COVID was in full swing when I made the radical choice to become my happiest self. I had just returned from a run, my only opportunity to escape the house during lockdown, when I worked up the courage to tell my mom I needed hormone blockers.
I found this courage at a complicated time, while Donald Trump was still in office and campaigning for a second term. As a gender-confused, queer 13-year-old, my future felt like a mystery. What would another four years of anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment in the Oval Office look like for me? Already, who I am was under attack. Would my entire existence be denied?
This time around, my question — less for me and more for trans kids in red states — is quite similar. But I’ve also begun to question the other side of the political spectrum. Why are reproductive freedoms at the forefront of the Kamala Harris-Tim Walz campaign while trans rights remain in the shadows, especially when trans and reproductive justice advocates see the two as connected?
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This is not to say that abortion rights don’t deserve to be a focal point. Reproductive freedom has been under siege by the GOP for decades. “I was able to kill Roe v. Wade,” Trump boasted on his Truth Social account in May of last year, referencing his role in packing the court with three anti-abortion justices, enough to overturn the 1973 decision.
But reproductive freedom isn't the only thing Republicans are trying to destroy. Already, more than 20 states have outright banned gender-affirming care for minors, and Republican lawmakers in various states — including Florida, South Carolina, and Ohio — have either enacted or are pursuing laws to limit this care for adults.
The GOP has spent $65 million on transphobic ads since August. Many of these ads tout the line, “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.” Is she, though? Harris and other Democrats’ responses to these attacks have sometimes been muted. The party already has a line to counter this GOP onslaught: “Mind your own damn business,” which Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz famously said at the Democratic National Convention when he attacked Republican efforts to restrict abortion rights as government overreach. Trans rights aren’t as removed from abortion as one might think: Both concepts stem from the same principle of bodily autonomy.
On that day in 2020, I decided to take control over my body and my future, to exercise my agency. Can we honestly treat my decision as fundamentally separate from someone’s choice to terminate a pregnancy? In response to Republican encroachment into private, medical matters, both a trans person and cisgender woman might use that same phrase: “Mind your own damn business.”
Yet at the Democratic Convention trans issues received disappointingly little airtime, mentioned by just two speakers, neither of whom is trans. The party’s previous two conventions, on the other hand, put the spotlight on trans politicians Sarah McBride and Danica Roem.
While Democrats were notably silent this year, there was no shortage of anti-trans sentiment at the Republican Convention. For instance, Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) attacked the Democratic campaign for its supposed “sexualization and indoctrination of our children.” If that’s not enough, at a Moms for Liberty conference in August, Trump did what he does best: He told a precipitous, bold-faced lie, warning parents, “Your kid goes to school, and comes home a few days later with an operation.”
Walz, in a recent interview on the We Can Do Hard Things podcast, supported the appointment of judges and the crafting of legislation to protect trans Americans’ right to “be who [they] are.” Other Democrats, unfortunately, have chosen to defend themselves rather than support trans people. In response to attacks from his opponent, Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Oh.), in an ad, denied claims that he had voted to allow trans women to compete in women’s sports.
The Democrats’ timidity to engage in these issues feels hopeless and confusing. When I listen to Republican legislators brag about enshrining transphobia into law, I’m nothing short of terrified. And when no one is there to defend me? That’s just frustrating. But maybe we can decipher where this silence is coming from: Republicans have committed to campaigning on this issue. Clearly, they see this hateful rhetoric as an advantage. Perhaps Democrats agree; they just don’t see this as a fight they can win.
Currently, 63% of US adults believe abortion should be legal in all or most situations, according to a poll published in May by the Pew Research Center. In contrast, only 38% recognize that an individual’s gender can differ from their sex assigned at birth. This figure, based on data captured in May 2022, is 6% down from September 2017.
Before we jump to conclusions, there’s some nuance here. Despite the predominance of anti-trans sentiment, the majority of US adults – 64% – are in favor of protecting trans people from discrimination in housing, employment, and public spaces. So Americans don’t want to ostracize us entirely, but they also don’t understand our identities, and mystery breeds discomfort. It makes sense that Republicans’ constant defamation of trans people and freedoms might boost their popularity; they capitalize on discomfort and convert it into fear. They craft the falsehood that the freedom of trans people is a threat to everyone else’s.
What doesn’t make sense to me, though, is the Democratic Party’s silence. As the poll numbers indicate, Americans don’t simply want to eliminate that which puzzles them. Then why — as the party that’s meant to defend bodily autonomy — can’t the Harris-Walz campaign use this fact to its advantage? Why can’t the desire to protect the right to choice explicitly include trans people? After all, the Republican party’s transphobic fearmongering is often baseless and easy to dispel.
I don’t ask this to signal that Democrats have neglected to defend trans Americans in past policy. Just last year, Walz effectively turned Minnesota into a haven for trans people from other states, allowing them to receive affirming care without risking punishment from their governments at home. And many advocates like Chase Strangio, co-director for Transgender Justice with the ACLU’s LGBT & HIV Project, believe that a Harris-Walz administration would be a safer one for trans people to navigate than a Trump-Vance administration.
I bring this to light in honor of the confused, queer teenager I was just four years ago. How would I have felt to know that Democrats had little to say in defense of my humanity? Would I still have had the courage to take control or would I have succumbed to the violent pressure to stay silent?
I guess what I’m trying to say is that policy is only ever half the battle. To truly protect the trans community from hate, the Democratic platform must vocally back our rights. Due to the silence of Democrats, the Right can continue to pump out transphobia — both in rhetoric and legislation — at full speed.
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