Rivaldo, I wanted to respectfully address this as I believe you are misidentifying exactly who are those people that are using trans people as culture war fodder, and also to share a perspective on the struggle for trans rights that you or others may want to incorporate into how they view the issue.
Because I am a straight, white, cis, male who formerly was transphobic and homophobic; you may wonder, who is he to speak on this topic. Candidly, there are better resources for gaining improved understanding rather than listening to me. My perspective is influenced by the activism that I’ve done over the past decade, which has been mainly with LGBTQ organizations full of people who were far more accepting of me than I had previously been of them.
Currently trans people are culture war fodder because of those opposed to their equal rights, not because of those fighting for their rights. Full stop.
When we look at the historic struggles for civil rights in the USA, whether it be for the rights of women, indigenous people, Black people, LGBTQ, etc. we will see common methods of opposition. Examples of this can be seen in opposition to women’s “crazy” demand to have the right to vote, or criticism of MLK’s being an “outsider” or his tactics.
The opponents of equal rights will attempt to frame the struggle and the demands of activists as:
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crazy/hysteric
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counter to god’s law or “natural rights”
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and they will clutch their pearls about activists’ tone and/or tactics
Consider how the opponents of trans rights try to redirect our focus away from the rampant discrimination and violence(much of it institutionalized) that trans people face in their lives, and try to get us to focus on something like transgender participation in athletics. Or they try to decry “cancel culture” as running amok, because people are calling out transphobic language, actions, and support of discriminatory policies.
I am not claiming that I am an expert in how best to be inclusive of trans people when it comes to athletics. I do know that we don’t need to have fully resolved how to best be inclusive of trans people in sports prior to taking action that ameliorates the violence and discrimination that trans people face right now in their daily lives. I am confident that even if you and I could magically produce a coherent system for including trans people in sports, there would still be transphobic people opposed to equal rights to trans people outside of athletics.
So, when someone like Joe Rogan opines on trans rights by focusing on athletics, he is(intentionally or otherwise) using his platform in a way that negatively impacts how his audience considers the issue of trans rights. He could focus on the glaring and obvious violence and discrimination trans people face and the need for civil rights for all people, but he doesn’t. Ask yourself, would someone after listening to Rogan be more likely to think “I should stand in solidarity with trans people!” or “Trans people are ruining sports. Why are trans rights activists so crazy”. Then ask yourself how different the actions of people would be in the future if what Rogan spoke about made them think the former rather than the latter.
If someone, such as Joe Rogan, with a ratio of minutes spent in dialogue with the likes of Ben Shapiro vs minutes spent in dialogue with an expert on trans rights of approximately 1,000:0 decides to approach the topic of trans rights the way Rogan does, I believe he is acting with reckless indifference, and the president of the Human Rights Campaign is correct for calling him out.