Republicans Are Betting on Anti-Trans Prejudice to Win Swing States

Some
of the Democrats targeted have by now responded with their own ads. But the ads
made by campaigns for Senator Sherrod Brown and Representative Colin
Allred—meant to address their opponents’ claims that they support “biological
transgender men” in girls’ and women’s sports—“have not
inspired trans folks that they’ll have our back,” MSNBC columnist Katelyn Burns
recently wrote. Allred’s ad stated he didn’t support “boys
playing girls’ sports,” without any clarity on what he meant by that, while
Brown’s ad says that transgender girls have
“already been banned” from playing girls’ sports in his state. Neither ad says
that excluding trans girls from sports is wrong. “It may seem like a sensible
political strategy, given how radioactive the polling
is about
trans athletes,” wrote Burns, “but characterizing trans girls as boys in a
sports context would lead one to characterize them as such in other contexts,
too.” Rather than point to their own records of affirming trans rights, Democrats
have ignored them. Even Harris, when asked in an interview about the ads
attacking her over gender-affirming care for incarcerated trans people, simply responded that she was following the law.

Whoever
these ads are for, whether they win this election or not, they are landing in a
moment of increasing scapegoating of trans people. Jones recently reported on groups such as the Proud Boys,
who since the January 6 attack on the Capitol and the ensuing prosecutions of
their leadership have intensified their harassment of queer and
trans people as a recruitment tactic. “I cannot help but be very aware of the
fact that in the closing days of the campaign that they are dumping an
inordinate amount of money and putting the time of their candidate into … talking
about trans people in this way,” said Jones. “I think that that message is
heard by these groups.”

Trump
made an appearance on Tuesday at a barber shop in the Bronx, aired on Fox, in
which he claimed, “There are some places, your boy
leaves the school, comes back a girl. Without parental consent. What is that
all about?” Some of the men who could be seen on camera laughed, a few nodded.
Maybe the claim sounded like another nonsense Trump line to a lot of viewers. Or
they might not know that such claims have led to bomb threats against schools and health
clinics, led trans kids to higher rates of attempted suicide. And some
viewers might not register Trump’s lies about trans kids and schools until hearing
them repeated in an ad later.  Maybe some
will go on to repeat it online. Maybe some will act on it, on election day or
after.