Transgender advocates are pushing back on activists who resort to “unreasonable” tactics, with some admitting they “cannot vilify” critics — as support among Americans for their biggest issues plunges.
Transgender rights came in dead last in a Gallup poll that asked 2024 voters to rank the 22 issues that factored into their voting decision, with 36% of survey respondents rating them “not important.”
Drilling down into polling on specific issues — such as transgender bathroom policy, trans athletes competing in female sports and laws allowing gender-questioning youth to procure medical sex-change treatment — reveals support from many Americans is waning.
Some LGBTQ activists recently told the New York Times they believe the worrying dip in support is attributable to the zealotry of the movement, which emphasizes shame and forced compliance while discouraging any critical debate.
“We have to make it OK for someone to change their minds,” Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, executive director of Advocates for Transgender Equality, told the outlet.
“We cannot vilify them for not being on our side. No one wants to join that team.”
Advocates cited tactics — such as stripping distinctions of “male” or “female” from abortion and childbirth topics, being fanatical about pronoun use and likening even unintentional misidentification of a trans person to an act of violence — has not helped grow their coalition of allies.
“No one wants to feel stupid or condescended to,” Heng-Lehtinen acknowledged.
Rethinking how the issue is advocated has also become a part of the Democrats’ ideological reckoning following their decisive loss in this year’s election.
The Trump campaign seized on Vice President Kamala Harris’ past support for taxpayer-funded sex change operations for prisoners, and turned her pushing of LGBTQ issues into one of the most effective campaign ad slogans of the election, “Kamala is for they/them. I am for you.”
Even a small group of Democratic congress members have started testing the waters in defiance of the trans lobby.
“Here we are calling Republicans weird, and we’re the party that makes people put pronouns in their email signature,” said Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.).
His office was protested by trans activists after he suggested transgender athletes competing against biological females could have an advantage or even injure other competitors — which has and continues to happen.
Tufts University’s science department chair purportedly claimed that the school would be cut off internships with Moulton’s office over his concerns, but the Boston institution quickly clarified that was not the case.
Mara Keisling, founder of the National Center for Transgender Equality, pointed the finger at activists for devoting so much energy to debating losing issues.
Among them, she told the Times, include the demonization of “Harry Potter” author JK Rowling for her stance against the encroachment of biological males into female spaces and pretending any objections to transgender women in sports are invalid and rooted in discrimination.
The issue of sports, in particular, Keisling noted, was an instance where Americans moved away from sympathizing with trans activists.
“We looked unreasonable,” she told the outlet. “We should be talking about the 7-year-old who just wants to play soccer with her friends.”