ELi5: Why has the trans community become so political ly important?

Question

I was born in the early 90’s, and have known about trans people for as long as I can remember. Why, all of a sudden, are trans people/ the trans community so important in American politics?

I don’t understand why this community is NOW perceived as some battleground for political stances?

Please don’t take me the wrong way… But I’d like someone to explain to me the nuances of this because to me it just seems like a nonsensical distraction from actually important issues. Not to say trans rights are not important, but it just seems like this attack has sprouted out of nowhere?

In: Other

Answer 1

The US Republican party, at large, and specifically the more ultra right-wing parts of the party are a shrinking amount of the electorate. How they keep holding on to such large amounts of power in the country is by motivating their people to vote. If there are 1000 Democratic voters and only 100 Republican voters, a Republican candidate will win if only 150 votes are cast total and the Republicans cast 100 of those votes while 950 Democrats sat on their butts at home.

One tactic to motivate their voters is to spread outright lies about some scary “other” that represents the opposition that threatens their way of life. That used to be black people (stealing out white women to “pollute” the gene pool) and other immigrants (stealing the jobs of hardworking Americans), and these attacks still exist, by the way. But as society as a whole is more accepting of people, the GOP has to find a different target. They moved on to gays and lesbians (wanting to make everyone gay) for a while, especially in the 80’s and 90’s. Again, these lies are still told today.

Now it’s transgender people. The average person has a hard time understanding “all this trans stuff.” Part of that problem is confusion over how to refer to them, what pronouns to use, and all of the other intricacies that exist within the community- and that’s for people who are accepting. For those that don’t even want to acknowledge their existence at all, they become an easy “other” that no one can understand who must be trying to change how all Americans live. Transgender people have become the latest “threat to American society” to use by the GOP to motivate their voters.