u/MR_TELEVOID

This week, James Talarico fucked up. During an interview with Fox News on Wednesday he stated he opposed trans people playing sports, retracted his previous statement about there being more than two genders, and opposed gender-affirming surgery for minors. Instead of pushing back against bad-faith framing, he gave Fox News the exact capitulation they were fishing for.

Trans people in sports isn’t an actual problem. Being trans provides no special athletic advantage and there just aren’t that many young trans athletes to begin with. The hormones trans people take often put them at a disadvantage compared to cis athletes. Yet, too many ignorant liberals are inclined to see this as a good opportunity to throw the right a bone. They don’t know the facts, so they assume what the reactionary “common sense” position is. It is a completely manufactured moral panic designed to divide the working class, and conceding to it validates a non-existent threat.

Minors don’t go through genital surgery. A trans youth undergoes years of social transition and therapy before taking any medication, and surgery almost never happens before 18. Comprehensive analyses of U.S. commercial insurance claims (including studies from Komodo Health and Harvard researchers) show genital operations among adolescents ages 13 to 17 are statistically negligible… averaging fewer than 20 to 30 cases per year nationwide, almost exclusively tied to intersex conditions or rare, severe clinical exceptions. The entire right-wing talking point is built on an outright lie, yet Talarico validated it as if it were a legitimate policy controversy rather than debunking it on the spot.

Mastectomies are occasionally performed on older adolescents (ages 15 to 17) experiencing prolonged, well-documented dysphoria. These procedures require multidisciplinary mental health evaluations, hormone therapy adherence where applicable, and parental consent. Healthcare claims data show between 200 and 300 transgender adolescents receive top surgery annually across the United States. By comparison, thousands of cisgender adolescent boys receive chest reduction procedures every year to treat gynecomastia.

That double standard makes it obvious this was never about protecting kids, but about demonizing and policing trans healthcare. More importantly, we have to call this what it really is: a direct assault on bodily autonomy. The exact same reactionary legal apparatus being used to strip trans people of healthcare is the one banning abortion and criminalizing reproductive freedom. You cannot separate the defense of gender-affirming care from the socialist fight for universal, decommodified healthcare. If the state is allowed to dictate what medical procedures consenting people can receive with their doctors, bodily autonomy doesn’t exist for any of us.

Transphobia is such a salient topic for the right because Democrats have consistently failed to lead. The Democratic Party made a conscious choice after gay marriage was legalized to not “push their luck” on culture war issues. When the anti-LGBTQ+ movement pivoted to transphobia, the Democratic Party responded with hollow rainbow capitalism. By treating basic civil rights like corporate branding rather than something worth fighting for, they completely surrendered the narrative to reactionaries.

This was such an unforced error, no doubt inspired by listening to too many shitlib consultants. They’ll argue Talarico needs to do this to appeal to moderate voters, but nobody motivated by anti-trans panic is ever going to vote for a Democrat. It’s the exact same reason Kamala’s “tough on the border” routine failed so miserably in 2024/ it alienated the base while doing nothing to win over the bigots. In Texas specifically, this kind of triangulation is pure electoral poison. You aren’t flipping Abbott or Paxton loyalists in rural counties by throwing trans kids under the bus, but you sure as hell will demotivate the young working-class organizers in Houston, Austin, San Antonio, and Dallas who actually knock on doors and drive turnout. You cannot out-Republican the Republicans, and abandoning vulnerable people only signals weakness to the bullies you’re trying to appease.

The reason leftist candidates have been doing so well across the country is because voters trust they will be different than the corporate establishment that came before them. Most run Bernie-style grassroots campaigns funded by small-dollar donations that reject corporate PAC money. They campaign hard and earn that trust by showing spine. It’s why insurgent candidates have weathered relentless smear campaigns and massive corporate spending against them… voters stick by candidates who stand firm on their principles instead of folding under pressure.

I can’t blame trans folks if they see this as a betrayal of that trust, because that’s exactly what it is. It’s an appeal to culture warriors who hate their existence, and it should make every leftist ask: who else is on the chopping block next? The foundational principle of the working-class movement is that an injury to one is an injury to all. Solidarity cannot be conditional. The second you decide a marginalized minority is an acceptable sacrifice to look “reasonable” to conservative pundits, you tell every worker, immigrant, and union member that their rights can be bartered away the moment it becomes politically uncomfortable. If the left doesn’t aggressively push back against this kind of triangulation now, we are just clearing the path for more candidates to abandon our people the moment the heat gets turned up.