Content warning: This resource contains transphobic rhetoric and language, presented and described for the purpose of analyzing and countering accurately. 

As the 2026 midterm elections approach, we are seeing an uptick in anti-trans disinformation, similar to what we’ve seen before in recent election cycles. These attacks are part of a coordinated, well-funded push to score political points by marginalizing transgender, nonbinary, and intersex people. Anti-LGBTQ+ politicians employ this cynical strategy to divide and distract from critical electoral issues that actually impact people’s lives. This rhetoric causes real harm to those targeted, both when rhetoric becomes policy and when this rhetoric is translated into behavior such as mistreatment, discrimination, or violence.

This strategy is not random. It tests the limits of power to oppress, and allows the current government to increase the discrimination, bigotry, and violence against a “stigmatized” group, moving the boundaries of what the government can get away with. Their actions against trans and other LGBTQ+ people ultimately imperil the safety and basic rights of all. This feels especially important for Jews to understand, and has been a tactic used against us time and again in our own history.

It is our responsibility as Jews committed to the dignity and equality of all to be particularly vigilant when any group is targeted. We can recognize this rhetoric for what it is, counter disinformation with facts, and work for a society of dignity and safety for everyone! 

Use this resource to stop disinformation from spreading in your community. Below, we introduce the specific tactics being used to spread this disinformation, the facts debunking these claims, and the values to refer to in conversations with friends and loved ones about anti-trans disinformation. We encourage you to focus on these values when in these difficult conversations, and to return to them when in moments of conflict or tension.

“Authoritarian movements historically use a shared playbook: consolidating power by targeting vulnerable or minority populations, specifically LGBTQ+ individuals, immigrants, Jewish communities, and the autonomy of women.” 

– Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum

Three Common Disinformation Tactics 

Tactic #1: Fear for Children’s Safety

The Claims: What Opponents to LGBTQ+ Rights Say* 

• “Schools are ‘indoctrinating’ kids to be trans”
• Transgender and nonbinary youth are “indoctrinated” by “social contagion” and brainwashed into “rapid onset gender dysphoria”
• “Doctors are ‘pushing’ transition for youth” or youth are “rushing into” medical care aimed at transition
• Deliberate misrepresentation of gender-affirming care—creating a narrative that gender affirming care = “surgery,” using language such as “mutilation,” or “sterilization”
• False claims that gender-affirming care is “experimental” or “unproven”
• Claims that the “transgender movement” wants all children to be transgender

The Facts: Why They Are False

• Transgender, nonbinary, and gender-expansive/diverse youth are as able to understand and know their identities as well as cisgender youth. No one can coerce or “brainwash”  a person to be a gender / hold an identity other than their own. 
• Both the “social contagion” and “rapid-onset gender-dysphoria” claims have been roundly discredited by all major pediatric care organizations and the primary study used to “justify” these claims was formally retracted by the publisher, accompanied by a public apology, due to ethics violations. 
• Among those who do need gender-affirming care, such care is urgently needed and often life-protecting.
• Gender-affirming care for minors has rigorous clinical guidelines, is evidence based, and is endorsed by all major medical organizations. A plan of care for any individual must be determined with their care team taking into account their unique needs. Gender affirming care includes a wide range of forms of care, including talk therapy, medications, education, and more. The claim that gender affirming care for youth means genital or reproductive surgery is a deliberate falsehood designed to spread fear. 
• As with healthcare for many historically marginalized groups, more and better research is always needed—but this does not mean that the currently available best practice care is “experimental.”   
• Gender-affirming care is not “pushed” by doctors or “too easy” to access. As of 2024, adolescents referred by care providers for such care faced average wait times of 8-13 months to begin care. Early indications are that wait times have only increased in the years following. 
• Many of the specific forms of care being banned for trans youth (who are able to consent to and are actively seeking this care) have specific “exceptions” to be provided for intersex youth (often without medical reason or consent). This clearly demonstrates that the motivation behind these bans is not about the safety and well-being of youth, but actually about maintaining rigid binary categories and asserting control over people’s bodies. True concern for the safety and wellbeing of youth looks like patient-centered care, in which developmentally appropriate levels of bodily autonomy, clarity about medical need, and clear, well-researched information drive medical decisions for youth on a case-by-case basis. Blanket bans and stigma lead to higher levels of safety or wellbeing. 

The Values: Tools to Use in Difficult Conversations

• All people deserve to be taken seriously, respected, and cared for
• Transgender youth deserve the same access to evidence-based, patient-centered care as all people
• Restricting access to care places youth at risk, it makes no one safer
• Individual care decisions should be made in ways that center the wellbeing, developmental stage, bodily autonomy, and needs of the patient
• The government has no place in controlling our bodies—whether it be related to gender-affirming care or abortion access 
• Anti-trans activists often attempt to build support for their cause by trying to claim the value of youth safety and wellbeing. In conversations with community members, it is important to talk about what youth safety and wellbeing can look like in a world that affirms and cares for trans, nonbinary, and intersex youth.

Sometimes the cynical veil of justification for harmful policies can be very thin. We see that clearly, for example, in the ways gender-affirming care is denied to trans youth, but forced on intersex children. “In 2023, more than 65% of state-level bills proposing a ban on gender-affirming care included explicit stipulations which would force the same treatments they restrict for trans folks, who ask for them with informed consent, onto intersex people without their consent.”  – Liat Feller

Tactic #2: Fear for Cisgender Women’s Safety

The Claims: What Opponents to LGBTQ+ Rights Say* 

• Anti-LGBTQ+ politicians, strategists, and media members make cynical attempts to pit safety for trans women against safety for cisgender women
• They prey on fear and trauma around sexual violence and claim that access for trans women would invite cis men as predators to threaten women’s spaces
• They harp on “fairness in sports,” saying that trans women “take” spots and have an unfair advantage
• They claim we need to create invasive and inappropriate checks and tests in order to monitor people’s bodies, in the name of “safety”

The Facts: Why They Are False

• No evidence supports the claims that transgender people are more likely to commit crimes of any kind than cisgender people. In-depth reviews of crime incident logs finds no evidence that there is a pattern of transgender people committing crimes in spaces such as restrooms or locker rooms, and that bathroom bans do not lead to a reduction in crimes against non-transgender people—but do correlate with an increase in violence, harassment, and discrimination against transgender people.
• In fact, transgender people are more than 4 times more likely than cisgender people to be victims of violent crime. Transgender people are far more likely to experience harassment and violence than to inflict harm on others.
• Policing of bodies, “sex testing,” and body scrutiny are deeply invasive and violate the privacy of individuals subjected to it. At the time of this writing, only women are subjected to this level of invasive body policing, and the rules and standards of testing assume a very narrow set of standards for which women’s bodies are seen as “acceptable.” The very project of body scrutiny harms all women.
• Body scrutiny and policing disproportionately impact people of color, intersex people, people with disabilities, and have deep ties to racism and antisemitism. It puts young people, especially young girls, at further risk of sexual assault.
• Studies find no significant advantage for transgender women in sports.        

The Values: Tools to Use in Difficult Conversations

• Pitting groups against one another deprives us all of safety. There is an inherent hypocrisy in claiming to care for women’s safety when eliminating healthcare, funding, and protection elsewhere 
• Safety for women includes all women—and currently, trans women are among the most at risk
• Sports teams can be places of true belonging for so many. Let’s remember the core values of participation, teamwork, health, and belonging. 

All-Purpose Tools for Hard Conversations: 

• • • Draw on core Jewish values: Transgender and nonbinary people are our neighbors, friends, family members, teachers, students, colleagues, congregants, and more. Every single person is created B’tzelem Elohim, in the divine image, and deserves to be treated with Kavod, dignity and respect. 
    • Share concrete stories: Whether your own or with the consent of others, and with anonymity when necessary, hearing about real people and the harmful impacts of policies, bills, and rhetoric humanizes and makes real hypothetical political issues, and can cultivate empathy.
    • Questions to Ask to Encourage Critical Thinking  : 
      • • • Who benefits from me believing these myths? 
          • Who paid for this messaging? 
          • Would this be an absurd thing to say or think about other groups? 
          • How does this impact the trans people you know? 

Tactic #3: Outright Disparagement and Dehumanizing Language

The Claims: What Opponents to LGBTQ+ Rights Say* 

• Employing predator narratives for trans people, such as claiming that the presence of transgender poses a threat to the safety or privacy of others in restrooms and locker rooms (this is a claim most commonly made targeting transgender women, and presenting the safety of cisgender women as being in opposition to the safety of transgender women)  . 
• Presenting transgender people as deceptive, often tying these claims to bills attempting to prevent transgender people from updating identification documents to accurately reflect their appearance. This can take the form of conspiracy theories claiming that public figures are transgender, implying that they are threatening / to be feared.
• Disparaging language such as describing a transgender woman as a “man masquerading as a woman”
• Language inappropriately sexualizing or fetishizing transgender people, or inviting speculation and assumptions about the bodies of transgender people
• Language describing being transgender as an “ideology,” “transgenderism,” or “radical gender ideology,” rather than as a legitimate identity or set of experiences. These claims are often paired with the notion that transgender and nonbinary people are “grooming” or “preying on” people, attempting to cause (particularly young people) to become transgender

The Facts: Why They Are False

• Many of the above claims are never intended to be based in fact, and are purely aimed at “othering” transgender, nonbinary, intersex, and gender-expansive / diverse people.
• Often the most productive ways to address these more absurd claims begins with reminding the people hearing or repeating these claims that they are speaking about real people. Transgender and nonbinary people are real, have always existed, and are in all of our communities. 
• It is false that there are trans people using trans identity as a cover to inflict harm. In fact, it is trans people, and trans women in particular, who are much more likely to suffer harassment, abuse and violence.  
• There is no one universal experience of being transgender, coming out, or transitioning/affirming one’s gender. A thread that is shared among the wide diversity of trans experience is living in ways that align with one’s sense of self—the very opposite of “deceptive.” 
• Transgender, nonbinary, and gender-expansive people hold a wide range of beliefs and ideologies—being oneself is not inherently an “ideology” or a “movement.”
• These claims are often used to justify ID restrictions for trans and gender-diverse people. ID documents are most useful when they reflect a person’s actual appearance and characteristics. IDs based solely on sex or names assigned at birth that do not reflect a person’s current gender are inaccurate for transgender people, often inaccurate for intersex people, and increase confusion and barriers for everyone. Being forced to use an ID that is inaccurate can expose transgender, nonbinary, intersex, and gender-diverse people to concrete barriers and real risks.

The Values: Tools to Use in Difficult Conversations

• It is never appropriate or acceptable to speak about a person or group of people in dehumanizing ways. As Jews, we are intimately familiar with the horror and peril of “othering” a group of people, and particularly of the dangers when this kind of dehumanizing rhetoric enters the political sphere and is used to gain political power. 
• There is a deep historical and current connection between anti-trans bigotry and antisemitism. They are often invoked by the same groups, in service of the same ends, and use similar language and tropes. Allowing one to thrive inherently strengthens the other. 
• People’s bodies are private. Speculation about, obsession with, or fearmongering about what a person’s body might look like is deeply invasive and has no place in private conversation, much less public or political discourse.
• People’s bodies are their own. We believe in bodily autonomy for all people— and that it is not the role of a government to regulate peoples’ bodies. 

One more tactic to look out for: 71% of Americans believe that transgender people deserve the same rights and protections as others. Our opponents’ focus on “wedge” issues like bathrooms, sports, and youth healthcare are designed to threaten this margin. They attempt to paint these policies as “common sense.” Those wedges are not common sense, they have been leveraged to create divisions in our movements and communities, as well as openings for extreme government interference that threatens democracy and safety. We must not fall for it.

“Conservative operatives have openly called trans athletes, for example, a “beginning point” on trans issues. They want to get Americans “comfortable” with anti-trans animus, and from there, they can pull the conversation even further to the right.” – Erin In The Morning

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*You can view real examples of anti-trans political advertising from 2026 in this archive. Be aware that this content uses dehumanizing language and false claims. Take care of yourself if you choose to view the content of the ads.

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