Exhausted and Numb

I followed the mid-term results on November 3rd with a grim sense of satisfaction but with none of the exuberant joy I was seeing around my accustomed Internet haunts. I was able to muster a quick Gulf of Mexico joke, but otherwise, I felt numb. I had to ask myself, "Am I broken? Am I unable to feel joy in this victory?"

Don't get me wrong. I understand that this election is unequivocally good for the country. Trump's rubber stamp in Congress will be gone in January, his most loathsome hand-picked toadies branded as "losers", a number of women of color will govern their States, many LGBTQ candidates, including transgender and non-binary people, will take office, and Elon Musk may learn that money doesn't always buy you whatever you want.

So why the ennui? Maybe it was my cynical nature asserting itself. Maybe like Janeane Garofalo "I guess I just prefer to see the dark side of things. The glass is always half empty. And cracked. And I just cut my lip on it. And chipped a tooth."

Maybe I'm just exhausted. The past two years have been absolutely traumatizing for trans people who have been constantly vilified by Republicans, abandoned by moderate Democrats, and yelled at by Progressives worried that we're going to ruin it for everyone by pointing it out.

Shifting Positions: Democrats, Transgender Issues, and the 2026 Midterms

a timeline of events, plus thoughts on how this may play out in future elections

Switch HitterJulia Serano

My election night viewing started out on a sour note when I tuned into NBC News to hear Nikki Haley going on about "gender surgeries for children and boys in girls sports" with zero pushback from the hosts.

As Democratic wins starting coming in, I thought about the winning Democrats who had adopted transphobic Republican framing in their campaigns, such as Annie Andrews, Amy Acton, Josh Turek, James Talarico, and even Scott Colom. (And if the irony of the first Black man in 150 years to be elected Senator in Mississippi saying, in effect, that he doesn't want those t-slurs anywhere near his daughters is lost on you, think on it for a bit.)

I wondered how much of that framing they would carry forward in their governance, and I wondered if the best we could hope for going forward would be if everyone just left us alone.

I am afraid that the blue tsunami will mask the election's big lessons regarding transgender rights. Lesson 1 is that demonizing trans people does not guarantee a win for Republicans. The common wisdom after 2024 was that Trump won because of his "they-them" ad. Republicans went all in on that as campaign strategy this year to no avail. Even Ron DeSantis, Governor of one of the worst States on LGBTQ+ rights, thought it went to far. Personally, I thought he should have been wearing a hot-dog suit while saying this, but you can't have everything.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis Blames Anti-Trans Ads For Republican Losses In 2026 Midterms

“I knew Republicans were in trouble when they were running ads on and spending hundreds of millions of dollars across the country on trasngender ads”

Erin In The MorningErin Reed

Lesson 2, and this is the important one, is that Democrats don't have to throw a vulnerable portion of Americans under the bus in order to win. Abdul El-Sayed, Sherrod Brown, and other progressives won seemingly close elections without adopting the Nikki Haley lines mentioned above. Ethics aside, attacking trans people was completely unnecessary to ride the wave, and accomplished nothing other than to alienate a portion of their base.

And given the number of anti-trans voter initiatives that won in Washington, Arizona, and Colorado, as if voters thought that they deserved a little bigoted treat as a reward for electing Democrats, my fear is that moderate Dems will take this as a signal that they shouldn't change their rhetoric or work to undo some of the trauma inflicted upon my community. And a lot of the same people who told us to sit down and shut up during the election are now telling us to sit down and shut up now that we're asking the new majority to step up on our behalf.

Will states with newly Democratic legislatures and executive branches work to repeal anti-trans medical and sports bans? Will they restore inclusive language in regulations and school curricula? Will the new Attorney General in Kansas re-issue Driver's Licenses to people who were forced to turn them in because of their preferred gender markers? I want to hope so, but I have so many doubts.

Not helping are centrist pundits and mainstream media outlets like The New York Times who, having counseled the party to move to the right after the 2024 loss, now counsel the party to move to the right now that they've won big.

Win or Lose, The New York Times Tells Democrats to Move Right Every Time

Heads, I win; tails, you lose.

The Present AgeParker Molloy

My fears are allayed somewhat by the knowledge that I am not alone in my feelings and that there are reasons for hope. Much of the electorate will undoubtedly pat themselves on the back for a job well done and turn their attention to other matters. But there is still clearly so much work to be done by activists and allies in educating our newly elected leaders and de-programming the public who have been fed an unrelenting onslaught of poison, that it's hard not to be daunted. But as the saying goes, the only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.