Why has support for trans rights declined in recent years while support for gay rights has gone up?

[Kahane's Grave Is A Gender-Neutral Bathroom]

LINK TO STUDY

A supermajority of Americans support gay marriage, and- by extension- LGB rights.

A supermajority of Americans also oppose the participation of trans people in women's sports.

And over the last few years support for trans rights has declined. According to Pew Research, in 2017 54% of people thought that whether one is a man or a woman is decided at birth while 44% said it can change. In 2022 that number rose to 60% who said it is decided at birth to 38% who said it can change. 12% net change in the wrong direction while gay marriage went up from 60% to over 70%.

I've never heard a good explanation from the Atlas trans rights activists about why this is.

[Hindsight was 2020]

Because rw media weren’t calling them pedos 24/7 in 2017

[LostInOhio]

I’m gay myself and know a few trans people. I support their rights fully. However, one of the reasons for this (in my view) is how closely the trans community has become with full-blown leftism. Nearly all of the high profile trans people you see online are also far-left activists and are often the ones pushing for society to be completely gender neutral and for asking one’s pronouns to be a standard greeting. This is really far-fetched for many who otherwise accept trans people.

Gay people never really had that association nor were their demands seen as unreasonable: they always pitched it as just wanting to have the same rights as everyone else to hold jobs and get married. Plus there are many more gay people than trans individuals and most gay people fall under the radar. It’s far more difficult for trans individuals to “blend in” with straights.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Because rw media weren’t calling them pedos 24/7 in 2017

But then why would RW media focus on calling trans people pedophiles instead of the rest of the LGB? This was definitely a common attack in, e.g., the late 70s.

[OSR stands with Israel]

1. Cause gay marriage only effects people who are 18 and above and people are generally in favor of letting adults do what they want . Trans issues on the other hand are mostly about people 18 and under

2. One doesn’t undermine parental rights anywhere near the other . Progressives views on trans issues would greatly reduce the rights parents have over kids medical and psychological health and hand it over to the government which is insane

3. Gay Marriage can be argued both through an equal rights perspective and a perspective of changing certain norms are good while trans issues is only the latter .

[Hindsight was 2020]

Because rw media weren’t calling them pedos 24/7 in 2017

But then why would RW media focus on calling trans people pedophiles instead of the rest of the LGB? This was definitely a common attack in, e.g., the late 70s.

Probably because some d-bag rw super pac did a focus group study that suggested targeting out trans people over the whole community would be more successful. The same way they came up with “the death tax” line

[Vosem]

There is also some evidence that "trans rights" issues are trending in the anti-trans direction in the United Kingdom, I think.

It seems like the issue was virtually never polled prior to the mid-2010s, when it became political, and was initially polarized among roughly the same lines as the gay marriage question. (At this point, there was majority national support for gay marriage and the question was already performing 'ahead' of the Democratic baseline, but it was not yet overwhelming). As it became a separate issue, I think it has taken on patterns of its own.

I remember in the 2016 primary there were discussions in right-wing spaces regarding whether many of the trends that we call 'wokeism' now (like university cancellations or political messaging in advertisements or whatever) were indicative of real cultural shifts and needed to be fought, or a passing fad that wasn't really to be taken seriously. (The former position was strongly associated with support for Donald Trump, interestingly). My general take was that it probably wasn't an enormous deal, just because shifts on political issues measured in polling weren't happening. (Indeed, if anything subsequent evidence suggests that in the 'woke' era of the 2010s affirmative action has become less rather than more popular among the general public). I was wrong, but this is because the shift was associated with issues like trans rights (or more extreme stances on racial issues on the left, among those who had always supported affirmative action) which were rarely or never polled prior to the mid-2010s.

(The trends towards social liberalism on questions like gay marriage and drug liberalization -- and FTR less-discussed things like legalization of sex work and financial deregulation/gun rights -- long predate 'wokeness' in the sense of the mid-2010s shifts. Of those, I think there's only one which actually affected the mainstream culture, which is the really rapid turn against Confederate memorabilia. This is a demography forum, and as late as the 2000s you could still see in certain races 'counties settled by Confederate veterans vote D, counties settled by Union veterans vote R' in places where that distinction was historically significant, particularly parts of rural Texas. In 2004, a progressive politician trying to paint himself as sort-of far-left, Howard Dean, could use the Confederate flag as a symbol. When I was an 8th grader, in 2011, in the suburban North, my middle school held a 'Civil War Ball' in which half the male students were expected to dress as Union soldiers, and half as Confederate* ones. The event wasn't canceled until 2018, but at this point it's been decisively memory-holed -- ie, people have deleted evidence from Facebook that it ever happened. Today, a right-wing politician using Confederate imagery would be considered very edgy. But...like...I'm not sure any other 'woke' shift actually hit the broader culture.)

The point of this anecdote is that I think 'woke' issues, or issues that basically nobody thought about before like 2013, are not the same thing as earlier social liberal issues and probably shouldn't be expected to follow exactly the same trends.

*And randomly assigned, incidentally. And, yes, we had black students, and yes, some of them did dress as Confederate soldiers. In 2011, I don't remember anyone except foreigner-immigrant-parents finding this strange.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Because rw media weren’t calling them pedos 24/7 in 2017

But then why would RW media focus on calling trans people pedophiles instead of the rest of the LGB? This was definitely a common attack in, e.g., the late 70s.

Probably because some d-bag rw super pac did a focus group study that suggested targeting out trans people over the whole community would be more successful. The same way they came up with “the death tax” line

Okay but why would a focus group find that targeting trans people over the whole community is more successful? This question is the entire point of the thread.

[Amanda Huggenkiss]

1. Cause gay marriage only effects people who are 18 and above and people are generally in favor of letting adults do what they want . Trans issues on the other hand are mostly about people 18 and under

Do you have to demonstrate in every trans thread in USGD that the only knowledge you have about the trans community stems from the right-wing media bubble and that you otherwise know nothing about trans people? Like, at all?

[BlueSwan]

LINK TO STUDY

A supermajority of Americans support gay marriage, and- by extension- LGB rights.

A supermajority of Americans also oppose the participation of trans people in women's sports.

And over the last few years support for trans rights has declined. According to Pew Research, in 2017 54% of people thought that whether one is a man or a woman is decided at birth while 44% said it can change. In 2022 that number rose to 60% who said it is decided at birth to 38% who said it can change. 12% net change in the wrong direction while gay marriage went up from 60% to over 70%.

I've never heard a good explanation from the Atlas trans rights activists about why this is.

First, because most people believe in “live and let live”, but the more recent trans agenda goes way beyond that and make demands that directly affect the lives of non-trans people. The classic gay agenda never really made any major demands outside of having the same rights as everybody else.

Second, the people responding that gender is assigned at birth, doesn’t this group include the trans activists who claim to have been born in the wrong body? That infact they were born the way they are?

[OSR stands with Israel]

1. Cause gay marriage only effects people who are 18 and above and people are generally in favor of letting adults do what they want . Trans issues on the other hand are mostly about people 18 and under

Do you have to demonstrate in every trans thread in USGD that the only knowledge you have about the trans community stems from the right-wing media bubble and that you otherwise know nothing about trans people? Like, at all?

If this was the case then you would have zero problem with the parental permission proposal . You yourself admitted in the the other thread you think parents should have less power over their kids physical and psychological health than they do right now

[progressive85]

For a lot of people, transgender is still something very new, and acceptance of new change happens slowly and not always incrementally upwards.  There's backlash along the way, and with any societal change comes an opposing movement against it.  Right now, that opposing movement has increased power than it did five years ago.

The gay rights movement as we know it, if we start at 1969, that's over 50 years of time that's taken place.  It took many decades for new attitudes to develop.

It's not that gays were more supported, they weren't.  They were more opposed.  The idea of homosexuality was deeply uncomfortable for many people.  There was no support in the Congress for any discussion of gay rights outside a few fringe liberal people.  With every Harvey Milk came someone like Anita Bryant or Jerry Falwell.

The 1980s and the AIDS crisis dealt a very damaging blow to the gay movement.  Even those people who were gradually becoming a little more open-minded were now very scared of AIDS and its association with gay male promiscuity.  Fear is a very powerful thing.  The common attitude that it was "God's punishment for homosexuals" and that "they brought it upon themselves" was widespread.

So when I read about the 50-year history of the gay rights movement, just when you think things are looking up, they can very quickly get bleak.  Harvey Milk's short time as a public figure in the late 1970s, a huge boost of energy for the gay movement, was cut short when he was assassinated.  By the early 80s, many gays were demoralized as the backlash against them grew.

I highly recommend a book called The Gay Decades, it's a collection of dates in chronological order of the gay movement from 1969-1990.  Reading it is like going on a roller coaster - just as something good happens for gays, something bad happens for them.  With every message or expression of acceptance comes a slap in the face.

[Pink Panther]

From what I've noticed, it's a combination of various things. LostinOhio is partially correct in the intermingling of trans rights activists and left-wing causes, and I know people who have been turned off by these activists, but that's largely paralleled to gay rights activists and their involvement in left wing causes, especially in the 2000's. Also, most trans people I know simply want be treated with respect and to be left alone, similar to the other groups in the LGBT+ acronym.

I don't know how much of a hot take this is, but until recently, the trans community enjoyed the coatails of the rise of support for gay rights, since they had been lumped together and allied for decades up to that point. And as a result, the trans community benefited with this newfound rise in support. However, as the right gradually conceded the front on gay rights, many commentators began separating the two movements and mainly focused their attention on the trans stuff exclusively. As people began to separate the two, especially conservatives, newfound suspicioun was aroused on the state of the trans movement after gay marriage became a settled issue. People at a higher rate began questioning the rhetoric of certain activists and the established laws/procedures in place regarding the topic on hand(the Lia Thomas case being chief among them). These questions also spread to various moderates and minority voters to boot. As you see now, support has recently taken a dip.

As for the future? It really depends on how much trans rights activists shape their rhetoric on this issue. If they embrace a similar rhetoric to the gay rights movement (ie, leave us alone and treat us like everyone else), they should be fine. However, I'm not sure how easy this will be  considering social media has had a larger impact on the movement than their gay counterparts back in the day(yes, social media definitely played a major role in the gay rights movement, up to today even, but since social media is more prevalent in people's lives in the present day, people will be more attracted to those who say the most outlandish statements, which has been plaguing the trans movement as of recent. This is a major issue especially as the movement isn't as established in the public eye as their gay counterparts.)It also depends on how much the GOP overplays their hand on the issue. Plenty of their candidates tried desperately to make this an issue in 2022, but it mainly failed due to Dems rarely if ever taking the bait and a perception that this issue was nowhere near as significant as the economy or abortion, among other issues. Eventually, people get bored and will see you as insidious pricks for focusing so much of your attention on a group of people that doesn't even make up 1% of the population.

But I am certain of one thing. We are far from done in terms of trans threads here. I swear to God, it's a majority of discussion here nowadays, or close to it.

[OSR stands with Israel]

^^ Lumping in culture war issues together is a mistake


Republicans who ran on election decertification tended to lose across the board while republicans who didn’t actually did pretty well . Anyway I think conservatives should focus on utilizing ballot measure on this issue rather than just hoping for republican victories and it was a mistake not to do it in 2022. We should have put Youngkin style parental permission ballot measures up all across the nation

[GeneralMacArthur]

"Trans rights" is such an annoying term.  When did participation in women's athletic leagues become a human right for biological men?

I support trans people having the same basic human rights and dignity as everybody else.  Anyone who takes my stance on some arbitrary issue that's not actually related to human rights, and spins that to label me "against trans rights", is just engaging in the kind of bullying and public-shaming behavior that's become extremely prevalent in online LGBTQ circles over the last five years.

Someone really needs to coin a neologism for this online character assassination practice where you take some loaded characterization term like "against trans rights" and use that as a weapon against someone, without actually explaining how they fit the term, and then it turns out that your justification for applying that characterization is actually just a telephone game of you intentionally interpreting things they said in the worst possible light while simultaneously applying the loosest possible definition to the term you're weaponizing.

For instance if I were to say I don't think schools should be subsidizing the purchasing of coca cola in school cafeterias and then you went on social media and said "General MacArthur thinks children should starve" and then got all your friends to run around saying I'm "pro-starvation" and that they should all boycott my video game or they're supporting "someone who goes on genocidal tirades against hungry children."  And if anyone were to ever dig into it they'd find out that was because you were intentionally twisting my stance against free coca cola to make me against some bill for free school lunches, which you then intentionally misinterpret to have me be against free school lunch in general, and then you apply a broad definition to the term "starving children" where if you don't give kids free school lunch you want them to starve.  And if anyone were to ever dig into what you're doing here, they'd find out that you're full of crap, but 99% of people aren't going to do that, they're just going to believe your characterization because it has social proof, and be herded by the crowd into mob behavior, since there's such low stakes in simply believing that I want kids to starve.

As you can see, it's very difficult behavior to explain and label, which is probably why nobody's managed it yet.  But it's a pattern I've recognized occurring over and over and over again, more and more lately, and it's happening especially with LGBTQ discussions where anyone who doesn't just support literally everything and/or go along with literally everything runs the risk of falling victim to this technique.  Very bad for open discourse.  And ultimately bad for the cause, because it allows radicals and extremists to hijack the movement by simply being the most willing to label and attack everyone else.

(for the record this is a J.K. Rowling post, not a post about something that's happened to me personally, although a certain forum user also used to regularly engage in this behavior, especially against me, albeit not on this particular subject)

[Yoda]

I’m gay myself and know a few trans people. I support their rights fully. However, one of the reasons for this (in my view) is how closely the trans community has become with full-blown leftism. Nearly all of the high profile trans people you see online are also far-left activists and are often the ones pushing for society to be completely gender neutral and for asking one’s pronouns to be a standard greeting. This is really far-fetched for many who otherwise accept trans people.

Gay people never really had that association nor were their demands seen as unreasonable: they always pitched it as just wanting to have the same rights as everyone else to hold jobs and get married. Plus there are many more gay people than trans individuals and most gay people fall under the radar. It’s far more difficult for trans individuals to “blend in” with straights.

This is all pretty spot-on, especially the bolded part. Back when I waited tables one time a trans person told me I should greet every table and ask them their preferred pronouns lmaoooooo. Like if there's a table of gruff construction dudes I should ask them if they identify as male and prefer to be called sir/he/him, etc and if there's a table of women ask if I can call them Ms/she/her etc. Just literally wacko stuff. You'd piss off 99.9% of people doing that as you're suggesting you can't tell their gender by looking at them.

The simple reason why trans rights do not enjoy such high level of support as gay rights do is b/c some of the trans rights activists' demands are literally f***ing insane.

[AtorBoltox]

Wonder if the relentless anti trans-propaganda blood libel has anything to do with it

[darklordoftech]

In 2015-2019, Republicans were distracted by debates over immigration and trade, and in 2020 by debates over COVID restrictions, police, and riots. During the 2016 primaries, Cruz tried to attack Trump for being too liberal on trans rights and it didn’t make a dent in Trump’s momentum.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I touched on this in a post that most people saw as tl;dr and admittedly that covered emo examples...but the fundamental gist is that while supporting gay rights didn't require any personal sacrifice on behalf of straight people, that was actually a notable argument in support of gay marriage after all in that it doesn't harm you any, a lot of woke activism actually does require some level of personal sacrifice or commitment. I was speaking in a more general sense than just trans issues, but that's been touched on above, the trans component of wokeness does in fact require people to make some alterations to their behavior if you buy into the whole "everything should gender-neutral and you need to always introduce and ask for pronouns" deal not even getting into the "you should probably examine your genital preferences in dating" side of things. Now I think these are on a whole very fringe positions, I after all live in an incredibly liberal city and have never been asked my pronouns personally, and this is including at events like shows from a self-described "queercore" riot grrrl band or a music fest that included the singer of feminist hardcore band War on Women waving a trans flag during the last song of their set*, but because of the way social media works that gets amplified and it ends up being the stuff most people see and hear about.

It is worth pointing out though that the "bathroom bill" push by Republicans was a massive flop and no one has really pushed to bring those back since then.

*I actually do recall finding out that like 3 people on Twitter were upset about that thinking it was "appropriative" as she's a conventionally attractive femme looking cis woman, but you can find 3 people on Twitter say just about anything.

[Horus]

Wonder if the relentless anti trans-propaganda blood libel has anything to do with it

Blood libel? Get real. Over the top alarmist rhetoric like this is exactly why trans acceptance is faltering.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Because rw media weren’t calling them pedos 24/7 in 2017

But then why would RW media focus on calling trans people pedophiles instead of the rest of the LGB? This was definitely a common attack in, e.g., the late 70s.

Probably because some d-bag rw super pac did a focus group study that suggested targeting out trans people over the whole community would be more successful. The same way they came up with “the death tax” line

Okay but why would a focus group find that targeting trans people over the whole community is more successful? This question is the entire point of the thread.

Because the broader LGBQ+ community has been normalized. They're no longer the "other" so the GOP cannot effectively demonize them. "Murder your neighbors and co-workers for the GOP!" hurts Republicans far more than it helps them, even among people who are not willing to reject the Republican cult entirely.

But trans people are a smaller minority, often invisible and have not been normalized in the zeitgeist, which makes demonizing them far easier, and results in much less blowback on the GOP.

[7,052,770]

Wonder if the relentless anti trans-propaganda blood libel has anything to do with it

Blood libel? Get real. Over the top alarmist rhetoric like this is exactly why trans acceptance is faltering.

It's become a normal Republican shibboleth that supporters of trans equality are "groomers" and "child abusers" and you're criticizing his rhetoric?? C'mon, man!

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

There is also some evidence that "trans rights" issues are trending in the anti-trans direction in the United Kingdom, I think.

It seems like the issue was virtually never polled prior to the mid-2010s, when it became political, and was initially polarized among roughly the same lines as the gay marriage question. (At this point, there was majority national support for gay marriage and the question was already performing 'ahead' of the Democratic baseline, but it was not yet overwhelming). As it became a separate issue, I think it has taken on patterns of its own.

I remember in the 2016 primary there were discussions in right-wing spaces regarding whether many of the trends that we call 'wokeism' now (like university cancellations or political messaging in advertisements or whatever) were indicative of real cultural shifts and needed to be fought, or a passing fad that wasn't really to be taken seriously. (The former position was strongly associated with support for Donald Trump, interestingly). My general take was that it probably wasn't an enormous deal, just because shifts on political issues measured in polling weren't happening. (Indeed, if anything subsequent evidence suggests that in the 'woke' era of the 2010s affirmative action has become less rather than more popular among the general public). I was wrong, but this is because the shift was associated with issues like trans rights (or more extreme stances on racial issues on the left, among those who had always supported affirmative action) which were rarely or never polled prior to the mid-2010s.

(The trends towards social liberalism on questions like gay marriage and drug liberalization -- and FTR less-discussed things like legalization of sex work and financial deregulation/gun rights -- long predate 'wokeness' in the sense of the mid-2010s shifts. Of those, I think there's only one which actually affected the mainstream culture, which is the really rapid turn against Confederate memorabilia. This is a demography forum, and as late as the 2000s you could still see in certain races 'counties settled by Confederate veterans vote D, counties settled by Union veterans vote R' in places where that distinction was historically significant, particularly parts of rural Texas. In 2004, a progressive politician trying to paint himself as sort-of far-left, Howard Dean, could use the Confederate flag as a symbol. When I was an 8th grader, in 2011, in the suburban North, my middle school held a 'Civil War Ball' in which half the male students were expected to dress as Union soldiers, and half as Confederate* ones. The event wasn't canceled until 2018, but at this point it's been decisively memory-holed -- ie, people have deleted evidence from Facebook that it ever happened. Today, a right-wing politician using Confederate imagery would be considered very edgy. But...like...I'm not sure any other 'woke' shift actually hit the broader culture.)

The point of this anecdote is that I think 'woke' issues, or issues that basically nobody thought about before like 2013, are not the same thing as earlier social liberal issues and probably shouldn't be expected to follow exactly the same trends.

*And randomly assigned, incidentally. And, yes, we had black students, and yes, some of them did dress as Confederate soldiers. In 2011, I don't remember anyone except foreigner-immigrant-parents finding this strange.

You got a good point about the Confederate aspect, although Howard Dean never tried to use it as a symbol, he just made a remark at a debate in regards to trying to appeal to more working class white male type voters that he "wanted to be the candidate for the guy with a Confederate flag bumper sticker on his pickup truck" which granted is a REALLY clumsy way to argue for that and more of a stereotype of what working class white voters were like than reality, at least ones winnable by Democrats even in 2004. Gephardt had a pretty good response to that that I think would summarize who the Democrats were aiming for much better: "I don't want to be the candidate for the guy with a Confederate flag bumper sticker on his vehicle. I want to be the candidate for the guy with an American flag bumper sticker on his vehicle."

The other big issue with such a massive shift is casual slurs and imagery of Native Americans, like the former name of the Washington Commanders, it was controversial for quite awhile and criticized since before you were born, but in the late 2020s kids learning about it for the first time are going to be absolutely stunned that that was a professional sports team name in the current decade (even if just barely.) Similarly Peter Pan may be a film from 1953, but a certain controversial scene in it is something that I could maybe even see making a 90s animated film...and if it were any kids today seeing it would have their minds blown that that was made when their parents were alive, it didn't really become particularly controversial until a little over a decade ago.

[Horus]

Wonder if the relentless anti trans-propaganda blood libel has anything to do with it

Blood libel? Get real. Over the top alarmist rhetoric like this is exactly why trans acceptance is faltering.

It's become a normal Republican shibboleth that supporters of trans equality are "groomers" and "child abusers" and you're criticizing his rhetoric?? C'mon, man!

Wow, it's almost like socially conservative religious scolds and gender obsessed wokescolds both use sensationalist language to make up for their lack of substance..

[7,052,770]

Wonder if the relentless anti trans-propaganda blood libel has anything to do with it

Blood libel? Get real. Over the top alarmist rhetoric like this is exactly why trans acceptance is faltering.

It's become a normal Republican shibboleth that supporters of trans equality are "groomers" and "child abusers" and you're criticizing his rhetoric?? C'mon, man!

Wow, it's almost like socially conservative religious scolds and gender obsessed wokescolds both use sensationalist language to make up for their lack of substance..

Child molesters are the worst thing a person can realistically turn out to be, and Republicans as mass accusing Democrats of that. It's sick and disgusting and has no equivalence coming from the liberal/pro-trans side. I don't doubt some well-meaning trans activists lay it on a bit too thick at times, but they're not sinking anywhere near that low.