The Upshot of Trump’s Trans Pledge

 

President Trump has sworn to keep men out of women only spaces and sports, stop ‘child abuse’ in schools that offer puberty blockers, breast binders and other so – called gender affirming care to minors by threatening to cut off federal funding and warning that punitive action will be taken against medical practitioners who perform sex – change procedures. He also insisted that he will make the US Government recognise only two genders (he means sexes) – male and female.

Trans activists and The American Civil Liberties Union will fight these policies in court, but one wonders if they will prevail given that Trump has been given an overwhelming mandate and has the Senate as well as Congressional majority which will allow him to stack the Supreme Court as he sees fit. Gender ideology may not have been the only factor that tipped the scales in favour of Trump, but it certainly was a major one. Especially when Trump’s campaign aired an advert with the wildly popular tagline, ‘Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you’ that promptly went viral.

Kamala Harris sought to win over the women voters by bringing up the great abortion debate but ironically, Trump who has repeatedly been accused of sexual assault emerged as the crusader who would safeguard women’s rights and protect them from men who identify as women. The trans issue which saw the Dems greenlight questionable procedures and policies while ignoring or cancelling women who protested, might have been the straw that broke the back of the moderates or centrists and made Trump voters out of them.

Trump is right to address some of these concerns particularly with regard to troubled kids whose parents have been demonised in their eyes by gender idealogues who encourage them to undergo irreversible medical treatments with little proven benefits, without considering the far – reaching physical and psychological ramifications. But rolling back trans rights in its entirety is extreme and unfair.

Many female athletes feel the Olympic bosses let them down long before the Imane Khelif gender row. Their concerns are valid since scientifically, athletes who are intersex or have DSD (Difference of Sexual Development) meaning they appear to be girls at birth but have an internal testis, may have an unfair edge over biological females. This also applies to men who have transitioned. But one cannot help but recall that Indian athletes like Santhi Soundarajan, Dutee Chand and Pinki Pramanik were humiliated and traumatized over ‘failed’ gender tests, that makes one sympathetic to their plight.  

Women who complain about men in skirts being allowed access to female only spaces putting them at risk, make a crucial point especially since no woman anywhere in the world is safe from the threat of rape. But the trans community has endured privation and oppression for too long. Denying them their hard-won rights is cruel and cannot be endorsed in good conscience. We must work twice as hard to create a world that honours women’s as well as trans rights. To do that we need not veer between the extreme right or left but create a space somewhere in the middle where peaceful coexistence is possible, provided we act with common sense and conscientiousness.

This article was originally published in TNIE Magazine