Laurel Bowen, Contributing Writer
The transgender community is under threat from both Republicans and Democrats — yet it hasn’t been painted as such.
It is often the opinion of Democratic editorialists, voters and cisgender allies that transgender people simply must vote for the Democrats and they will be safe.
It is preached that if we don’t vote for them, the Republicans will annihilate us — they will rip away every right we have won.
The truth of the matter, unfortunately, is not so. Even during Democratic presidencies such as the Biden administration, the Republican Party continued to attack us. In the midst of those attacks, the Democratic Party only became a bastion of indifference and hostility — both with the wholesale abandonment of efforts to protect transgender people and with some politicians even actively working against us.
For example, Rep. Thomas Souzzi, D-New York, stated, “I don’t want to discriminate against anybody, but I don’t think biological boys should be playing in girls’ sports.”
The use of “biological boys” itself is an act of de-legitimization of trans women who do participate in these sports. It also erases the existence of transgender men by not acknowledging them. The transgender community does not — in any meaningful way — exist to Souzzi, a man our siblings in New York “need” us to vote for and put our faith in.
Let’s look to the current darling of the Democratic Party — California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Within his party, Newsom has been working against bills protecting transgender individuals. He tried to prevent the LGBTQ+ Caucus of his party from passing protective legislation. The Caucus responded by breaking party lines and trying to pass it regardless.
In one instance, the California governor vetoed a bill that would require a judge to take the gender identity of a child into consideration during custody disputes. In effect — transgender children cannot be guaranteed their safety should a parent or guardian be transphobic. Newsom, despite being a part of the party allegedly fighting for trans rights, clearly does not actually care to uphold laws that maintain the safety of trans people.
Even the new governor of Virginia, Abigail Spanberger, is not exempt from this issue. She represents indifferent negligence to the worst degree.
Spanberger’s solution to the “issue” of transgender women in sports and bathrooms is to return to the old system where the county decides on a case-by-case basis with the discretion of parents and local school boards.
This means that in rural counties, with school boards packed by Republicans, transgender women will continue to be left unprotected. Again, the focus is only on transgender women, with no mention is made of transgender men, completely erasing them. A large portion of the community does not exist to these people.
While not all of the Democratic Party has succumbed to this trend, the fact that any of them have these ideals is a clear signal they cannot be relied upon.
The fact that we are told time and time again that these people are supposed to protect us — that if we don’t vote for them, we will be destroyed — is a sick joke, minimizing any actual benefit for trans people to vote for Democrats.
Democrats as a whole need to stop relying upon the idea that Republican threats to trans existence is enough to get us to vote for them. They do not protect us from anything. They actively work against protecting us with the policies they put forward, and the moderate voices among them only perpetrate their harmful ideologies.
I often hear the trans community is under threat unless we vote blue. But when they do not support us and wage war against us, what does voting blue actually do?