[[{“value”:”
By Siobhan M.
In recent years, Republicans have waged an increasingly aggressive war on transgender rights. Through bans on transition-related healthcare, sports participation restrictions, prohibitions on access to public spaces, and much more, Republican-controlled states are wreaking havoc on the lives of their trans residents in an effort to drive them out of public life and further stir the passions of their most frenzied adherents.
Donald Trump has made restricting trans rights a centerpiece of his campaign, promising to ban federal funding for “promoting” gender transition and airing ads relentlessly criticizing Kamala Harris’s past support for providing transition-related care for people held in government custody. The right-wing Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for a second Trump administration, Project 2025, promises to roll back regulatory protections on LGBTQ+ rights, including by permitting harassment at work and banning trans people from the military. There is little doubt that the Republican Party is an existential threat to transgender people in this country.
At times, Democrats have drawn a stark contrast and taken relatively strong positions supporting trans rights. Harris herself, as Trump’s ads love to point out, stated her support for trans healthcare in government custody in 2019–though she argued the opposite position in her capacity as California Attorney General in 2015. Trans women, Sarah McBride and Danica Roem, were invited to speak at the 2016 and 2020 Democratic National Conventions, respectively. LGBTQ+ advocacy non-profit organizations have, in recent decades, been some of the most visible supporters of LGBTQ+ rights. Their advocacy and relationship-building within the Democratic Party has helped shore up LGBTQ+ rights in blue states, and their legal advocacy against anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination, often specifically in red states, has led to well-known victories like Lawrence v. Texas (2003), U.S. v. Windsor (2013), Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), and Bostock v. Clayton County (2020).
Plaintiff James Obergefell and attorney Al Gerhardstein react to the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide in Obergefell v. Hodges. Credit: Elvert Barnes.
Democrats Retreat On Trans Rights
However, in the face of increased Republican pressure on the issue, the Democratic Party establishment has notably changed their tune on trans rights. No trans people spoke at the 2024 DNC, and trans rights were only briefly mentioned twice. Harris’s response to these Trump ads—other than silence—has been to criticize Trump for transition-related procedures provided to incarcerated people during his administration. The Biden administration, in May, went along with a Republican plan to ban Pride flags at U.S. embassies. The Democratic nominees for U.S. Senate in Ohio, Texas, and Wisconsin are even running ads explicitly opposing trans rights.
Excerpt from an ad supporting Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI). Credit: Tammy Baldwin for Senate.
The response from some to concerns about this harmful messaging has been to suggest that while the Democratic Party’s messaging is unsupportive, their policies show they have trans people’s backs. However, a closer look reveals the Democratic Party has been souring on its previously-broad conceptions of trans rights since at least April of 2023. Then, in an early indication of wavering support among establishment Democrats, the Biden administration issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking regarding “Sex Related Eligibility Criteria for Male and Female Athletic Teams” under Title IX, the landmark law requiring sex equality in education. The administration could have used this as a moment for a full-throated defense of trans kids’ rights to play with their friends. They had a defensible legal position—it would have been consistent with the Supreme Court’s holding in Bostock to treat anti-trans discrimination as prohibited discrimination based on sex. Instead, Biden’s Department of Education put together a weak, unmanageable rule that allowed Democrats to claim they were protecting trans kids while leaving gaping holes for discriminatory policies. This proposed rule was written with the most obvious benefits for trans youth who are able to begin hormone therapy before starting puberty, but between unsupportive parents, the costs of receiving medical care, and state bans on youth transition, this encompasses only a tiny fraction of trans people. For all others who do begin endogenous puberty, the rule spells out the formula for Republican bans, allowing restrictions on sports participation based on alleged concerns over competitive fairness or injury risk.
A closer look reveals the Democratic Party has been souring on its previously-broad conceptions of trans rights.
On the issue of trans students’ sports participation, the closeness of LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations to the Democratic Party may have stifled criticism of the proposed rule. Shortly after it was released, a coalition of more than 20 progressive organizations, including several which explicitly exist to advocate for LGBTQ+ people, issued a press release lauding Biden’s “restoring and reinforcing vital civil rights protections for all students.” The organizations knew of the rule’s grave flaws–they even said in this release that “this regulation does not go far enough”–but they still advocated for it and, with a largely celebratory tone, congratulated Biden’s administration for issuing it.
To their credit, Democrats’ other proposed Title IX rule, “Enforcement of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 With Respect to Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in Light of Bostock v. Clayton County,” was generally seen quite positively by advocates for trans rights when it was proposed in June of 2021, excepting the absence of protections in sport. It recognized harassment based on sexual orientation or gender identity as prohibited sex-based harassment and granted trans students’ rights to use gender-appropriate bathrooms and locker rooms. However, after it was challenged in court, Democrats and their appointed justices ultimately appeared to abandon the proposal. In her dissent in Department of Education v. Louisiana (2024), Justice Sonia Sotomayor—an Obama appointee—wrote, “Every Member of the Court agrees” to block “three provisions of that Rule: 34 CFR §106.10 (2023) (defining sex discrimination), §106.31(a)(2) (prohibiting schools from preventing individuals from accessing certain sex-separated spaces consistent with their gender identity), and §106.2’s definition of hostile environment harassment.” Sotomayor further acknowledged the Biden administration, despite proposing the rule, “does not contest” the blocking of provisions allowing locker room and bathroom access or prohibiting a hostile school environment for queer and trans students. This even has implications beyond schools–the Affordable Care Act’s protections against discrimination in healthcare also flow from Title IX, meaning federal protections for queer and trans people in medical settings are now also at significant risk.
Establishment Democratic Party Senators and their allies are also starting to take anti-trans legislative action. Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) blocked a federal judge nominee on the grounds that she had previously ruled to allow an incarcerated trans woman to transfer to a women’s prison–sending a signal to careerist-oriented judges to not make similar rulings in the future. Sen. Joe Manchin (I-WV), a former Democrat still in their Senate caucus, also joined with Republicans to push through committee prohibitions on some trans healthcare for veterans and their families. Across the highest levels of American government, trans people are seeing a sharp change in tune from a Democratic Party that was recently proud of its support for trans rights.
Where Is This Headed?
One does not need to look far to see the potential end point. In the United Kingdom, the Labour Party, once supportive of trans rights as part of a broadly left agenda, has made a sharp rightward turn and is now leading a government that appears intent on driving trans people from existence in the UK. Labour have maintained a Tory ban on hormone therapy, including puberty blockers, from trans youth, forcing them to endure an excruciating puberty we have the capacity to prevent, but not entirely reverse. There are also disturbing reports of National Health Service GPs discontinuing their adult patients’ hormone therapy and functionally forcing them to detransition. When a formerly-supportive party turns on a vulnerable constituency, the consequences are dire.
Trans rights protest in London, UK. Credit: Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona
Notably, Labour leader Keir Starmer’s heads of strategy and policy were in Washington to meet with Democratic Party strategists in early September. These Labour Party advisors suggested Harris go “on the front foot and launch[] a new policy on” immigration akin to Starmer’s “Border Security Command,” and encouraged Harris to think about a “longer-term question of making sure that the Democrats stay on the center ground.”
The Democratic Party’s changed tune on trans rights is beginning to echo their dramatic shift in immigration policy. When Trump made anti-immigrant sentiment central to his 2016 campaign, Democrats responded with forceful calls that “no human is illegal” and a platform to “defend against those who would exclude or eliminate legal immigration avenues and denigrate immigrants.” As Trump and Republicans have continued attacking immigrants, however, the Democratic Party has largely stopped speaking up in defense of immigrants and ceded more and more ground on immigration policy. Biden’s administration has worked to expand Trump’s border wall, even pushing to waive environmental regulations to allow them to do so more quickly. The administration has also taken executive action to significantly reduce avenues to apply for asylum. Perhaps most publicly, in early 2024, Biden and Congressional Democrats pushed a harsh immigration bill that Biden himself called the “toughest” in decades. After Republicans refused to pass the bill, Biden excoriated them in his State of the Union, touting the bill’s potential to “hire 1,500 more border security agents and officers” and its endorsements by the Border Patrol Union and the Chamber of Commerce and asking conservatives, “what are you against?” This total surrender by the Democratic Party to right-wing framing and policy on immigration could be an ominous sign for their commitment to trans rights.
Only A Socialist Workers’ Movement Can Win Lasting Protections
In the face of Republican exterminationist policies and increasing Democratic indifference, trans people must find another vehicle to fight for our rights–and socialist organizing is that vehicle.
As long as capitalism exists, the right wing of the capitalist class will seek out cultural issues upon which to divide and conquer the working class. Hatred against minorities, whether immigrants, queer and trans people, religious minorities, or people of color, is time and time again intentionally stoked by the funds of billionaire donors, fanned by right wing media outlets, and all coordinated by right wing political operatives. For many of these capitalists, fueling hatred is “just business, don’t take it personally.”
Members of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners attending a screening of Pride. Credit: Fæ.
But for those of us on the receiving end, this hatred they cultivate is profoundly personal and often violent. As long as the capitalist system remains, so too will exist the incentive and ability for a handful of billionaires to turn working people against one another. Every improvement won under the leadership of the liberal wing of the capitalist class is in jeopardy of being revoked from day one, so long as the capitalist system remains intact. The only solution which can win lasting security for trans people, and all marginalized groups, is to replace capitalism with a socialist system. Instead of being used to sow division, the resources of society, and especially our media, can be used to educate society on our beautiful diversity and collective commonality. The supposed divide between culturally-conservative working-class people and socially-progressive urban and college-educated people is not insurmountable. This was proven by the socialist-led Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners campaign, a story dramatized in the movie Pride (2014), in an inspiring demonstration that these two sections of society can be united in struggle.
Ultimately it will not be trans people organizing as a minority, but the socialist-led working class which will have the ability to contest for power with the capitalist class and win.
Ultimately it will not be trans people organizing as a minority, but the socialist-led working class which will have the ability to contest for power with the capitalist class and win, establishing a workers’ government which can carry out the socialist transformation of our economic and social structure. Without abandoning for a second the fight for the particular issues facing trans people, trans socialists must take their place in this fight for a socialist workers’ movement, especially by joining trade unions and working to form a new party.Trans and gender-nonconforming people are already leaders across socialist movements, including several members of DSA chapter leadership across Massachusetts. Evan MacKay–a nonbinary person, member of the Cambridge LGBTQ+ Commission, and DSA member and endorsee–came within a handful of votes in their bid earlier this year to unseat establishment Democrat Marjorie Decker. DSA is engaged in a nationwide campaign to protect and expand Trans Rights and Bodily Autonomy.
Canvass for Evan MacKay on Trans Day of Visibility, 2024. Credit: Evan for Cambridge.
Still, we must do more. We must organize our workplaces into militant unions prepared to break with the Democratic Party and fight for causes like nationalized healthcare, including free and readily-available gender-affirming care on demand. We must dramatically scale up our political mobilization to escape the capitalist economic system that keeps trans people in financial precarity. We must build socialist, working-class power to fight for true trans liberation. Let every trans comrade take their place in the front ranks!
Siobhan M. is Treasurer of Boston DSA, Secretary of her UAW unit, and a UAWD member. The views expressed herein do not represent her employer.
“}]]