Julia Serano - On Democrats Who Cave In Response to Anti-Trans Attack Ads
Trans Author
(juliaserano.medium.com)
To any of the cis liberals reading this who want to comment something about voting for dems, please take a moment to think about whether or not it's your place to lecture trans people on how they should be willing to turn a blind eye to and vote for their own oppression, and that it is extremely unlikely trans people don't realize how bad republicans are. In the current midterm elections there are 72 democrats who have either voted for anti-trans measures alongside republicans, or have run anti-trans ads. That's over 15% of the democrats running for office this election. The democratic party falling into transphobia isn't a fringe concern, it's currently happening, and we have a great example of what that leads to with Labour.
Just a few weeks ago in the UK, a trans women was killed by the NHS, who refused to treat her curable but aggressive cancer in the women's or men's wards, instead waiting over 2 weeks until a private room opened up, at which point the cancer had spread too far. Not even a full week after that, the NHS guidelines were officially updated to force trans patients into the wrong wards, something which provably leads to higher rates of assault on trans people. Meanwhile in the US, solidly blue states like Colorado have started ending medicaid coverage for trans minors on puberty blockers and HRT, literally forcibly detransitioning them.
If a trans person chooses not to vote for a democrat, it is not out of a belief that a republican will better serve their interests, it is a desperate attempt to send any sort of signal possible that might stop the democrats from continuing to adopt transphobia into the core of the party. A world in which both republicans and democrats seek to discriminate vs trans people, remove our healthcare, and force us out of public life is the inevitable outcome of this adoption of transphobia, just as it is in the UK.
If the options presented to a trans person are a candidate who will vote to strip their healthcare, and a candidate who will strip their healthcare but might use less slurs about it (not none, "biological male" is also a slur), in what possible world can you blame them for not voting rather than the candidate who chose to lose those votes in order to be a transphobe in the first place. And if all your efforts are spent lecturing trans people on social media instead of pressuring the candidate to be less transphobic, your priorities are backwards (and it also starts to look like you just want an excuse to yell at trans people tbh).
At the end of the day, if you're demanding a trans person vote for a democrat who wants to remove their rights, you have to ask yourself what rights would you be willing to give up in order to get democrats to win. Because if the answer is less than what you're demanding a trans person gives up, your demand is hypocritical.