In North Carolina, Trump Showed the Real Target is Cis Women
Trump’s mention of transgender “insanity” drew a standing ovation, but it’s what came afterwards that revealed the true nature of the GOP’s attacks on the trans community.
by Evan Urquhart
On Saturday evening, June 10, former president and current Republican primary candidate Donald Trump spoke to the North Carolina Republican Convention for 90 minutes. Trump’s remarks were made in his signature style: That of a rambling uncle talking back to the TV while the family is eating dinner. For the first 77 minutes the former president repeated conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, misrepresented the ratings for his CNN Town Hall appearance, inflated the number of undocumented immigrants who have entered the country since he left office, called the economy terrible, reminisced about cutting taxes and ending NAFTA, and promised to halt support for Ukraine’s defense against the Russian invasion. At about the 1 hour and 18 minute mark the former president also spent about five minutes talking about transgender issues. These comments, in which cis women became the butt of his jokes and seemed to be the primary target of his contempt, were among the most enthusiastically received by the North Carolina audience.
“It’s amazing, how strongly people feel about that,” Trump said after a promise nearly 80 minutes into his 90 minute speech to stop schools from teaching critical race theory and “transgender insanity” resulted in a standing ovation, seemingly the strongest reaction the crowd had to any single segment. “I talk about transgender, everyone goes crazy. Who would have thought? Five years ago, you didn’t know what the hell it was.”
Seven years ago, during his first presidential run, Trump told NBC’s Today that Caitlyn Jenner could use whichever bathroom she wanted in Trump Tower, and was harshly criticized by Ted Cruz, who strongly supported North Carolina’s bathroom ban. In 2016, Trump differentiated himself from other Republican candidates by being somewhat less queerphobic, by, for example, offering LGBTQ+ Trump merchandise. Once elected, this shallow support largely dematerialized, particularly when it came to transgender Americans. Still, when it came to picking targets for his customarily cruel, dehumanizing comments, Trump was more likely to single out women, migrants, Black and brown people in America and abroad, people with disabilities, and even veterans.
After the aside about how much his base loves hating trans people, Trump returned to talking about trans issues for another 3 or 4 minutes, promising to ban trans women from women’s sports and to ban what he called “child sexual mutilation.” Much of this time was taken up with humerous flights of fancy. First, the former president imagined a scenario where cis women’s weightlifting records were being easily and casually smashed by trans women. (While he was claiming this had happened, trans women do not hold any world or Olympic records in weightlifting. It’s possible Trump was referring to Laurel Hubbard, who entered the Olympics but later had to withdraw, or to a 2019 story, when a trans woman broke an age and weight class record at a particular event, later having the record stripped from her because American weightlifting does not allow trans women to compete as women.)
In his fantasy scenario, Trump conjured a woman weightlifter who was struggling to lift 218 pounds “a lot of weight for a woman.” He described this character he made up as having to give up after the tiniest amount was added. Then, he described “a man” coming in and easily beating her record, making a weightlifting pantomine and laughing. He followed this with a similar joke about women in running saying, “Some women are being badly injured by the windburn that’s caused by the man going so much faster- the wind is blowing it’s just terrible.”
In both of these comments, notice that the target of the joke was not trans women but cis women athletes.
Even though Trump was late and lukewarm to the anti-trans culture war, it seems many in the GOP would rather have him lead the charge, more so than any other Republican, including those who were earlier and harsher in their attacks on trans people. Trump, however, offers something those other politicians don’t. Only Trump will openly and mockingly brush past the veneer of scapegoating a minority to go after the real target: cis women. In the world of making America great again, the real threat all along has been the possibility that women might be strong and powerful and succeed on their own merit. Trump’s promise, with his comments about trans women in sports, is not about trans women at all. He’s promising to put cis women back in their place, to remind them that they are not, and can never be, men’s equals.
Other politicians are all-in on the moral panic over trans people, but only Trump cuts through the bullshit and unveils the real target. By openly mocking the women in sports he’s claiming to protect, Trump goes farther than his primary competitors even as they constantly seek to set themselves apart by being crueler and more dementedly obsessed with trans people than each other. Trump alone is showing he understands the real stakes, and the real targets. He will fight for the domination and humiliation of women with his last breath, and knows that trans people are a mere sideshow.
