Castro and Booker Brought Trans Issues To The Debates — But Is It Enough?

By Mary Emily O'Hara


For the opening time, transgender equality is a presidential debate topic — nevertheless what does it mean any time there really are no trans candidates to weigh in?


On Wednesday, June 26, former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julián Castro became the initial 2020 Presidential candidate to raise the allocate problem of transgender equality at the Democratic primary debate. The question was about abortion: “I don’t believe only in reproductive freedom, I believe in reproductive justice,” Castro mentioned, nevertheless he also fumbled any time while he elaborated. “What that shows is that just because a woman — or, let's also not forget, someone in the trans community, a trans female — is poor, doesn't mean they shouldn't have the correct to physical activity that right to choose.”


At the moment, it was unclear whether Castro meant to mention trans men (who can, and do, get pregnant) or whether he was confused about what it means to be transgender at all. That evening, Castro’s team tweeted a slightly-less-awkward version of his comment that still managed to conflate trans ladies with access to abortion. The candidate later clarified further, if he retweeted Human Rights Campaign (HRC) rapid response press secretary Charlotte Clymer. “Last night I misspoke. It’s trans males, transmasculine, and non-binary folks who need full access to abortion and repro healthcare. And I'm grateful to ALL trans and non-binary folks for their labor in guiding me on this issue,” he wrote.


Clymer herself is trans; she praised Castro for bringing up trans rights in response to a question that didn’t ask about trans people. For several in the community, it was one of these “good enough” moments. “At least he cares enough to talk about us,” became a familiar refrain on Twitter moments right following the debate aired.


Of the 10 candidates who were on stage debating that night, just one other presidential hopeful brought up trans rights: Senator Cory Booker. “We don't talk enough about trans Residents of the United States, especially African-American trans Residents of the United States and the incredibly high rates of murder right now,” he said later. (A few candidates said LGBTQ+ rights, including Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard, who stumbled by way of the acronym.)


None of the 10 candidates who appeared on the next night of debates said transgender people, though Senator Bernie Sanders, and Representative Eric Swalwell, and former Vice President Joe Biden mentioned the LGBTQ+ community. (Their comments were mostly embedded in statements about diversity and civil rights overall, or in Swalwell’s case, about gun violence.) Although two brief mentions still constitute the most debate time ever spent on the topic of transgender equality, ever in the past of televised presidential politics. And several LGBTQ+ advocates seemed happy enough; to go from blackout invisibility to a couple quick blurbs was at least a step in the correct direction, right? 

While other candidates have previously addressed the crisis of violence against Black trans women (Elizabeth Warren named 10 Black trans victims of murder in a June 15 tweet), Booker’s comment stood out. He is one of the few presidential candidates who explicitly includes LGBTQ+ issues as an intricate platform point on his campaign website. If elected, he'll “immediately end the ban on transgender servicemembers from serving in the military” and “rescind the Trump Administration’s ‘refusal rules’ that permit people to be denied required health care because of a provider’s personalized beliefs.”


It matters that trans people were spoke at all on the debate stage; 15.3 million people watched Wednesday’s debate across NBC, MSNBC, and Telemundo combined. And those numbers shot up the next night, any time 18 million viewers tuned in. That candidates centered trans people, especially for a brief few moments, means that the message — and the issues trans people face — reached millions of people on a national level.


Yet it also matters that at first say, trans representation was a disaster. For Castro to confuse trans boys with trans ladies so with little effort is indicative of a larger problem; there were no trans candidates on stage to chime in and correct him, no trans debate moderators to ask follow up questions. (Castro’s campaign did not respond to a MTV News request for comment asking whether the candidate had any transgender members of his campaign team.) And it also wasn’t clear at first up until his Twitter apology the next day) whether he had accidentally misgendered transgender gentlemen, or whether he thought that transgender ladies can have uteruses and get pregnant. If an incorrect pronoun falls out of a candidate’s mouth and no one moves to correct it, does it make a sound?


Daroneshia Duncan-Boyd, the executive director of the leadership building nonprofit Trans United, told MTV News Castro’s misgendering of trans gentlemen throughout the debate was “toxic,” and warned that, in general, candidates might be “trying to find something to jump on the bandwagon about because they require folks to vote for them.” Yet she also highlighted the significance of speaking to trans issues — and directly to trans voters — while in the debates.


“A lot of trans people feel like our votes don’t matter, so a lot of us don’t vote,” mentioned Duncan-Boyd. “We need to get a lot more involved around civic engagement, to know how critical it is for us to vote. So there’s a required for them to include us in the debate, and to offer extra education and literary texts around the topics.”

For Gillian Branstetter, spokesperson for the National Center for Transgender Equality Action Fund, Castro’s comment was a “milestone.”


“Secretary Castro made clear the required for an inclusive vision of reproductive justice, one that recognizes the significant overlap between the fight for reproductive rights and the fight for transgender rights,” Branstetter told MTV News. “Transgender people know very well the reality of having a lawmaker step between our doctors and ourselves, and having this recognized on a national debate stage is a transformational moment for transgender people nationwide.”


Mistakes aside, the fact that a candidate brought up transgender equality in healthcare however has yet to mention the supply on his campaign website, introduces the possibility of transpandering. NPR’s Shereen Marisol Meraji has written at range about political ‘hispandering;’ the phenomenon in which candidates bust out their high school Spanish (like Beto and Booker did on Wednesday) and quote Che Guevara (as Bill de Blasio did, with excruciating results, at a Thursday rally) sort in attempt to increase clout among Latinx voters, although not all Latinx people speak Spanish. Such conflation tactics can just be hobbling a well-meaning, yet ultimately misguided candidate. It’s vital for any candidate to imagine the needs of growing minority voter bases, however candidates who don’t belong to those groups some days fail to do that outreach without embarrassing themselves or crossing a line. Transpandering threatens to place straight, cisgender candidates in a similar quagmire, as Castro’s flub so correctly illustrated on Wednesday.


That Castro later apologized for his mistake accommodates — right now comes the work of doing better by and for that community, and including them in further conversations. For his part, he has shown that he is ready to listen; he asked for a nonbinary person’s pronouns prior to addressing them at a recent forum. And while Castro doesn’t highlight a specific LGBTQ+ program on his website, LGBTQ+ needs are explicitly included in the candidate’s housing, education, and immigration platforms. Such efforts speak to a larger trend: That this may very well be the most inclusive and progressive presidential race we’ve ever seen, even if the leading Republican candidate has spent years attempting to dismantle the rights of trans, and other LGBTQ+ people in unprecedented ways.


Nevertheless the work is far from done. While all the Democrats that took part in the opening round of debates have stated support for the Equality Act, which would add sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes to federal civil rights law, less than half of the candidates have actually introduced LGBTQ+-specific platforms in relation to their campaigns. That includes former Vice President Joe Biden, who has said that passing the Equality Act could be his first priority as president, however also stumbled on Saturday, June 29, with a claim that homophobic jokes would have been acceptable five years prior. (His website does not list LGBTQ+ rights in his platform.) And activists have both praised and questioned Senator Kamala Harris’s history with LGBTQ+ issues, and have been especially key of her past treatment of incarcerated transgender people in California if she served because the state’s Attorney General; her website calls out both homophobia and transphobia in a policy serious about protecting LGBTQ+ rights.


Thus marks a critical turning point: the debates are a good begin, yet right now they’re over. The fight for LGBTQ+ rights isn’t, and it’s up to the candidates to prove that they are advocates for each person affected by homophobia, transphobia, and discrimination. Saying you will fight for marginalized people is one thing; showing up and doing the work right following the broadcast ends is another. Otherwise, voters may have little reason to believe the talking points are anything other than empty promises, or in President Trump’s case, outright lies.


Between Wednesday’s nods to trans rights and Thursday’s competitive showing by an electable, openly gay candidate in Mayor Pete Buttigieg, the crowded kickoff to the 2020 debate cycle brought more LGBTQ+ content we’ve ever seen. And it also seems more and more needed that any viable Democratic contender eventually does roll out a concrete plan for expanding LGBTQ+ equality. HRC National Press Secretary for Campaigns Lucas Acosta mentioned the debates reflected the growing power of the LGBTQ+ vote.


“From touting the Equality Act to highlighting the epidemic of violence facing the Black trans ladies, candidates made it clear that LGBTQ+ voters are essential in the path to the Democratic nomination,” Acosta told MTV News. “We look forward to continuing to discuss the issues affecting LGBTQ+ people and why we can make our nation more fair and more equal for each person, without consideration of who they are or who they love.”