Politics do not always play out on clean partisan lines. Democrats had a great election night, including the Democrats who had moderated on transgender sports and spaces. All the blue states with referenda to protect female sports on their ballots passed them into law.
Organized critics of political transgenderism came from the left. There is a reason why an organization called “Democrats with An Informed Approach to Gender” exists, but no contrary Republican organization exists, and it certainly isn’t billionaire money. They are the Democrats who put Democrats over the top.
This does not represent a whole, clean break with any portion of the party’s past support of political transgenderism and its blinkered policy agenda. Instead, it represents the internal cleavage of the party’s election coalition.
Half of them, both partisan Democrats and independents, support sensible limits on the ambitions of the transgender lobby. When blue state electorates are given a chance to vote on sports and spaces issues discrete from partisanship, they consistently support sensible limits on ‘trans rights’.
To form a national electoral majority, either party must convince ‘independent’ (actually, low-propensity) voters to vote for its candidates. Democrats largely muted their enthusiasm for pediatric sex rejection medicalization and secret schoolhouse transitions.
Red states can vote blue
“Girls sports are for Girls”, Rob Sand, Iowa’s new Democratic governor, said. The new Senator from Iowa, Josh Turek, agrees with gender critical Democrats that it is wrong “biological males” do not belong in girls’ sports. Sarah Trone Garriott ran an ad opposing “letting men in women’s locker rooms” and flipped a House seat. Lindsay James also called for “common sense rules to keep sports fair for boys and for girls” and won a House seat.
In South Carolina, Dr. Annie Andrews explicitly disavowed “biological men playing in women’s sports” and opposed gender surgery for minors in a series of ads. This is a reversal from her prior position as a Democrat. We will now call her Senator Andrews. Democrats are learning that the extreme demands of political transgenderism are both costly and easily discarded. Good!
Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, who said “boys should not play in girls’ sports” and acknowledged concerns about safety in schools, won re-election. Amy Acton, the Ohio gubernatorial nominee, got progressive backlash for opposing “boys” playing in girls’ sports. Democrats used clear language to signal they are not ideologically captured, and despite the earnest efforts of the transgender lobby to push out gender critical Democrats, they won.
Actually, they won big. Jonah Wheeler was narrowly reelected to the New Hampshire State House despite an “elaborate write-in campaign” by a would-be spoiler who championed transgender “rights”. Turns out the limits of the issue for swinging votes work both ways. It has just become much safer to be a plain-spoken gender critical Democrat.
Winning in blue states
The number of red states just shrank, and at the same time, the number of red states where sports and spaces protections for women and girls could be enacted had already been exhausted. Any further progress had to take place in blue areas.
Almost all the ballot initiatives in yesterday’s elections passed with substantial majorities. Nebraska Initiative Measure 442, the Nebraska Sex Requirement for School and College Sports Amendment, passed with 67 percent of the vote. In Arizona, Arizona Proposition 318, which draws the line at restroom access, received almost 60 percent of the vote.
These were red states, emphasis were, and their flipping blue tells us something about the electoral value of the gender critical Democrat to the Democratic Party coalition. The political majority of the future is full of sex realists. For even in blue states, majorities supported common-sense ballot initiatives. Gender critical Democrats are identifying themselves as ‘swing voters’ even in blue areas.
With ballots still being counted, Colorado Proposition 134 protecting girls’ sports in public schools is “narrowly” passing by a 5 percent margin. Proposition 135 prohibiting transgender surgeries on minors is passing by a “narrow” margin of about 4 percent. Mainstream media sources are eager to marginalize the story of a grassroots campaign victory.
I recently talked to Erin Lee, the organizer behind these victories. She was massively outspent by the legacy organizations that have kept Democrats in line on transgender issues. It made no difference to the outcome. People power won.
Colorado wasn’t a fluke. Washington Initiative 638 to protect girls’ sports passed by a 7 percent margin despite a massive spend against it. Turns out the gender lobby cannot stop the ‘people power’ of the gender critical Democrats with any amount of money, or any amount of ‘be kind’ shaming. Turns out that voters will support a clearly-worded referendum along gender critical policy lines — as long as it is discrete from other issues, parties, and candidates.
A Missouri initiative, Amendment 3, failed to pass. It would have prohibited pediatric sex rejection medicalization, but its organizers tied the question to abortion rules, which was sure to fail. It leans right into the framing of the transgender mafia that such laws are an infringement on ‘bodily autonomy’. In fact, I first became aware of the brewing fraud scandal in pediatric ‘gender medicine’ because I listened to progressive activists touting this exact organizing strategy.
Winning back the party requires re-entry
In states where Democrats control the language of ballot measures, attorneys general can, and have, killed gender critical referendums through dishonest wording. This demonstrates the importance of identifying gender critical Democrats, supporting their legislative initiatives, and advancing their careers within the party. We do this right now, while our opposition lobby is weakest.
Because for every Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp of Washington who is willing to say that it “isn’t fair for boys to compete in girls’ sports”, there is an Abdul El-Sayed who says says girls should be fine with penises in their faces. Some argue that this is taqqiya, the concept within Islam that lying to outsiders is not sinful. The same may be true of James Talarico, who changed his stance to “oppose trans athletes playing in girls’ sports if it endangers safety or fairness” (emphasis added), leaving wiggle room to take it back later, if the political winds shift.
And then there are Sens. Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren. Markey says that “trans athletes should be able to play”, which is of course a different way of saying that boys should be able to cheat at sports through self-identification. He has pledged to fight the Supreme Court on behalf of sports cheats, while Warren has blamed the Supreme Court decision on “right-wing extremists and the MAGA movement”.
Aside from the trans-affirming fanatics like Pramila Jayapal and Sarah Jacobs, the number of transgender Democrats in office is growing. Rep. Sarah McBride, who whined about “dignity & fairness” in reaction to the Supreme Court rulings against transgender sports cheats, emphasizes participation, community, and kindness in his apologetics. Even the deeply-red parts of the country have very blue areas, now.
Democrats have engineered entire blue states to serve as transgender policy laboratories. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro recently pledged to protect “our trans children” as he welcomed Admiral Rachel Levine back to the Governor’s mansion for his fourth annual pride reception.
Levine, who served as both physician general and health director for the state before his stint in the Biden administration, was instrumental in lobbying WPATH, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, to cancel almost all the age limits for surgery in their new standards of care. Counteracting this culture of aggressive disregard for basic sanity and safeguarding will require the gender critical Democrats to bring a counter-culture to the party.
Black organizers pressured their way into the Democratic Party in 1964. Fannie Lou Hamer testified before the Credentials Committee about systemic violence and disenfranchisement at the 1964 Democratic National Convention and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party she led symbolically occupied the convention floor. Their pressure led to new party rules against segregated delegations, so that the Democrats were fully integrated by 1968.
George Wallace, the most infamous of all the Dixiecrats, saw the writing on the wall after the 1970 gubernatorial campaign. He forged a new relationship with Joe Reed, the Black head of the Alabama Teachers’ Union, that cemented his power in the state. Wallace was last reelected governor in 1982 with over 90 percent of the Black vote. If you think politicians cannot change, you have not paid any attention.
Goodbye to all that
So long, Republican friends. I said at the beginning of this website that you were not going to inspire a massive, long-term political realignment over transgender issues. Negative partisanship is the single most unappreciated force in American politics. Partisan tribalism has only increased with social media. As a result, gender critical and sex realist spaces will remain a potent force of ideas, but the ‘movement’ will never cohere as a united political force.
The time has come when Democrats who walked away from the party, who even voted for Donald Trump on this issue, are collapsing back into the party, hopefully transforming it. This perhaps is a more interesting and subtle story than the media wants to tell, right now. But it is the one I look forward to seeing play out, because I know the players, and because I appreciate that American elections are a zero-sum numbers game.
Opportunity beckons. It will not be easy or smooth. It will be yet another fight for visibility in a party that pretended not to see us. Democrats opposed to political transgenderism must focus now on becoming visible. They can try being nice again, and raise hell if that doesn’t work. They have the numbers to win, but only if they fight.
'Gender Critical' Was Never Going to Work Out as a Long-Term Political Realignment
Negative partisanship is the single most unappreciated force in American politics. Partisan tribalism has only increased with social media. A general political realignment is impossible after the Supreme Court decision last week to let states shut down abortion access. As a result, “gender critical” spaces will remain a potent force of ideas, but “gender criticism” will never cohere as a united political movement. There are too many countervailing forces at work.