform. This laid the groundwork for a stunning turnaround in the next decade, and the rest is history. I would argue that, not only is trans rights currently in its own 2004 moment, we have been here since at least 2018, and it's good that more people are finally waking up to the reality. It is now up to trans people to try and do the same thing that gay marriage advocates did twenty years ago. We can only save our future if we win over the general public.

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The Reactionary Rabbit Hole of Competitive Outrage

I'm going to talk about an increasingly worrying phenomenon: the rise of competitive outrage on the right. This is perhaps one of the things most characteristic of how the populist New Right is different from old-school conservative politics. Think of it as the mirror image of the 'oppression olympics'. Instead of competing to be the most oppressed, however, it seems like many in the populist right like to compete to be the most outraged. We are seeing this phenomenon more and more often in both political influencers and actual politicians making policies. And this has some worrying consequences…

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TaraElla is a singer-songwriter and author, who is the author of the Moral Libertarian Manifesto and the Moral Libertarian book series, which argue that liberalism is still the most moral and effective value system for the West.

She is also the author of The Trans Case Against Queer Theory and The TaraElla Story (her autobiography).