“What a Day” podcast host and out journalist Jane Coaston delivered a fierce critique of recent commentary that claimed support for transgender people somehow led to election failure: “Come the entire F on.”
In the November 11th episode, Coaston called out Massachusetts Rep. Seth Moulton’s baseless fears about trans girls playing sports, as well as former journalist and frequent trans critic Bari Weiss’s definitions of “elite” and Vice President-elect JD Vance, whose campaign rhetoric included the fully-fabricated suggestion that students are using trans identity to game the “DEI culture” and get into Ivy League colleges. Coaston factchecked: out of 1,143 Yale students surveyed, about 70% of the class of 2021, only two identified as transgender.
“This is stupid. Especially since so much of it is coming from people who, you guessed it, think being trans is suspicious and bad in the first place. When we’ve got a hammer, everything looks like a nail. But also, this is irritatingly important. The wider strategy on the right is to say that a trans woman who works at a Starbucks in Iowa City is a coddled elite, while Elon Musk, the world’s richest man… is somehow just an ordinary everyday joe. Elite doesn’t mean anything if it never applies to the richest people alive and only applies to minorities some people decide to get mad at a few times a year and the people who care about them.”
Transgender people are dramatically more likely to suffer financial distress and housing insecurity, according to recent economic surveys and trans people themselves. This includes lower unemployment rates, lower household incomes, increased food insecurity, and health care discrimination, on top of a surge of bans against health care for trans youth in at least 20 states. Transgender people were also elected to office this year in historic fashion, including in red and blue states, including the first out trans member of Congress, Sarah McBride.
Coaston recalled that the blame game is familiar, that “we have been here before.” In 2004, opponents of marriage equality pushed ballot measures in eleven states across the country to drive right wing voters to the polls. Commentators casting for reasons why John Kerry lost the presidential election blamed marriage equality efforts instead of the right wing push, complaining that marriage equality was not an issue that ‘everyday Americans’ support. 20 years later, 70% of Americans support marriage equality because advocates never gave up on it. It’s been legal nationwide for nine years and counting.
“There are lots of reasons why Kamala Harris lost the presidential election – I mean, inflation? And I have more theories and so do you,” Coaston said. “But scapegoating trans people isn’t it. Because it’s not just untrue, it is morally wrong. It is wrong to cast a group of people to the wolves because you want to pick up more votes with people who actually don’t care very much about trans people one way or the other… it is wrong to say that caring for and supporting our fellow Americans is ever the wrong thing to do, especially because of politics.”
The “What a Day” podcast drops Monday through Saturday at 5am Eastern on your favorite podcast app and on YouTube.