I was at a concert recently and a person next to me was wearing a cross-body bag that read, “Speak Up for Your LGBTQ+ Friends.” This person appeared to be your average straight white guy.
The fact is, straight guys, even those who consider themselves to be allies, do not speak up for LGBTQ+ people often enough.
There are a lot of straight guys who aren’t against LGBTQ+ rights, but it’s not “their fight” because it doesn’t directly affect them. Never mind the fact that the people who are directly affected are their family, friends and community members. People they claim to love or at least care about. Straight guys are largely insulated from the harms that result from anti-LGBTQ policies. (Straight women less so since so much LGBTQ+ animus has roots in misogyny.)
It’s important to remember that not being against something isn’t the same as being for something. It’s also important to remember that it’s not enough to quietly support LGBTQ+ people and issues, especially if you’re a straight guy. You can’t assume that people know where you stand, because chances are they don’t and they’re making assumptions.
For example, as a white person I have had encounters with other white people where they say something racist to me, expecting me to agree with them or at least not be offended. As I’ve lived and learned, I now know that it’s important that I live my life and present myself in such a way that racist white people do not think I’m one of them.
Straight folks, you need to live your life and present yourself in such a way that people do not assume you are anti-LGBTQ+. (Unless you are anti-LGBTQ+. In that case, fuck you.) Because right now the loudest voices are screaming about “men in women’s sports” and getting rid of LGBTQ+ books from school libraries and banning trans health care. If you give a shit at all, you’ve got to add your voice to supporting LGBTQ+ people.
This goes for politicians, too. To every Democrat who thinks that they need to abandon trans people in order to win elections, I present to you Sen. Ed Markey’s recent defeat of Rep. Seth Moulton in the Democratic Senate primary election in Massachusetts.
Now, Sen. Markey is old. 80 years old, in fact. And there have definitely been calls for older Dems to step aside in favor of younger leadership.
Unless that younger leadership sucks. And Rep. Moulton sucks. He may be only 47, but he made the extremely gross decision to give credence to the right’s anti-trans hysteria.
On the issue of trans kids playing sports, Moulton said, “I have two little girls. I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete.” He later told The Advocate, “As a dad, this is something I think about, and I know others do, too,” and that he wasn’t trying to “undermine transgender rights but to highlight what he thinks is the necessity of addressing Republican attacks head-on.”
But agreeing with an attack isn’t exactly addressing that attack head-on. Moulton lent legitimacy to what is a bad-faith argument. Republicans do not care about girls and women, and they certainly do not care about the sports they play. If they did, they would actually fight for policies that protect girls and women from actual harms, not an imaginary trans specter.
Markey took a different route.
As Josh Ackley, writing for The Advocate, explains it, “[Markey] confronted Moulton, defended transgender young people, accused politicians of throwing vulnerable children under the political bus, and refused to behave as though association with transgender Americans represented some embarrassing liability requiring distance between himself and the people being attacked.”
And Markey won by 30 points.
This idea that trans issues are some kind of electric fence that will fry Democratic candidates if they dare come near it is bullshit.
Are there parents who ordinarily vote for Democrats for whom the issue of trans athletes girls’ sports is a top concern? Maybe. But Republicans are betting everything on trans people. Specifically on the hatred of trans people. They are hoping that voters get so fixated on this that they forget about the disastrous war with Iran, the high prices they’re paying at the gas station and supermarket, the attack on reproductive freedom, ICE killing people in the streets, immigrants being treated like criminals, the Reflecting Pool debacle, Trump tearing down the East Wing of the White House, lack of food safety oversight, making every meal a game of intestinal Russian roulette, and so much more.
Anyone who cares about a trans kid running track more than any of these issues is not going to vote for a Democrat. Period. Instead of pandering to anti-trans hysteria, Democrats should really be running on a platform of “Republicans want you to shit your pants and die” and make Republicans prove otherwise.