cass1312 (she/her)

My issue isn’t whether voting for a democratic candidate or not is better overall as a trans person, I think basically every trans person in the US knows that policy wise a democrat will, at worst, be the same as the republican they’re running against on trans rights specifically, and at least a bit better on some others. (There is a consistent belief on every one of these posts that somehow trans people don’t understand that as well, which is a different issue lol)

The point is that if a politician doesn’t lose support/votes for taking an anti-trans position, then there’s nothing punishing them for taking that position. That’s the argument being made about how voting for an anti-trans democrat is voting against your own good, not because of their policy specifically, but because by voting for them in spite of it you send a signal that their position on trans issues can be the same as a republicans as long as they’re marginally better than one in other ways.

For what its worth, I’m trans and am planning on voting for all Democrats in the midterms, even though I’m disappointed in a few of them. However, there are a couple candidates mentioned in this article specifically (namely cuellar + kaptur and a few others) where I think not voting for them has a very strong argument I’d consider if I lived in those states.

Currently in the US trans people in federal prisons are forcibly detransitioned, trans minors can’t access necessary healthcare, including the compromise option of puberty blockers, and “trans ideology” was included as one of the “biggest threats to america” in a terms of what the current administration is focusing on in the name of anti-terrorism. Saying that trying to improve that situation is “not high on your priorities” or “a major concern” just because trans people are a small part of the population (especially when discussing an article about the democratic party continuing to shift towards anti-trans language and policy) is, at best, extremely insensitive.

I like how its always a minorities job to vote against their own self interest “for the greater good” and not the job of a Democratic politician to not throw them under the bus. Especially with how seemingly extremely important this one demographic is if a significant portion of said demographic not voting will cause the candidate to lose.

A deeply unpopular and morally bankrupt position that costs key votes for a Democratic candidate, and then leads to neoliberals blaming a minority group’s lack of support for the candidate losing rather than the candidate choosing not to appeal to a seemingly very important chunk of their voting base? Maybe.