Lately, mainstream America’s been having a kind of wake-up about trans people. That’s mostly meant acknowledging that they exist and are human beings with feelings, which is kind of rudimentary as far as wake-ups go but it just shows you how much progress this country needs to make.
With heightened visibility, a lot of misconceptions are being challenged, pronouns honored, etc., and a raising of awareness for the often-overlooked T in LGBT has been a long time coming.
But there have been unexpected beneficiaries of America’s burgeoning trans visibility: Republicans, scrambling to find new villains to demonize now that they’re supposed to be nice to cis gay white folks.
You’ve surely heard all about the bathroom bills, which make life impossible for trans people by obsessing cruelly over their genitals every time they need to pee. The North Carolina bill is, in fact, far worse than just that; it also imposes harsh obstacles to claims of workplace discrimination and holds wages down, among other things.
Republicans absolutely love these bills, and not just because they rile up their base. Attacking trans people also riles up their enemies — liberals, leftists, LGBTs, civil rights activists — which just gives those Republicans more enemies to go after.
For example, an ESPN anchor recently signal-boosted a super-horrible anti-trans meme. ESPN fired him, much to the delight of Ted Cruz, who used it as an opportunity to go on a rant with Glenn Beck.
“ESPN fired Curt Schilling for making the rather obvious point that we shouldn’t allow grown male adult strangers alone in a bathroom with little girls,” Cruz said, and Glenn Beck agreed, saying that if bathroom bills can “save one little girl from being molested by a heterosexual pervert, we should do it.”
Yeah, okay, but the thing is: They can’t. Banning trans people from using the bathroom will not save little girls from heterosexual perverts. What are you even talking about? We’ve been over this many many times, but just to reiterate it, there has never ever been a case of a bathroom molestation that was made possible by inclusive bathrooms.
And yet, and yet, and yet… Sarah Palin vomited out her support for Curt Schilling, posting to Facebook that a trans women are really “40-year-old men wearing a dress in the girl’s restroom.”
Does she really believe that to be true? Doesn’t matter. All that matters is that she’s found an endless supply of wriggling worms to impale on the end of a fish hook over ignorant supporters.
And yes, there’ll be a price to pay for all this, but Ted Cruz and Sarah Palin won’t have to pay it. It’ll be paid by trans people and those who love and support them. After North Carolina’s bathroom bill passed, calls to a trans suicide hotline nearly doubled.
So thanks, Republicans, for finding a way to advance your careers by ruining other people’s lives.