Trans People Have Kitchen Tables Too

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I am the first to admit that sometimes the concept of “kitchen table issues” baffles me. 

Maybe it’s because I grew up in a family where the act of sitting down around our dining table together as a family was comparatively rare. My dad is a journalist and my sister and I were always running around from dance classes to sports to theater to band and endless other activities. Most nights getting to sit down for dinner at all instead of eating something in the car or bleachers was a major achievement. Still, the couple of times a month that we did manage to all sit down together, our topics of conversation covered everything from politics to the latest drama in my 4th grade Scrabble club. For the most part nothing was off limits, and everything carried equal importance.

So valuing an issue based on how likely it is to be discussed at a kitchen table never quite clicked with me.

Eventually in college I realized that it was code for issues that politicians want to characterize as what matters to “real” Americans. Usually this is meant to invoke the white working class, both lower and middle, who have “bigger” things to worry about than lofty ideals of equality and social justice and civil rights. American farmers, according to many (mostly conservative) politicians, don’t have time to be worried about trans rights. That’s the realm of far left, ivory tower academics who have no idea how the real world works. They can talk about theories of gender and race because they don’t have to worry about putting food on the table or gas in the tank. They’re humble issues that impact good, hard working, red blooded (again, read, white) Americans.

This gets brought up any time a civil rights or social justice movement begins to take a prominent position in American political discourse. There are a few reasons for this in my mind. The biggest one is fairly simple, both political parties (Democrats are guilty of this as well folks), know that the current system, which stratifies us along lines of race, class, gender, and disability, works to their benefit. Upholding the system, as broken as it is, lines their pockets and reaffirms their access to power. They have a vested interest in ensuring that things remain as they are, even if they give “love is love” and “Black Lives Matter” platitudes on occasion.

It’s also an effective strategy to garner votes in an election. After all, the core question in any given election is “which candidate understands your needs and issues the most, so that they can effectively address them?” If you claim that your opponent is distracting from the “real” issues, and that the people who support your stances are the “true” Americans, people who want to be viewed as “true” Americans are going to want to vote for you. It’s electoral politics 101.

In the wake of the absolute failure of the Democratic run for the White House in 2024, there’s been a lot of discussion as to what went wrong. After all, the Dems turned course due to growing discontent with Biden, ran a relatively young Black woman instead, and most importantly, were running against someone that most people thought America had finally written off as a dangerous, wanna-be dictator. This election shoulda-coulda-woulda been a slam dunk if it weren’t for…if it weren’t for…well surely it can’t be the fault of the Democratic party’s ineffective campaign strategies and status-quo policy. It has to be someone else’s fault.

And that someone else, it seems, is the trans community. There’s a massive political tension now happening on the left, as institutional liberals in one breath try to claim that trans rights distracted from the “real” issues in the election, while in the other grapple with the clear moral imperative of protecting Americans from a rapidly growing fascist movement.

In February, a group of moderate Democrat consultants gathered to analyze what went wrong and how to fix it moving forward. The document they compiled was extensive, but political reporters for Politico’s Playbook pulled out five points of note:

• The party should “embrace patriotism, community, and traditional American imagery”;
• Democrats should “ban far-left candidate questionnaires and refuse to participate in forums that create ideological purity tests” and “move away from the dominance of small-dollar donors whose preferences may not align with the broader electorate”;
• They should “push back against far-left staffers and groups that exert a disproportionate influence on policy and messaging” ;
• Candidates should “get out of elite circles and into real communities (e.g., tailgates, gun shows, local restaurants, churches)”; and
• The party needs to “own the failures of Democratic governance in large cities and commit to improving local government.

This was met with quite a bit of eyebrow raising and eye rolling from civil rights activists and other on the ground organizers. Independent reporter Erin Reed, who has been covering trans rights for years, commented on Bluesky: “lol at least two of the five are “throw trans people under the bus” but left as subtext.”

I agree with this assessment, but would go further and say at least four of them carry elements of encouraging mainstream Dems to abandon trans people, at least in the context of the broader political discourse. I’ll be leaving the final point alone for today, as it has far less to do with my area of expertise than the first four, but I’ve left it to preserve the quote, and so people are aware of it.

Asking Democrats to “embrace patriotism, community, and traditional American imagery” calls to mind a very conservative ideal. Most people would not consider trans people to be a part of the “traditional American imagery.” We aren’t exactly what the bald eagle and apple pie classic Americana aesthetic invokes, except perhaps at a 4th of July drag show. This phrasing rings a lot of alarm bells to me. It absolutely reads as the idea that criticising the American government, that dreaming of a better way of life, dreaming of social evolution, is somehow “unpatriotic” or “un-American.” Never mind that the core of American mythos is built on social evolution and dreaming of a better way of life. Anything but unquestioning, toxic positivity about the state of the nation is treasonous under this line of thinking. So trans people, who by our very nature challenge the traditional, challenge the norm, cannot possibly included in this image of the future of Democratic politics.

The demand to move away from “far-left candidate questionnaires” and “forums that create ideological purity tests” as well as moving away from “small dollar donors” that don’t represent the broader electorate also all reek of abandoning trans and other marginalized communities. First off, I generally don’t trust conservatives and self-described “moderates” when they start throwing around the term “far-left” because 90% of the time they’re discussing groups and individuals with politics well to the right of my own. The American Overton Window – a political science concept that states that there is a shifting window of political acceptability – is so far to the right that most Democrats are still objectively conservative.

Beyond that though, “far-left” has also been so frequently paired with the term “gender ideology” in recent years that it’s hard for me to believe that they aren’t partially referring to trans supportive organizations that try to gauge candidate’s support for protecting the right to gender affirming care, anti-discrimination laws, and public accommodations access among others. Trans people are often also accused of forcing “ideological purity” (see the recent conflicts I’ve had with certain actors in the state-church world for just one example) because we ask people to refer to us using terms that don’t cause us harm, and are increasingly refusing to sacrifice our health and safety on the altar of neoliberalism.

The same goes for pushing back against “far-left” staffers and groups that influence policy and messaging. It should not come as a surprise that trans and other marginalized individuals are more likely to be engaged in progressive and other left leaning political spaces. Politics is one of the means through which we improve our world and society for ourselves, our communities, our families, and future generations. We’re often drawn to the world of politics because our experience of oppression drives us to fight for change. I know for myself my involvement in law and politics has come from a lifetime of experiencing violence, fear, and discrimination as a queer and disabled person, as well as feeling a moral imperative to use the skills I have in research, writing, and communication to right the wrongs I see in the world. My story is not unique. So often moderates try to characterize the fight for change and justice as “too radical.” As I noted in my earlier piece, “‘Respectability’ is Not a Viable Strategy” every social justice movement is continually met with criticisms that “now is not the time.” Abolition, women’s suffrage, the Civil Rights movement, the disability rights movement, all have been considered too radical because they challenged the status quo.

Politics needs dreamers. Politics need people who can aim at the moon so we can continue to try and land amongst the stars. The people actively working in government and on political campaigns should be working towards loftier goals, so that the ultimate result of negotiations and the policy that is eventually enacted lands on a center that is a net benefit, rather than two steps forward and three steps back. If we disregard the people who fight for social justice, we will only fall further into this pit of fascist oligarchy, because no one will be fighting to push us forward.

Then there is the point that inspired this essay. 

“Candidates should ‘get out of elite circles and into real communities (e.g., tailgates, gun shows, local restaurants, churches)’”

Trans rights are continuously characterized as a matter of academia and the wealthy people who have the most access to academic institutions. People who oppose transgender existence see people discussing theory, and having overly academic discussions about what gender is and how we exist and how it impacts our lives and culture and assume that those are the only places where these discussions take place. Similar to the concept of “kitchen tables” there is an idea that there is an entirely separate world where issues like gender, race, class, and disability never come into play. Trans people go to drag shows and gender studies lectures. Real Americans are out tailgating and at church, and those are the people we need to be talking to.

Now I will preface my point here with the fact that I am well aware that at this point in my life a lot of people would place me more in that “academic elite” camp, than the “kitchen table” camp. I have an advanced degree, have studied political and legal theory extensively, and regularly engage in academic spaces. But I’ve also spent my entire life in these so-called “real” communities. I grew up going to church fish fries and ice cream socials. I love college sports (go Hoosiers). I love a dive bar just as much as I love a cocktail lounge (often more so), and I love a bonfire and a camping trip as much as I love a trip to the ballet or opera. I’ll admit I’m not a fan of fishing, but that has more to do with a traumatic childhood summer camp incident involving a snapping turtle than me being queer. I read my cheesy (admittedly gay) romance paperbacks alongside my political theory. I put my pants on one leg at a time. Etc.

My point is that trans people are not confined to the ivory tower. In fact, it’s very much the opposite. Trans people are far more likely to experience poverty, homelessness, and associated issues like addiction, sexual assault, and violent crime. The largest group of queer people isn’t located in big coastal cities like LA or New York, but scattered throughout the South, with 32% (3.6 million people) of all LGBTQIA+ Americans living there. If politicians want to talk about working class Americans, they cannot exclude the queer community, including the transgender contingent. We are not some alien aberration from another planet. We are just as “real” as anyone else. We’re your neighbors and friends. We’re the people at your dive bar and coffee shop. We’re the people at the voting booth and in your church and playing bingo at the VFW. We’re the people at your city council meetings and legislative sessions. We’re teachers and lawyers and doctors and cashiers and HR reps and healthcare technicians and any other profession you can think of. 

We’re here, and throwing us under the bus would not only be a strategic failure, as data shows that voters right before the election were significantly more likely to support a candidate in favor of trans rights, but also a moral failure. Ultimately the “realness” of trans people and our place in society is not contingent on our value to polling numbers and how we impact access to political power, or at least it shouldn’t be. Instead we are “real” because we are human beings, with real emotions and thoughts and lives and dreams, and yes, kitchen tables.

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Kat (they/them) is a queer lawyer, activist, and theorist focusing on the intersections of law, queerness, religion, and politics, with the occasional bit of theology, political theory, and legal theory thrown in for good measure. Originally from rural southern Indiana, Kat earned their B.A. in Political Science in 2019 before continuing on to earn their J.D. in 2022, both from Indiana University- Bloomington. A former Equal Justice Works Fellow for the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Kat has spent their professional career fighting for the separation of church and state and LGBTQIA+ rights. Outside of work you can find them at a ballet or contemporary dance class, sipping on dirty shirleys at their local gay bar, or playing video games with their cat, Merlin.