Antagonism to transgender rights is tied to the authoritarian desire for social conformity – not just partisan affiliation

Yahoo

11-06-2025

Since becoming president, Donald Trump has aggressively sought to fulfill his campaign promise to reverse the Biden administration's protection of transgender Americans.
His administration decreed that the federal government will recognize only two genders and banned transgender Americans from serving in the military. Trump has also restricted federal funds for hospitals that perform gender-affirming care.
Trump is not alone in attacking the rights of transgender Americans. In 2025, 53 bills have been introduced in the U.S. Congress and over 900 bills have been introduced in 49 states that aim to limit the rights of transgender Americans in education, health care and athletics, according to the Trans Legislation Tracker.
While legal and ethical questions remain about these efforts, restricting the rights of transgender Americans seems to enjoy support among a majority of Americans.
For example, support for restricting the ability of medical professionals from providing gender-affirming care to minors has risen from 46% in 2022 to 56% in 2025, according to the Pew Research Center.
We wanted to know what factors contribute to majority support among Americans for these measures. We found that authoritarian attitudes – the desire for social conformity and an aversion to difference – play an important role in Americans' willingness to restrict transgender rights.
A number of civil rights organizations, pro-democracy think tanks and scholars have recently argued that executive and legislative efforts to limit the rights of transgender Americans reflect a larger authoritarian turn in the nation's politics.
Here, we refer to authoritarianism not as a type of political system or the characteristics of a leader, but rather as a person's preference for social conformity and desire to suppress social difference.
According to this perspective, the attack on transgender rights is intended to appeal to Americans with authoritarian inclinations. As seen in authoritarian regimes such as Russia and Turkey, political leaders first mobilize their citizens on the basis of their desire to suppress transgender individuals in order to advance a broader movement to undermine democracy and restrict the rights of other groups that fail to conform to majority values.
While this perspective is quickly gaining media coverage, there hasn't yet been hard evidence that authoritarians are particularly supportive of anti-trans legislation. Our goal was to assess the link between authoritarian attitudes and support for measures that restrict transgender rights.
We are political scientists who study the role of authoritarianism in American politics and who field polls that explore Americans' views on a number of pressing issues.
In April 2025, we fielded a nationally representative survey of 1,000 American adults, asking about their perceptions of the first months of the second Trump presidency, their views toward various groups in society, and their policy preferences. We also asked them for their views about restrictions on the provision of gender-affirming care to transgender Americans.
Here's how we analyzed and interpreted their responses.
Authoritarianism is defined by public opinion scholars as an individual's predisposition toward conformity, obedience and uniformity and an aversion to diversity, difference and individual autonomy.
To measure authoritarianism, scholars use a scale that asks respondents to express their preferences for a range of child-rearing practices. The scale asks whether a respondent tends to prefer children who are obedient, well behaved and well mannered or children who are independent, creative and considerate. Those who tend to favor obedient children are scored as having more authoritarian views.
Child-rearing preferences seem to be unrelated to attitudes about conformity in society. But there is good reason to believe that an adult who prefers conformity, obedience and uniformity in children also desires the same in society at large.
Political psychologists have used this scale to help explain Americans' support for the war on terrorism, their racial attitudes, views on gender equality and immigration attitudes.
This work consistently shows that individuals who are less authoritarian are more likely to support policies that recognize diverse views. Those who rank high on authoritarianism prefer policies that highlight social unity and conformity.
Thus, we expected that Americans with more authoritarian attitudes would more strongly support state laws that seek to restrict transgender Americans' access to gender-affirming care.
We find evidence that this is indeed the case.
In line with other polling on this issue, our survey found that a little over one-third of Americans – 36% – express support for legislation that would make providing gender-affirming medical care to transgender youth a crime. Among the remaining respondents, 38% expressed opposition, and 26% expressed ambivalence toward this proposal.
We looked at support for banning gender-affirming care by level of authoritarianism. We found clear differences between the most and least authoritarian Americans.
Among those who score highest on the authoritarian scale, 46% express support for this ban, with 18% in opposition. The remaining 36% responded 'neither support nor oppose' this ban. Examining the views of Americans who exhibit the least authoritarian views, we find that while 21% support these bans, 61% oppose them and 18% expressed an ambivalent view.
Authoritarianism remains an important contributor to Americans' support for a ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth, even after we take into account other considerations that influence this attitude.
Republican partisanship, conservative ideology and religiosity all increase support for a ban on gender-affirming care. After accounting for these factors, as well as for characteristics such as education, income, age and knowing a transgender person, more authoritarian people are still more likely to support the ban.
Many state legislatures and the U.S. Congress are considering legislation to restrict the rights of transgender Americans.
The findings from our survey suggest that while partisanship, ideology and religiosity all play key roles in explaining the popularity of these policies, a missing piece of the puzzle is authoritarianism.
Given their aversion to diversity and difference and their preference for the status quo, Americans with authoritarian inclinations likely believe that transgender people pose a threat to the social order. Thus, they are more likely than Americans low in authoritarianism to support policies that seek to restrict transgender rights in order to restore social conformity.
It's not clear whether the passage of anti-transgender policies alone will lead the nation to turn away from a largely diverse and open democracy toward a more closed and intolerant society. But the fight over transgender rights is not a sideshow in American politics. Instead, it is one of the first of many battles over diversity and difference that will determine the nation's political future.
This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Tatishe Nteta, UMass Amherst; Adam Eichen, UMass Amherst; Jesse Rhodes, UMass Amherst, and Lane Cuthbert, UMass Amherst
Read more:
Our trans health study was terminated by the government – the effects of abrupt NIH grant cuts ripple across science and society
Anti-trans measures don't just target transgender men and women – a sociologist explains how 'male' or 'female' categories miss the mark for nonbinary Americans
Autocracies that look like democracies are a threat across the globe
Jesse Rhodes has received funding from the National Science Foundation, the Demos Foundation, and the Spencer Foundation. He is a member of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Adam Eichen, Lane Cuthbert, and Tatishe Nteta do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.