This was recently said at CPAC.



This was recently passed by a state legislature.



This was recently written in the New York Times.



My basic claim is that Republicans/conservatives generally want to get rid of transgender people or at least transition care and to roll back societal acceptance of trans people. Not all, but a significant percentage. Things like athletes, bathrooms, and children are just picking off the low-hanging fruit to try and build momentum for bans with a wider scope just like late-term abortion bans and fetal heartbeat bills were used to build towards overturning Roe v Wade. It's impossible to talk meaningfully about transgender issues without accurately describing how one side feels. Is my description about how conservatives feel about transgender people accurate?

Thinking that these issues break down in some sort of neat dichotomous way in terms of "sides" is lol.

*Also-- only 8 more threads to go...

I would describe it as a slim majority( in the gop)
In florida they have what is being called a "kidnap kids bill"

in tennessee they have banned drag shows and people who dress like the opposite sex. New bills being introduced ban portrayals of gay and lesbian couples. Iowa republicans have a bill( unconstitutional, for now) to ban gay marriage. I am directly affected by this and increasingly terrified.

Tennessee has banned cross-dressing?

This stood up to constitutional challenges?

Yes it's banned. I would *guess* that it won't hold up to constitutional challenges. We will see in court :/

The "think about the kids" acts as conservatives dipped their toes into the water of banning things to do with trans people was always clearly an act as has been revealed now that the faucet is wide open and these GOP governors all trip over each other to enforce the most regressive policies they think they can get away with.

It's hard for me to believe that in 2023, most US conservatives want to get rid of transgender people. Sadly it's getting easier for me to believe every day, but I'm still trying to be optimistic that we're just hearing from a very loud minority, and unfortunately too many conservative political leaders are among them. My hope is that as these ****ing ridiculous bills keep getting passed, that there are a good number of people who aren't actually hateful of transgender people but bought into some of the bullshit concerns "about the children" will start to see through this political charade and will start to cause some backlash against the transphobia. Naïve of me, perhaps.

So I'm a little on the fence between options 1 and 2, but have let hope sway me.

Most of Uke's and Space's posts about conservatives trying to rid the planet of transgender people are bullshit. None of the bills ever say what they claim and most of the bills are being introduced, passed a committee or have passed a vote in only half the legislative body. So most aren't actually laws yet. Generally, if they do become laws, which is rare, because most state legislature s don't just pass blatantly unconstitutional laws or they are immediately blocked from going into effect by a federal court on Constitutional grounds.

This TN law is a great example: its not actually in effect, it hasn't been challenged yet in a federal court and it only bans sexual prurient shows in public, not private venues. As they claim no drag shows are sexually explicit (which is 100% false in my experience), the statute actually should be inapplicable, let alone an attempt to eradicate transgender people.

I'm not them. What's your opinion of the tweets in the OP.

I mostly agree with you here (except for your suggestion that I was characterizing this as "an attempt to eradicate transgender people"). That is, most of the more egregious bills don't make it to law. A lot of really bad bills do, but not the most egregious ones. My characterization was this:

If there is a gap between the criticisms and the bills itself, it is because I think a lot of these bills are clear political dog whistles.

Agg the left with their " Dont Say Gay bill" and now "kidnap the kids bill"

Lets be honest the state has responsibility to protect a child from harm. They will take child from a abusive parent, they do not kidnap them. They have the power to remove a child in a dangerous situation . They do not kidnap them. If the state passes a law prohibiting an action on a minor and it survives a supreme court ruling than the state has the right to remove that child

No one wants to eliminate trans gender individuals . Personally myself once you reach the age of 18 I am for whatever you choose to do in surgery.

I am for a healthy debate when it come to what we allow children to do in the regards to puberty blockers and surgery. I do realize that administering puberty blockers at the age of 18 may be to late but also giving them to a child after a 2 hour doctor meeting is to quick as well .

What do you do do if one parent approves of the puberty blockers and one disapproves?

Its also very easy for many of us to have an opinion never having a trans child as well .

Dwayne Wade a prominent basketball player is going through it himself over the years

https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-...y-she-n1138196

Hi lozen, thought I'd let you know that "trans" is short form of "transgender". No space. Here's a reference that you can use to help educate yourself about these types of things: https://www.glaad.org/reference/trans-terms

the idea that state's dont pass blatantly unconstitutional bills is hilarious.

red states all did it for abortion over the last 10 years and eventually WON.. it will continue en masse.

it's like intentionally fouling at the end of a basketball game when you're down 7-10 pts.. if it works one time it's worth doing every time.

Acting like state law makers routinely intentionally make unconstitutional laws is even more ridiculous. You are cherry-picking the abortion issue, acting as if the strategy used on this issue is the rule not the exception.

There are certainly idiots in both the state and federal legislatures that introduce bills that have no chance of passing because they are unconstitutional, but claiming the laws passed by the entire legislative body and approved by the governors are like intentional fouls in basketball is moronic.

we all literally saw this happen over the past 5 or so years.. it's "moronic" to ignore that.

we're seeing it again with trying to penalize leaving the state for abortion care, chilling freedom of speech issues, and trans care. they are intentionally pushing the issues to see if they can win at the extremely conservative and largely irrational supreme court they now possess.

actual conservative ideology is wildly unpopular, they need to legislate through judicial fiat. none of these issues win elections.

This is a fair characterization as I agree most of these types of bills are dogwhistles. I am attributing the hyperbolic language of the advocates tweets and dogwhistles to the posters here, which is probably unfair.

Not a lot of time to respond, but me and uke don't actually speak for each other and we have contrasting viewpoints, even in this thread.

I would characterize the overall rhetoric as genocidal. Just because they are currently in the beginning stages of an attempt at getting rid of all transgender people in the us/uk doesn't mean it's not. You could argue that right now all that's happening is 100s of incredibly abusive bills are being voted on in 40 different states, and transgender medical care is only currently being denied in 6 states, the cast of ru paul's drag race is currently only banned from one, and there's only 3-4 states where the ag is going through records of transgender parents, so that isn't one part of setting the framework of what michael knowles calls "ending transgederism entirely" but I would disagree.

My state passed 250 laws last year Congress passed between 200-600 each year. Only a handful of these laws will ever be deemed unconstitutional. Your basketball analogy was moronic but even if it was being used to counter abortion rights, that strategy prevailed. Continuing to claim abortion statutes being passed at the state level are unconstitutional smacks of the same given the SC's ruling.

Here is a piece on the increasing eliminationist rhetoric used by anti-trans conservatives:

https://erininthemorn.substack.com/p...erism-entirely

this has nothing to do with what we are talking about..

several red states spent years passing abortion laws and fetal heartbeat laws that got shot down until they got a religious right controlled supreme court that finally granted one of their laws status.. they eventually got what they wanted..

the argument is that republican legislatures are attempting to do that with anti-lgbtq issues as well.. if you cant see that then i don't know how to explain it to you. its extremely obvious.

It's a mistake to assume that conservatives or progressives always have a grand, well thought out, multistep plan on issues like transgender rights. Sometimes they do. But often they do not.

On the other hand, it is an even bigger mistake to assume that nothing truly terrible can happen unless there is a grand plan at the outset.

LB is also correct that the question presumes a cleaner dichotomy than actually exists.

i dont think there is a particular difficulty in assuming the "grand plan" in republicans passing laws because they want those laws to be laws.. no one is playing 4d chess here. the states that attempted to pass fetal heartbeat laws and other abortion laws(like the one where you had to have a doctor with hospital admitting privileges at every clinic) prior to dobbs wanted those laws to stay law. they hoped that their laws would get the dobbs treatment at the supreme court. they wanted to end abortion. it's clearly analogous to the anti-trans bills being proposed and/or passed recently

Everything about this is dishonest framing. It presumes I acted like all the bills I mentioned as "Introduced" I claimed were currently law for some unknown reason. It also presumes the many transgender people discussing the "trans panic" issue are delusional in their idea that this is genocidal rhetoric but people largely unfamiliar with trans issues have some magical insight that allows them to see through trans women's claims even when they are ivy league educated and discussing it with men who are openly transphobic and didn't even go to college.
If you read what I wrote carefully you'll see I never claimed the bills did something they don't do. I certainly never claimed that all 400 bills introduced were currently law or am unaware of how state legislatures work.


As for the law in tennessee your interpretation is an erroneous one. First you must understand Tennessee is a prison world capital with a rate of incarceration that is at least 5 times greater than any eu country. They have a long history that is documented very thoroughly of treating minorities and marginalized communities, including lgbtq people very badly to put it lightly, that is a different subject that many books could be written about; in any case the idea that tennessee has a documented history of enforcing g laws unfairly against marginalized communities is beyond dispute.

We have to think about how this law is intended to be used, what it says, and who it targets. Your framing of drag queens is incorrect, drag queens are largely children friendly and an important affirming cultural motif for young gay men's well being. I'm sure when the tennessee cop told you they are targeting "adult shows" you just took his word for it. What do things in the actual bill like " impersonating a man or woman " and being against the "prurient interest " really mean? Who decides what is sexual or "adult" in nature? In reality this law will be used by law enforcement to harass gay bars, arrest guys in skirts, and cancel pride events. We can look at a long history of laws written this way and see that the cruelty is the point.

I am a casual basketball fan and thus very familiar with dwayne wade and his daughters story. I think it's a heartwarming story of his daughter becoming her true self.

I agree the age of treatments and surgery is up for debate.
First, I would point out it's clearly very overly politicized compared to other patients treatments so people should be careful when making false claims that endanger children. For example Matt Walsh claimed millions of children were on puberty blockers but the actual number is under 5000. So less than 0.02% of teenagers, hardly an explosion.
I'm not a doctor but my opinion in that scenario is that the well being of the patient of gender dysphoria should be the most important thing. Knowing the effects of puberty blockers are largely reversible, in the scenario you described , assuming there has been over a year of documented gender dysphoria by a doctor and a psychologist and that the teenager is fully aware of the effects and the decision they are making and mentally competent to make that decision I'd say it's not up to the parents.