Emmett Rensin recently published a piece in Vox lamenting “the smug style in American liberalism.” Rensin is a liberal himself, but like a good team player he isn’t afraid to offer constructive criticism to his own side. Now that a new front has opened in the culture war — the “bathroom bills” garnering national attention in North Carolina and Mississippi — several of my fellow columnists and liberals everywhere eager to enter the fray would do well to first heed Rensin’s advice.
Rensin argues the vein of smugness that seems to be pervasive in contemporary liberalism has weakened its mass appeal, thereby making it more difficult for liberals to enact their proposals. In short, liberals have become their own worst enemies. I find this argument plausible, perhaps even convincing. Consider the recent language employed in The Cavalier Daily editorial pages to attack North Carolina’s controversial law, H2B, which prohibits individuals from using public bathrooms that don’t correspond to their biological sex:
Lucy Siegel approvingly cites a different student who calls the bill “a chapter in America’s horror story.” Brandon Brooks attacks the “absurd logic used to justify [the law’s] passage.” Tamar Ziff, linking H2B to religious liberty laws such as Indiana’s controversial Religious Freedom Restoration Act, asserts the “Radical Religious Right” has “equated ‘freedom of conscience’ with freedom of intolerance.” I have no doubt these statements reflect genuine and justifiable moral outrage at what they perceive are hateful laws, but the statements seem more likely to signal the writer’s virtue to other like-minded individuals than actually win any hearts or minds.
Siegel, Brooks and Ziff all present compelling reasons why H2B is poor policy, intentionally discriminatory and hypocritical. Moreover, even some conservatives like columnist Charles Krauthammer have rebuked the law, labeling H2B “a solution in search of an issue.” As Krauthammer and the aforementioned Cavalier Daily columnists all point out, fears of rampant abuse if we allow transgender persons to use the bathroom of their choice are wildly overblown. There is not “an epidemic of transgenders being evil in bathrooms.” And yet these fears and the laws they spawn persist.
Rather than mock these fears as irrational, hateful or bigoted — or even cite statistics and offer what we may see as dispassionate analysis — we should first try to understand and empathize with those who hold them. Do you think the average 65-year-old man who has signaled his support for this law either directly or through a pollster to his local state representative really has the same view of transgender issues as the average liberal college student at an elite University? A majority of Americans oppose allowing transgender people to use their preferred bathroom, and ordinances instituting a policy have even failed in progressive areas such as Houston. Justified or not, popular resistance to these policies is strong.
This does not make these views correct or these fears well-founded, but it does mean these views are persistent and must be countered with something other than accusations. The first step is as simple as acknowledging the guiding motivation for some current opponents of these laws might legitimately be safety concerns, not bigotry. The second is to realize that even if bigotry is a motivating factor, as Rensin warns, opponents of the law should avoid condescension.
I realize this may be difficult, as many conservative proponents of the law seem just as eager to escalate the culture war as the liberals who oppose it. Nearly one million people are already pledging to boycott Target for signaling its openness toward transgender individuals. A Florida woman has even received national attention for announcing she’d be carrying her Glock .45 when using Target bathrooms now; the gun, she said, “identifies as my bodyguard.” Guns and LGBT issues at once — I can’t imagine a more perfect microcosm of our polarized society.
Fairly or not, I think the burden must fall on opponents of H2B and similar laws to de-escalate this conflict because supporters of the law clearly won’t; Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) for example seems eager to turn the law into a wedge issue. The most important emotion opponents of North Carolina’s law should convey is empathy, not disgust. Public shaming and celebrity boycotts may result in the repeal of certain discriminatory laws, but they won’t result in any sort of consensus concerning the central issue. If anything, I’d wager these approaches only stoke resentment and make finding common ground more difficult.
This common ground is not so hard to find. Opponents of the law can at least understand why the idea of men in women’s bathrooms unnerves people. Then they can note how if the idea is to simply keep scary-looking men from entering women’s bathroom’s, laws prohibiting transgender individuals from using the bathroom of their gender identity are actually horrible policies. U.S. Army Sergeant Shane Ortega, for example, is a transgender man and bodybuilder with roughly the same figure as Arnold Schwarzenegger. Under current North Carolina law, he’d be required to use the women’s bathroom. It’s hard to imagine many proponents of H2B had this in mind when they supported the law. This example may not direct us to a simple or obvious solution to this current conflict, but it at least demonstrates that the opposing views are not irreconcilable. We just needed to tone down the rhetoric to realize it.
Matt Winesett is a Senior Associate Editor for The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at m.winesett@cavalierdaily.com.
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