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trans rights
If It Wants to Understand Trump’s Win, Mainstream Media Should Look Inward
Rather than examining their own role in promoting the irrational fears that were the lifeblood of the successful Trump campaign, corporate media focused on their perennial electoral scapegoat: the left.
Nov 09, 2024
Corporate media may not have all the same goals as MAGA Republicans, but they share the same strategy: Fear works.
Appeals to fear have an advantage over other kinds of messages in that they stimulate the deeper parts of our brains, those associated with fight-or-flight responses. Fear-based messages tend to circumvent our higher reasoning faculties and demand our attention, because evolution has taught our species to react strongly and quickly to things that are dangerous.
It’s simply a fantasy (advanced repeatedly by Republicans) that Harris was running on identity politics, or as a radical progressive.
This innate human tendency has long been noted by the media industry (Psychology Today,12/27/21), resulting in the old press adage, “If it bleeds, it leads.” Politicians, too, are aware of this brain hack (Conversation, 1/11/19)—and no one relies on evoking fear more than once-and-future President Donald Trump (New York Times, 10/1/24).
This is why coverage of issues in this election season have dovetailed so well with the Trump campaign’s lines of attack against the Biden/Harris administration—even in outlets that are editorially opposed, at least ostensibly, to Trumpism.
Scary Issues
Take immigration, a topic that could easily be covered as a human interest story, with profiles of people struggling to reach a better life against stark challenges. Instead, corporate media tend to report on it as a “border crisis,” with a “flood” of often-faceless migrants whose very existence is treated as a threat (FAIR.org, 5/24/21).
This is the news business deciding that fear attracts and holds an audience better than empathy does. And that business model would be undermined by reporting that consistently acknowledged that the percentage of U.S. residents who are undocumented workers rose only slightly under the Biden administration, from 3.2% in 2019 to 3.3% in 2022 (the latest year available)—and is down from a peak of 4.0% in 2007 (Pew, 7/22/24; FAIR.org, 10/16/24).
With refugees treated as a scourge in centrist and right-wing media alike, is it any wonder that Trump can harvest votes by promising to do something about this menace? Eleven percent of respondents in NBC‘s exit poll said that immigration was the single issue that mattered most in casting their vote; 90% of the voters in that group voted for Trump.
Crime is another fear-based issue that Trump hammered on in his stump speech. “Have you seen what’s been happening?” he said of Washington, D.C. (Washington Post, 3/11/24). “Have you seen people being murdered? They come from South Carolina to go for a nice visit and they end up being murdered, shot, mugged, beat up.”
Trump could make such hyperbolic claims sound credible because corporate media had paved the way with alarmist coverage of crime (FAIR.org, 11/10/22). It was rare to see a report that acknowledged, as an infographic in The New York Times (7/24/24) did, that crime has dropped considerably from 2020 to 2024, when it hit a four-decade low (FAIR.org, 7/26/24).
‘Classic Fear Campaign’
Trans people, improbably enough, are another favorite subject of fear stories for media and MAGA alike. “Republicans spent nearly $215 million on network TV ads vilifying transgender people this election cycle,” Truthout (11/5/04) reported, with Trump spending “more money on anti-trans ads than on ads concerning housing, immigration, and the economy combined.”
Journalist Erin Reed (PBS “NewsHour,” 11/2/24) described this as “a classic fear campaign”:
The purpose of a fear campaign is to distract you from issues that you normally care about by making you so afraid of a group of people, of somebody like me, for instance, that you’re willing to throw everything else away because you’re scared.
Transphobia has been a major theme in right-wing media, but has been a prominent feature of centrist news coverage as well, particularly in The New York Times (FAIR.org, 5/11/23). Rather than reporting centered on trans people, which could have humanized a marginalized demographic that’s unfamiliar to many readers, the Times chose instead to present trans youth in particular as a threat—focusing on “whether trans people are receiving too many rights, and accessing too much medical care, too quickly,” as FAIR noted.
‘Alienating Voters’ With ‘Progressive Agenda’
But rather than examining their own role in promoting the irrational fears that were the lifeblood of the successful Trump campaign, corporate media focused on their perennial electoral scapegoat: the left (FAIR.org, 11/5/21). The New York Times editorial board (11/6/24) quickly diagnosed the Democrats’ problem (aside from sticking with President Joe Biden too long):
The party must also take a hard look at why it lost the election... It took too long to recognize that large swaths of their progressive agenda were alienating voters, including some of the most loyal supporters of their party. And Democrats have struggled for three elections now to settle on a persuasive message that resonates with Americans from both parties who have lost faith in the system—which pushed skeptical voters toward the more obviously disruptive figure, even though a large majority of Americans acknowledge his serious faults. If the Democrats are to effectively oppose Mr. Trump, it must be not just through resisting his worst impulses but also by offering a vision of what they would do to improve the lives of all Americans and respond to anxieties that people have about the direction of the country and how they would change it.
It’s a mind-boggling contortion of logic. The Times doesn’t say which aspects of Democrats’ “progressive agenda” were so alienating to people. But the media all agreed—based largely on exit polls—that Republicans won because of the economy and immigration. The “persuasive message” and “vision… to improve the lives of all Americans” that Democrats failed to offer was pretty clearly an economic one. Which is exactly what progressives in the party have been pushing for the last decade: Medicare for All, a wealth tax, a living minimum wage, etc. In other words, if the Democrats had adopted a progressive agenda, it likely would have been their best shot at offering that vision to improve people’s lives.
More likely, the paper was referring to “identity politics,” which has been a media scapegoat for years—indeed, pundits roundly blamed Hillary Clinton’s loss to Trump on identity politics (or “political correctness”) (FAIR.org, 11/20/16). Then, as now, it was an accusation without evidence.
‘Democratic Self-Sabotage’
At The Washington Post, columnist Matt Bai‘s answer (11/6/24) to “Where Did Kamala Harris’ Campaign Go Wrong?” was, in part, that “Democrats have dug themselves into a hole on cultural issues and identity politics,” naming Trump’s transphobic ads as evidence of that. (In a Postroundup of columnist opinions, Bai declared that Harris “couldn’t outrun her party’s focus on trans rights and fighting other forms of oppression.”)
At the same time, Bai acknowledged that he does “think of Trump as being equally consumed with identity—just a different kind.” Fortunately for Republicans, Bai and his fellow journalists never take their kind of identity politics as worth highlighting (FAIR.org, 9/18/24).
George Will (10/6/24), a Never Trumper at The Washington Post, chalked up Harris’s loss largely to “the Democratic Party’s self-sabotage, via identity politics (race, gender), that made Harris vice president.”
Bret Stephens (10/6/24), one of The New York Times‘ set of Never Trumpers, likewise pointed a finger at Democrats’ supposed tilt toward progressives and “identity.” Much like other pundits, Stephens argued that “the politics of today’s left is heavy on social engineering according to group identity.”
Of the Harris campaigns’ “tactical missteps,” Stephens’ first complaint was “her choice of a progressive running mate”—Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. He also accused the party of a “dismissiveness toward the moral objections many Americans have to various progressive causes.” Here he mentioned trans kids’ rights, DEI seminars, and “new terminology that is supposed to be more inclusive,” none of which Harris vocally embraced.
But underlying all of these arguments is a giant fundamental problem: It’s simply a fantasy (advanced repeatedly by Republicans) that Harris was running on identity politics, or as a radical progressive. News articles (e.g., Slate, 9/5/24; Forbes, 11/5/24) regularly acknowledged that Harris, in contrast to Hillary Clinton, for instance, shied away from centering her gender or ethnic background, or appealing to identity in her campaign.
‘Wary and Alienated’
The Times‘ own reporting made Harris’s distancing from progressive politics perfectly clear not two weeks ago, in an article (10/24/24) headlined, “As Harris Courts Republicans, the Left Grows Wary and Alienated.” In a rare example of the Times centering a left perspective in a political article, reporters Nicholas Nehamas and Erica L. Green wrote:
In making her closing argument this month, Ms. Harris has campaigned four times with Liz Cheney, the Republican former congresswoman, stumping with her more than with any other ally. She has appeared more in October with the billionaire Mark Cuban than with Shawn Fain, the president of the United Auto Workers and one of the nation’s most visible labor leaders.
She has centered her economic platform on middle-class issues like small businesses and entrepreneurship rather than raising the minimum wage, a deeply held goal of many Democrats that polls well across the board. She has taken a harder-line stance on the border than has any member of her party in a generation and has talked more prominently about owning a Glock than about combating climate change. She has not broken from President Biden on the war Israel is waging in Gaza.
Kamala Harris did not run as a progressive, either in terms of economic policy or identity politics. But to a corporate media that largely complemented, rather than countered, Trump’s fear-based narratives on immigrants, trans people, and crime, blaming the left is infinitely more appealing than recognizing their own culpability.
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We Gave ‘Transvestigators’ an Olympic Stage—Here’s How We Take It Back
The attacks against Algerian boxer Imane Khelif show why cis women must join trans women in this fight against having our bodies and gender debated and defined.
Aug 20, 2024
As the 2024 Paris Olympics come to a close, it’s heartbreaking to see that instead of celebrating the unity these games are meant to inspire, we were forced to collectively watch the opposite—a deepening divide among us. The original values of Olympism were to “encourage effort,” “preserve human dignity,” and “develop harmony.” And it seems when presented with those opportunities, we failed on all three of those fronts as a society.
As a trans woman, I am deeply disturbed by the narrative that was allowed to surround Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, whose victory against Italian boxer Angela Carini in the women’s welterweight boxing tournament was overshadowed by baseless accusations and transphobic conspiracy theories. These attacks were given a national stage by conservative figures, who falsely claimed that Khelif is biologically male, feeding into the ugly rise of a conspiracy theory known as “transvestigations.”
These so-called “transvestigations” are a disturbing form of misogyny, and part of another category of transphobia known as transmisogyny, targeting women under the guise of protecting womanhood. Khelif is a cisgender woman, assigned female at birth, and identifies as a woman. Yet, her victory, that should have been internationally lauded, was met with a wave of online harassment and accusations.
When we allow fear and hatred to dictate who counts as a “real woman,” we undermine the very foundation of women’s rights.
This is the chilling reality of the world we live in: Anti-trans and transphobic narratives have seeped into the mainstream, reaching a global stage. Now, it’s not just trans women who are under attack by those with nothing better to do than police gender and spread disinformation, but cis women too—anyone whose womanhood doesn’t fit an impossible standard.
“Transvestigations” didn’t start with Khelif, and unfortunately, they won’t end with her. It’s a new label for an old problem—misogyny rebranded, now weaponized against both cis and trans women. It’s a way to attack women while pretending to defend them. It uses language that claims to protect women’s rights but only protects women who fit a certain mold. Many other Olympic athletes—especially women of color—have been subjected to having their gender analyzed because of their strength, abilities, and looks. And when birth certificates, health records, or hormonal testing aren’t enough to satiate this mob of “transvestigators,” they move the goalpost further, constantly redefining what it is to be a woman.
It concerns me to know that cis women are now being persecuted in the same way myself and my trans sisters have been since the beginning of time. As these persecutions intensify, the barometer and measure of “womanhood” will continue to be pushed and challenged. Are we going to start declaring that women with conditions like polycystic ovary syndrome, or women who undergo IVF, aren’t “real” women? Are we going to label women who choose not to have children as less of a woman? Are we going to question the gender of our mothers, sisters, and aunts who have undergone breast augmentation after cancer? Are we going to no longer consider our grandmothers who receive hormonal therapy during menopause to be women? Are we going to let these harmful, misogynistic, arbitrary definitions of womanhood continue to divide us? If you are a woman or care about women and girls, this should worry you as well.
Khelif won the gold, but at what cost? She defended herself in the ring but entered an even bigger battle having to defend her human dignity. She spoke out after her quarterfinal win, urging spectators to refrain from bullying athletes, highlighting the devastating impact such attacks have on mental health. She said, “It can destroy people, it can kill people’s thoughts, spirit, and mind. It can divide people. And because of that, I ask them to refrain from bullying.”
If this is the impact on a cis woman, imagine the daily mental toll on trans women who face this scrutiny not just in sports, but in every aspect of their lives. Transgender people are over four times more likely than cisgender people to experience violent victimization. Forty-three percent of transgender youth have been bullied on school property, compared with 18% of cisgender youth. And now, many human rights organizations are declaring an epidemic of violence against trans people in the United States because of the uptick in attacks, an explosion in violent and hateful rhetoric aimed at the LGBTQ+ community, and the onslaught of discriminatory legislation.
As a trans woman, I know all too well the pain of having my humanity debated, politicized, and threatened. But the harm doesn’t stop with trans women. When we allow these narratives to flourish, when we let public opinion dictate who is “woman enough,” we are all at risk. Consider the growing number of anti-trans bills in the U.S. that seek to police gender in ways that hurt everyone. In states like Idaho, Arizona, and Georgia, these laws are putting young girls at risk, subjecting them to invasive exams to “prove” their gender, such as genital exams, before they can compete in sports.
This is not protection—it’s abuse. It’s a violation of bodily autonomy, and it’s a betrayal of everything women have fought for. The sad truth is that these policies, framed as protecting women, do the exact opposite. They endanger all women and girls, creating an environment where no one is safe from scrutiny.
The reality is that transphobia and transmisogyny don’t just harm the trans community—they harm everyone. When we allow fear and hatred to dictate who counts as a “real woman,” we undermine the very foundation of women’s rights. We allow the patriarchy to pit us against each other. They are creating infighting against an imaginary enemy, saying trans women are the true threat to feminism, distracting us from uniting against the real forces that oppress us all.
Imane Khelif’s story is a powerful reminder of what’s at stake. But this is not just about her—it’s about all of us. It’s about the girls and women who will come after her, who will face the same scrutiny if we don’t stand up now and stand up together. Cis women must join us in this fight against having our bodies and gender debated and defined.
This fight isn’t just for trans women—it’s for all women. It’s for anyone who believes in the right to define our own identities, free from the fear of harassment, discrimination, and violence. I hope that out of this, we will see more allies, more voices speaking out against the dangerous rhetoric of “transvestigations.” I hope that cis women will join us on the frontlines and join us in declaring it is not up to the government or the public to define our womenness, or moreso, our humanness.
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In Milwaukee, the GOP United Around Hate
Most convention speakers called for unity by rallying their base against marginalized communities like immigrants, trans people, and others they consider undesirable.
Jul 20, 2024
The Republican National Convention here in Milwaukee seems very far away from Ripon, Wisconsin, the birthplace of the Republican Party.
As one approaches the RNC, inside the heavily guarded, temporary steel wall erected around Milwaukee’s downtown as part of this so-called National Special Security Event, one encounters a side street next to Media Row, filled with food vendors, a stage, t-shirt and souvenir booths, and a slew of organizations touting conservative issues. Also present is a replica of The Little White Schoolhouse, towed into place by the Ripon Chamber of Commerce. It was in the actual schoolhouse, still standing in Ripon some 90 miles northwest of Milwaukee, that a group of abolitionists launched their new Republican Party on March 20, 1854.
The abolitionists who met in Ripon in 1854 included many from a nearby socialist community known as Ceresco. They felt the freedom they sought should be enjoyed by all, including the millions of people enslaved in the U.S. Two years after the party formed, an Illinois lawyer named Abraham Lincoln joined. In 1858, he ran a failed Senate campaign against a pro-slavery Democrat, Stephen Douglas, then, in 1860, ran for president. Southern states began seceding within months of Lincoln’s election, launching the nation into civil war.
“They have nothing else to offer the American people. It’s scapegoating politics, rooted in stoking fear and stoking hate and creating the impression that there’s a dystopic reality at the border, which simply is not the case.”
Several years earlier, in 1850, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act, giving bounty hunters from the South significant powers to abduct and remove suspected runaway enslaved people from the North to the South. When Joshua Glover, an escaped slave from Missouri living in Wisconsin, was caught and held overnight in the Milwaukee jail in 1854, a crowd of up to 6,000 formed, stormed the jail, freed Glover, and helped him escape to Canada. It was the Glover incident that spurred the Wisconsinites to finally launch their new abolitionist political party.
“Resolved… we will cooperate and be known as Republicans… we cordially invite all persons, whether of native or foreign birth, who are in favor of the objects expressed, to unite with us,” read one of the founding resolutions. The principal “object expressed,” their main goal, was the abolition of slavery in the United States.
One hundred seventy years later, the rhetoric pouring forth from the RNC podium sounds strikingly different. Back in 1854, immigrants were a large part of the population swelling new states like Wisconsin. Now, hostility to immigrants is a central theme of the Trump campaign. Former U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the streamlining of the GOP’s platform from 66 pages of detailed policy prescriptions to a compact, 16-page document.
“We must deport the millions of illegal Migrants who Joe Biden has deliberately encouraged to invade our Country,” it reads, promising to “begin [the] largest deportation program in American history.” Many delegates at the convention were enthusiastically holding signs that read, “Mass Deportation Now!”
On stage at the Fiserv Forum, MAGA Republican loyalists spoke from the podium, heaping praise on their party’s unquestioned leader, Donald Trump, just days after an attempted assassination that left him with a bloodied right ear over which he now wears a white bandage. A number of Republican delegates have been wearing symbolic ear patches in solidarity.
Speakers compared Trump to legendary leaders like President Abraham Lincoln, Civil War General then President Ulysses S. Grant and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. In the wake of last Saturday’s assassination attempt in Pennsylvania, several key Republicans, including Donald Trump himself, are calling for national unity. Unfortunately, most convention speakers are calling for unity by rallying their base against marginalized communities like immigrants, trans people, and others they consider undesirable.
“We are facing an invasion on our southern border—not figuratively, a literal invasion,” Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said from the podium. “Every day Americans are dying, murdered, assaulted, raped by illegal immigrants that the Democrats have released.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who has engineered an armed standoff between Texas National Guardsmen and U.S. federal border agents, and who proudly busses desperate migrants to cities run by Democrats, spoke as well:
“Biden has welcomed into our country rapists, murderers, even terrorists.” In fact, the crime rate in the immigrant population is far less than in the general U.S. population.
Responding on the Democracy Now! news hour in Milwaukee, Jean Guerrero, a senior fellow at the UCLA Latina Futures 2050 Lab, said, “They have nothing else to offer the American people. It’s scapegoating politics, rooted in stoking fear and stoking hate and creating the impression that there’s a dystopic reality at the border, which simply is not the case.”
The answer to the current threat to democracy is more democracy. “Knocking on doors and talking to people,” Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of Voces de la Frontera Action, suggested as the best organizing strategy, speaking on Democracy Now! “You need to get the word out, because every vote counts.”
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