What Is It That Keeps Everyday People Stuck in the Culture War Against Transgender People?

Since right-wing religionists and politicians discovered the use of “culture wars” to scare people into voting for them and their pet causes back in the Moral Majority era, we can understand why the leaders of these so-called “wars” have pushed this idea on the country.

Choosing human beings that already reflected cultural prejudices as scapegoats and stoking fear of them, has kept politicians, clergy, right-wing talk show hosts, and what we now call “influencers” in the limelight by fulfilling their desperate personal needs for attention, bringing in big bucks, creating personality cults around them, and increasing their political power.

Whether these public figures are actually believers in anything but themselves or not, they’ve learned that right-wing religion is easily manipulated to sanctify their biases, fears, hypocrisies, moralistic attitudes, and violent rhetoric.

But why do these things work to get everyday people who aren’t getting these personal benefits drawn in even when the evidence is against the claims, and fellow human beings are thereby made to suffer?

Of course, we can’t know with certainty what’s going on in someone else’s head. We can’t know what their personal life stories are or what their unhealed hurt and pain is not only from their personal histories but due to growing up with constant institutional messages around us all that are meant to keep the system going just as it is without rocking any boats.

And in the last years we’ve seen that those “culture wars” have focused especially on one of the smallest cultural minorities - transgender people. While many younger people have moved beyond worries about gender binaries, many of older generations continue to attempt to impose their “wars” on everyone, fearful that younger generations won’t take them seriously any more.

Historically, older generations have always criticized the young in fear that elders will no longer be able to keep the young under their control. They’ve thought that change from the supposed good old days of some mythical past was scary. And the older generations are usually making money off the younger generations while criticizing them.

We know that there are regular excuses given by everyday folks that enable them to stay in whatever prejudices in which they have taken comfort. It’s difficult for people to change anyway when it requires re-learning and turning around, but with these covers, they can save themselves from the work it takes to grow and heal on matters that have helped define their feelings of place in the world as they perceive it.

Religion has been the most common fallback reason for whatever prejudice they have. Blaming their divinity, their scriptures, their institutions, and all else that constitutes their religion diverts the attention away from any personal responsibility.

They might have been brought up with a certain religious position that affirms their prejudice, but many others have come to question such traditions in the light of answers which have been around for a while that actually affirm the realities of human beings that share the planet.

Even old, outdated, psychology is used to allow people to stay stuck. The professional associations had moved way beyond these prejudiced theories long ago.

Even back in 1998, the American Psychological Association admitted that old theories were previously held “because mental health professionals and society had biased information.” In 2008 it reaffirmed that all psychologists: “provide appropriate, nondiscriminatory treatment to transgender and gender variant individuals and encourages psychologists to take a leadership role in working against discrimination towards transgender and gender variant individuals.”

A third cover is that the right-wing has created a community of people with whom they can feel that their prejudices are true because others agree with them. Prejudice, like misery. loves company.

Right-wing news organizations, talk show hosts, online influencers, social media channels, and religious institutions affirm that they are not alone in maintaining their prejudices. Giving up a community is difficult – ask LGBTQ+ people who have had to because their very lives were at stake.

But in spite of all this, people do change – they change to more inclusive religious communities, find support and answers in organizations such as PFLAG, and discover online resources such as Whosoever.org to educate themselves and let them know there are knowledgeable people world-wide who live without these old prejudices.

So, staying stuck in prejudices isn’t because there is something wrong with any person for identifying as LGBTQ+. It isn’t about the lack of available information or the dearth of communities who are ready to accept them with open arms, listen to their worries, and share their own stories of growth beyond old prejudices.

The current inability of people to seek to understand the struggles, the fears, the threats to, the humanity, and the needs of transgender and nonbinary people, is about so much other than these scapegoats the right-wing has played upon to cover its own fears and unbelief.

Settling for the idea that transgender and gender-role non-conforming people are sick and immoral is a way to actually protect societal and personal gender dysfunctions.

If transgender people are accepted, affirmed, and even proud to express themselves as who they are, it upsets comforting notions of how so many define themselves using well-worn, safe, essentialist gender binaries.

To reassure oneself that one is a man or a woman by societal definitions and that there are only two settled but “opposite sexes,” has been such a default setting that just being reminded that there are all sorts of questions around this feels like an earthquake destroying the solidarity of their personal footing.

If they ever learn to be self-reflective enough, most people would see that society has taught them to be somewhat insecure about all this. They just aren’t as secure in the idea that they’re expressing their manhood or womanhood as clearly and publicly as they should be while unthinkably wondering how secure their gender identification is, and whether others wonder too.

To do this could very well be the hardest (though most freeing) recognition in their lives.