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Comment by matchbok3 | Hacker News Reader

They do it because it wins them elections. It's a 90/10 issue and national democrats are on the losing side.

As someone who struggles with my position on some of these topics, one of my major self criticisms/fear is the tyranny of the majority. Even if (and that's a hypothetical if) my values would reject transgenderism, my values of freedom and fairness conflict with forcing another human being onto a specific path, especially with the use of force (government). So even if 90% are cisgendered (I didnt look up the real stat), that doesn't mean we vote to make our world cisgendered... A right and fair leaning is to create the freedoms we'd want if the tables were turned.

I say this all to say it surprises me how many republicans I know are pro freedom until it hits certain topics... Pro 2A and anti-(an adult can choose a different hormonal profile for their own body) is an odd pairing in my mind. Pro free-speach like Alex Jones / Citizens united but anti-(choosing to wear clothes or other adornments/appearance of the other gender) is an odd pairing in my mind.

> even if 90% are cisgendered (I didnt look up the real stat)

The real stat is much higher than 90%, in case you were curious.

The number of people abject enough to end up with transphobic views is thankfully nowhere near that. Most people, as it turns out, are not creepily obsessed with other people's genitals. Most people also aren't driven by a horrible urge to find minorities to torment. Though those who are would sure claim otherwise, of course; trying to normalize their awfulness is part of the playbook.

Yeah, I don't get this. If they're niche irrelevant issues that affect ~nobody, why not just concede them? Republicans could hardly dominate the discourse with these topics if there was nobody to discourse against.

> Yeah, I don't get this. If they're niche irrelevant issues that affect ~nobody, why not just concede them?

Because there's about 1% of people who are trans in the US [1] and most other populations, on top of that come a further about 1.7% people who are somewhere on the intersex spectrum [2].

Democrats aren't willing to throw literally millions of people under the bus. Republicans aren't just willing to cast them aside - they are knowingly driving trans people to extinction.

[1] https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/trans-ad...

[2] https://www.ohchr.org/en/sexual-orientation-and-gender-ident...

But this is not throwing millions of people under the bus. At least according to this thread, there are fewer trans women in sports than bills stopping them. If this issue does represent throwing literally millions of people under the bus- driving them to extinction-, why are you saying upthread that it's niche and irrelevant?

Bostock affirmed core civil rights to transgender people in housing, employment, etc. The fights now are about other things (not "rights") and as such, are much more unpopular. In fact, a majority of people, even on the right, support the core rights affirmed by Bostock.

> In fact, a majority of people, even on the right, support the core rights affirmed by Bostock.

A majority of people support wage hikes [1], anti-trust laws [2], higher taxes for the rich [3], at least a general responsibility of the government for healthcare insurance [4] and even a full or barely restricted right to abortions of pregnancies [5].

But neither of this gets done despite bipartisan support, because Republican megadonors and their networks heavily keep the GOP in line. And for trans people, it's the same. The anti-trans rhetoric in the GOP gets pushed primarily by Evangelical influence groups, the rest of the GOP does not care, and neither do the voters.

[1] https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/issues/economic-justice...

[2] https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/47798-most-americans-oppos...

[3] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/03/19/most-amer...

[4] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/12/10/most-amer...

[5] https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/fact-sheet/public-opini...

This isn't a fight we can avoid by retreating. They would just advance and the same battle would happen on different ground. If we abandon the trans, the culture wars will be about the gays. If we abandon the gays, the culture wars will be about blacks or hispanics or jews or god only knows. There's something to be said for picking firm ground to fight on, but there will be a fight and it cannot be won by retreating.

Why am I being interpreted as advocating for abandoning the trans? I don't want to do that and I don't need to be convinced by my empathy for gays or blacks- I care about trans people themselves! I'm saying if an issue doesn't matter- according to the trans people in this thread- and it's a losing issue, why are we insistent on fighting it anyway? Who benefits from this?

It'd probably be best to give an example of an issue you're talking about. I thought you were saying to concede trans topics altogether.

Hmm, yes, I see that and that the person I was responding to is getting read the same way, but not clear why that's the case. We're both in this conversation under [1]. The sports issue is the one that's 90/10 [2], while the bathroom one is maybe in the neighborhood of 60/40 [3]- I do think there is a chance of winning ground on the latter and should have been more specific. But nobody is saying there's 90/10 in favor of transphobia- a substantial majority views trans people favorably[3].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49712333

[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/08/11/most-amer...

[3] https://prri.org/press-release/new-survey-finds-strong-major...

Because then they'll move on to the next victims and in having surrendered without even a fight you've granted them momentum for no good reason whatsoever, and you'll have fewer allies left too.

Is there a reason to believe this is how things work? Rather than "within a democracy as long as 'trans rights' means something that most people disagree with, it will be harder to advance the pro- side of the issue"? Is there evidence of 'momentum' being a real thing in politics, as opposed to the 'pendulum' that I've witnessed over the last decade?

Everything related to the right wing and fox news? We never had a big "swing left" - clinton was the democrats showing they can do economic conservatism as well. Modern acceptance of trans folks isn't a pendulum, most of the people espousing anti-trans views weren't pro trans 5 years ago.

Trying to abstract history into major shifts that are attributable to inanimate objects is just very ludic fallacy.

I'm confused by this. Are you saying that everything related to the right wing and fox news is evidence that momentum is a good model or that trying to model history with momentum is fundamentally fallacious? If the former, you've really got to be more specific- was firing Tucker Carlson evidence for momentum somehow? Did Republicans conceding gay marriage or Trump conceding abortion give Democrats momentum?

Sorry for being confusing, I was saying the latter - that these are reducing history to some game that can be understand with rules when it is nothing like that.

If you go back 15 years or so, you hear the exact same "concerns" about gay people pretty much word for word. Now that they're no longer an acceptable target for most people, they've moved on to regurgitating the same baseless fear mongering but targeted towards trans people. If society manages to progress further, they'll eventually come up with another group to serve as the "other" that they can blame everything on.

they're already shifting to immigrants for that reason.

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