Three Things to Know about How Americans are Thinking about Gender

Anti-choice activists accused women of using abortion to avoid the responsibilities of their natural gender roles at the expense of “fetal rights.” This argument set the terms of the debate for decades. [...] Drawing on this mindset, people assumed that some combination of wealthy elites and corrupt politicians—sometimes simply articulated as “they”—used the decision to deflect attention from their accumulation of wealth and power at the expense of the rest of us. [...] The application of the System-Is-Rigged mindset to make sense of the Dobbs decision doesn’t entirely replace Gender Essentialism or discussions of bodily autonomy. [...] It does, however, draw on the widely held assumption that the foundations of American society and democracy are cracking due to the breakdown of American institutions at the hands of powerful interests and deliberate efforts to distract us from it. [...] The implications of this shift in perceptions are not yet clear, but the collapse in trust in the Supreme Court’s impartiality and the success of the explicitly pro-reproductive rights candidate in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race in April 2023 suggest that the terms of the debate are shifting in important ways.