July 15, 2025 - 8:00pm
When Kamala Harris lost to Donald Trump last November, Democrats briefly looked inwards: could our stance on trans issues be partially to blame?
Though some polls suggested “trans rights” weren’t central for most voters, others found that Harris’s focus on “cultural issues like transgender issues” mattered deeply — especially to those who disliked both her and Trump. His ad tagline, “Kamala is for they/them, Donald Trump is for you”, was heralded as one of the most effective in history.
So what now? The New York Times reported this week that some Democrats are ready to concede that their all-or-nothing stance on trans rights has cost them dearly. In recent years, Democrats rejigged Title IX to protect gender identity, as opposed to sex, allowing males to compete in women’s and girls’ sports. They’ve demanded the institutionalization of gender identity in medicine and education, compelling speech and belief. They’ve insisted that gender-affirming care for minors is evidence-based and life-saving, despite mounting evidence to the contrary.
Still, Democrats willing to say they went too far don’t seem to be offering any substantive policy change. Despite polls showing that most Democrats oppose allowing males to compete in women’s and girls’ sports, those who spoke out against the practice, such as Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton, have declined to support a ban. And even though 54% of Democrats, and 71% of all voters, believe no one under 18 should access gender medicine, New York City’s popular Democratic mayoral candidate, Zohran Mamdani, has proposed $65 million for gender-affirming care.
According to Ruy Teixeira, co-author of Where Have All the Democrats Gone?, Democrats are “changing the messaging a bit rather than the position”. The main shift, he suggested to me, is that they’re willing to stop calling those who dissent “transphobic”.
One reason they can’t get off the train, no matter how fast it’s hurtling away from the majority of voters, is that they consider pivoting on these positions as a betrayal of the cause. To agree that males should not compete against women or be in their private spaces, or to admit that minors cannot consent to both the known and unknown effects of modifying their secondary sex traits, is to align themselves with the attitudes and policies of Trump.
Uncomfortable though it may be, this is something they must do. As Teixeira put it: “Somebody’s really just got to bite the bullet and take a clear and unambiguous position.” That means supporting bans on males in women’s sports and spaces, however those males identify or whatever they’ve done to their bodies. It means supporting a moratorium on youth gender medicine — and thus embracing Trumpian policies like subpoenaing data from pediatric gender clinics, or shutting them down.
How can Democrats do that and still be the party which supports people who identify as a category other than their sex? That would require serious social engineering — although the party has been engaged in that for a decade anyway, imposing the idea of gender identity onto the nation and not allowing room for dissent.
If Democrats want to be the party that both embraces the reality of sex and accepts gender non-conformity, they need to allow people their belief systems and make room for differences. That means, ultimately, accepting trans women as a variation of men. That means trans women in men’s sports and spaces, and in their bathrooms. It means cultural acceptance of male femininity, or males emulating femininity. We can’t ban their inclinations or desires. We don’t have to agree, but we can create wiggle room for gender non-conformity, as we once did for tomboys.
For Democrats to change their stances on trans issues means they must uphold bipartisanship. This was once a virtue, and is now a liability. But it doesn’t have to be — not if there’s a Democrat out there strong enough to stand up for what’s right and what’s real at the same time. Whoever that is, it’s time to come out of the woodwork.
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