By Noah Rothman
Monday, November 25, 2024
It has become lamentably easy to list the
impositions on individual Americans, many of which represent grotesque
violations of conscience and liberty, for which the trans movement is
responsible.
Families forced to board their elementary-aged school girls with
adults who only identify as female; institutions that glamorize and subsidize hormonal and even
surgical “remedies” for gender dysphoria in minors; young women whose shot at
athletic excellence was stolen from them by administrators either in the thrall of
this faddish intellectual movement or hostage to it; and so on. Even the
compulsory exercise in thought policing represented by ever-evolving
pronoun-usage standards contributes to the impression that this is not the
egalitarian enterprise it claims to be. There’s a reason why Donald Trump’s “they/them” ad might have been the most
effective political spot of the 2024 presidential election cycle.
But why was it so effective? Former New Jersey governor
Chris Christie put his finger on one aspect. Most Americans “don’t see
themselves as they/them,” he observed. “Yet, the Democrats have spent more time
talking about a trans issue, which, quite frankly, is infinitesimal.” Christie
was corrected by his interlocutor, ABC News host Jonathan Karl, who insisted
that it was the GOP who talked more about trans issues than their Democratic
counterparts. If that is true, it is only insofar as Republicans played a
defensive role in this cultural crusade. The Democrats were the party on
offense, the vandals at the gates spoiling to tear down the existing cultural
compact.
To the extent their own activism gave rise to the
backlash that contributed to the party’s exile to the political wilderness,
Democrats only have themselves to blame. Joe Biden’s party gave itself over to
a maximalist activist class and lavishly financed its every flight of fancy. The vanguard
of the trans revolution treated anything other than total subservient fealty to
whatever voguish notion spilled off campus as a betrayal of first principles.
Too few within the Democratic firmament had the courage to say “no.”
Republicans are in the driver’s seat now, but they would
do well to avoid repeating the Democratic activist class’s mistakes.
Sacrificing the moral high ground in the effort to ingratiate itself with
sectarian zealots for this cause or the other is one of those pitfalls the GOP
could easily avoid.
The first step in the effort to steer clear of the trans
debate’s landmines would be to state plainly exactly what it is the GOP is
against. It should stand in opposition to those who would maximize their
liberty — even its most self-destructive expressions — at the expense of
others’.
There is a profound distinction that all but the
hopelessly ideologically captured would recognize between those who want to
live an unobtrusive life in their preferred identity and those who make a sport
of forcing you to recognize it. The properly socialized can distinguish the
pervert who wants to invade women’s spaces for the titillation of it — sexual
or otherwise — from the more modest sort that goes to self-conscious lengths to
blend in. It is, however, very difficult to codify this distinction in statute.
That is where the GOP risks overreading the moment and sacrificing the moral
high ground.
Representative Nancy Mace’s latest attempt to secure some
attention for herself is indicative of the risks Republicans may invite if they
join with Democrats in abandoning all discretion. The South Carolina
representative lobbied for and secured a rule change for the next Congress
aimed at excluding Representative-elect Sarah McBride from using women-only
facilities. McBride acquiesced — “I’m not here to fight about bathrooms,” a statement
read, which is an easy concession given the availability of private
facilities in the Capitol — but Mace vowed to fight on against . . . someone.
Ignited by her advocacy, more fanatical elements within
the GOP firmament soon took to calling the incoming representative “Tim” and
insisting that Mace’s reform should be applicable in private spaces beyond the
federal government’s reach. Some of this is performance art for the benefit of
an audience on social media, but there are doubtlessly sincere opponents of
transgenderism as a legitimate cultural practice in the mix.
Surely, there are many thoughtful and non-confrontational
Americans in this contingent who think it has all gone too far. There must be a
cultural rearguard action aimed at reversing the trans insanity that has been
foisted on the country, they might contend. In the process, however, they would
assume for themselves the credentials of a behavioral psychoanalyst as they
render an armchair diagnosis of mental illness, the cure for which must be
uncompromising and indiscriminate. If federal law must be the instrument of our
deliverance, so be it.
This is where the GOP risks losing the plot. First,
there’s the disparity of comportment on display in the two combatants in this
nascent ideological conflict. In a departure from the trans debate so far, Mace
appropriated from Democrats the role of cultural aggressor. That will enthrall
the right, but it risks sacrificing the GOP’s core advantage on this issue: the
appearance that it is fighting against discrimination (which Americans do not support regardless of the identity
of the individual experiencing discrimination).
The law is a blunt instrument. It can and should be used
in discrete ways that limit the potential for private or public discriminatory practices. But there
is a risk in crafting law that is overbroad and criminalizes conduct in ways no
constabulary would or could enforce. The law cannot distinguish the
thrill-seeking reprobate or the imperious meddler who wants to make women
uncomfortable for the sheer exhilaration of it and those who don’t make
themselves into spectacles. That is something only communities can police
through the application of discretion.
If social stigma is the most effective and least
obtrusive way to be rid of the trans movement’s excesses, the GOP should avoid
arresting the development and adoption of the cultural standards it seeks to
popularize. To the extent that the transgenderism fad is a social contagion
(the evidence for which is compelling, particularly among young people), making scofflaws out of
average law-abiding Americans while contributing to the taboo around that
status isn’t going to halt its spread. Quite the opposite, if past experience
is any indication.
There is nothing unnatural about the sudden flowering of
a high-handed backlash against what was itself a domineering and authoritarian
cultural fashion. And perhaps I’m wrong insofar as Americans will welcome an
indiscriminating remedy to the trans movement’s cultural expansionism. But even
if the activists struggle with the distinction, Americans, on the whole, are
probably more capable of recognizing the difference between an aggressor in the
trans cultural onslaught and someone who just wants to be left alone.
The Democrats’ mistake was to draft the nation into a
cultural conflict, only to find that Americans resented their conscription.
Republicans would be well served to heed the lesson there, observe the
voluntary principle, and err on the side of maximum individual liberty. The
alternative course might win accolades on social media and flood your coffers
with donations, but at the expense of winning the argument.
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