The steady flow of attack ads portraying Democrats as too liberal on transgender rights began appearing on television over the summer and continued through Election Day: “Kamala is for they/them,’’ went the tagline on one from Donald J. Trump’s campaign. “President Trump is for you.’’
The idea, Republican strategists told reporters, was not so much to connect with voters on specific policies as to suggest that Democratic priorities were out of step with the mainstream. It was a message adopted by dozens of Republican candidates up and down the ballot.
But for many transgender Americans, the experience of being invoked by political candidates as a symbol of absurdity or an object of disgust has taken a toll. And as Mr. Trump won the race for the White House and Republicans captured the Senate this week, L.G.B.T.Q. rights advocates said they were gripped by a new round of anxiety and fear.
“There’s a bit of shame, or embarrassment, like a loss of dignity, when I’m watching one of those ads, knowing my friends or my colleagues are also watching it,’’ said Austin Johnson, research director at the Campaign for Southern Equality and a professor of sociology at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. “That this is happening in public, that people with authority are saying these disrespectful things.’’
Dr. Johnson, who is transgender, said the television ad that affected him most implied that allowing trans athletes to use the locker rooms that correspond with their gender identity would place others at risk of assault. “It’s bleak to think that they’re going to continue using trans people as a wedge issue to rile people up because it was effective.’’
During his campaign, Mr. Trump promised to impose restrictions on several aspects of life for transgender people, including issuing an executive order to cut funding for schools that he says teach “gender indoctrination.’’ He has said he would “keep men out of women’s sports” and withhold federal funding for Medicare and Medicaid from hospitals that provide gender transition treatment to minors. It is uncertain exactly how Mr. Trump intends to carry out his agenda, and advocates for trans rights say legal challenges are likely.
Mr. Trump’s plans amounted to a kind of “bullying at a structural level,” said Kelley Robinson, the president of the Human Rights Campaign. On social media, Erin Reed, who publishes a newsletter on transgender political news, urged her followers to update the gender marker on their passports, a process that she said could become more difficult under the Trump administration.
But for groups opposed to transgender women participating in women’s sports and to transition treatments for minors, Mr. Trump’s position on transgender issues was cause to celebrate his election. Lawmakers in 26 Republican-led states have enacted bans or restrictions on gender transition treatments for minors, one of which is being challenged by the Biden administration before the Supreme Court.
“Seems clear this new administration will not be suing states that have democratically determined to enact laws protecting youth from the harm of drugs and surgeries designed to alter developing bodies,’’ said Doreen Denny, a senior adviser for Concerned Women for America, a conservative group that supports a ban on federal funding for gender transition medical procedures for minors.
Some Democrats called for the party to consider that a broad embrace of trans rights issues could have lost them votes. Gallup polls suggest that about half of Americans say changing one’s gender is morally wrong, and that about seven in 10 Americans say transgender athletes should only be allowed to compete on sports teams that match their sex at birth.
“Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone rather than being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face,” said Representative Seth Moulton, a Democrat from Massachusetts. “I have two little girls. I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat, I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”
There are about three million transgender adults in the United States, less than 1 percent of the population. A recent government survey of high school students in America found that about 3 percent identified as transgender.
In interviews, several L.G.B.T.Q. advocates said this moment reminded them of 2004, when ballot measures to ban same-sex marriage passed in many states, before marriage equality gained support from a majority of Americans.
Some said they saw hope in the election of Sarah McBride, a Delaware Democrat who won a seat in the House of Representatives and will become the first openly transgender person in Congress. And Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, executive director of Advocates for Trans Equality, said his organization was now planning an effort to shift public opinion.
“We’re now in that dark period where we have to fight,’’ Mr. Heng-Lehtinen said. “We know that most Americans, no matter where they live, still don’t think that they know a transgender person.’’
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