What's at Stake for Trans People in This Election | Opinion
Moms for Liberty summit in Washington, DC, Former President Donald Trump doubled down on anti-trans rhetoric with the totally false claim that schools were performing gender-reassignment surgeries on kids, saying "Think of it, your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation." He repeated those claims again at a rally in Tucson.
And has since dropped $65 million of anti-trans dialing up the volume on this issue.These words, from some of the darkest corners of the internet, were injected into the heart of American political discourse.
To see what's happening here, we have to be clear about what is true.No child receives surgery at school to change their gender.
More to the point, gender affirming care for minors is an incredibly complex and highlystandardizedprocess involving parents and doctors that rarely even involves surgery at all.The reason that this lie about kids has become a talking point in the general election is because of a long-standing coordinated right-wing effort to spread vast quantities of medical misinformation about transgender people and make the debate over "gender ideology" a mainstream topic.This manipulated political conversation underscores the fact that this year's national, state and local races present trans people with existential choices up and down the ballot.But trans lives have been hanging in the electoral balance for a while now.Starting in 2021, after Joe Biden defeated Trump for the presidency, there was an explosion of anti-trans legislation introduced and passed in states across the country.
