Rep. Sarah McBride (D-DE) claimed that the backlash against transgenderism is the result of a “well-funded” and “well-coordinated, right-wing effort,” walking back previous remarks that his party may have overreached on the issue.
The cross-dressing Democrat sat down with Katie Couric on the latest edition of her “Next Question with Katie Couric” podcast, where he discussed the ongoing rollback of policies favoring the minuscule but highly influential demographic, including biological males competing in women’s sports and medically transitioning children.
At one point, the veteran journalist asked the congressman if the “pendulums maybe swung too far” on transgenderism, sparking the current backlash against those who practice the controversial lifestyle.
(Video Credit: Katie Couric)
“I don’t think the pendulum swung too far,” McBride responded. “I think more than anything else, the reason why this has happened is because there was a well-funded, well-coordinated effort to fearmonger and scapegoat around a vulnerable community.”
He claimed that even though transgenders were becoming more publicly visible, their increasing prominence in society wasn’t matched with a “level of public understanding” and that right-wingers used the lack of “understanding” to “demonize” the entire trans community.
“It’s just sort of the reality of new progress, right?” McBride told Couric. “It’s always the most fragile at the start. And then that is met most explicitly by a well-funded, well-coordinated, right-wing effort to demonize, fearmonger, and scapegoat that community. It’s had toxic consequences.”
McBride, who has been celebrated by the media as the first openly transgender person to be elected to Congress, was more willing to entertain the idea that his own party bore some of the blame for the backlash for their relentless pushing of the issue on Americans who were then accused of being bigots and haters if they pointed out that men don’t belong in women’s restrooms, that biological males have a physical advantage over female athletes and that it’s depraved to encourage kids to transition.
“I think that’s an accurate reflection of the overplaying of the hand in some ways — that we as a coalition went to Trans 201, Trans 301, when people were still at a very much Trans 101 stage,” McBride told the New York Times’ Ezra Klein earlier this year.
“And I think some of the cultural mores and norms that started to develop around inclusion of trans people were probably premature for a lot of people,” he added. “We became absolutist — not just on trans rights but across the progressive movement — and we forgot that in a democracy we have to grapple with where the public authentically is and actually engage with it. Part of this is fostered by social media.”
McBride told Couric that “one of the things that I take solace in is the fact that absolutism, whether on the left or the right, is only possible in authoritarianism.”
“The fact that change takes time, as unfair as that is and as unsatisfying as that is, we can try to make it as fast as possible, and we must make it as fast as possible. But the fact that it’s hard, that is a feature of democracy, not a bug of it,” the pretend woman added.
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