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Today I will post of the ballot measures. Similar to 2024, there were a lot. What is notable to me is that many states that ended up electing Democrat politicians also ended up voting for many initiatives that I'd consider Republican priorities, including lower taxes and voter ID. This includes four states that limited transgender athletes, transgender bathroom access, and more, those four states being Arizona, Colorado, Nebraska, and Washington.
One of my friends in Arizona quickly said that this might be the death of transgenderism as a politically relevant issue. He thought it was likely that the issue would be dropped as an election loser, as something that the people obviously did not want since they voted against it by majority in even what you might consider quite "Blue" states. I said what could be summarized as "I doubt it", maybe along with "you'd be surprised". I think I have been vindicated in saying this, as the Colorado governor is outright saying that he's going to fight these measures that have been passed to the best of his ability, and there are already schemes to nullify those ballot measures. Anecdotally, I see transgender rights commenters saying that the Arizona propositions are illegal even if the people did vote for them.
Most of these culture war issues are not things that can be resolved by simple votes. They can only be resolved through decades-long grueling lawfare. Blues don't take 'no' for an answer, as their responses to Heller and Bruen and now this ballot measure show.
The leftists in my life have mostly interpreted the election results as "sure, trans issues might be unpopular with the unwashed masses, but they're not enough to sink a candidate, so full steam ahead". Six states elected their first trans/nonbinary lawmakers. Those lawmakers, at least, are true believers: part of the reason they want power is so that they can advance trans issues.
However, in the US the executive branch is the one that controls how many trans people there are. Biden creatively interprets the Civil Rights Act and leans on social media companies to promote woke content, and the rate of trans youth goes up. Trump re-interprets the Civil Rights Act and leans on social media companies to promote anti-woke content, and the rate of trans youth plummets. The president can't undo transitions that have already happened, but he can marginalize those people to the point where they're not an immediately visible top-of-mind concern to the median voter.
So I predict that we will see no movement on trans issues in the US for the next two years. To the extent that Congress and state governments try to take action, they won't succeed, and voters won't really care. Then in 2029 a president who campaigned on an unrelated platform will turn the dial back up and it will become a big salient issue again.
Spicy straights. By which I mean women, who by all appearances are typical straight women, asserting a queer or gender nonconforming identity despite a total lack of gay behavior or gender nonconformance.
Maybe I'm being unfair and there are actual nonbinary people. I suspect they're vastly outnumbered by progressive cis straight women who got their ""queer"" identity from tumblr.
What would it mean to be 'actually' non-binary? Human beings are binarily gendered. Do you mean people with various intersex conditions? People who use medication and surgery to try to achieve an androgynous appearance? Something else?
For what it's worth, in my experience I have met two types of non-binary person, which I think of as (and I am aware of the irony), male NBs and female NBs.
Male NBs are usually straight guys who don't want to be fully trans, but in some way want to defect from or signal that they're not participating in conventional masculinity. (Pa)trick Weekes might be an example of this, but I have met some in person. Generally they look like ordinary men, maybe with a pony-tail, or maybe with painted nails, or something trivial like that.
Female NBs that I've met are generally just lesbians. They're just lesbians. Usually a bit of a butch affect, short hair, tomboyish, etc., but if you round them off to lesbians you won't lead yourself far wrong.
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