They/Them
"It's all I can trans, I can't trans no more." —Republicans
Someone needs to tell our (former) ignoramus-in-chief that trans people are not the enemy, the other, the out group, or a convenient punching bag.
Despite the Trump campaign’s feeble attempt at wit in the form of anti-trans rhetoric, Harris-Walz are quite capable of supporting the rights of trans folks AND the cisgender majority. It’s not a zero-sum game, and to frame it this way is pure propaganda (not to mention stupidity). Republicans’ favorite tactic during election season is divide-and-conquer. This is a weapon that oppressors and authoritarians have been wielding like a broadsword since—forever. Patriotic, truth-loving Americans need to carry a large shield to fend it off.
The first lie to deflect is that average cisgender American would otherwise be concerned about what transgender people are doing or which pronouns they prefer if they weren’t subjected to rightwing propaganda. I doubt anyone besides Honors/AP English students and the dreaded grammar police even knew what a pronoun was until some libertarian-type made it into a free speech issue. Who can relate to someone who would die on such a shabby hill?
Of course, I can call someone I don’t like by a different name than the one they answer to (which is not substantially different from insisting on using binary pronouns)—but does this make me a free speech hero or a reactionary asshole? If the same people also spoke out against the murder of trans people and other crimes and policies that undeniably victimize the trans community, I could give them the benefit of the doubt and say they fall somewhere in the middle of the (admittedly hard to quantify) spectrum I just invented. The power of speech, like any weapon, lies in how you use it—not whether you use it.
This is how the Orange Man—definitely man—chose to use his speech in August at a Moms for Stupidity (I mean Liberty) event:
"Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child and you know many of these childs 15 years later say, what the hell happened."
Of course, Trump can put words together that conjure up an image of demented lunch ladies sedating and herding children like cattle to the cafeteria kitchen once the final bell rings and mutilating them with unclean butcher knives on a makeshift operating table—all because some woke liberals in Hollywood are uncomfortable with boys being boys and girls being girls. He can say these things. He has a mouth—not that I like to think about that—but should he? Of all the words he could form in his brain and expel through his breath, should he choose those words? I hope I’ve already implied an answer.
Now, I’ll address the argument that a plural pronoun shouldn’t be used to represent a singular. (Spellcheck doesn’t like it—but he said “childs,” so I wrote “childs.”) It’s worth noting that Trump exercised his right to not only spew baseless, fearmongering bullshit but also butcher the already imperiled English language. Yet, I’m supposed to believe that Trumplodytes care about grammar rules? Please. I’m more likely to believe that schools are sexually reassigning children without parental consent. (But for the record, they are most certainly not.)
I could launch into a detailed policy- and human rights-based defense of the trans community, but more informed activists and legal experts have already done this. I’ll just shout out a few groups Republicans don’t want you to care about or listen to: the ACLU, the HRC, the NCTE, GLAAD, and The Trevor Project. They will give you the much-needed perspectives missing from cruel-and-unusual campaign ads.
My message to the Trump campaign is simple: They/them r us. I will repeat it slowly (since I know I’m dealing with simpletons): They/them … r … us.
Oh, and one more thing—my preferred pronoun is MMM. Get it right or fuck off.