Towards a Truly Moderate Approach to Trans Issues

Both sides are at fault and must change, if we want a truly productive dialogue

Photo by Thiago Rocha on Unsplash

Over the past seven years or so, I have been working to create a moderate and productive dialogue on trans issues. As I've recently illustrated, by moderate, I mean a discourse where we actually take everyone's good faith concerns into account, and talk over things in a respectful and rational manner. By moderate, I also mean a discourse that upholds the values that underpin a moderate politics, values like free speech, freedom of conscience, independent thinking, non-tribalism, commitment to the objective truth, honesty, compassion and decency. Sadly, my attempts at bringing about a trans discourse that is both productive and respectful of these values has been a difficult, if not entirely futile fight so far. In this article, I will summarize what I think needs to change.

Firstly, I have long tried to convince 'my own side' in this discourse, the trans community, to embrace a more moderate stance in the trans discourse. At the very least, we need to allow people, including allies, to disagree with certain aspects of the trans activists' demands. The way many in the community reacted to long-standing allies like Seth Moulton and Gavin Newsom disagreeing on the sports issue is a textbook example of how not to act. If we can't even trust allies to disagree with the activist platform in good faith, we really wouldn't be able to have productive and respectful discussions of any kind. It simply becomes 'agree with us or you're the enemy', which isn't sustainable at all. At this rate, we'll be losing all our allies, and left at the mercy of people like Donald Trump.

Moreover, I've also maintained that, on issues where we're unlikely to be able to win a rational and evidence-based argument on, we should just concede and move on. The sports issue seems like one of those issues at the moment, given the lack of supporting evidence. There are many other issues where we're both on stronger ground and are more relevant to the everyday lives of trans people, and we should focus on those. I mean, when you can still be fired or denied housing for being trans in many places, how is focusing on the sports issue even justified? Also, given that trans rights are already under attack by the Trump administration, how can we afford to turn away allies over some minor disagreements?

On the other hand, there are actually good reasons why many members of the trans community have become increasingly wary of participating in a discourse with those who have disagreed with, or at least have questions about, the trans activists' demands. The fact is, while many 'trans skeptics' remain respectful and compassionate, many are not, and simply see trans people as manifestations of a 'gender ideology' or other left-wing political program they must aggressively defeat. Their words and actions are truly reminiscent of the words of Michael Knowles, who declared that 'transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely' in 2023. Many of the policies of the Trump administration, from passports to the military, which have made trans people's lives harder for no benefit at all, have also been cheered on by anti-trans culture warriors, with not much pushback from supposedly more rational skeptics either. Many trans people see a picture of a group of people with a shared agenda ganging up against trans people and trans rights indiscriminately for the sake of culture war purposes, and it's certainly looking more and more like that every day.

I blame online influencer culture for this radicalization of trans skepticism into a hardened, indiscriminately anti-trans posture. Online influencer culture thrives on being controversial, polarizing, and above all, attention grabbing. I mean, you can have questions about parts of the trans activist agenda while remaining compassionate and respectful. But unfortunately this isn't good for views or social media clout. When Michael Knowles made his infamous statement back in 2023, it made him the center of the political discourse for a while, boosting his profile in invaluable ways. The fact that it worked encouraged others to do similar things. Thus trans skepticism gradually changed from asking reasonable questions about the trans activists' agenda, to political pundits effectively competing to be the most stridently and aggressively anti-trans personality of them all. The problem with this is, it makes it very hard for trans people and their allies to voice their concerns and point of view, even in a reasonable manner. It is simply very hard to maintain rationality and respectfulness in the face of this extremism. If we can get the discourse back to where it was 7-10 years ago, then we might be able to bring everyone together. But it just can't be done in the current landscape.

So what can someone in my position do right now? I guess the best, and perhaps only, thing I can do is to push back on the excesses of both sides, and encourage everyone to de-escalate and get back to where we were a decade ago. Those of us who want a more moderate trans discourse simply cannot work with the current polarized landscape, period. We simply need to change this first.

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TaraElla is a singer-songwriter and author, who is the author of the Progressive Conservative Manifesto, the Moral Libertarian Manifesto and the Moral Libertarian book series. She is also the author of her autobiography The TaraElla Story.