I Am a Small Part of the Reason Why the Transgender Rights Movement Went Flying off the Rails
It wasn't all me, but it was a little bit me
Anyone still arguing that the transgender rights movement doesn’t need a Come To Nonbinary Jesus moment needs to contend with this new polling from Lakshya Jain of The Argument.
IMHO, the most shocking finding in this poll is the strong opposition to letting transgender people use the bathroom that matches their gender identity. As Jain points out, people used to support that: That got 51 percent support in a 2016 poll and 53 percent in a poll from 2017. Ten years later, it has 33 percent support. That’s not losing an argument; that’s losing an argument so badly that the Dalai Lama tweets “Haha bro you got POWNED” at you.
I won’t say that this is all my fault, because if I’ve learned one thing over the years, it’s that I don’t matter very much. But looking at that polling makes me reflect on my small role in this enormous failure. The part I played is that I’m the guy who pitched and co-wrote Last Week Tonight with John Oliver’s 2015 piece on transgender rights.1 People might be surprised to learn that, because I’ve been critical of aspects of the transgender rights movement, and critical of Last Week Tonight’s recent work on this topic in particular. And when I rewatched the 2015 piece today, I was horrified to see that it ends with a monologue that has aged so poorly that it makes me want to get a port-a-potty, bury it a mile underground, and go live in it.
Did I write that? I honestly don’t remember — the one thing that gives me hope that I didn’t is that I would have said “suffragette”, not “suffragist”. But even if I’m not responsible for that master class in lightly threatening jackassery, I at least sat nearby with my thumb up my ass while it was written. And when I think back to my involvement in that piece, it seems like a cautionary tale illustrating exactly how things went so wrong.
