On October 22, NBC’s Hallie Jackson asked Vice President Kamala Harris if she thinks transgender Americans should have access to gender-affirming care in this country. Harris responded like the skillful attorney she is, “I think we should follow the law.” The Vice President then explained what that would mean under her presidency.
While many transgender individuals in my circle defended her responses, some remarked that she didn’t articulate a clear enough position. Others eviscerated her for it, with one professional account I follow branding Harris as someone who would commit genocide on transgender Americans just as she is doing, from their perspective, to the Palestinian people of Gaza.
Somewhat activated by this account’s comment, I went back and watched the interview, focusing specifically on the question about gender-affirming care.
That is when I saw it in her look and affect, reflecting an experience I empathize with. It read, “No matter how I answer this question, I will be damned if I do and damned if I don’t, even with people who might otherwise support me or define themselves as more centrist. So I will take the stand I can in the most careful way possible so I won’t create unintended consequences.”
The consequences of this election are higher than ever, with every undecided vote mattering at this point.
People who take centrist positions are often condemned as problematically neutral. Their critics often intone Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s quote, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
The teaching has inspired me to take a clear stand on various issues, including speaking out against President Trump many times since 2016, even though I run a business in the increasingly conservative state of Ohio.
In my assessment of Harris’s NBC interview, she was taking a stand for transgender people yet being very careful with her words and her tone so that she didn’t step on a proverbial landmine.
History will tell whether that was the right decision.
I have empathy for her because of the situation in which I was raised. In the same physical house, I lived with one Roman Catholic parent (my mother) and a Pentecostal Evangelical (my father) who believed Catholics aren’t “real Christians.”
If you are shaking your head and wondering how this happened, my parents didn’t begin married life this way. They were both Catholics before my father converted when I was young, expecting my mother to follow suit.
Not only did she hold her ground, but she also double-downed on her Catholicism and pride in her Catholic identity. They stayed married throughout my childhood. They would enlist me in complicated theological debates at an age when no child should have to wonder how much their true answer might get them in trouble–with God or the other parent.
I went to both churches on Sunday mornings through elementary school and most of high school to keep them both happy.
My entire early childhood was an exercise in keeping competing forces satisfied, if not completely happy. I am still in psychotherapy to address the impact of this upbringing on my life, and I recognize it’s a quality that the President of the United States must do their best to embody.
My upbringing trained me to be an emotional diplomat and is a major reason I can shut down emotionally when asked to comment on justice issues regarding the Israel-Hamas war.
I am a white person with no direct ancestral or cultural ties to the region, so I recognize that even writing what I’m about to write is a privilege. Yet my distance, combined with my lived experience from childhood, might make my perspective valuable to some readers. No doubt it will get me canceled by others or, at the very least, viciously trolled.
As a person with both Jewish friends and family of choice (my first husband was Jewish) and Arabic Muslim friends and colleagues, I’ve read and listened to works recommended by friends on both sides of the conflict. I’ve listened extensively to people sharing their stories. And it’s not an academic exercise to me.
I love people on both sides of the conflict. Whatever their sociopolitical reading of the situation might be, it brings up strong emotional triggers and reactions for people who are connected to the region, especially those with ancestral connections. While it might be futile to hold space and offer emotional support for everyone, I do my best to be that kind of friend.
On both sides of the conflict, I’ve heard the people in my life, in addition to the broader parasocial connections that I have on social media, say things like, “Even though it pains me to support Trump, I am voting for him because he is better for Israel.”
One influencer even suggested that his change from an ardent anti-Trumper to someone who voted for him was seeing his friends and followers in the United States turn a blind eye to the victims and hostages from the attacks on October 7, 2023.
In contrast, I’ve heard just as many folks declare that “a vote for Kamala is a vote for the genocide of the Palestinian people,” referencing the United States’ long-standing military support for Israel, currently enforced by the Biden administration.
Despite being married to Doug Emhoff, a Jewish man, Kamala is indeed between a rock and a hard place.
Seeing many people speak up to people who have a black-and-white read of the situation is heartening. On TikTok this week, the singer Ani DiFranco encouraged fellow supporters of Palestinian liberation to see a vote for Kamala Harris as an act of harm reduction.
As I’ve observed, the people of Gaza would certainly not be any better off under a Trump regime. And many other voices, particularly those who are Black, brown or otherwise marginalized, are calling out many white activists on the left for virtue signaling.
In this context, virtue signaling looks like publicly shaming others into voting third party or withholding their vote for Kamala Harris because of their, in my opinion, misguided view that she hasn’t done enough as Vice President for the people of Palestine. Or, that she publicly takes a position supporting a narrative that Hamas is the real enemy and that the people of Israel have a right to defend themselves and to self-determination in their ancestral homeland— a position that I wish more Jewish Americans voting in this election would hear her speak and take to heart.
Kamala Harris has done her best to be as careful as possible around two of the most critical issues of our time— transgender rights and conflicts in the Middle East— knowing that emotions run high and are viscerally charged.
Considering all this, I think she is doing as best as she can to show that she cares about the well-being of everyone. Knowing how I came through in my own version of a war zone, my home, I empathize with her.
I look forward to a hopeful future in which she will bring this capacity to understand the wide range of human suffering and its nuances to the office of president.
Dr. Marich is the founder of the Institute for Creative Mindfulness. A clinical trauma specialist and educator, she is the author of over a dozen books and manuals on trauma and addiction recovery. Her latest book, You Lied to Me About God: A Memoir, will be released by North Atlantic Books on October 15.