Somewhat grown up piece from Trans US Representative

[NumberTheory]

Sarah McBride, the first TiM to be voted into the House of Representatives in the US talking about why the trans movement lost in the US in the New York Times. There doesn’t seem to be any suggestion that the goal of gender replacing sex everywhere is an unreasonable one, but it is a thoughtful examination of what the activist movement in the US did and how and why it was a failure.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/17/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-sarah-mcbride.html

https://archive.ph/xOmav

Link does not work for me.... I get nginx. Is there another way to read this? Can someone summarize?

Did you try the archive.ph link too?

I have only read the first bit but I would summarise it as:

”We didn’t stay sneaky enough”

”We weren’t good at emotional blackmail”

“We failed with the forced teaming”

I did try the archive.ph link.... same result.

Then I’m not sure, adulting. I’m abroad at the moment and have an NYT subscription so it might all work a bit differently for me. Maybe others who can access the links could help. It’s too long to cut and paste in, I think.

I would say it was more along the lines of- we were arrogant and stopped trying to persuade. We failed to look outside our bubble. We tried to silence people instead of listening and talking. And McBride applied that predominantly to trans activism but also to other aspects of left activism. I also read an undercurrent of frustration with broader queer theory influencing the Democratic Party.

As I said, though, no acknowledgment that their goal might be flawed or that there might be legitimate concerns about some aspects of what they want and a need to compromise.

There is a very different conversation in the US on this subject. There's it's all about politics: left and right. Here the conversation is framed in the language human rights.

Yes. And there is a powerful misogynistic right wing that is anti gender identity in US, which is not the case in the UK.

Nevertheless a lot of TRA tactics seem to come directly from the US and to see some pulling away from the toxic rhetoric may mean changes in the UK.

Oh I liked that. McBride is a very interesting person. Good quote about the language becoming But yes, still the message that there is a perfect set of beliefs (unspecified) which some people haven’t got to yet, rather than any actual fundamental problem or sex difference that can’t be eliminated with time. But of course it is a different conversation in the States, a large chunk of Trumpists including lawmakers look certifiably insane and yet they’re colleagues. I can understand any political American’s frustrations with trying to live life and do politics with these nutters who’s only aim is to scream loudly for TikTok, particularly when one of them is the president.

Good quote about the language becoming about signalling you’re in the in-group.

I couldn't read that whole thing. He's fundamentally misunderstood that it's not lack of hearing the arguments - it's that we've heard and understood and shock horror disagree. I also think that most of what he says isn't relevant to the UK where we're not seeing a roll back of gay rights or abortion rights (in fact it's the opposite) so viewing the push back against trans as part of a wider picture of a shift to the right is inaccurate. Irrelevant navel gazing imo.

Very interesting read. McBride is going to make headway, wisdom in their suggestions. Not sure whether the sensible opinions will make headway against those locked in a purity spiral. Everyone gains if there is discussion and conversation and trying to understand (well everyone except extremists who won't ever be happy). McBride does not say how we achieve that adult dialogue.

I believe that discussion and conversation and educating does not necessarily help the TRA side or result in public support for more trans 'rights'. I suspect (hope) it will result in a 'this and no matter more' line of general agreement about key issues by people across the political spectrum.

Wouldn't it be great if trans people could feel safe and GC people could too?

And McBride applied that predominantly to trans activism but also to other aspects of left activism. I also read an undercurrent of frustration with broader queer theory influencing the Democratic Party.

Important to remember that McBride is from Delaware and has a political career based on being extremely close to the Biden family. I rather doubt that McBride is very radical on issues other than trans, or has much affinity with the Omnicause activists who have become much more influential in recent years.

It really annoys me the way he side steps talking about women.
It makes it more obvious that women are a sex class he doesn't want to acknowledge.

He talks about language, policies, norms, "those people who bait me". He's refusing to see the discomfort so that he can say it was never there, since he sees only malice.

I thought this section was illuminating and mirrors thoughts I’ve had myself:
**
The support that we saw for trans rights in 2016, 2017 — it was a mirage of support in some ways. Because I think, in the postmarriage world, there was a transfer of support from the L.G.B. to the T. for two reasons.

One, I think people said: Well, the T. is part of the acronym. I support gay people, so I’ll support trans people — it’s all the same movement. Two, I think in those early days after marriage, a lot of people regretted having been wrong on marriage in the 1990s and 2000s. And they said: I didn’t understand what it meant to be gay, and therefore I didn’t support marriage, and I regret not supporting something because I didn’t understand it. So I’m going to, without understanding, support trans rights because I don’t want to make that same mistake again.

Much of the rest though was US-specific as pp have said, and much is infuriating.

p.s. the archive link works ok for me this morning.

A share token here and a warning that it is loooong

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/17/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-sarah-mcbride.html?unlocked_article_code=1.P08.-Nf_.cDOe9PNY4Auq&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

I think that's very true, especially people assuming T is basically the same as LGB (because it's all the same acronym) and should therefore be supported by right-thinking people without question.

He knows that many supporters of so-called "trans rights" are doing so blindly because they don't understand, yet seems to think those who don't support the movement are also acting out of ignorance.

He seems totally unaware (or perhaps just unwilling to acknowledge) that when people do "educate themselves", they tend to end up on the side of sex realism.

He is aware that "the support for trans rights was a house built on sand", but doesn't acknowledge that the whole movement and their demands are also incompatible with reality and societies in which other people (particularly women and children) also have rights.

I thought this was interesting from Ezra Klein:

But the one thing that’s maybe different here is there’s a set of narrow policies, like nondiscrimination, and then a broader cultural effort — everybody should put their pronouns in their bio or say them before they begin speaking at a meeting — that was more about destabilizing the gender binary.

And there people had a much stronger view. Like: I do know what it means. I’ve been a man all my life. I’ve been a woman all my life. How dare you tell me how I have to talk about myself or refer to myself!

And that made the metaphor break. Because if the gay marriage fight was about what other people do, there was a dimension to this that was about what you do and how you should see yourself or your kids or your society.

He correctly identifies that gay marriage does not require anything from anyone else, but oddly fails to understand that pronoun declaration enforces the gender binary and that this is particularly problematic for women.

They skate around sport, but still seem to understand the problem as ‘winning hearts and minds’ not erosion of women’s rights.

I know Trump is the loudest voice in the US and he doesn’t care about women’s rights, but they are oddly incapable of looking outside their on country.

Yes, he never, ever makes that leap, does he, eg to acknowledging that women have human rights?

He’s actually incredibly bourgeoisie, not the revisionist storyteller he thinks he is.

This brings to mind the contact hypothesis. It has been shown that when people spend time with and around gay people, they become more accepting of gay rights, but the opposite happens with trans people.

Gay rights campaigners knew that as/when gay people were able to safely ‘come out’, the most powerful influencing tool they had was gay people. The general public would learn that the only difference between ‘them and us’ is who they have intimate relationships with.

People tend to have fewer issues with trans people when they don’t know any. The more time and contact they spend with them, the more differences they notice - mostly mental health issues and lack of quality of life.

Researcher advocates are now referring to the need for mediated contact - in response to the contact hypothesis not working. I have my suspicion that the model of mediation won’t reflect conventional models that are completely neutral and don’t have an ideologically based starting point

Yes, and this bit:

"In a recent poll where Trump’s approval rating was around 40 percent, 52 percent of Americans approved of how he’s handling trans issues. Another poll showed that was more than approved of Trump’s handling of immigration. Far more than approved of his handling of tariffs. And if you look more deeply into polling on trans rights, the public has swung right on virtually every policy you can poll."

I haven’t read it all yet as it’s so very long, but I found this comment of Klein’s interesting:

I wonder how much that reflected the movement of politics to these very unusually designed platforms of speech, where what you do really is not talk to people you disagree with but talk about people you disagree with to people you do agree with — and then see whether or not they agree with what you said.

The whole “no debate” thing rendered it inevitable that there would be no forward movement and no persuasion of people who disagreed.

Bullying and shouting people down will only take you so far, as activists are now hopefully starting to realise. It also means that much of the support they did think they had was likely based on fear of being cancelled as opposed to genuine understanding. Which I guess is part of the ‘mirage’ referred to by McBride.

Mediated contact won’t change the nature of the material world.

It is possible to have a romantic and or sexual relationship with somebody of the same sex.

It is possible to be gender non conforming.

It is not possible to change sex.

Again, knowing sex is real and that women have rights is not Right Wing.

Not wanting kids serilised - not right wing.

They cannot see that the reason Trump won is because of their utter nonsensical insanity and seeing how the Democrats have completely fucked up everything they see with their own eyes. It isn't Right Wing to notice these things.