First: The Story of Rebecca

When I was in my early thirties, I met a trans woman named Rebecca. She was my age, a single parent, and a genuinely good person. She had worked in restaurant kitchens for over a decade at that point. Here is a sad story that Rebecca told me. One day she applied for a better-paying job. The potential employer knew she was trans, and they called her in for an interview anyway.

In the interview, the manager asked her: "What if a customer is using the bathroom—won't you molest them?" That was the point of the interview: to make her come in and get humiliated. I myself endured similar humiliation interviews due to prejudice, but for different reasons.

When Rebecca told me this, I asked her why she didn't ask him if he made a habit of molesting men in bathrooms. She said she was simply too stunned to answer.

Rebecca was hardworking. She was brave. She chose to come out as trans knowing she would face discrimination and lower pay for the rest of her life. That is the true face of discrimination. And that is the true way to judge those who ride the equality bandwagon and never deliver.

What This Article Is About

Transgender people are one of the few groups that society still allows us to discriminate against, laugh at, and mock. They are one of the "othered" communities that the established moral order has flipped against. In some parts of this country, a person can physically assault a trans individual and face no real consequence.

But I am not writing this to catalog the many terrible things trans people go through. I am not here to rate their suffering against anyone else's. What I want to look at is how this issue has been used in the name of political advancement.

Because if you think Republicans have used the demonization of trans people as a political crutch, look at what Democrats have done. They weaponized the issue, discarded the people they used to win a few elections, and passed token change. Big capital pinkwashes its illegal and often criminal actions while doing the same thing.

Here is an example that sounds like a sad joke. Years ago, my employer at the time sponsored a Pride parade in the city where I lived. That same employer allowed a Black gay person to be harassed every day—to the point that someone hung a noose on that person's locker. The employer tried to destroy the evidence and made a policy that you can't call the police from campus.

If you want a less theatrical but more horrific example, we can talk about the handing over of personal data by Meta and Google of trans and gay people to Israel, which then proceeds to blackmail individuals or use their location to kill them and their families.

Trans People in the Political Discord

Transgender people are a group with a unique disposition. They dare to defy gender norms that almost all societies hold. And because they are a tiny and uninfluential minority, they are used and vilified in the political discord.

Let's reflect on the use of the trans issue—not as an issue of equality, as it should be, but as a voter card used by the duopoly of our one-party system. And how those Democrats and Republicans are willing to use any and every one of us, the rest of us, to keep themselves entrenched in power.

The Political Use of Trans People

Let me start with the basic rights that any individual should be able to look forward to. A transgender person, and any person who is othered in the US, suffers mainly in three areas:

1. Discrimination at work and pay.
2. Discrimination in personal rights:
   (While federal law protects core rights like marriage, state-level laws dictate how difficult, unsafe, or restricted transgender individuals are when trying to exercise those rights, update documents, or secure inheritances.)
• The right to marry and form relationships.
• The right to inherit.
• The right to change name.
3. Personal safety.

Looking at the problem carefully, we can see two kinds of issues here.

One kind can be helped by the state. For example: enforcing anti-discrimination laws, including trans people in affirmative action protections, or creating a category in criminal law that ensures proper sentencing for those convicted of hate-motivated violence.

The other kind is what the state cannot do and should not do, in my opinion. The state cannot force people to feel a certain way. It should not police personal behavior that is not dangerous and is protected by free speech. It should not try to legislate legitimate conflicts, like sports competition, where reasonable people disagree. All these policies are hard to enforce, they infringe on people's speech and personal views—which they have a right to—and they result in conflict that is used for the benefit of divide and conquer.

And if you look at the Democrats, that is exactly what they tried to do. In my opinion, they offered no solution but to inflame societal fights and pit people against each other. They pushed until the majority of the country rejected the "woke" idea and went for Trump. And now the Democrats have thrown the trans community aside, except in some states where their vote is needed.

Instead, we got token rights, with token individuals to represent success, while the other party used those silly fights and the infringement on people's personal rights—like women's sports, for example—to trump up anger. Anger that this discarded minority has to face.

The Real Problem: A Two-Party System That Profits from Division

But here is the deeper issue. It is not just that Democrats failed or that Republicans are cruel. It is that the system itself is built to reward this behavior.

We do not have two parties that compete to solve problems. We have two wings of the same bird. They compete to see who can better weaponize the suffering of one group to win the votes of another. Trans people are simply the current card in the deck. Before them it was gay marriage. Before that it was welfare queens, Black people, whoever was convenient.

The two-party system does not want these issues solved. If trans people were fully protected—if they had equal pay, equal housing, equal safety, equal inheritance, equal dignity under the law—then the wedge would disappear. And the parties would lose a reliable tool for fundraising, for turnout, for rage.

So they keep the wound open. They pass just enough token measures to claim progress, and just enough restrictions to keep the other side angry. And the people themselves—trans, gay, straight, Muslim, immigrant, the rest of us—are left to fight each other while the duopoly stays entrenched in power.

This is not a bug. It is the design. And until we name it, nothing will change.

How We Should See This

Regardless of our personal beliefs, if we still have to pretend to be humans, we should hold to one simple principle: all of us are people who should be judged based on what we do and did. Not on how we look. Not on who we are.

If a trans person commits a crime, that person alone is responsible. But being trans is not a crime. It should not be a political card. It should not be a wedge. It should not be a fundraising email. It should not be a Pride logo on a corporation that harasses its own employees.

The trans card is not played for trans people. It is played for power. And as long as both parties can use the suffering of a small, vulnerable group to mobilize their bases, nothing fundamental will change.