We Need to Talk More About Trans People, Not Less
In the wake of the election, some have said that Democrats need to talk less about transgender people. That’s exactly wrong: they, and we, need to talk more — more about real trans lives, real science, and real values, and less about disinformation and lies.
Thanks to nearly $250 billion in campaign spending, Republicans have owned the discourse about trans people and have, in Steve Bannon’s memorable phrase, “flooded the zone with shit.” They have spread lies about trans identity, trans sports, and trans kids. They have Swift-Boated the Democrats, who were afraid to fight back and lost votes and credibility as a result. And while that disinformation blitz didn’t determine the outcome of the election — the economy did — it raised the intensity of anti-trans sentiment, to the point where the basic science and lives of trans people is now being denied.
I got a small taste of that myself, when, on CNN last week, I objected to a fellow journalist describing trans girls as “boys playing girls’ sports.” In response, I’ve received thousands of hateful text messages, emails, and social media messages, which comes with the territory, but I’ve also been excoriated on Fox News, in the Atlantic, and elsewhere, which often repeated the same medically-inaccurate, historically-inaccurate right-wing talking points.
We need to take a breath and press the reset button.
Let’s start with the definitions of sex and gender. For almost everyone, biological sex correlates with either anatomy or genetic type. (Not everyone — there are intersex people, and people with various genetic variations, and the genetic basis of gender is actually quite complex — but almost.) It’s mostly a binary, and mostly familiar: boys and girls, men and women.
“Gender” means something else, which is why it’s a different word. Gender refers to how society understands masculine and feminine, how we dress and speak and act in ways that are associated with gender, and thus, how we see ourselves in the context of these social roles. Hairstyles, fashion choices, and social roles have nothing to do with anatomy; they have to do with society, and the specific markers of gender vary from place to place. To oversimplify it, the saying goes that sex is about what’s between your legs, and gender is about what’s between your ears.
For the vast majority of people, gender and sex align. But for a small minority — recent estimates say between 0.6 and 1 percent of the U.S. population — they don’t.
This isn’t just a preference, like wishing you had blonde hair instead of brown (more on that in a minute). It is, for many people, a painful mismatch between how they feel about this intimate, fundamental part of themselves and how they are seen in the world, or even in the mirror. This condition is known as gender dysphoria, which simply means a non-alignment of sex and gender.
How do we know this? Well, if you know trans people, especially teenagers, it’s obvious. Trans people just exist. They’re not mentally ill, and if they’re allowed to be who they are, they are as happy and unhappy as the rest of us. It’s really quite simple, but since only 40 percent of Americans say they know someone trans, trans allies need to talk about it more.
Alternatively, you can read up on four decades of scientific studies. While there’s a fair amount of pseudoscience and polemical literature floating around today, the mainstream medical consensus remains clear: all 21 major medical organizations recognize gender dysphoria and the range of treatments for it. None deny it. These are facts.
Science is not guided by public opinion. If it were, it would have concluded in the 1950s that different races have different levels of intelligence, or in the 1960s that homosexuality is a mental disorder. It is guided by data and the scientific method.
The gender spectrum is also part of history. Many societies have more than two genders. In my Jewish tradition, the Talmud lists five. In India, the hijra are a third gender that is neither male nor female. The muxe people are a third gender in Mexico. These categories don’t quite match up to today’s scientific ones, but they point to the spectrum of gender that has always been part of human experience.
It’s even in religion. The Bible features many people whose gender expression or actions don’t match their biological sex, like Jacob, described in predominantly feminine terms, and Deborah, described in masculine ones, not to mention eunuchs in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament. If you’re religious, you might even see gender diversity as part of God’s design.
Obviously, medical interventions to treat gender dysphoria are new, and it’s reasonable to have questions about them. But so are Ozempic and Botox, not to mention chemotherapy and heart surgery. We intervene with ‘nature’ all the time when the health of our bodies and minds are at stake. Or even for preference; we color our hair and replace it when it falls out, we wear makeup, we undergo plastic surgery. We alter our bodies all the time.
Let’s remember what’s at stake. This is a small and very vulnerable population: Over half of trans kids aged 12-18 have seriously considered committing suicide, according to surveys by the Trevor Project. Only 35 percent of trans teens say their families are supportive of them. The amount of airtime this small and vulnerable population receives from conservative politicians — 614 anti-trans bills were proposed in 2024 alone — is wildly out of proportion to reality.
Now, I know that a lot of this is new, and a lot of it can be, well, difficult to grasp. I get that people are irritated by pronouns, and don’t like being shamed for being politically incorrect. (Since I’ve simplified some things in this article, I’ll probably catch some of that myself.) I also get that parents of girls (I am the parent of one) have legitimate concerns about safety and opportunity.
So, sure, we can have conversations about sports, pronouns, and bathrooms. We can talk about when hormones or puberty blockers are appropriate, and what safeguards should be in place. We can call people into conversation, rather than call them out for their offenses.
But that’s not what’s happening right now. What’s happening is that vulnerable people are being exploited for political purposes, and people are saying things that are just not true. According to every medical organization in America, trans girls are not simply “boys.” Only a tiny sliver of trans teenagers undergo surgery, and then only after extensive counseling, screening, and other interventions.
It is flat-out wrong to deny these facts — and it is dangerous. Looking someone in the eye and saying “I know your soul better than you do” is a first step toward dehumanizing and oppressing them.
My first question, whenever this happens, is always: Do you know someone trans? If you do, you know that gender identity isn’t some delusion, or game, or preference, or tactic. Those are myths — not unlike myths people used to tell about gay people, that we were child molesters, or mentally ill. We need more trans voices in the media to tell the truth, and we need more allies to speak up so they don’t always have to.
My second question is: Do you know the parent of a trans kid? They want what all parents want: what’s best for their kids. Check out this Missouri dad who spoke to the state legislature there about his daughter. Why is the government getting in between parents, kids, and doctors when it comes to best-practices medical care? Why is this anyone’s business but the families’?
If you don’t know trans kids or trans parents, your task is to listen to trans people directly, rather than listen to people talk about them. Listen to them talk about their lives, the pain of dysphoria and repression, the liberation of an authentic life. Watch Will and Harper, about Will Ferrell and his longtime friend who transitioned, or Ma Vie En Rose, or Disclosure, or Hearstopper. Read the anthologies Authentic Selves and Trans-Kin about trans people and their families, or Elliot Page’s new memoir, or classics by Kate Bornstein, Leslie Feinberg, C.N. Lester, or Susan Stryker. There’s an entire reading list of books by and about trans people produced by the organization PFLAG.
As the right loves to say, “do your research.” Follow trans people online, like Imara Jones, Natalie Wynn, Abigail Thorn, Chase Strangio, Ivan Coyote, Charlotte Clymer, and Dylan Mulvaney, who was targeted in a vicious anti-trans campaign. If you’re in a religious tradition, check out books by Justin Tanis, Joy Ladin, Cheryl Evans, and many others. The list goes on and on and on.
Reasonable, thoughtful people are going to disagree about policies, on this as well as every other issue. That’s how civil society functions. But wherever we come down on the issues, the only ethical way to talk about them is on the basis of science and reality, not myths and misunderstanding. We need to do better. At stake are hundreds of thousands of lives.
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