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

[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..

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.

I think murderers are usually just as evil, and the liberal/pro-trans side is constantly equating GOP policies to genocide. These are often bad, invasive policies, but they are not genocidal.

[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.

I think murderers are usually just as evil, and the liberal/pro-trans side is constantly equating GOP policies to genocide. These are often bad, invasive policies, but they are not genocidal.

Again, you're drawing a false equivalency here between random social media accounts (most of which are fakes and trolls) and the most well-known politicians and pundits of each party. Very few prominent Democratic office-holders or media personalities are using "genocide" rhetoric, and only a very small percentage of Democratic voters in real life use it. Much, much lower than the amount of Republican politicians, media personalities, and voters using "groomer" rhetoric.

[DaleCooper]

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.

I think murderers are usually just as evil, and the liberal/pro-trans side is constantly equating GOP policies to genocide. These are often bad, invasive policies, but they are not genocidal.

This is actually a really good point, and I hadn't made that connection. It's pretty rich to hear the people accusing everyone of supporting genocide whine about the groomer narrative, which too be clear is also a sleazy and disgusting narrative, but it's the same crap.

[RINO Tom]

Because history isn't a linear march toward an ever-more liberal outcome on social issues, where we all just need time to "evolve."  These issues aren't related to most people I know, including gay men.  It's just phrased that way by the left.

[jamestroll]

give us this day our daily trans thead.

Seriously, it is time for a sub board

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

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

Blood libel now?

"banning people from showing their penis in a women's locker room is literally the same as mid-1500s European anti-Semitism"

[Dan the Roman]

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.

I think this argument is underestimated. While Gay activists were largely on the left, and 90% of the support came from the left, there was a PR effort to showcase the minority who did not. Virtually every major Gay rights group, HRC/GLAAD went out of their way to hire Republicans, and showcase the Republican support. Remember Ted Olsen leading the SSM charge? The message was clear - this is an alliance of convenience. For Republicans/Conservatives "if you drop opposition to us, we will drop opposition to you" and more importantly "our allies, including your own family members and employees will drop it".

In this case the ask - SSM/no sodomy laws etc, was so small and something many wanted to do anyway, and the offer so generous of course they would agree.

No such effort has been undertaken. Groups like HRC/GLAAD even the ACLU have purged not just conservatives but moderates, and they have done so even on issues unrelated to LGBT stuff. You can support Trans rights, but if you have issues with BLM you are out. POLICE OUT OF PRIDE! What this means is there is no carrot.

Rather than promoting the two key groups for SSM - conservative allies and conservative members of the community both have been expelled. I am not saying bring onboard Blaire White, but by driving the "Truscum/Transmedicalists", the Transgender individuals who make the best impression and quite honestly whose arguments make the most sense to anyone from the center-left rightward, out of the community with extreme venom, the Transgender Cause has made itself explicitly leftwing. It has purged its own conservatives, which is hardly a recipe for cooperation. I cannot stress enough how often I have heard "Truscum are the only Trans folks who make sense" among center-right millennials. They can reach people others within the community cannot. Yes they may not be representative, but were Lesbian corporate lawyers who held GOP fundraisers at their Hamptons home representative at all in 2009?

Worse, rather than using them to reach a conservative audience, figures like Buck Angel have been driven into alliance with the opposition which means not only are there "Trans voices" on the other side, but those voices are far more compelling to conservatives and Republicans who would otherwise be open-minded than their rivals.

So what you are left with is a Transgender movement which is anti-conservative, even if conservatives are Trans(Truscum), or agree on Trans issues(anti-SWERF, must embrace BLM, increasingly wacky on Israel), and which spend most of its time attacking Center-right figures who agree 70% not religious conservatives(the JKR fight, regardless of the fault, has been an optical fiasco).

Basically, if everyone who is not left-wing is an enemy of Trans Rights, then by the arguments of activists themselves there is no place for Pro-Trans figures in Conservativism.

I should add all of this has been accomplished by the most over-the-top, stereotypical tactics of cancel culture conservatives have faced at school, college, or in the workplace.

If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and threatens to cancel anyone who does not call it a duck, it is a duck. And in this case Duck = Leftwing.

As a Conservative Gay male, I honestly cannot understand how anyone can think of themselves as a conservative at all and support the Trans Rights movement as it exists now, regardless of wider policy positions.

[First1There]

This is a question we can answer with data, so lets answer it with data.

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2022/06/28/americans-complex-views-on-gender-identity-and-transgender-issues/

A majority of Americans support allowing transgender people to transition but a majority also believe that sex is determined at birth. A plurality of Americans say there is little too no acceptance of transgender people but a plurality also that America has gone to far in accepting transgender people. So Americans have contradictory views on transgender issues, and they are probably not even aware that they have contradictory view on transgender issues.

[RINO Tom]

^ Is this surprising?  It's an issue that would have been laughed at when someone my age (31) was a kid, by conservative and "liberal" people alike.  And no, that's not a "times change" thing; there was a very conscious understanding that LGBT people were marginalized by society and even many of those who felt no pressing need to enact chance in the early 2000s were completely at peace with the fact that as generational displacement took place, LGBT people would gain a much more equal footing in society.  That's why as it happened, you saw some rabid political resistance from the fringe right, but the general population largely didn't give a $hit.

Conversely, this is something that people don't quite know how to comprehend.  Your average person, from my experience, is quite uncomfortable or at the very least conflicted policy-wise with the nitty gritty of transgender issues (e.g., bathrooms or a former male playing on a high school girls sports team) but generally approve of kindness and tolerance toward people's choice to express their transgender identity in general.  I don't really have strong feelings on the issue, but to compare it as a direct continuation for the struggle for gay rights is pretty misguided.

[Ferguson97]

This is a question we can answer with data, so lets answer it with data.

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2022/06/28/americans-complex-views-on-gender-identity-and-transgender-issues/

A majority of Americans support allowing transgender people to transition but a majority also believe that sex is determined at birth. A plurality of Americans say there is little too no acceptance of transgender people but a plurality also that America has gone to far in accepting transgender people. So Americans have contradictory views on transgender issues, and they are probably not even aware that they have contradictory view on transgender issues.

I don't think this is contradictory at all. It seems to be the "live and let live" perspective. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if the median person's position on the issue was "you're not really a man/woman, but if you want to transition, you should have the legal right to do that". It's the same reason why so many people just stopped opposing gay marriage, even if they weren't enthusiastic supporters. People just realized there wasn't really any good reason to oppose it.

[Anti Democrat Democrat Club]

(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)

[All Along The Watchtower]

Declined? From which towering heights?

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

Declined? From which towering heights?

If you actually bothered to read the OP, then you'd know that the percentage of people who think you can change your sex after birth fell from 44% to 38%.

[Alben Barkley]

Gee, you tell me...

https://medium.com/@rebeccarc/j-k-rowling-and-the-trans-activists-a-story-in-screenshots-78e01dca68d

When was the last time gay rights activists did that?

As I said before: Trans rights activists, I'm available for hire! I can and will sell your ideas far, FAR better than you have thus far. Reacting in hysterical rage to what appears to normal people to be calm, reasoned argument usually does not get you very far...

[7,052,770]

Medium and Substack are blogs without any controls over whether what's posted there is accurate and complete. I strongly recommend not getting too worked up over anything you see there.

[Alben Barkley]

Medium and Substack are blogs without any controls over whether what's posted there is accurate and complete. I strongly recommend not getting too worked up over anything you see there.

I strongly recommend you just go to JK Rowling's Twitter feed and read the latest replies to literally anything she said then, it will be the exact same thing.

Also, while I once would have agreed with you that media control over what is "accurate and complete" is better than the alternative, on certain issues (including and especially this one) it's more of a hindrance than a help, as it can lead to nuanced and critical perspectives being bulldozed over and ignored. Jesse Singal is a literal expert on the issue who has been published in The New York Times and The Atlantic, and he was the only one who actually seemed to bother to read and analyze the latest "trans youth medicine OBVIOUSLY is the best solution for everyone!" study in full, and he posted said analysis on Substack. Attacking the source rather than the argument is a classic fallacy.

[7,052,770]

Medium and Substack are blogs without any controls over whether what's posted there is accurate and complete. I strongly recommend not getting too worked up over anything you see there.

I strongly recommend you just go to JK Rowling's Twitter feed and read the latest replies to literally anything she said then, it will be the exact same thing.

I strongly recommend you just go to JK Rowling's Twitter feed and see how deranged and consumed she is by this issue. She eggs it all on daily and revels in it. This false portrayal that she's some kind of innocent victim who never meant to offend anyone is easily dispelled.

[Alben Barkley]

Medium and Substack are blogs without any controls over whether what's posted there is accurate and complete. I strongly recommend not getting too worked up over anything you see there.

I strongly recommend you just go to JK Rowling's Twitter feed and read the latest replies to literally anything she said then, it will be the exact same thing.

I strongly recommend you just go to JK Rowling's Twitter feed and see how deranged and consumed she is by this issue. She eggs it all on daily and revels in it. This false portrayal that she's some kind of innocent victim who never meant to offend anyone is easily dispelled.

Complete and utter nonsense. I follow her on Twitter, I've read literally everything she's ever posted on the issue (which is not daily and she far from "revels" in it). Read her actual words, especially the heartfelt essay she wrote which caused all this s--tstorm of death and rape threats and hysteria. (Absolute insanity to think any woman would "revel" in such a thing, by the way.) Don't rely on Contrapoints or somebody to "unpack" her words for you. Just read them, then look me in the eye (or the closest internet equivalent) and tell me what she said was actually unreasonable. I know you can't! Because it's objectively not.

By the way, I am talking about how she could literally be posting a picture a child sent her about her children's book and she still will get disgusting death and rape threats from TRAs in the replies. Literally ANYTHING she writes, you'll see the same thing. She has been effectively unpersoned by TRAs, and I have yet to hear ANY coherent argument for why what she said (essentially, biological sex is real and relevant) is wrong or offensive.

All this ignores the underlying point by the way: Regardless of even if JK Rowling was wrong about everything, the question was WHY have people soured on trans rights even as support for gay rights has increased? I am giving you the answer. Like it or not, I am certain that the abrasive, aggressive style trans rights activists have chosen to be their predominant strategy (the opposite of what gay people did when lobbying for marriage equality) is one of the main reasons why.

[7,052,770]

I used to follow her too until it was all anti-trans all the time. I don't know what Contrapoints is, but doing things like defending Matt Walsh (greater of the "groomer" lie) and opening the only women's shelter in Britain that explicitly bans trans people is enough for me to think lowly of her.

Obviously I condemn the death threats as much as anyone, but ad I often point out, assume everything on Twitter is fake unless you know for 100% certain it is not, regardless of what side it's coming from. It's almost entirely bots and trolls.

[7,052,770]

All this ignores the underlying point by the way: Regardless of even if JK Rowling was wrong about everything, the question was WHY have people soured on trans rights even as support for gay rights has increased? I am giving you the answer. Like it or not, I am certain that the abrasive, aggressive style trans rights activists have chosen to be their predominant strategy (the opposite of what gay people did when lobbying for marriage equality) is one of the main reasons why.

I mean, maybe? I certainly condemn the "abrasive, aggressive style" but I don't really know who is doing that. Not single member of the Biden Administration, not a single Democrat in Congress, not a single person I know in real life, despite most everyone in all 3 of those groups supports trans equality. I just don't really care about random unverified social media accounts that are probably all fake and/or foreign agents and/or random teenagers dicking around.

Maybe you do know of some politicans or real life people who act like that, but that just doesn't match my experience. Compare that to lots of Republican politicians and pundits and real life people pushing the groomer/pedophile lie (remember that you too are a groomer to them). That's real life from verified people. That's what pushed me to be as pro-equality as I currently am, backlash to their abhorrent behavior.

[Mister Mets]

There are a few main reasons.

• This is a more recent societal change, with a serious increase in the amount of people identifying as trans (especially the amount identifying as trans boys and trans men.)
• Some of the current activists are bad messengers, especially since this coincides with the rise of a more radical left who is well-represented within this community. They're the modern equivalents of 60s activists who thought Harvey Milk was a sell-out.
• It's often a bigger ask. Gay rights is typically framed as people wanting to be treated the same as everyone else. Some trans activists call for changes in behavior, taxpayer support for affirmative care, and accommodations that others aren't comfortable with/ clash with other priorities (IE- the whole question of whether trans women should compete with women.)
• There are a lot of unknowns. At this point, we don't know what percentage of twelve year olds who currently identify as trans will do so in twenty years. So what kind of medical care should they have access to?
• There's an off-putting language policing on this topic. It seems clear that the mainstream media is uncomfortable with this topic, and that there are internal conflicts. It's kinda telling that Abigail Shrier isn't invited to left-wing platforms, even if the point is to show how she's wrong. The terms AMAB (Assigned Male at birth) and AFAB (Assigned Female at birth) bother me since sex is different from gender, and this language seems to apply to the much smaller category of people who are intersex.

[ηєω ƒяσηтιєя]

Some great points made in this thread. Another point that I haven't seen mentioned is that many people can conceptualize and understand someone being "gay" but not so much someone being "trans".

Being trans is just not something that many people can wrap their heads around. "Oh, that guy/girl likes another guy/girl. OK whatever" as opposed to "That guy/girl is...a girl/guy?". To me, this is the biggest stumbling block when it comes to "trans rights".

Also, "trans rights" are almost exclusively related to trans women because trans men are pretty much non-existent to most people and about 99% of debates over "trans rights". Many people still view trans women as just a "man in a wig and dress" and that connotation will be hard to shake for a lot of trans women.

[MasterJedi]

Just like all the failed social crusades of the past from conservatives (slavery, womens suffrage, native suffrage, interacial marriage, gay marriage), they are using the last gasp of oppostion to try and bring their hate onto something. Just because people are shouting about it, doesn't mean it's a popular position.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Also, "trans rights" are almost exclusively related to trans women because trans men are pretty much non-existent to most people and about 99% of debates over "trans rights".

And this is pretty telling, isn’t it?

See also: the obsessive focus of homophobes on gay men specifically.

(Not that lesbians and trans men aren’t subject to all kinds of hatred and harassment—far from it—but the emphases are different. I have my theories as to why).

[Progressive Pessimist]

This is very easy to answer. Same-sex marriage in practice has proven to have almost no impact on the lives of people who don't engage in one. Meanwhile the prospect of considering a different way to look at how we talk about and view gender in society is too challenging and makes people feel antagonized and confused to have what they've been used to all their lives be questioned.

However, that still doesn't mean it's as salient of an issue to fear-monger about for electoral purposes as Republicans may think, as the 2022 midterms suggested.