What’s up, TWIBSies?
This week, I’d like to take your frown and turn it upside down! No, not like that… that’s a SMILE, not an upside down frown! Do it right! Do it right or else!
Sorry! I’m sorry. I lost my cool for a moment. Anyway, I’d like to take a look at a scary-bad headline—Nearly half of Americans favor candidates who support trans sports bans, from Brooke Migdon at The 19th—and turn that spooky sentiment on its head, if I can.
Here is some downright factual information provided by Migdon, right at the top of the article, from a 13th/YouGov poll: “Forty-five percent of adults said they were more likely to back a candidate supportive of trans athlete bans, compared with 20 percent who said they are more likely to vote for someone who opposes them. An additional 16 percent said politicians’ views on trans athletes are unlikely to affect how they vote, and 18 percent were unsure which candidate they would support.”
Sounds bleak, right? Believe me, I’ve seen plenty of doomsaying about these numbers… and I get it. I do. Hearing that forty-five percent of adults said they were more likely to vote for a candidate that wants to institute bans on trans athletes is an absolute gut punch. Or it is until you read the next set of stats, where Migdon reveals that the ideological divide is 78 percent of Republicans, 46 percent of independents, and only 19 percent of Democrats.
I mean… that’s it? That’s really it? After they spent hundreds of millions of dollars on anti-trans ads in the leadup to Trump’s second win? After traitorous scumbags like Marcy Kaptur, Mary Peltola and James Talarico declare their opposition to our community in hopes of winning elections, a strategy that paid off super well for Seth Moulton?
You’re telling me that, after devoting years to running relentless campaigns on the airwaves and in person against the concept of trans athletes—and, I might add, succeeding in barring their right to participate in sports across most of organized athletics—the end result is that conservatives are still bigots and liberals largely do not agree with them?
Holy shit! This may be the worst return on interest of any targeted culture war campaign in history! I mean, yeah, they’ve destroyed the hopes and dreams of countless trans kids across America, and I can’t tell you how downright apoplectic that makes me. The assault on trans youth in this country is disgusting, it’s a disgrace, and it makes me furious every single day all over again.
At the same time, these dweebs never actually cared if trans kids played sports. Last year, NCAA president and professional receding hairline Charlie Baker admitted before Congress that there were fewer than 10 trans kids competing in sports at the collegiate level. Conservatives know this was never a real problem. Even if, against all the evidence to the contrary, trans athletes were superhuman freakbeasts tearing up the court and pummeling cis girls and women into dust, there are so few of us it wouldn’t matter.
This was always a political wedge issue intended as one step towards convincing uninformed cis people to hate us and our community. I mean, shit, professional loser and failed dental student Riley Gaines admitted it last year. She said it out loud! She said the quiet part out loud! And, unfortunately for her, it ain’t getting the job done.
In Migdon’s article, she quotes Ramiro Sarmiento, national press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign, who said, “These attacks are expensive, and they aren’t really working. Republicans and their allies have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on ads attacking trans kids, and even after that barrage, 55 percent of voters either would back a candidate who opposes sports bans or don’t have a strong opinion. After all that money, that’s a failure to persuade—candidates shouldn’t treat MAGA’s most expensive talking point as if it’s working or as if it’s organic.”
These kinds of expenditures largely failing to win hearts and minds is, by any metric, an absolute failure. I’m not saying Trump and his goons haven’t been scoring wins for years now, and I’m not saying things haven’t gotten worse for our community. Believe me, I’ve been reporting on it since 2023, I am well aware of the current state of things.
But that’s exactly why I remain hopeful. In the face of all this reckless hate and nonstop spending, these soulless losers still aren’t cleaning up the way they hoped. It gives me hope for the future. It makes me believe that, even as we suffer setbacks and lose battles, we are almost certain to win the war.
Which is exactly why we have to pressure jerkoffs like Talarico to support our community no matter what, rather than blindly voting for them and hoping they turn out to be good guys after the fact. Yeah, go ahead, post at me on Bluesky! That’s right, send me your angry posts! I love ‘em! I eat ‘em up for breakfast! I’m not scared of you!
