Drug and surgical treatment of transgender-identified children is wildly unpopular…
…among likely voters of both parties.
It’s a lot more unpopular among Republicans, though, as one might expect. But it’s not approved of by either group. The question in the poll was, “Do you believe underage minors should be required to wait until they are adults to use puberty blockers and undergo permanent sex change procedures?” Here’s the breakdown of responses:
Full survey: 78.7% wait, 21.3% don’t wait
Democrats: 53.2% wait, 46.8% don’t wait
Republicans: 96.8% wait, 3.2% don’t wait
No party or “Other”: 84.6% wait, 15.4% don’t wait
I’m actually kind of surprised that the opposition in that last unaffiliated or “other” group was so very high.
Another thing that surprises me are the age breakdowns (found on page 12). The age group with the highest percentage of “wait” responses is the youngest, 18-24. In that group, 92.3% responded “wait.” And yet the next age group, 25-34, had the highest “don’t wait” response wait – 37.2% – although even in that age group the majority (62.8%) said “wait.”
And yet, despite this enormous amount of opposition, the Democratic Party forges ahead with its support of the practices. I think it’s hurting them in the polls and will hurt them in the election as well.
On almost all of the recent polls I have seen the ‘no party’ or ‘independent’ people are almost matching the responses of the Republican responders on the cultural issues like this and crime.
Right now those people are about 80% Republican voters whether they call themselves that or not.
As the saying goes, the first 90% takes 90% of the time; the remaining 10% takes the other 90%.
My point? The voters may vote on different issues. They may be ignorant of either the candidate’s stance on the issue, or their party’s. Nor is it helped by political operatives who, the poll shows, have an incentive to muddy the water.
I left the GOP about a year ago and am unaffiliated now, so if I had responded to that poll, I’d have pulled up that “other” category.
The combination of suggestible young folks–see Slenderman stabbings–and woke parents suffering from/enjoying Munchhausen-by-proxy still has potential to ruin a kid’s life.
It is mind-boggling to see Democrats in tight races making strong statements in favor of “gender affirming care” for children. As this survey shows, most people, when they consider what this “care” means, are opposed to it for children.
This could be the big issue that generates a true Red Wave.
Wokster attempts to explain it as a good idea only give it more exposure as the insane practice it is.
The Democrats are so invested in it that they can’t step away from it.
Kate,
Over and over I see evidence that regular Democrats just do not know what is going on.Had a discussion today with an older, black Democrat. She watches CNN and listens to a black issues pod cast . She seemed to have very little idea about the extent of the transgender stuff in school. She did not know about the proposed changes to title 9. But she said she is not free. Lives in a nice middle class house. Husband drives a BMW. Black issues podcast are telling her about how bad it is to be black in America.
Kaye,
I do think Dem voters hear sound bites, “ Gender affirming care” and do not examine what it means. It just means being nice to those kids , or something.
When these poisoned, mutilated children find out that their lives have been irreversibly ruined, their vengeance against the parents and doctors will be violent.
One of my favorite analogies for where we are in recent years has become, “through the looking glass”.
In some states, and I would guess most, the minimum age to buy alcohol is 21. I don’t know, but it may be as young as 18 in places. It is also a misdemeanor, or even a felony, for an adult to buy alcohol for an underage child. Yet, we have this gender dysphoria sewer in which it is considered normal to encourage, or even impose, life changing actions for children.
The ramifications for the children involved are critical. Equally critical for the future of our society is how it responds to this travesty. If we cannot quash this kind of madness, the future is dire.
Griffin and windbag, I became an independent on my registration due to that wonder RINO Boehner. So, I also show up in any poll as one of those others despite my voting 100% GOP since that time. There’s too many spineless wrecks at the GOP national level, so I just can’t bring myself to affiliate myself with them.
Over and over I see evidence that regular Democrats just do not know what is going on.
jon baker:
True. But some are waking up. And it looks to me going more left-to-right than visa-versa. Especially with this transgender wackiness.
As Neil Young once said, “Everybody knows this is nowhere.”
I was a radical leftist before 9-11. Leftism is quite brittle. Once you start questioning it, it shatters.
Leftists are smart though. That’s why they censor, deplatform, and shout down their opposition now.
My Wife and I also switched to Independent, and for the same reason mentioned above. There’re a lot of us.
My Spam filter gets 20 to 30 emails a day begging for money. Not a chance in H that we will give anything again.
Here in CO the big issue that the Dems are pushing is Abortion. CO has Abortion on demand up to birth.
Yep here in WA the big issue in every Democrat ad is abortion and Trump.
My personal favorite is the Patty Murray ad claiming that her opponent Tiffany Smiley is in cahoots with ‘MAGA Mitch McConnell’!!!
It is completely ridiculous but it’s all she’s got. And of course Murray will win a SIXTH term in the senate.
The term “gender affirming” seems Orwellian, since gender negating must come first.
@ Bill > “The term “gender affirming” seems Orwellian, since gender negating must come first.”
Makes a good sound-bite.
However, I suggest that the “gender affirming” part first requires “sex negating” — as the transition is from biological sex to imaginary* gender.
*I recognize an exception for Neo’s trans readers who have shared their experiences with us and are not part of the current insane rage to mutilate children.
John Hinderaker of Powerline Blog addressed this poll today also.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/10/who-wants-sex-change-operations-on-minors.php
After noting that the trans operations are making the hospitals and doctors (I use that term advisedly now) a LOT of money, he still doesn’t understand this point:
I think that’s a good question.
There are a lot of ways to get money and power (and the Democrat party engages in most of them), so why THIS one in particular?
I would expect/hope there to be a lot of opposition to it from any sane people of any political affiliation; but that 46.8 percent of Democrats that say don’t wait sends shivers down my spine. That’s almost half!
My guess would be that many urbanites (of which many are Democrats) might know or know of someone who, as an adult, underwent drug/surgical treatment of a transgender person and believes that ALL have had happy endings.
But, we rarely hear about those that did not end happily! I suspect those folks that had regrets try to be even more hidden than they tried to be before any surgery; so, we never hear for them.
Unless it is life/health saving, kids are way to young to undergo ANY surgical procedure that is irreversible. They might think all they need is this special treatment and poof! their life is magically better. It doesn’t work that way. Even many adults don’t get it – their fantasy is stronger than reality.
The commenters on Hinderaker’s post cover most of the possible reasons for the Democrats pushing opposite-gender-stereotype-implementation procedures.
I don’t think there is a single over-arching reason, other than that leftists are mentally ill; rather, several reasons can be operating simultaneously for many of the pushers.
Most comments are along these lines:
“When you take your boy dog to the veterinarian and have HIM neutered; castrated, that does NOT that make HIM a girl dog. ” – Andrew Wilkow
And:
“If gender is a “social construct” why does anyone need surgery?”
Another reason for parents’ opposition to “gender-affirming care” is the risk of injuries caused by trans athletes to female players. “The Cherokee County Board of Education in North Carolina voted last month to forfeit girls volleyball games against a rival school after a transgender athlete reportedly injured a player with a spike. . . . The Hiwassee Dam player is still suffering from long-term concussion symptoms and has not been cleared to play, according to Education First Alliance.”
https://nypost.com/2022/10/22/north-carolina-school-district-votes-to-forfeit-games-against-rival-after-transgender-athlete-injures-player/
Parents of girls participating in high school and college sports are waking up to the potential risks to their daughters’ health and safety even when the girls themselves are not interested in “transitioning.”
AesopFan quotes the valuable comment on Hinderaker: “If gender is a ‘social construct,’ then why does anyone need” ‘medication’ and surgery?
QUOTING Hinderaker, “Presumably there must be a reason why the Democratic Party has chosen sex change operations on minors as a hill to die on, but I can’t imagine what that reason might be.”
AesopFan continues: “I think that’s a good question.
There are a lot of ways to get money and power (and the Democrat party engages in most of them), so why THIS one in particular?”
I thinks it’s a piece of what Ayn Rand usefully called “a package deal” in Left political philosophy. The Deal today is that happiness is subjective. And if you are against others’ happiness, then you are an evil hater. “Hate has no home here” as the Democrat Governor of Minnesota righteously insisted, recently.
Since ‘All Must Have Prizes’, then ‘Everyone Has A Right To Be Happy.’ The latter insight comes elaborated at length in Mark Bauerlein’s latest book “The Dumbest Generation Grows Up.” Everybody loves someone. That’s the gynocentric ideal the Left embraces and advances. From child to adult, who you love doesn’t matter — you hating bastards must be stopped if you object that it does!
Ergo, part of the Left’s PoMo tribal Neo-Marxism means cobbling together enough ‘Tribes’ to defeat and depose from power their Axis of Evil, rooted in Men’s Patriarchy and racist White Christian Supremacy (eg, Dead White European males, imperialist Western Civ, and the nuclear family).
In other words, as James Lindsey has concluded about allied tribes of CRT, they’re all basically fronts redeploying racist NeoMarxist analysis in “the last (ie, most oppressed) shall be first” March for Heaven on Earth way — and if it doesn’t do that, it ain’t real anti-racism!
As Lindsey explains in a recent YouTube interview, the race neoMarxists believe that there is a future infinity point where everything in history converges, and looking back and cutting off the past (“1984” style) will achieve ultimate socialist happy betterment, collectively.
Thus, the exploitation of Trans and subjective abortion by law (through birth or whatever offends) — no morally relativist extreme can be denied!
What Hinderaker fails to understand is that Classic Marxism aimed to be scientific and therefore aspired norms like falsification, appeals to historical experience, and utility testing.
The new improved race Neomarxism is informed by the PoMo dictum that “only power matters.” Thus, rational criteria like utility maximising can be righteously jettisoned, if it helps them achieve and maintain power.
In addition, such vacuous pandering serves to achieve the enemy’s demoralisation and deauthorization as “haters.” For example, in Eastern Europe, under Soviet Communism, the locals did this without instruction from Moscow or the ComIntern. “We did it to ourselves,” — that is, totalitarian oppression.
Or, as the observant Theodore Dalrymple famously put it: “Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.” It’s all a package deal.
The far Left still subscribes to humiliation as a tool deployed against the enemy — even though classical Marxism has been ditched, together with its Hegelian “scientific history.” This ambition has been defeated by experience of history.
Since today’s young are purposely ignorant of real history, indoctrination can run wild and unopposed. Hence, the ever righteous BLM riots of St George Floyd summer. And the obedience of kneeling FBI agents, institutionally rewarded, and the like in pro sports and major consumer companies.
It’s all a package deal. Then trans and utopian abortion rights/rites become protected components of the same team.
A related outrage sees “Nature Human Behavior” embracing the New NeoMarxist Widsom — and receiving outrage and opprobrium from evolutionary biologists Heather Heyer and Bret Weinstein.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5wr9jNUr-k
Can real science survive this? No.
When I was a kid going to school, it was perfectly fine to carry cough drops in your pocket at school. They would check to make sure it wasn’t candy, but you could have them. Now, they have to be kept with the school nurse with a parent’s or doctor’s note to get one. But you can get life altering surgery to remove body parts without your parent’s or primary care physician knowing?
This isn’t a trans issue. This is fundamental basic rights and consistency in laws.
In many churches, you will find a group of people who are very enthusiastic about establishing and maintaining contemporary worship services with drums and electric guitars. This group of people typically consist of younger Boomers and older Gen Xers who insist that the contemporary services are necessary “for the kids.” You will find most of these contemporary services filled with these Gen Xers and Boomers while the kids are (mostly) nowhere to be found.
I see a lot of the same type of people pushing the trans thing on kids. I don’t know what it is, but I suspect that there is something about the cohort of younger Boomers and older Gen Xers that drives them into the arms of these fads. Sadly, by the time the whole trans thing blows up, I suspect that most of these folks will be very elderly or no longer with us to appreciate their mistakes.
You will find most of these contemporary services filled with these Gen Xers and Boomers while the kids are (mostly) nowhere to be found. I see a lot of the same type of people pushing the trans thing on kids.
The people you’re describing with these potted Strauss-Howe terms would be around 60. I haven’t noticed people of that age pushing contemporary music in worship services. In my experience, people pushing contemporary music are the people on the payroll (or, at least, volunteers with official titles); the rest of the congregation just puts up with it. As for Munchausen mommies, median age as we speak is around 43, or a half generation younger.
It is astonishing that there appear to be plenty of MD’s willing to perform sex change surgery on kids and plenty of parents who go along with the wishes of their children despite their young age.
These MDs are the “willing executioners,” for they should know better. The parents are the enablers.
In other times and places, it was these sorts of folks that shoved children into gas chambers or worked to death gulag prisoners.
All of course, for the “benefit” of society.
It’s amazing what people will do – actually anything at all – when they believe they are doing the right thing.
It is just as astonishing to see that almost half of democrats believe that children should obtain this drastic surgery, literally at any age.
This alone should be a warning to every thinking individual, for it demonstrates that many demokrats have no boundaries in what they believe and what they would do if they obtained absolute power.
They will do anything and everything; there will be no limitations.
Great comments here starting from/circling around John Hinderaker’s question, why has the Left chosen transgenderism (and esp. underage T/G) as the hill to die on?
My speculation: a bully gains the most power from oppressing the most innocent over the most trivial or contrived “offense.” And the more success a bully enjoys, the less connected to reality the bully becomes, and the more grandiose his or her plans and demands.
They are high on their own supply. Best to let them fail; and applaud politely when they do.
Correction: “applaud politely” should be “cheer wildly.”
Really now!
What IS wrong with destroying kids, schools, families, societies, cities, countries??
(Especially when such destruction can be framed, and sold, as “empowerment”, “liberty”, “self-actualization”, “freedom from stultifying repression”, “basic morality”, “anti-Deplorable”, “HUMANITY itself”…”the right thing to do”??)
I mean, are you a SEMI-FASCIST?
Really now….
Our church has its contemporary service at 11. The traditional service is at 9. Lots more kids at the later service because, according to some parents, It’s too hard to get the whole family out the door in time for the early service.
“And yet, despite this enormous amount of opposition, the Democratic Party forges ahead with its support of the practices. I think it’s hurting them in the polls and will hurt them in the election as well.”
In the short term, yes, it hurts them. In the long term they think they can pound us down by calling us names like transphobes. The left has long used the mentally disordered as cudgels against us. Think Greta Thunberg. By her own admission she has Asperger’s Syndrome. Basically she’s a high functioning Autistic being exploited by the “climate catastrophe” con artists. Attack the con-artists, and they’ll claim you’re attacking a poor defenseless developmentally disabled Swedish teenager.
As Greta Thunberg herself would put it, “How dare you!” No matter how demonstrably false she is on the facts we have to go along with her demands or we’re just mean. Or, so say her exploiters.
So the powers that be crawl into a corner like scared rabbits, begging not to be called mean names. Screw the general population who will be forced to freeze in the dark as the European power grid collapses. But at least European “leaders” won’t be vilified by a hostile press and can jet off to climate conferences in Can Cun where they can feast on prime rib, pork loin, caviar, and New Zealand farm-raised “sustainable” salmon (actual menu from a “climate conference; it’s good to be a member of the nomenklatura).
You, peasant, must eat bugs and reduce your carbon footprint by never venturing from your village using any conveyance that might produce carbon emissions.
So why wouldn’t they exploit people with gender identity disorder to force you to comply with the left’s demand that reality is whatever they say it is from one day to the next? Fauci didn’t lie when one day he said the healthy don’t need to wear masks. Of course he later admitted he did lie since he believed you needed to be lied to. Then you needed to be masked. Then doubled masked. Each day when he said another thing that contradicted the thing he said the day before, each day it was the truth. The Current Truth. Just like Billy can come to school today and announce he’s no longer he but she’s Barbara. And we all must believe it. And the girls have to become involuntary strippers and shower with “her.” That’s the Current Truth and you best believe it with all your heart. And when Barbara’s female penis does what a female penis naturally does, since Barbara is an avowed Lesbian,
“How dare they,” the girls force to shower with “her,” question any of the Current Truth and be traumatized.
And when Barbara decides it is more advantageous to be Billy again, like the convicts who decide they are transwomen while in prison but, you know what? Now that they’re getting out they’re actually cis-gender men, “How dare you!” question that any of it was a lie. Transphobe! Your cult leaders demand you believe the Current Truth with all your heart. And not remember today what the Current Truth was yesterday. Because it’s no longer the Current Truth. And today’s Current Truth isn’t necessarily tomorrow’s Current Truth, comrade.
This is how cults operate. Coercive persuasion. A.K.A. brainwashing or mind control. Using force to change how someone feels and thinks.
If banning puberty blockers and reassignment surgery for children is wrong, I don’t want to be right.
Dementia Patient Says It’s Wrong for States to Ban Puberty Blockers and Sex Reassignment Surgery For Children
I’ve figured out Joe’s bargain with the WH staff: He says what they tell him to say, and they let him keep sniffing kids.
Right now those people are about 80% Republican voters whether they call themselves that or not.
Welcome to the party, pals! I’ve been a support-the-man-not-the-party independent since 1998, when I saw the GOP of Gingrich and Lott revert to the illogic of politics-as-usual just four years after their Revolution.
That was the year I voted for a Democrat candidate for IL governor: Glenn Poshard, an old-school Dem who was pro-life and pro-2A from highly-unionized downstate coal country … over GOP Chicago Machine pol George Ryan, who after his term in office was convicted of corruption,
That was also the last time I voted for a Dem, which speaks to just how awful their positions are relative to the GOP. But it took me another decade to perceive the problem behind the problems: the entrenchment of thinking I refer to as social technocracy, that pushes all of us, regardless of politics, to sell ourselves short and instead look to that “little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital” to remove risk from our lives and solve problems FOR us, as though they are omniscient and infallible.
The more we ask government to do FOR us … even things that sound good and benign and anything but radical … the more power we give government to do TO us. And even those who call themselves “conservative” are susceptible to this, bitterly clinging to their pet tax deductions, student-loan guarantees, Federal funding for THEIR public schools and roads and “community development” instead of persuading their neighbors to ask some fundamental questions:
> Is this the proper way to get this done?
> What are we giving up by doing this?
> What strings are attached, that can be used later to jerk us around?
… the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate…
This explains why the Dems persistently pursue lunacies surrounding sexuality. By jamming abortion-on-demand, celebration of the LGBTQ lifestyles, and kids “transitioning” down our throats, all as “normal” – and branding anyone who objects with the “hater” label – they believe they can humiliate them, Christians in particular, to the point of impotent irrelevance.
After all, “if it’s legal, it’s moral”, y’know.
A primal fear of Progressives is that someone will possess the credibility to have others listen, when that someone proceeds to harsh Progressives’ mellow about their irresponsible choices in life. That is their motivation to humiliate dissenters, pursued with a fundamentalist zeal that makes fire-and-brimstone Baptists look like loose-topped libertines out for beads at Mardi Gras.