r/politics • u/HyacinthFT • 7h ago

No Paywall Donald Trump says transgender people will "end" if GOP keeps Congress in midterms

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2026/08/donald-says-transgender-people-will-end-if-gop-keeps-congress-in-midterms/
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u/30yearoldhondaaccord 6h ago

Jesus are dumdums still so scared of “transgenders”? I can’t believe they sold out the country because they were so worked up over transgender people. But now that the economy is in the shitter and there’s war in Iran I wonder if the trans boogey man is still as effective as it was

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u/Eris_AppleOfDiscord 6h ago

It was exit polled as the third most important issue of 24 elections. (immigration and inflation were the top two). And it ranked far above both the war in Ukraine, and Isrsel too.

It's absolute insanity.

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u/pilgermann 6h ago

The issue feels solvable to small minded people who can't accept that they don't have direct control over the actual problems in their life. They get to feel good about barring a single trans kid from a youth soccer team since that was in their control. Most people are really primitive when it comes down to it.

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u/HeyItsTravis 6h ago

This is exactly it. Bury your head in the sand on the big scary topics and focus on whatever will let you outlet your frustration while compartmentalizing your fears and anxiety to project onto them.

It’s like when a parent has a bad day at work then comes home and screams at their kids because they’re watching TV on the floor and not the couch.

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u/ProfSpaceTime 4h ago

A conservative will give you their last dollar if you tell them it will go towards lynching someone. They’re blood hungry demons

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u/LazyLeslieKnope 5h ago

It’s the new witch hunt.

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u/JEFFinSoCal California 2h ago

Great time to remind everyone that it wasn’t “witches” that were burned at the stake. It was women and girls.

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u/IFartOnCats4Fun Oregon 3h ago

Ironhide: “Why are we fighting to save the humans? They're a primitive and violent race.”

Optimus Prime: “Were we so different? They're a young species. They have much to learn.”

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u/the_gaymer_girl Canada 6h ago

And Harris mentioned trans people like one time and otherwise completely left them to get demonized by the GOP for months.

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u/pinkfartlek Michigan 6h ago

There's was a commercial the GOP ran that said "Kamala promised inmates sex changes" or something. I bet that left an impression on a lot of them no matter if it was true or not. All fearmongering bullshit

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u/SDRPGLVR California 2h ago

And that was only because she was promising that vital medical care will be provided to those who need it, which should go without saying, but we have inmates dying due to medical neglect on a constant basis. The fact that the right spun that as Kamala handing out "sex changes to inmates" and their electorate ate that up is such a blatant indictment on the intelligence of the populace at large.

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u/Eris_AppleOfDiscord 6h ago

The gop specifically said they wanted to force kamala to speak more about it. Since it was a winning issue for them.

She was caught in a catch 22

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u/shinkouhyou 4h ago

The only way out of these catch-22s is to reframe the issue instead of letting Republicans constantly control the narrative. Call out Republicans for their creepy fixation on trans women, talk about the issue from a medical privacy perspective and say that politicians shouldn't get between patients and their doctors, and treat the trans issue like the absurd manufactured distraction it is. Keep the tone light, avoid preachiness, and pivot back to economics. Produce media-friendly sound bites explaining how transition actually works (no, schools are not giving out sex hormones) and for fuck's sake, train every Democratic talking head so they don't stumble over themselves when talking about trans issues.

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u/Zeyode 2h ago

I thought this was obvious, but it feels like a lot of democratic politicians now forget that part of a politician's job is to be a rhetorician. They just take for granted that people will vote for them cause they have campaign money and they're not republicans.

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u/simpersly 6h ago

She should have. And call them out on it. Make fun of their fears and correlate their obsessed hate to the mass muders that happened throughout history.

Instead she spent 2 months trying to convince conservative housewives to vote for her.

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u/Eris_AppleOfDiscord 6h ago

The exit polling clearly shows otherwise. Trans issues are an Achilles heels for dems. Unfortunately.

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u/Bucksack 6h ago

So how does it get fixed?

What I’m reading in your comment is: “trans people exist, therefore dems will struggle to win.”

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u/Eris_AppleOfDiscord 5h ago

Personally. I would hope dems take a more libertarian angle and try to take the issue away from republicans. Make it more about personal liberty and autonomy rather than even trying to argue "Trans women are women"

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u/IAmPud 4h ago

You literally cannot defend trans rights if you are dropping “trans women are women”

That’s inherently central, dropping that has allowed the Labour Party in the UK to stomp on trans rights

You can’t accept bigotry to defend against it

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u/Bucksack 5h ago

That angle couldn’t hurt.

Part of my fear is that any Dem messaging strategy that relies on their audience thinking critically and not about themselves may be asking too much.

And Dems also need to be consistent lest they hand ammunition to the opposition. If they appeal to personal freedom/libertarian ideals for trans issues, are they also going to apply the same appeal to gun ownership/gun control? Environmental protection? Universal healthcare?

Whatever route they choose, I doubt a tv or radio ad is going to change minds on the topic, we gotta talk to people.

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u/IAmPud 6h ago

Post one

I’m sick of being told it’s my fault for existing that my rights are being taken away, so post the polls that show trans people are the reason we lost

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u/simpersly 6h ago

Because Republicans overlords, and conservative media made it so. Harris's job was to make it not an issue

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u/Hefty_Remove7965 6h ago

And people still thought she was far left..

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u/LOLSteelBullet 6h ago

It's the dumbest shit Democrats fall for.

Democrats: exist

Right Wing Propagandists: THEY'RE FAR LEFT SOCIALIST

Democrats: freak out and make a point to appear centrist (at best)

Democrats base: infighting

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u/Hefty_Remove7965 6h ago

Right when Nancy pelosi and Obama were called Communist/socialist...

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u/LOLSteelBullet 3h ago

Ironically it was Joe Biden of all people that moved leftwards, however so slightly, on his platform in response

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u/Hefty_Remove7965 3h ago

Yeah he was the first president to stand in a union strike line iirc

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u/Zeyode 2h ago

Dance around us too, like we were some sort of embarrassing secret. And then a lot of Democrats in office blamed us, when they barely even defended us the whole campaign

We're just another issue to throw to the wolves to save themselves political embarrassment.

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u/wewereromans 5h ago edited 3h ago

Nobody gave a shit about trans people in the US before they lost the 2020 election.

The right needed a new convienant thing to rally hate about since they had nothing of substance to offer their constituents that might actually improve their lives.

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u/CravingNature 6h ago

The salt of the earth in the flyover states will be fearful of anything if you repeat it enough.

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u/and_so_forth 5h ago

It's propaganda. People feel how they are told to.

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u/wolferman 5h ago

A true boogeyman since most people don’t/can’t name a single trans person in their lives.

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u/subwayratlander 5h ago

Maybe these people want to feel like badass heroes and theres nothing they personally can do to fix the economy or influence how our taxes are spent or decide which wars we fight. but any old joe could see a trans person and be awful to them, and that gives them the rush of power they crave … just guessin

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u/Yingletofthecorn 2h ago

I mean, yeah I’d rank the rights of trans people pretty damn high in my priorities. I put it alongside immigration policy in terms of priorities on the grounds of “I don’t want half my friends to wind up in a concentration camp.”

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u/Choice_Depth_5933 Washington 6h ago

I think the GOP has fundamentally misread this. When I looked at exit polling cross-tabs after 2024, intensity on the trans-rights questions was most intense on the left. That is to say, even where anti-trans views were more widely shared, it wasn’t a motivating factor for Republican GOTV.

Many democratic pundits (mostly men tbh) scapegoated trans women and immigrants after the election, and the GOP has run with their story.

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u/Strange_Dust7128 1h ago

What's really awesome about that is in order to be transgender, one simply has to say they are transgender. It's not even an issue, it's just a state of being. Might as well go after people prone to ingrown toenails.

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u/Corevus Minnesota 31m ago

What the fuck. I hate this country.

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u/daward444 6h ago

My MAGA boomer aunt posts BS about Democrats performing surgeries on 6 year old boys on Facebook. That really gets the outrage a brewin'.

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u/HourActuary5324 6h ago

The stupidest person I’ve ever had to work with went on a rant once about how her son could go to the doctors and get his genitals removed. The rest of us asked her how a GP would manage complex surgery during a 15 minute appointment. She couldn’t answer, but pretty sure she still believed the lie.

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u/NDHardage 5h ago

So - I've had that surgery. As an adult, in her 30s, with money and full autonomy, who really really wanted it to happen, and it still took years to get to the point where it could actually be done. I say that because: since I know firsthand that it's something that cannot medically be rushed, so the idea that they're just performing it all willy nilly to minors is especially ludicrous to me.

And don't even get me started on how much my mom in her 70s was opposed to it, to the point where while I was on the phone with her she said, "I brought you into this world, and I can take you out of it." To which the only possible response I could give was, "No, you can't."

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u/HourActuary5324 5h ago

One of my good friends had to jump through hoops for years as well.

It’s not like getting a skin-tag removed even though my dimwitted coworker kept comparing the two.

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u/Grey_0ne 3h ago

And if they cared about facts or experienced basic human empathy for anyone that isn't straight, white, christian and votes the way they do then I'm sure your story would resonate... But we really need to get away from the idea that there's this magical right thing that we can say or, fact we can point out or point we can make that will change their minds.

MAGA is a hate cult and hate is all they want or understand.

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u/allenahansen California 2h ago

The electrolysis alone would be enough to put me off my feed. Props to you, sister!

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u/NDHardage 1h ago

Thank you! Yeah that process was ...not fun, haha 😅

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u/skredditt Minnesota 2h ago

I wonder if she had her kid circumcised.

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u/supercabbageuk 30m ago

Was this in the UK, or is GP used in the states too?

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u/hammlanc 5h ago

I’m a teacher, and there have been more than a couple times when people have said: “So the boys are using the girls bathrooms now, right?” or “I heard they’re putting litter boxes in the bathroom for those furries.”

Of course I tell them that none of that is happening, that it’s much ado about nothing— but they still don’t believe me. One person said “Well, I heard that’s what’s going on,” all smug and self-satisfied that she has the inside scoop. You can’t counter some people’s beliefs with any amount of evidence.

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u/Asleep_Document9811 3h ago

Just tell them the truth, that the cat litter is actually because America has a bit of a gun problem at schools, and kids need to be able to hide in cabinets for extended periods of time.

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u/hammlanc 2h ago

Seriously, our school has put contractor buckets in every classroom— they are there in case we have a lockdown and can’t let kids out to use the bathroom. They’re stocked with wipes and a shower curtain to drape for privacy. One of the only reasons we would have such a long lockdown is because of an active shooter scenario.

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u/IAmPud 6h ago

How often do you push back on her?

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u/daward444 5h ago

I keep my distance from her and am not even friends with her in Facebook. I cut her off years ago when she spammed my email with evangelical Republican propaganda.

I recently discovered that she is a Republican precinct chair in Texas (of course) - something that she kept hidden from us all these years. That prompted me to check her Facebook briefly, and it was as bad as you could possibly imagine. She is not just some random crazy boomer aunt, unfortunately.

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u/Automaton_General 50m ago

Never mind her circumsized nephews who definitely consented to and had prior awareness of their genital surgeries.

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u/evilcatminion 31m ago

My family still thinks a local school has a litterbox in the classroom for kids that identify as cats.

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u/make_me_breakfast 6h ago

They’re afraid of trans women and afraid of their own sexuality. Notice how trans men never get discussed.

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u/Translycanthrope 6h ago

We’re hotter and more masculine than they are. They don’t want to invoke trans men because then their idiot followers will look us up and realize we pass as indistinguishable from cis men. Imagine being outmanned by a guy born without a dick. Their fragile masculinity can’t handle it so they ignore us, lmao.

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u/edgarandannabellelee 3h ago

Bro. I'm so jealous of Trans guys. Like, even before I transitioned I was half the man you guys are. I applaud you every day. You go get it.

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u/sparkly_butthole 5h ago

They might ignore us now, but we are in as much danger as trans women when it comes down to it.

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u/AnxiousEpileptic 5h ago

It's just about sports and bathrooms. Nobody is worried about trans men using their bathroom or playing men's sports.

I personally don't care because I have zero stake in the game and it doesn't affect my life whatsoever, but that's the argument I hear most often, especially from my liberal buddy that has two daughters. He is liberal in every other way except when it comes to that "issue."

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u/Translycanthrope 5h ago

Well the Dump administration has decided we are legally women and must use the women’s room. Lots of trans guys have had SRS and are wielding flesh and blood penises. If you want me in the women’s room you’re going to need to build urinals. I’m not waiting for women in the stalls. They wanted to avoid men and dicks in the women’s room and made it legally mandated because they want to pretend so hard that men like me don’t exist.

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u/patchy_doll 3h ago

"You belong in the women's bathroom" is a wild thing to hear when you're a fat old bearded trans man with zero feminine attributes.

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u/AnxiousEpileptic 4h ago

I think all public bathrooms should be genderless. Everyone can use them. If someone is worried about strangers, they are free to go in there with their kid. Solves every problem.

For sports, I just don't care. I watch only NFL and NHL. If a trans man joins the Bruins and is wicked good, I would wholeheartedly welcome it. I only care about winning. Other people can argue about the WNBA and women's college sports. That's between women and the transfolk to decide. None of my business.

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u/[deleted] 5h ago

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u/Translycanthrope 5h ago

That’s not what the law says. It’s based on sex coercively assigned at birth. You can propose the “men’s is an open class” bathroom but that isn’t what Dump’s administration says.

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u/theVoidWatches Pennsylvania 2h ago

Nobody is worried about trans men using their bathroom or playing men's sports

No, people also get worked up about those things. I remember hearing about a trans guy being forced to wrestle in the women's division a few years ago.

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u/sobrique 1h ago

Let me guess, they also think gay men are disgusting, but lesbian women are hot?

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u/ballisticks Canada 4h ago

It's because they can't fathom why a man would "want" to become a woman, because to them women are inferior. A woman becoming a man, to them, makes more sense.

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u/jaxonfairfield 5h ago

Exactly, it makes their downstairs-place feel uncomfortable and they'd rather exterminate a group of people rather than have to think about anything outside their heteronormative bubble.

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u/germanmojo 2h ago

They'd rather demonize trans women than possibly hitting on one at a dark bar/club, bringing her home, figuring it out themselves, liking it, being found out, and being called the same slurs for the community that they hurl daily.

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u/Bamce 2h ago

They see ftm as a promotion

That obviously you would want to be male.

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u/iProXi 6h ago

The apparent problem is much bigger than just trans people unfortunately

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_theory

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u/Hefty_Remove7965 6h ago

It's the tip of the iceberg to get people to fall in the conspiracy 

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u/crooked-v 2h ago

For anyone wondering, it's just a rebrand of the Nazi "everything we hate is secretly run by the Jews" conspiracy theories into a "everything we hate is secretly run by the communists (who are secretly run by the Jews)" conspiracy theory, with the anti-Jewish hate removed by one step but still absolutely in there. It has the typical fascist connecting thread of painting the secret enemies as omnipresent and all-powerful, yet also weak enough to be defeated by just being a manly man who flexes hard enough.

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u/Starbucks__Lovers New Jersey 6h ago

Trans individuals make up .5% of the US population give or take. Jews made up .5% of the Weimar Republic's population in the 1930s give or take. Go figure

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u/Hefty_Remove7965 6h ago

Also trans people were some of the first to be attacked.

History rhymes 

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u/Reagalan 4h ago

It's more like 2% now since the "Left Handed Effect" has let more folks come out.

3% among youth.

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u/TheCaffinatedAdmin 2h ago

They're transdextrousing our kids! Soon all the kids are gonna be left handed!/s

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u/Scottiths 6h ago

As a general rule, MAGAts are so insecure and terrified of everything that they can't accept that other people are able to just be themselves without a personal identity crisis.

So instead of working on themselves and trying to improve they seek to make everyone else as miserable and terrified as they are.

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u/Effective_Pack8265 6h ago

It’s all MAGAts have: stoke fear & faux outrage in lieu of offering voters anything of value or worth. They have no governing ethic - just keep hitting those culture war buttons…

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u/redditismylawyer 5h ago

People who hate themselves necessarily hate you even more.

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u/ChetManley20 4h ago

It’s a losing issue for Dems and they need to realize it

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u/silent-sight 6h ago

Fearmongering

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u/BlackwallPandamonium 4h ago

Trans people, Israel / Palestine, and "caravans of immigrants" are the only things discussed in US politics in recent years. Really cool watching everything crumble as we do nothing but squawk about culture wars

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u/LikeAPwny 4h ago

They lost the war against the gays and had to move onto the next thing.

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u/VerySuperGenius 3h ago

My parents are from the Midwest and my brother is dating a transgender person. They are the nicest person in the room at our family gatherings but my parents say insanely horrible things when they leave. They have no reason to be angry with this person, they've just been conditioned to hate. The modern conservative ideology is built entirely around convincing dumb people to hate other groups for false reasons.

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u/LayerEight_Problem 3h ago

They’re scared of transgender people but they’re not scared of their leader that couldn’t read the word transistor and when he failed to read and understand that word he got as far as saying trans and decided that transistors and transgenders are the same thing. So he went off on a hate fuelled tangent.

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u/CaptainDudeGuy Georgia 2h ago

I'm still waiting to hear how trans people are a threat to my life, liberty, and/or pursuit of happiness.

Meanwhile you can ask anyone on the street how they think the economy is going and they'll list all sorts of threats to domestic tranquility.

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u/BennettWindy 2h ago

Propaganda works

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u/strangelyliteral 2h ago

Queer people (especially trans people) existing put a huge fucking spanner in conservatives’ bioessentialist gender role nonsense. You can’t really say men are for muscles and working while (white) girls are for housework and babies while there are lots of people running around living good lives not fulfilling their God-and-genitalia-given “duty.” In that sense, yeah they’re an existential threat to conservatism.

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u/NearPup Washington 19m ago

"Kamala is for they/them, I [Trump] am for you" was tragically one of the most powerful attack ad of the 2024 presidential election.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamala_is_for_they/them

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u/AndyJack86 South Carolina 6h ago

Yeah, Boo!

You're welcome. From your fellow trans femme NB.

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u/Curlydeadhead 5h ago

I come across a transgendered person MAYBE once a month, and I live in a city of 77,000 people with a good % of lgbtq+. I’m sure I’ve been around others that I haven’t noticed but that’s the thing, I’m not looking at every person on the street trying to figure out if they’re trans or not. I let everyone go about their day as I do mine. 

To narrow out this group is soooo fucking anti-civilization. Anti-human. And I still don’t understand how trans folk affect other’s lives to the point of hatred and wanting them ‘gone’.  As you said, there are far worse things to address that affect EVERYONE. But I guess attacking trans folk takes their mind off what is directly affecting them and that’s the point. 

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u/symbha 6h ago

The saw The Crying Game in the 80s, and their whole life flashed before their eyes.

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u/Healfezza 5h ago

Funny because if we accept being "transgender" as sin, it is still just one of many sins. And on the scale of sin, it would be rather low as it does not impact or cause harm to others.

It is more sinful to punish and berate those who are transgender for their gender/orientation, than it is to simply be one of them.

The problem with much of modern religion is that it teaches from the lens of the Church, rather than that of Jesus Christ. Even Christians can't agree on Christianity, how many denominations with differing beliefs do we have?

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u/Jubal81 5h ago

My hypothesis is it's being driven by porn apps and their algorithms.

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u/jim_cap United Kingdom 4h ago

It’s post-wank shame. Guess what their Pornhub history is full of.

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u/Powerfury 4h ago

Bruh, go to a bar in Kentucky and they can't even count the number of teeth they have, who their senator is, or anything that trump has done besides make America great again. But they can tell you all the details about trans people.

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u/walksonfourfeet 6h ago

The reason they’re scared is because they want to have the freedom to be able to grab anyone with boobs and not have to worry about whether they have a dick

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u/loganbootjak 5h ago

The GOP need their easy to identify boogeyman. It was gay people before trans were the main targets. It's so dumb.

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u/EndlessEagle 5h ago

It's literally just a scapegoat. Trans people are a small minority that they can target easily and beat down with near impunity. 

They can and have turned it into a culture war issue that distracts from real issues, while also beating down on an already oppressed minority group for extra cruelty. 

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u/MrMackSir 3h ago

They find them too sexy. Or they are mad that.they can't have the courage to be gay or transition.

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u/Asleep_Document9811 3h ago

I have never seen a trans person do anything other than exist and maybe talk about developing an open source graphics card driver for the Amiga 500. I don't fucking get it. They're completely fine.

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u/North_Complaint_2135 6h ago

Has anyone even seen one in the wild? 😂

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u/dostoevsky4evah 3h ago

You probably have you just didn't know it and it wasn't relevant.

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u/TheOtherMaven Virginia 2h ago

Yes. Two (three?) MTF, two FTM. (One of the FTMs liked to cross-dress for years before finally admitting and transitioning.)