Headwinds

The Daily Mail reports:

A liberal polling group is keeping quiet about the results of its survey that shows voters reject radical gender ideology, while privately hatching plans to 'educate' the public by 'rebranding puberty blockers.'

DailyMail.com gained access to an invite-only webinar of San Francisco-based Change Research, in which they unveiled new poll results that show Americans reject giving hormones and other trans drugs to children.

In the online session, lead pollster Betsy App called the results 'bad news,' saying the team would struggle to 'educate' the public about sex-reassignment for kids. She said it was time for 'rebranding puberty blockers' with a less-divisive term.

'I want to give us all a reality check,' App told the online session.

'We are facing an uphill battle when it comes to voters' fundamental beliefs about the relationship between sex and gender.'

Unfortunately for Democrats, the American public just isn’t on board with pharmaceutical and surgical interventions for gender-confused youth:

Some 60 percent were against puberty blockers, 56 percent opposed cross-sex hormones, and 60 percent were against removing girls' breasts. Barely a third of respondents supported such interventions on kids.

…

Winning the argument, [one pollster] said, involved changing language. 'Gender affirming care,' she said, was a 'great term that we should continue using' because it resonated with the public.

Not so for puberty blockers, she added.

'One of the key next steps is rebranding puberty blockers,' said App.

'This is a term that's not doing us any favors.'

These pollsters talk about the need to polish the language and “educate” the public about trans issues in order to increase buy-in. But this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the problem that faces trans activism. Trans activism thrives in the shadows of civil society: the less the public understands about the issue, the more supportive (or at least less opposed) they are. Excursions into the sunlight don’t tend to go well. This is not because trans activism has a public-relations problem. This is because trans activism has a reality problem.

Trans activism has been sold to the public—to the extent that any case has been made for these radical changes at all—as an urgent human-rights crusade that only bigots would oppose that somehow won’t affect the rights of anyone who doesn’t identify as trans. And since no one else is supposed to be affected, no one is supposed to have an opinion.

But trans activism is actually an “uphill battle” against material reality and civil society. Around the world, lobbyists have been changing laws and hoping nobody would notice (no, really, that’s the strategy).

But now the fallout is starting to come into view: strained relationships and broken families, detransitioners who’ve experienced medical harm, outright cheating in women’s sports, Orwellian language rules enforced by shameless bullies… it’s not a pretty picture. And it’s not what anyone was sold in exchange for their silent compliance.