Trans Representation

Trans representation has been a lightening rod topic. Alarms sounding on the right; jockeying for inclusion on the left. Examining a single month of news, it's saturated. But new data indicates we are making too much of it.

Despite the cacophony of uproar around books, bathrooms, puberty blockers, and abortion--a Pew study found that only .6% of Americans--just 1.4 M--identified as trans (and 1% as nonbinary). No one would know it by the parade of headlines.

Amid the reaction to overturning of Roe v. Wade--there's been a TERF war. TERF is an acronym for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist. Bette Midler and Macy Gray are in the hot seat for their tweets about 'woman' being verboten to some organizations who favor 'birthing people.'

Athletics have been in a snit about trans inclusion. Fox news dedicated a whole segment to the "Stunning Details on Transgender Skateboarding" when a transgender woman beat a 13 year old girl in the women's competition ... Because Fox is terribly concerned over women's sports!

FINA--the governing body for women's swimming--is usually concerned with women's sports. In response to the singular success of Lia Thomas, they've banned all transgender women from competitive women's swimming, making you think there was an onslaught of trans women swimmers.

Elon Musk, never a stranger to eyebrow raising comments and usually quite outspoken, has been largely mum on his daughter's request for a California court to change her first and last name and gender from male to female, citing she wants nothing to do with the billionaire.

Netflix released the latest season of The Umbrella Academy. The character previously known as Vanya is now Viktor reflecting actor Elliot Page's own transition. Conservative Jordan Peterson, who must stan Vanya, felt this was important enough to get banned from twitter over.

Musk, while not commenting on his daughter's legal petition, has spoken out against twitter's ban on Jordan Peterson, bringing it full circle. That's not surprising as Musk has made anti-trans comments in the past and has a contentious history with the social media platform.

But juxtaposing headlines with data, one can only conclude society has chosen to make this a culture war. Conservatives are going to have to realize they aren't likely to have much meaningful interaction with trans people. There's no real 'threat' to their way of life.

Meanwhile politicians, reproductive organizations, books, & TV are going to great lengths to be inclusive to the point of overcompensating. A trans person is statistically unlikely to be in every plot. America has made a mountain out of a molehill on both the right and left.