Maybe you came across a story last week about research funded by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that finds that transgender athletes are actually at a significant disadvantage compared to their cis competitors. This truth, as anyone with an internet connection knows, is the opposite of the lies right-wingers have been pushing for years, and will continue to push for decades.
Of course, trans people are at a disadvantage in sports because they’re disadvantaged everywhere.
They are among the most bullied people on earth and their bullies include governors, presidential candidates, and dictators around the world. Their identities are maligned in right-wing studies, even when their studies find that the rate of detransitioning is exceptionally rare. And the Supreme Court of the United States has joined the effort to make their lives miserable.
Rigidly enforcing hierarchies of gender that no one actually believes in is an effort that nearly all of society has been conscripted into. Yet trans people persist. They go on, refusing to retreat into the lies the right wants them to live. They suffer the abuse with grace, without the power to exact any of the revenge or accountability that this Nazi-like hate campaign deserves.
Why? Because they have to.
Meanwhile, the right is just playing.
They can move on to any other of the multifarious issues they exploit – immigration, Black people being in movies, M&Ms not having testicles… It’s all gain and no real costs for them, since the slings and/or arrows they imagine themselves suffering exists only in their heads.
They don’t care about trans kids or kids starving for a free school lunch or the thousands of kids Donald Trump kidnapped more than a half decade ago, many of whom still have not been returned to their family. For them, it’s all a game. And the reward for winning the game is trillions of dollars of wealth for the richest.
To win just enough, right-wingers do what they always do – toy with the emotions of the masses who don’t have access to enormous wealth in order to sell a fantasy of domination.
We can’t ignore their game, because the costs of their bullying for profit are immense – to poor people, minorities, the planet. So we have to find a way to see through the playbook to avoid the hate and defeat they want to create in us.
That’s why one of the key elements of the earlyworm project (which I invite you to joing — free or paid, your support matters) is to keep our hope up. It’s the belief that even when we come across depressing news like how money is getting tight for those in abortion ban states who need to travel or how bleak the situation is for poor patients in Alabama, we can do something about it. We may be able to do something about it. Like giving to an abortion fund or supporting the West Alabama Women’s Clinic. Or even just spread the word about giving to an abortion fund or supporting the West Alabama Women’s Clinic. It may not be enough. Or, to be honest, it’s never enough. But we persist.
One of the things that has been giving me the most hope is the idea of “reverse coattails” – the opportunity to make change on a national level by focusing on down-ballot races.
We have a great podcast coming Thursday with Melissa Walker from the States Project about strategic giving that has already made historic change. Above is a clip of the part that gives me the most hope, because I’ve seen personally in Michigan how much difference just 400 votes can make.
If this sounds like the kind of focus that can keep your hope up despite the right’s efforts, I encourage you to join this call with the States Project tonight (Tuesday, April 16th!) as they talk about the opportunities and goals in the seven states they’re targeting.
And we’ll keep working on more things you can do to keep that hope up.
The right needs to divide and exhaust us