Digging INTO Politics: Pronoun hate, trans stats, and Marjorie Taylor Greene

It’s one week closer to the election, and another week of LGBTQ+ headlines has rolled through. It’s just 23 days to election day, barely over three weeks. As campaigns continue to roll out bids for the LGBTQ+ vote and (more often) for the anti-LGBTQ+ vote, it can be hard to keep up with what people are saying. We have you covered with the latest on the LGBTQ+ news headlines.

This week, there was fresh news on old favorites. New reports have given more evidence for the dangers the LGBTQ+ community are exposed to, people had a lot to say about trans people in sports, and Marjorie Taylor Greene is trying to go the extra mile. Here’s this week’s news, the good, the bad, and the weird.

Republicans are attacking the concept of pronouns (again)

While trans people are often the target of Republican attack ads and policies, sometimes there’s a round about approach where they instead try attacking basic elements of language instead. This week, they’ve been at it again. The Indiana Republican nominee for lieutenant governor, Micah Beckwith, explained that he would target state employees who included pronouns in their email signatures. For attempting to be more inclusive, these employees will be fired. “If I get an email from anyone in my office or in agencies that I oversee as lieutenant governor, and their signature has their pronouns on it, they’re going to be gone,” Beckwith said, going on to explain that it was a marker of far-left ideology and that those people didn’t “have a grasp on reality.” As well as being and a threat to the free speech of state workers in a range of sectors in Indiana, this signals pretty clearly the sorts of policies that Beckwith would like to see in relation to LGBTQ+ citizens.

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Kamala Harris and her campaign have also been a target for Republican’s ire over the use of pronouns this week. In an attempt to be clever, Republicans have previously run attack ads against Harris that end with the slogan “Kamala is for they/them, Trump is for you.” While the second half of that slogan would only be true if the viewer was a billionaire, there was at least some logic to the idea. This week, ads started running that instead simply said “Kamala Harris is not the they/them for you.” This becomes nonsense, unless the Republicans are misgendering Harris and claiming that she is nonbinary. At best, this becomes an attack on the assumption that audiences already think “they/them” is bad in any context.

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The confusion is all part of the plan

A CDC report reveal 2 shocking trans stats

The CDC released a report this week that had new data about trans youth. According to their work, more than 5% of high schoolers in the United States either identify as trans or are questioning their gender identity. While this report is bound to bring up concerns of a “trans epidemic,” the increased rates are still reflective of the fact that as we learn more about gender as a society, more people are able to understand and express themselves. Sadly, there is another side to this study. The data demonstrates the damage that anti-trans rhetoric in our society has on trans youth. 25.3% of trans students skipped school over safety concerns, compared to just 8.5% of cisgender students who said they did the same. Similarly, 26% of trans and questioning students said that they had attempted to take their own lives in the past year, compared to just 8% of cis students.

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New CDC data shows 5% of all youth are trans—but it also shows something worrying

The data comes from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, a biannual survey of over 20,000 young people across the country.

Republicans in at least three states are suppressing the trans vote

Since the start of 2024, Republicans in at least three states have enacted new policies that target trans voters and function as voter suppression and voter intimidation. Florida, in January, made it so that trans people could no longer change the gender marker on the driver’s license. Alabama now require bottom surgery before a trans person can change their gender marker. And Texas had previously required a court order to change the gender marker, but now say they won’t accept those. In some cases, states are looking at retroactively changing previously corrected gender markers back, and there is a question over whether trans people could be accused of fraud for presenting a driver’s license with their correct gender listed. All of this is taking place in the months running up to the 2024 election when there will be over 800,000 trans citizens eligible to vote. In those states, trans people won’t have been able to get their ID corrected in time and might fear being turned away at the polls. Alternatively, using a license with their incorrect gender listed could expose them to harassment or violence. Here’s our guide on voting while trans.

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Voting while trans: here’s what you need to know

There’s a lot at stake for trans people in this election. But it’s also set to be harder for us to vote in it. Here’s what you need to know.

The latest trans sports news

It has been a big week for trans sports new, as attempts continue to ban trans athletes from competing as their correct gender and people fight back against it.

Republicans are wrong about Mack Beggs (again): In Texas, the race for senate has become heated as Ted Cruz is challenged by the Democratic candidate Colin Allred. A new ad targeting Allred’s experience as a civil rights lawyer who has worked for LGBTQ+ equality challenged his record by saying he “failed to protect women’s sports, supporting boys competing with girls.” The picture included alongside this is of Mack Beggs, a man who competed as a wrestler in the women’s league. The picture is from 2017, and Mack Beggs is a trans man. Republican policies forced him to compete under his gender assigned at birth, so it was the anti-trans policies that led to the very thing that they are complaining about. Sadly, Allred responded to the attack, seeming to be the first Democrat to really dignify a lot of these claims. In his response he said that he “does not support boys in girls’ sports.” While it could be argued that he is supporting trans matters by suggesting that trans boys are boys, the language comes depressingly close to the dog whistles used by Republicans.

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Texas Republicans went after a trans athlete for following their laws

The flyer is an attack ad against Democrat Colin Allred, who is vying for Ted Cruz’s seat.

Imane Khelif’s Olympic opponent has refused transphobic support: During the Paris Olympics, cis woman Imane Khelif beat the Italian boxer Angela Carini. In the aftermath of her victory, Khelif became a target of transphobic claims about her gender identity alongside a wealth of misinformation. The Republican member of the house of representatives, Lauren Boebert, decided to lend Carini a hand while misgendering Khelif. Boebert started a fundraiser for $196K, the amount that Carini would have received if she had won the gold medal for Italy. Carini has said that she holds no ill will towards Khelif and that if they met again, she would “embrace her.” She has refused the money that Boebert raised.

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Imane Khelif’s opponent refuses prize money raised by transphobes

Lauren’s Boebert’s latest grift blew up in her face.

Melania Trump weighed in on trans athletes: In her book, Melania: A Memoir, Melania Trump claims to fully support the LGBTQ+ community. Like some other claims in the book, this is at odds with the stated views of her Husband, who has vowed to end gender-affirming care for minors if re-elected. Melania Trump’s full support of the LGBTQ+ community apparently stops at sports. Not only does she make erroneous claims about the capabilities of trans athletes, but she also lays a hefty blame at the feet of trans athletes. “Today, some groups attempt to impose their ideologies on everyone, deepening the divisions in our society. One example is the ongoing debate over trans inclusion in sports, specifically when male-born athletes, who identify as female, compete against women.” It is perhaps more likely that the true problem here is people vilifying queer people and blaming them for the countries problems that divides a nation than a trans woman wanting to play soccer.

The strangest defense of “Black Nazi” Mark Robinson

Mark Robinson’s campaign for North Carolina governor has been in hot water since it came out he had made some weird comments on a porn site and called himself a “Black Nazi.” Despite all of that, Trump has not pulled his endorsement of Robinson. Now the GOP are coming out with a bizarre explanation of why Robinson’s campaign might fail. Kandiss Taylor, who unsuccessfully ran for Georgia governor in 2022 has explained that the Democrats created Hurricane Helene primarily to stop Mark Robinson from becoming governor. “I also believe they don’t want the voters turning out that are all around Asheville. Those Republican, red voters […] they are trying their best to keep Mark Robinson from that governorship because he understands […] he understands the Constitution.” Why are the Democrats so desperate to win North Carolina that they’d somehow unleash a hurricane across it? According to Taylor, it’s a “land grab and they want the lithium.”

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The trans p*rn-loving Black Nazi: Who is Republican Mark Robinson?

North Carolina’s candidate for governor is testing the axiom that “all publicity is good publicitiy.”

Marjorie Taylor Greene’s busy week

Marjorie Taylor Greene is an important part of the MAGA movement within the Republican party. Perhaps her most useful ability is saying things that sound so wildly separated from reality that Trump looks almost reasonable by comparison. This week was a stellar week for the Georgia House representative.

Like Kandiss Taylor, Greene has been spreading conspiracy theories suggesting that Democrats can control the weather and that they created hurricane Helene for political gain. These lies have gained enough traction that Biden has had to condemn Greene’s words. Despite being a representative for a state that took a lot of damage from hurricane Helene, Marjorie Taylor Greene wasn’t too busy to stop her from spreading lies about trans healthcare.

Greene has suggested that trans kids are getting gender-affirming surgeries, which she refers to as “genital mutilation surgeries.” Trans youth aren’t getting surgeries as part of gender-affirming care, regardless of what keeps being said. Sadly, behind the misinformation, Greene has introduced a bill that would make providing gender-affirming care to minors and teaching about gender-affirming care in medical schools a Class C felony. The bill, that she has named the Protect Children’s Innocence Act, would also ban some healthcare programs from providing gender-affirming care for adults.

But Marjorie Taylor Greene wasn’t done there. Not content with spreading misinformation about hurricane Helene itself, she also railed against FEMA for supporting trans victims of the hurricane. Greene shared a FEMA training video that discussed the extra considerations that need to be considered when helping migrants and trans women. Greene’s response to this was an irate tweet that ended with: “They hate Christians.”

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