Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) falsely suggested in a podcast interview on Thursday that white, upper- and middle-class teenagers applying to prestigious colleges and universities are pretending to be transgender in order to win admission.
Vance promoted the false claims on Joe Rogan’s podcast and offered no evidence to support his statements.
“If you are middle-class or upper middle-class white parent and the only thing that you care about is whether your child goes into Harvard or Yale, obviously, that pathway has become a lot harder for a lot of upper middle-class kids,” Vance said. “But the one way that those people can participate in the DEI bureaucracy in this country is to be trans, and is there a dynamic that’s going on where, if you become trans, that is the way to reject your white privilege.”
Vance then claimed that being trans is one of the only options available to cisgender white students “in the hyper-woke mindset.”
In reality, white students have a much easier time with the college applications and admissions process than their nonwhite peers — and Vance’s assertion that white students are being rejected from colleges due to “white privilege” is blatantly false.
Furthermore, a host of studies have found that transgender kids actually have more difficulties in accessing higher education, due to higher rates of discrimination and harassment, as well as lack of support from schools in earlier grade levels.
Attacks on transgender people — and fear mongering about inclusion — have been a key strategy of the Trump-Vance ticket, and Republicans overall, in the 2024 election.
During his recent Madison Square Garden rally, for example, Trump promised to get “transgender insanity the hell out of our schools.” Earlier in the campaign season, he baselessly suggested that some schools in the U.S. are influencing children to become trans.
“There are some places, your boy leaves for school, comes back a girl. OK? Without parental consent,” Trump has said.
No school in the country is pushing children to change their gender.
Erin Reed, a transgender advocate and legislative research journalist, has found that, in at least 100 political races across the U.S., transgender issues “are a major part” of the contest, with Republicans spreading disinformation and misleading claims about trans children and gender-affirming care in order to bolster their campaigns.
“These run from school boards all the way to the President of the United States,” Reed said, adding that “the election results of 2024 will be crucial for the future of anti-trans politics in America.
GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis has also condemned the way that transgender inclusion and health care has been weaponized this election cycle.
“After the election, trans Americans will have to deal with the dangerous fallout from the shameful lies and misinformation that far too many political candidates are intentionally spreading,” Ellis said in a statement to ABC News.
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