opinion

Where's the outrage?

Kassie Sharp

21 Jun 2025 • 5 min read

Note: Right after I originally hit publish on this yesterday, I read news of our bombing attack on Iran. Always some new, bigger outrage with these chaos monkeys America saw fit to put in charge, somehow making my concerns for the trans community feel like a hill of beans in comparison. Doesn't change the validity of what follows, but I thought it worth saying, and so forth.

Jamelle Bouie wrote an op-ed this week speculating that Donald Trump and his ghoulish lieutenant, Stephen "Peewee German" Miller, had overestimated America's tolerance for mass deportations and secret police round-ups of immigrants. His essay included this remarkable quote:

In his influential 1922 book, “Public Opinion,” Walter Lippmann observed that political leaders hold their greatest sway over the public when the issue or interest in question is abstract to most people’s experience. “The incidence of policy determines the relation between leader and following,” Lippmann wrote. “If those whom he needs in his plan are remote from the place where the action takes place, if the results are hidden or postponed, if the individual obligations are indirect or not yet due, above all if assent is an exercise of some pleasurable emotion, the leader is likely to have a free hand.”

I was struck by the way this quote is illustrated by the contrasting public responses to the issues of immigration and transgender rights. In the case of the former, people are rising in protest after seeing masked militia snatching neighbors, friends, and loved ones off the streets. Business owners are complaining that their sources of cheap labor are drying up. Elected officials are putting their own freedom on the line to protect targeted residents.

Now compare this to the treatment of transgender people, and especially trans minors. This week the Supreme Court of the United States issued a devastating ruling allowing the various states to ban transition related medical care for minors, stating that such care is not protected by laws forbidding discrimination on the basis of sex. Ironically, the ruling means that doctors can continue providing gender-affirming care to cisgender minors - puberty blockers for precocious puberty, top surgery for cis boys with gynecomastia, breast implants for cis girls who want them - but the court washes its hands of protecting care for transgender youth. Even more ominously, this same line of reasoning from the court will likely be applied to states or to the federal government when they move to ban gender related medical care for transgender adults as well.

Those moves have already begun. The Veterans Administration, under orders from Trump, has ceased all such care for veterans. The tax and budget bill (I refuse to call it by the ridiculous name adopted by Congress and the media) has provisions stripping transition care from Medicaid and Affordable Care Act plans. If lawsuits fighting these actions reach SCOTUS, it is all but guaranteed they will find for the transphobes, waving away the suffering of those forced back into the closet at best or into tortuous conversion therapy at worst while saying "not our problem."

Adding insult to injury is the muted response from elected Democrats and the almost gleeful approval of outlets such as the New York Times. They are too willing to accept the narrative that Trump's ad-blitz targeting transgender kids won him the election, that Kamala Harris was too pro-trans, and that the transgender community somehow brought all this on themselves by going "too far". The truth is that polling showed voters really didn't care about transgender rights so much as they wanted cheaper eggs. Harris and the Democrats ran away from trans rights as much as possible during the 2024 election by not having any transgender speakers at the DNC for the first time in years, sidelining Tim Walz who has been a stalwart ally, and not responding at all to Trump's anti-trans ads other than to call them a "distraction". Harris didn't lose by being pro-trans, she lost by taking no stand at all on this and other issues.

Even more insulting is this idea that we trans folks brought this upon ourselves. The New York Times, which has had it in for trans people for years, just as they had it in for gay people before that, has run numerous articles this week adopting that position. By doing what, existing? Insisting on being out of the closet? Wanting to update our identity documents without jumping through a million pathologizing hoops? For wanting our children, for god's sake, to have healthcare that affirms who they are so they can grow up to be their best possible selves?

Beyond hurtful is the response by Democrats who are supposed to be on our side. Gavin Newsom is having friendly chats with bigots and agreeing with sports bans for trans athletes. "Moderate" Democrats just want the issue to go away. Chuck Schumer posted that the SCOTUS ruling was a "diversion" from issues Americans cared about (he later deleted the post). Even Sarah McBride, the first transgender woman elected to Congress, is saying we should just retreat into the shadows until some future time when we're more accepted. I learned this week that my feelings of betrayal is a form of "moral injury" which can occur when trusted officials or leaders act in opposition to values one thought to have in common. Here's a good essay on how to deal with those feelings.

So, why are people in power reacting with justified outrage to ICE kidnappings, but shrugging off legislative and judicial attacks on trans people? Going back to the Walter Lippmann quote above, we can see that immigration is not an abstract or remote concept to many Americans and the effects of the raids are immediately apparent. And not to be too cynical, but as much as Americans may enjoy seeing some demonized group get brutalized, that "pleasurable emotion" is blunted when they are personally affected.

In the case of transgender people, we are a tiny minority of around half a percent of the population, so most Americans have never met one of us. Without getting to know us it is way too easy to believe whatever nonsense the bigots are selling, and without society's leaders actively defending us, not enough people are going to care. It is disheartening as hell.

So, if you do care, what can you do? Here's a good article on advocating for trans rights in your community.

Calling or writing to your representatives is always a good idea. Tools like Resistbot make it easy. Also, get educated when someone mindlessly parrots what they've heard online or read in mainstream think pieces like the NY Times. For example, if someone opines on trans women competing in sports, refer them to this great video from John Oliver.