{"id":26904,"date":"2023-06-10T13:18:49","date_gmt":"2023-06-10T20:18:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=26904"},"modified":"2023-06-10T13:18:50","modified_gmt":"2023-06-10T20:18:50","slug":"gop-anti-trans-agenda-is-a-shiny-object-to-distract-from-war-on-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2023\/06\/10\/gop-anti-trans-agenda-is-a-shiny-object-to-distract-from-war-on-women\/","title":{"rendered":"GOP ANTI-TRANS AGENDA IS A SHINY OBJECT TO DISTRACT FROM WAR ON WOMEN"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

FRI, 6\/9\/2023 – BY\u00a0CARL GIBSON<\/a> (Occupy.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Republican Party\u2019s outright hatred of the transgender population<\/a> is at a boiling point. As of this writing, 543 bills<\/a> limiting the rights of transgender Americans have been introduced in 49 states, with 70 of those bills passing in 14 state legislatures<\/a>. An additional 17 states have anti-trans bills pending, as legislative sessions in those states are ongoing. This is an obviously disproportionate number of bills targeting one group of people, given that a 2022 study<\/a> by researchers at the University of California-Los Angeles estimated there were just 1.6 million Americans who identified as transgender \u2013 approximately 0.5 percent of the US population. Around 20 percent of the transgender population are children between the ages of 13 and 17, according to UCLA. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to proponents of these bills, the argument in favor of curtailing transgender Americans\u2019 rights varies from \u201cprotecting women\u2019s sports\u201d to unfounded fears about \u201cgroomers\u201d and sexual predators supposedly masquerading as drag queens. However, according to attorney Krista Prata Browde of Browde Law<\/a>, no drag queens have been arrested for sex crimes against minors, at least so far this year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Browde has been documenting arrests of pedophiles<\/a> on her TikTok<\/a> profile since this Spring, and while the arrests include religious leaders<\/a> and right-wing politicians<\/a>, drag queens are conspicuously absent from her tally. And as Occupy.com previously reported, numerous Republican elected officials and staffers<\/a> over the years have been arrested for pedophilia, child pornography, and other sex crimes targeting minors. In the face of the unusually high number<\/a> of Republican officials being charged and convicted of sex crimes, it could be easily argued that Republicans\u2019 accusations of grooming and pedophilia is classic projection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Logically, this means that since Republican politicians are statistically far more likely than drag queens and transgender people to be accused or convicted of sex crimes against minors, the GOP\u2019s doubling down<\/a> on anti-trans politics could be for a different purpose altogether: Gaining back the support of women voters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"#letkidsplay\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The GOP\u2019s war on women cost them politically<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Following the US Supreme Court\u2019s overturning<\/a> of the Roe v. Wade decision in 2022, what was supposed to be a \u201cred wave\u201d midterm election failed to pan out. Even though Republicans gained back control of the House of Representatives (largely due to strategic racial gerrymandering<\/a> of Congressional districts) in the midterms last year, they lost ground in the US Senate, with Democrats having a definitive majority for the first time since 2014. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reasons for Republicans\u2019 failure to retake the Senate was partially due to the unpopularity of Trump-endorsed candidates<\/a>, but nationwide support for legal abortion was arguably the chief reason for the Republican Party\u2019s tepid performance in November. In every state where an anti-abortion measure was on the 2022 ballot \u2013 even in rural, red states like Kansas<\/a>, Kentucky<\/a>, and Montana<\/a> \u2013 anti-abortion proponents lost. The reason for this seems obvious on its face: Women make up half of the electorate, and most women are statistically not in favor of laws taking away their reproductive freedom. A 2022 Pew study found that nearly two-thirds of women<\/a> think abortion should be legal in all or most cases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Women voters\u2019 support for legal abortion presents a problem for the Republican Party\u2019s continued political survival, given that it has historically taken an anti-abortion stance for decades. According to polling from YouGov, female approval of the Republican Party was less than 30 percent<\/a> in October of 2021, with nearly 62 percent of women disapproving of the GOP. But after Republicans\u2019 weaponization of culture war politics against the transgender population heated up in recent years, they\u2019ve gained back tremendous ground with women voters. By April 2023, YouGov polling showed Republicans had the support of 46 percent of women \u2013 a 16-point swing in less than two years. This may very well be due to the GOP\u2019s proclaimed stance on \u201cprotecting women\u2019s sports\u201d by bullying the transgender community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier this year, Mother Jones reported on a trove of emails<\/a> it obtained showing the depth of planning by various well-funded far-right groups to unleash a wave of anti-trans legislation in statehouses across the country. The groups behind the push include the Alliance Defending Freedom (effectively the religious right\u2019s version of the ACLU) and the Koch-funded Heritage Foundation, among others. This group is the same one that convinced a federal judge in Texas to suspend FDA approval<\/a> of the abortion pill Mifepristone, which has been safely used in medication abortions (the majority<\/a> of abortions in the US are done with medication) for more than two decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of the bills the group advocates for would ban gender-affirming care for minors and limit transgender participation in school sports by requiring trans boys and girls to compete in the sport associated with their biological sex. But these two goals are paradoxical by nature, showing the limit of Republican knowledge about transgender athletic competition and the human endocrine system. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Republican arguments against trans athletes not based in science<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

USA Swimming \u2013 the governing body that oversees competitive swimming in the United States all the way up to the Olympic level \u2013 now requires transgender female swimmers to take testosterone suppressants for at least three years<\/a> before being eligible for competition. However, this would fall under the umbrella of gender-affirming care. This means in states where gender-affirming care for minors is banned, a transgender swimmer would have to break the law in order to comply with the requirements of her sport. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The prevailing argument against transgender inclusion in competitive sports is that trans women (born with male organs) have inherent physiological advantages. However, the medical community has long since debunked this argument. In 2010, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) required<\/a> that transgender athletes undergo at least one year of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) before being eligible to compete in a sport associated with their new gender. Endocrinologists have since endorsed<\/a> the NCAA\u2019s rulings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cResearch suggests that androgen deprivation and cross sex hormone treatment in male-to-female transsexuals reduces muscle mass,” Dr. Eric Vilain, Ph.D., professor, and director of the Center for Gender-Based Biology and Chief Medical Genetics Department of Pediatrics at UCLA, said in 2014. “Accordingly, one year of hormone therapy is an appropriate transitional time before a male-to-female student-athlete competes on a women’s team.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAccording to medical experts on this issue, the assumption that a transgender girl or woman competing on a women’s team would have a competitive advantage outside the range of performance and competitive advantage or disadvantage that already exists among female athletes is not supported by evidence,\u201d Drs. Pat Griffin and Helen J. Carroll wrote in a 2010 study<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aside from outliers like swimmer Lia Thomas, most notable transgender female athletes have had fairly mediocre performances in women\u2019s sports. Tennis player Renee Richards<\/a> didn\u2019t make it past the first round of the 1977 US Open, and ended up quitting tennis to become an ophthalmologist. In 2021, Olympic weightlifter Laurel Hubbard failed to make the final<\/a>, with her cisgender female opponents at the Tokyo Olympics all beating her to the podium. In fact, some of the most successful trans athletes have actually been transgender men (born with female organs), further debunking arguments about the supposed dominance of trans women in women\u2019s sports. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Runner Chris Mosier, who began his transition from female to male in 2010, qualified<\/a> for the Men\u2019s Team USA sprint duathlon roster in 2015, and competed in the 2016 world championships (he was unable to finish due to injury). In Texas, high school wrestler Mack Beggs, who is a trans boy, won the girls\u2019 state championship<\/a> in 2018. Though Beggs has asked to compete in the boys\u2019 division, Texas requires athletes to compete in the sport associated with the gender on their birth certificate, meaning Beggs has to compete in the girls\u2019 division. In this way, Republicans\u2019 anti-trans policies effectively make sports even less favorable for cisgender athletes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite their anti-trans arguments being repeatedly debunked by scientists, Republicans are winning the culture war and are poised to win further electoral victories by spreading vitriol against the transgender community. They\u2019re counting on the media to continue their false assumption that the GOP\u2019s anti-trans campaign is being conducted in good faith, in order to win back enough women voters to be electorally competitive in 2024 and beyond. This means it\u2019s incumbent on journalists, columnists, and pundits everywhere to thoroughly educate themselves on gender identity issues and the ins and outs of the endocrine system to recognize Republicans\u2019 war on the trans community for what it is: Smoke and mirrors for the sake of bullying a vulnerable population to score cheap political points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carl Gibson is an independent journalist whose work has been published in CNN, The Guardian, The Washington Post, The Houston Chronicle, The Louisville Courier-Journal, Barron\u2019s, The Independent, and NPR, among others.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FRI, 6\/9\/2023 – BY\u00a0CARL GIBSON (Occupy.com) The Republican Party\u2019s outright hatred of the transgender population is at a boiling point. As of this writing, 543 bills limiting the rights of transgender Americans have been introduced in 49 states, with 70 of those bills passing in 14 state legislatures. An additional 17 states have anti-trans bills… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26904"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26904"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26905,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26904\/revisions\/26905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}