Sunday, January 08, 2017

8.3 - Good News: public support for transgender rights

Good News: public support for transgender rights

For some more Good News to take us into 2017, here's another poll from Pew Research, this one with results that really surprised me.

A slim majority of Americans - by a margin of 51% to 46% - say that transgender people should be allowed to use the restroom that accords with their gender identity rather than being required to use to one for the gender they were assigned at birth.

Now, given the margin of error, you can't really say it's a majority, but you can say that the country is more or less evenly split on the idea.

Why this is both Good News and surprising is that usually, it takes time, often a generation or more, for an idea that affects social roles and identities to become accepted by a significant portion of society. That the relatively new idea of respecting gender identity - new  in the sense of something new to most of the public - already has become not only mainstreamed but accepted by half the country is surely encouraging.

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