I think these claims are hard to quantify one way or another. I've been threatened with violence for not "supporting our troops" in the past. That being said I think a lot of people are keeping their political opinions to themselves out of concern about human resources retaliation.

This was my reading as well. As someone who has zero (or even negative) party loyalty but has friends and loved ones all over the spectrum, it's really disappointing to see these kinds of casual assumptions.

Edit: Though maybe a more charitable reading is that whether or not the assumption is fair, you have to acknowledge that people out there do make it, and so republicans would be wise to not advertise their affiliation.

There are many people on the left who belive that since the republican platform these days includes anti gay rights, anti trans rights provisions, and provisions suppressing voting rights for African Americans, that the party is this bigoted and supporting said party is thus a bigoted choice because even if you don't intend to harm marginalized groups supporting Republicans will cause harm to marginalized groups.

By anti trans rights, do you among other things include being against doing irreversable surgeries on vulnerable teens?

> irreversable surgeries on vulnerable teens

In the latest scare about this in Nashville, TN it came out that they were doing about 5 breast reductions a year on trans men who were 16-17 years old. This is a surgery that is commonly performed on cisgender boys who have gynecomastia because, surprise, boys feel awkward about having large breasts. They were only allowed to do this after counseling between them and their parents. Trans men are given these surgeries as minors from time to time because many have a habit of binding their breasts so tightly that they damage their bodies, cracking ribs etc....

Genital surgeries are not performed.

https://apnews.com/article/health-business-tennessee-nashvil...

> On average, VUMC has provided five gender affirming surgeries to minors every year since its transgender clinic opened in 2018. All were over the age of 16 and had parental consent, and none received genital procedures.

In Florida they are attempting to ban SOCIAL transition which is just someone male being able to wear girls' clothes or someone female being able to wear boys' clothes.

https://www.them.us/story/florida-trans-youth-transition-car...

In Tennessee they are attempting to classify "female and male impersonators" alongside strippers as being unfit to be seen in public. The law is vague enough that it would give police leeway to persecute anyone who is gender non-conforming including gay and lesbian people. Anti-crossdressing laws were the main way that gay and lesbian people were harassed up through the 70's FYI and were directly related to the Stonewall uprising.

https://www.advocate.com/law/2022/11/09/bills-introduced-ten...

Even mentioning the existence of transgender adults around children is being legislated against and called "grooming" -- you can't make someone trans any more than you can make them gay so the idea is ridiculous.

When Matt Walsh, a very notable conservative catholic anti transgender activist who works under Ben Shapiro, appeared on Joe Rogan last week he was fact checked after he claimed MILLIONS of kids are being put on puberty blockers. The actual figure, as pointed out on the show, is under 5000 in the past five years. Not even a thousand a year. He recently released an anti transgender film called "What is a Woman?" which leads one to believe that his wildly inaccurate figure was an attempt to enrage Joe Rogan's audience with a lie rather than inform them with the truth. That, or he somehow spent thousands of hours pouring over the topic and still managed to get a basic statistic wrong by two orders of magnitude.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2lG7Y_8bVU

Matt Walsh has also said that his goal is for transition to be banned for everyone including adults: https://archive.ph/mi8jc

This all adds up to one obvious conclusion, which is that the talking point you just shared is a scare tactic meant to turn people against supporting the tiny minority of trans people in this country and instead treat them as a danger to themselves and others. It's cruel and misinformed and it won't work in the long run because it's based on irrational hatred, lies and half truths rather than genuine concern about people's wellbeing.

Sadly humanity is susceptible to hate - it is so easy to vilify a marginalized group for cynical power grabbing

By anti trans rights I mean whipping up paranoia about surgeries not actually being done, causing threats to be sent to the hospital where my kid was staying, including a bomb threat that was taking very seriously about a week before my son was admitted for a very serious case of RSV. This is all about things, and I can't stress enough, DIDN'T FUCKING HAPPEN.

I think, on average, well informed Democrats tend to perceive well informed Republicans as bigots because the Republican national party platform is unabashedly bigoted toward many minority communities.

Less informed Republicans are perceived in a mix of ways but it's usually a ratio of bigot and rube (for voting against their own best economic and social interests).

Republicans conversely seem to perceive well informed Democrats as ne'er do wells who want to harm their children and destroy civilization by way of sexual immorality , increased criminality and failure to protect the nation/economy while less informed Democrats are seen as immature and naive.