In her sweeping and frustratingly diplomatic interview with Ezra Klein, Congresswoman Sarah McBride paints a portrait of political strategy that feels, to many trans people, like a betrayal. Cloaked in the language of “grace,” “incrementalism,” and “liberalism,” McBride delivers what amounts to a carefully reasoned abdication of the urgency and moral clarity that trans lives demand in this moment.
Let’s be blunt: trans people are under siege. We are being legislated out of public life, stripped of our healthcare, erased from education, banned from sports, misgendered in official documents, and targeted in both political rhetoric and street-level violence. And in response, McBride suggests we take a breath, offer grace, and consider the feelings of those who want us dead or invisible.
She spends much of the interview wringing her hands over the “absolutism” of progressive activists, lamenting the so-called loss of persuasion as if trans people have ever truly had the chance to persuade in a society so committed to misunderstanding us. What she frames as strategic missteps (too much talk of pronouns, destabilizing the gender binary too soon, asking too much from cis people) reads as a dog whistle to respectability politics. At best, it’s an appeasement of center-left voters; at worst, it’s a scolding of the very people she claims to represent.
McBride repeatedly insists that the trans rights movement “lost the art of persuasion,” but that framing fundamentally misdiagnoses the problem. We haven’t lost it, it was never granted to us. Trans people have never had a fair seat at the table of public discourse. What we’re seeing is not a failure to convince, but a right-wing disinformation war, lavishly funded and obsessively focused, operating in bad faith. McBride seems to believe we can negotiate with an electorate that has been groomed into hysteria by years of “protect the children” propaganda as though saying “please” a little more softly will make someone stop throwing Molotov cocktails at our clinics.
Even more troubling is McBride’s embrace of rhetorical compromise. She argues that if someone votes the right way, we should overlook how they speak even if it misgenders us or reinforces harmful ideas. But what’s the cost of that leniency? For trans people, it means enduring humiliation and dehumanization for the sake of someone else’s learning curve. Growth is important, yes, but not when it comes at the price of our dignity, as if our pain is just part of someone else’s journey toward enlightenment.
The real heartbreaker in this conversation is that McBride invokes the civil rights movement, as if the great heroes of past struggles would advise us to tone it down, be more patient, and let our oppressors catch up. Would Bayard Rustin or Sylvia Rivera have argued for compromise over clarity? For grace over direct action?
When she criticizes trans people who are “screaming” in protest, who demand immediate action while the “house is on fire,” she fails to acknowledge the material, spiritual, and psychological violence we endure. She centers public opinion and voter discomfort over trans survival. She admits the house is burning and then tells us to whisper while we’re burning alive.
Perhaps most insulting is McBride’s insinuation that our movement is responsible for its own setbacks that if we had just been a little nicer, a little less online, a little less queer, we wouldn’t be in this mess. It’s as if she believes the persecution we face is simply a matter of poor marketing rather than systemic oppression baked into American institutions.
Sarah McBride seems to want a trans movement that is palatable, not powerful. That is polite, not disruptive. That will wait in the hallway while others debate our existence.
But the truth is this: the world does not change because oppressed people ask nicely. It changes when we demand more than crumbs. It changes when we refuse to compromise our humanity. It changes when we stop centering the comfort of the majority and start fighting like our lives depend on it, because they do.
We do not need more grace. We need solidarity. We need action. And we need trans leaders who will not scold us for being too loud while the fire gets closer.
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