General Discussion

She’s using concern for cisgendered women and girls to protect trans women. I’m not saying that it isn’t effective, but to convince someone to care about trans rights in themselves takes a bit more doing. The issues at the core of those ads are what rights imprisoned undocumented immigrants have, what rights trans individuals have, whether it is a medical issue, and how tax dollars are spent. The way the right weaponizes bigotry is by asserting there is an injustice being done to their constituents on behalf of a marginalized class. To change one’s mind, one usually has to deal with the perceived injustice by capitulating, explaining it away, or as AOC has done introduce a greater injustice and sidestep the issue of trans rights altogether. It’s something we can work on the next few years without blaming Harris’s loss on bad trans rights messaging.