Trans people are not making your eggs expensive.

The swathe of recent anti-trans legislation, sentiment, and executive orders would have the average American believe that transgender people are an imminent threat to American life. South Carolina Representative Nancy Mace has spent most of her recent time in Congress trying to get transgender women banned from using women’s bathrooms on federal property, claiming that it is a matter of “safety.” Even the President has recently signed an executive order on “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism” (yes, that’s actually what it says), which is pretty wild coming from a guy who, based on his own words, is someone women actually need to be defended from. Anyone remember “grab them by the pussy?” Anyway, the intense focus on trans Americans lately seems to imply that this is an imminent, far-reaching issue that affects our whole country.

Actually, it’s not. It’s a smokescreen to keep average people focused on identity politics instead of class consciousness. Only 0.6% of Americans identify as transgender, according to the Williams Law Institute. That’s less than 1%. And as for trans women secretly being predators who undergo extensive and expensive medical treatment to transition so that they can sneak into women’s bathrooms and harm them…this has never happened. Unfortunately, innocent trans people who are just trying to live in the “land of the free” have become the scapegoat for far-right politicians and media who need someone to turn the anger of their constituents toward. 

In reality, trans people are just like everyone else. The real danger to the lives and freedom of the average American are actually people like Elon Musk – people who hoard wealth, exploit workers, and serve nothing but their own interests. When the CEO of United Healthcare was shot last year, a lot of people weren’t all that upset. Millions of Americans have struggled with getting health insurance to cover their bills, and the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker reports about 1 in 12 adults have significant medical debt. People with severe health issues are more likely to have more debt, and the way American healthcare is set up is to cost patients as much as possible. It was really interesting to see just how many people – regardless of party affiliation – saw the CEO’s death as “not necessarily a tragedy” after being exploited by United Healthcare. It was a rare moment in which the partisan divides that rich lawmakers and constantly reinforcing among us were put aside, and millions of Americans were able to see that we are all suffering, actually. 

Grocery prices haven’t gone down since Trump was elected president. In all his executive orders, none of them address the state of the current economy or seek to make housing, medical care, or food cheaper for American citizens. Instead, they focus on things like renaming the Gulf of Mexico and bashing trans people. Trans people are not a threat – the upper class of oligarchs who seem to run this country are. They push so hard to keep us fighting over identity politics and party lines so that we don’t realize that, regardless of party, people like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk are actually our greatest oppressors. The new “Department of Government Efficiency” Musk is set to head is supposedly going to shrink federal spending. However, putting Musk in charge of something like this is a huge conflict of interest. He should not have power over the spending relating to regulations and subsidies to affect his companies (like Tesla). 

There has been a very unpleasant trend in recent years of tech moguls becoming intertwined with the federal government in a way that seems to serve their interests far more than ours. “First Buddy” Elon Musk is perhaps the most visible and egregious example of it, but it’s not a new development. Politicians are not working for the people who voted for them – they work for the companies who donate millions of dollars to them and their campaigns. I don’t think people realize just how scary this is, and in part, it’s because the distraction is working and we’re too busy fighting over race, gender, and sexuality to notice that we are all poor and we are all getting poorer. We have got to tear ourselves away from the fight over who can use what bathroom and realize that we are seemingly thisclose to an oligarchy. We have to do something about it.