Trans support fell because people were told black is white
Andrew Gold said:
“I think what it is is that people are fed up of being told to believe black is white. And that is as simple as that. I think as soon as trans people started, and it's only a few trans people really, think many do just want to be left alone, but started saying, if I believe I'm a woman, I'm talking about men in general in this case, I literally am 1, that will not fly.”
Framing a drop in public support as a rational response to an implausible claim feels like common sense: if a movement asks people to accept something they find obviously false, pushback is predictable. The 'black is white' metaphor borrows the authority of plain logic.
The drop in public sympathy for trans people tracks almost perfectly with a decade of sustained, organised anti-trans campaigning across politics and press, not with anything trans people newly started saying about themselves. The 'black is white' framing borrows the language of logic to describe something different: a refusal to accept that gender identity is real and consequential, dressed up as a reasonable response to an absurd demand. Trans women have existed, been recognised, and been part of communities across every culture and era of recorded history; what changed in the last decade was not the claim, but the volume of the organised opposition to it. Telling trans people that hostility towards them follows naturally from who they are is not common sense, it is a way of making them responsible for the prejudice directed at them, and that is precisely what makes it harmful.
What I said at the time:
“Black and white. We can't use that analogy because you can't it's not black is white. You can't say black is white because it's not white is white and black is black. But we're saying that it's kind of like, you know, you're saying, if the trans people didn't get upset about being bullied, then they wouldn't bring it on themselves?”
Trans people, who are told that the prejudice directed at them is a logical consequence of who they are rather than a product of organised hostility.