If you’ve received this as an email, don’t worry, you didn’t get signed up for some list against your will. Consider this the soft-launch of Holographic Liberalism, the rebrand and reboot of Transliberalism. Same author, same platform, just a different name and a slightly different focus.
In the new year, I plan on releasing at least one essay a month on Holographic Liberalism. They will be longer and more in-depth than most of the Transliberalism pieces. As of now, I have three essays practically finished, and several others in the works. More details to come early next month.
In the meantime, consider reading the two essays I’ve had published at Liberal Currents in the last couple months: “Finding Freedom in the Gender Phantasmagoria” (my review of Judith Butler’s new book) and “Abandoning Trans Rights Is Not a Path to Victory.”
In the wake of the 2024 presidential election, there have been numerous theories proposed as to what Democrats could’ve done different and what they should do in the future. I’ve heard “Democrats should embrace free-trade neoliberalism,” “Democrats should embrace economic populism,” “Democrats should have run further to the left on social issues,” “Democrats should have run further to the right on social issues,” “Democrats didn’t appeal enough to The People,” “Democrats were too preoccupied with trying to appeal The People and missed opportunities to make their lives better,” among others. The discourse is a mess. But there is one theory that seems to be ever-so-slowly gaining steam, yet is also demonstrably false. That is the theory that Democrats were too pro-transgender.
Three federally elected Democrats have come forward with this idea, all Representatives. Seth Moulton (D-MA) told the New York Times the following:
“Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone rather than being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face. I have two little girls, I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”
Soon after him came Tom Suozzi (D-NY), opining about Moulton’s comments to the New York Times:
“I don’t want to discriminate against anybody, but I don’t think biological boys should be playing in girls’ sports.”
More recently, Vincente Gonzalez (D-TX) said the following when asked by the Texas Tribune his thoughts on Representative Nancy Mace’s (R-SC) new crusade against bathroom access:
“That's a very, very tough conversation that needs to be had by Democrats. And I think at the end of the day, we got to vote our district and vote what we really believe. And I don't believe that boys should be in girls' bathrooms.”
Republicans are in on it too, although it’s less noteworthy as they’ve always been anti-trans. One Republican told Axios “I mean — a presidential election may have been decided on this issue."
Through this conversation, pundits and politicians alike have pulled up whatever datapoints they can to argue that really, it’s the transgender people’s fault for wanting to be treated normally. One survey — cited, for example, by Jonathan Chait in the Atlantic — said that the third most-selected reason why swing voters went for Trump is that they felt that Harris “is focused more on cultural issues like transgender issues rather than helping the middle class.” Anybody who understands polling should have seen the wording and been suspicious immediately. Please note the polling methodology:
Respondents were presented with random pairs of potential reasons to vote against Harris and asked to select which reason they found more compelling. Each participant evaluated four pairs drawn from a pool of 25 distinct criticisms. The strength of each criticism was measured by how frequently it was chosen when presented as part of a pair. The relative importance is how much more it was selected than the average criticism. For instance, the most popular criticism, “Inflation was too high under the Biden-Harris Administration,” was selected 74% of the time, so it has a relative importance of +24, while the least popular, “Kamala Harris isn’t similar enough to Joe Biden,” was selected 26% of the time, so has a relative importance of -24.
Wording matters greatly when you give people any kind of list and ask them to pick from it. Let’s imagine I ran a survey of Harris voters. All respondents are given two statements and asked to pick the one they agree with me. One half of the respondents are provided this pair: “I voted for Harris because of the economy / I voted for Harris because of democracy.” The other half is provided this pair: “I voted for Harris because of the economy / I voted for Harris because Trump is a moral stain on our country.” You will likely find a huge disparity between the first and second group, where the former go for “the economy” far more likely than the latter. This is because the phrasing is more emotionally potent. People often pick survey results if they feel like they should pick it. It’s nice to be able to say “I voted for Trump because Harris doesn’t truly care about the middle class” as opposed to saying “I voted for Trump because I don’t like Latinos.” Alternatively, it’s pretty unclear that “transgender issues” is the operative term for people picking this reason; it seems like you could substitute it out for almost any cultural issue and get the same outcomes. It doesn’t support the trans-bashing.
Regardless, it is remarkable that this one poll from nearly a month ago is still getting so much play. (Moulton also cited it to defend his comments.) It’s almost as if no other polls have been released that truly show that real reasons that decided people’s votes are the economy and democracy.
The other commonly cited datapoint is that one Democratic-aligned group found that one particular anti-trans ad shifted listeners’ choice 2.7 points towards Trump. I will note again that this is only one point, yet it seems to be getting a lot of play. Beyond that, however, there’s not much reason to think that the anti-trans ads actually did that much. Most notably, it’s been observed that in the seven swing states, the states where the campaigns devoted most their efforts and anti-trans ads ran the most intensely, Harris did better than the nation at-large — and, when you follow the logic one more step, Trump did worse. To distill the facts down for you, I took the vote tallies for each state and D.C. from 2020 and 2024 and compared the swing towards Trump in the 44 states + D.C. to the seven swing states. The swing towards Trump was smaller in the swing states as a whole — and again, I feel the need to stress, these are the states where these ads ran the most!
Breaking down the swing states doesn’t make the picture look any better for the trans-truthers. Five of the seven swing states all had a smaller swing than the country as a whole. This includes two of the most traditionally conservative states, George and North Carolina, and my home state of Pennsylvania, where we were absolutely swamped with anti-trans ads in the campaigns’ desperate attempts to get our vote.
Nevertheless, LGBTQ+ people are aware that there has been a subset of people who see our existence of as over-the-top and wished they could be rid of us but didn’t want to say anything because it would be considered impolite. They just feel emboldened to speak their mind now. The only way to keep them from winning is to fight back, and one of the easiest, cheapest, quickest, and most effective ways to fight back is to contact your elected representatives.
5calls has tools for helping you contact your elected officials and a script to make it easier if you don’t know what to say. The U.S. government also provides a helpful tool for you to find out who your federal representatives are, as well as their office phone number and mailing address. I suggest that when you contact them you note that your vote is contingent on how they handle these issues: If they do not stand up for LGBTQ+ rights, you would be inclined to take your vote elsewhere. What that exactly means is up to you; you may decide to sit out their election, or support a primary challenge, or support someone from the other party (this particular threat has high salience for Republicans that aren’t in safe seats). Whatever your precise plan is, it is important that your officials are aware that LGBTQ+ rights and freedoms matter to you and impact the way you vote. If they don’t get with the program, they may be out of a job.
These next four years are going to be difficult for us all. We don’t need to throw anyone under the bus; the only way through it is together. Instead of bargaining away freedoms, let’s build stronger coalitions. Instead of tearing down the progress of the last three decades and going back, let’s build a better world together.