J. D. Vance, Marco Rubio Claim Census Question on Gender Might Turn Teens Trans

Two U. S. Senators believe gender identity is so fluid just asking about it could undermine American teen’s identities.

Quick question, hotshot: Which political party in the U. S. is more likely to believe gender is fluid? If you think it’s the Democrats, the guys more closely associated with LGBTQ+ rights, you’d be incorrect. More and more, Republicans are claiming that gender identity is not just fluid but so incredibly fragile that even hearing about the possibility of non-cis identities existing poses a serious risk to children.

Case in point: J. D. Vance and Marco Rubio, two whole adult male senators, who apparently believe that by asking a test question about gender on the U. S. census the government might infect teens with the notion that trans existence is possible, thereby destabilizing their entire reality… or something.

These two kooky fellas recently sent a letter to the Census Bureau objecting to the inclusion of a test question on the American Community Survey which would ask what sex a person was assigned at birth and what is their gender identity in the interests of figuring out the best wording and placement of questions in order to gain more accurate info on the trans community. The ACS surveys millions of households annually and provides data that supplement the official census of all U. S. households, conducted once a decade. Data on the LGBTQ+ community in the U. S. has been inconsistent and hard to come by, according to research by Ken Schneck who reported on this for the Buckeye Flame, which is also where we first found this story. The lack of good info on the trans community has prompted the Census Bureau to attempt to gather such data for Americans age 15 and older, starting with a test question.

Not so fast, say our senatorial duo. Did they consider that just asking about gender identity might turn teens trans? This is the only real “concern” expressed in the letter, which is otherwise just an exercise in finding new ways to say they don’t think trans people are valid and don’t want the government finding out more about them.

They write “questioning minors about their “gender identity” risks misleading them that the concept is valid and backed by the U.S. government—which it emphatically is not.”

screenshot from a Marco Rubio press release

In addition to being really silly, this is also an example of the conservative belief that gender is not just fluid but incredibly, dare we say unbelievably fluid. For conservative Republicans gender is so fluid that just hearing about trans people can cause it to change. Gender is so fluid that it must not be spoken about in any way not approved by Republicans, lest the sound of the word transgender pollute the virgin ears of a child. (If you’re suddenly worried that you’ve been polluted by reading this article, I regret to inform you, yes, you have, and now you’re transgender. Unless you were already trans, and if so you’re now cis. Whoops! Sorry!)

This is the logic not only of this letter but of Don’t Say Gay legislation, book bans targeting public or school libraries, and of legislation banning drag queens from reading to children. It’s the logic of conservative fragility, a belief that their identities, norms, and values are so weak that just hearing about other options is an unacceptable threat to those identities, norms, and values.

In the GOP way of thinking about gender, everyone is just as transgender as anyone else, which somehow isn’t contradicted by the fact that even in a time of relative visibility trans people have remained a small fraction of the population. For Vance and Rubio there is no gender identity, just people of different sexes being told how they should behave by an authority. If the authority stops telling them their gender, they assume, it will just fall to pieces. Men becoming women! Women becoming Superwomen! Superman becoming a dachshund! There’s no end to the potential madness, once you embrace the idea that humans have no innate qualities and are infinitely malleable by those in authority.

As a worldview, this seems to cut against the insistence that conservative social norms are based in things like “nature” or “reality” and instead posit that we could reshape society and build a better world, if we only wanted to. I’m sure they don’t mean it that way, though. That would really be goofy!