Here’s an eye-catching headline from the LGBTQ+ news site them: “New Data Shows Vast Majority of Americans Support Trans Rights. The research from this story, published last week, suggests that right-wing attacks on trans protections are not aligned with the country’s values.” That’s a pretty big deal considering several recent polls have shown the opposite, that Americans are largely on board with trans sports bans and bans on trans minors’ access to gender-affirming care.

So what’s up with this one poll?

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The article discussed a poll released on Trans Day of Visibility by the LGBTQ+ organization HRC and the polling outlet SRSS that managed to get some pretty solid majorities in favor of trans equality by making the questions broad and vague.

For example, 88% of respondents in this poll agreed that “transgender people should have the same ability as anyone else to get the healthcare they need.” Compare the question above with the response to a 2025 AP/NORC poll that found that 46% of Americans want to see gender-affirming care for people under the age of 19 banned. A poll from The Argument from earlier this year found that only 33% of Americans supported allowing “puberty blockers for minors when deemed medically necessary by doctors, with parental consent.”

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Polling depends a lot on wording. HRC’s question about whether trans people (no age mentioned) should have access to “the healthcare they need” got the vast majority of people to respond in the affirmative, while the polls that named gender-affirming care and minors got far less supportive responses. When it comes to HRC’s question, a lot of people aren’t going to immediately think of gender-affirming care, and I’m saying that as someone who knows that it’s medically necessary for many trans people.

The same holds true for sports bans. HRC asked people if they agreed with the statement, “transgender students should be protected from discrimination and harassment in schools,” and 83% said yes.

While I agree that banning trans kids from playing sports as their gender is a form of “discrimination… in schools,” it’s unlikely that most Americans see it that way. To that point, a poll from January by the Economist/YouGov found that only 22% of Americans support “allowing transgender student athletes to play on sports teams that match their gender identity, rather than the sex they were assigned at birth.” (To be clear, there’s no reason to believe that HRC was even trying to hint at sports bans with this question. They’re presented here together to compare people’s responses.)

HRC/SRSS also asked U.S. adults if they thought “transgender people should have the same rights and protections as everyone else,” and 85% of people agreed. That’s great, but those people clearly aren’t using the same definition of “same rights and protections” that I am.

The HRC/SRSS poll points to something more fundamental about how people understand politics, something that could offer a path to lessening the attacks on trans rights that have plagued the decade. People generally like to think they are fair and decent, even when they are supporting attacks on a marginalized group. That is, almost no one is comfortable admitting to themselves that they hold discriminatory beliefs, even when they clearly do.

These people are not working from a different set of values. They’re not proudly saying they support discrimination. In fact, they would probably honestly claim that they support equal rights for everyone, but that they’re against “special rights” or don’t agree that a certain right is part of “equal rights.” And many people just haven’t spent much time thinking through these issues.

Which means that the task of convincing the majority of the country to support equal rights for trans people is as much about information as it is about values. It will require convincing people that telling a girl that she can’t play volleyball with her friends because she’s transgender is a form of discrimination. It will require getting people to understand that the vast majority of trans kids grow up to be trans adults and that they are less likely to regret gender-affirming care than they are to regret knee surgery.

Another part of the HRC/SRSS poll highlights the idea that information makes a big difference. Respondents who said they know a transgender person were much more likely to support trans rights, and people who said they have “regular conversations” with a trans person were even more likely to support equal rights for trans people.

This was especially true for protections against workplace discrimination, where HRC/SRSS asked people if they agreed that “transgender people should be protected from discrimination in hiring and employment.” Of the four statements they asked people about, this is the one that refers to the most specific policy. It also had the least support among people who don’t know any trans people, but improved the most among people who did know someone who’s trans.

There are several ways that knowing a trans person could increase support for trans rights. Part of it is likely that the people who are the most opposed to trans rights don’t live in an area with many out trans people or make an effort to avoid meeting them.

Another way is that cis people who know a trans person might support trans rights more because they just plain like their trans friend, coworker, or acquaintance.

But it could also be an informational issue. Knowing someone who is actually part of a marginalized community helps them disregard attempts to turn that group into a bogeyman. A cis person who knows a trans person from their church or spinning class may be more likely to disregard a hateful meme shared on social media because they know it’s not true.

Because of media fragmentation, the fundamental issue here could be the informational environment – with “knowing a trans person” being a proxy for how a person is positioned within that environment.

This is something that I first noticed when covering the fight for marriage rights in the 2000s: People who opposed marriage rights for same-sex couples didn’t see it as supporting discrimination. It was obvious to me that having two legal regimes for two different kinds of couples – one with more rights and protections and one with fewer – was discrimination, but it was also apparent that a lot of people didn’t see it that way.

And that could be why public opinion changed so fast in the following decade. Changing people’s values is hard work that takes decades, but sharing information can happen much faster.

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