Almost three years ago, there were a round of Gallup polls on typical liberal v. conservative culture war issues. 55% of respondents stated that being transgender was wrong, in and of itself. The actual quote on the specific question was 51% but factors including party identification and adjacent issues pushed the average up by four points. As a trans person myself, that 55% deserved the headline. I chose not to post about it at the time because I was afraid I would sound paranoid. It even sounded like a strangely granular parsing of the issue for an outfit like Gallup. A part of me wasn’t quite convinced it was real.
Obviously I was naive.
Commentators stressed the distinction between classifying something as morally wrong and advocating discrimination. That, to me, sounds like the same kind of bullshit as ‘hate the sin not the sinner.’
Gallup also grouped the data into clusters of political affiliation and people who know trans people and those who do not. The number of those who know one of us was consistent with the percentage of those who said that being trans was morally acceptable: 30%-40%.
The irony is that anti-trans activists are afraid that medical transition will catch on like a social movement. If that were true, approval would be the only limiting factor.
We are not a social movement, though. None of us know why we are trans. If there was a ‘why’, as with a reasoned belief, this whole conversation would be easier. My belief is that we’re genetically predisposed. That is why we are always a statistical minority. It just doesn’t occur in nature very often. Since we do not often reproduce, the number slims down even more.
That also means that the number of people who “know a trans person” is always going to be tiny. Hopefully, whether or not we’re allowed to suck wind won’t always depend on our numbers.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/645704/slim-majority-adults-say-changing-gender-morally-wrong.aspx
AilixChaerea 