LGBTQ+ people and allies have lost support on transgender rights not because of trans people themselves but likely because they’ve had a false sense of security about queer and trans rights, says U.S. Rep. Sarah McBride. And there are ways to win that support back, such as meeting people where they are and not expecting perfection, she says.
McBride, the first out trans person elected to Congress, talked about the issue on a recent episode of The Ezra Klein Show, a podcast hosted by the political commentator of that name for The New York Times.
McBride, a Democrat representing Delaware, pointed out that support for other LGBTQ+ causes, such as marriage equality, is lower than it was a few years ago, at least (among Republicans) in one poll, as has support for women’s rights.
“Candidly, I think we’ve lost the art of persuasion,” McBride said. “We’ve lost the art of change-making over the last couple of years. We’re not in this position because of trans people. There was a very clear, well-coordinated, well-funded effort to demonize trans people, to stake out positions on fertile ground for anti-trans politics and to have those be the battlegrounds — rather than some of the areas where there’s more public support.”
After marriage equality became the law of the land thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling, LGBTQ+ Americans and liberals in general thought progress would continue, she said. Some straight and cisgender people regretted being wrong on marriage equality, as they claimed to have not understood being gay, lesbian, or bisexual, but they figured they’d become supportive — and also endorse trans rights, whether they understood trans identity or not, she noted.
“I think that resulted in a lot of us — a lot of our movement — stopping the conversation and ceasing doing the hard work of opening hearts and changing minds and telling stories that over 20 years had shifted and deepened understanding on gay identities that allowed for marriage equality to be built on solid ground,” McBride told Klein.
“And I think that allowed for the misinformation, the disinformation — that well-coordinated, well-funded campaign — to really take advantage of that lack of understanding. And the support for trans rights was a house built on sand.”
“We became absolutist — not just on trans rights but across the progressive movement — and we forgot that in a democracy we have to grapple with where the public authentically is and actually engage with it,” she continued. The movement decided to work for “perfect policy … regardless of whether the public is ready,” she said.
“We should be ahead of public opinion, but we have to be within arm’s reach,” she added. Supporters of trans rights should reach out to members of the public who may disagree but should not treat them as hateful, she said. And the progressive coalition should welcome people who may not check all the boxes, like Massachusetts Democratic Congressman Seth Moulton, who made a negative comment about trans women athletes last year, she said. He still voted against a bill that would have banned their participation in female sports, she pointed out.
In the fight for marriage equality, “we created incentives for people to grow, we created space for people to grow, and we allowed people into our tent, into that conversation who weren’t already with us,” McBride said. That made for the inclusion of some who endorsed civil unions but not marriage for same-sex couples, she noted. The fight for trans rights should be inclusive, she said.
“We got into this performative fighting to show our bona fides to our own in-group, and we lost the fundamental truth that all of those things are only even possible once you’ve done the basic legwork of allowing people to see trans people as people,” McBride added. “When you allow trans people to be seen as human beings who have the same hopes and dreams and fears as everyone else, once that basic conception of humanity exists, then all the other things, all the other conversations sort of fall into place.”