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Why Trans Rights Infuriates Certain Parents, Even The Non-MAGA Ones

It’s not always why we think.

Ted Bauer
4 min readJan 13, 2025

If you believe the various after-action articles about the 2024 Presidential election, it seems like the single Trump ad that bumped the most “on the fence” voters — and I cannot imagine who was on the fence by the time that election happened — was one where he said Kamala supported trans prisoners, and the tag line was that Kamala is for “they/them” and Trump is for “you.” Nice. Apparently that moved the needle for some people, which was another example of trans rights, which maybe impacts tens of thousands of people per year at most directly, helping to decide an election for 330 million people.

My mom is 81 and hates Trump with a passion, but she even would ask me on the phone, “What is happening in the schools? Are they operating on kids?” (Please recall I said she’s 81.) I have a neighbor who spent years being sometimes to the left of AOC on some issues, and then she got pregnant after a few years of trying, and before she even announced she was pregnant to the world, she was telling us: “Well, I don’t think I can vote Democratic anymore because they are supporting changing the gender of kids.”

People have struggled with this topic for years on any number of fronts, including politically “Why is this seemingly the issue that…

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Ted Bauer
Ted Bauer

Written by Ted Bauer

I write about a lot of different topics, from work to masculinity to relationships and social dynamics, I.e. modern friendship. Pleasure to be here.

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