The title to the op-ed stands in contrast to the substance, as the former is the sort of insipid snark favored by children in response to a serious question.

Really, You’re Blaming Transgender People for Trump?

The content, on the other hand, is far more thoughtful.

I wanted to hear Hillary Clinton’s concession speech, but she was late to the podium. On TV, a commentator speculated that Mrs. Clinton had lost because of her party’s focus on things like trans rights — “boutique issues,” they were called.

A boutique — a place where you’d shop for, say, artisan pantyhose — is not the first place I’d associate with an individual’s quest for equal protection under the law, but then what did I know? I was now one of the people from whom the country had been “taken back.”

It’s unfair to blame transgender people for being who they are, or for demanding accommodation so they can go through life without the fear, or worse still, the reality, of being harmed for being who they are. To have your concerns trivialized as a “boutique issue” rather than a “quest for equal protection” is offensive. If there’s a good chance that some violent nutjob will beat you for being trans, there is a good reason to take this very seriously. No one should be harmed, or have to live in constant fear of harm, for being who they are.

But that, unfortunately, doesn’t answer the question.

Who will fight against these laws, if Democrats give up on their commitment to justice? Colin Jost, on “Saturday Night Live,” made light of this when he noted the new Tinder feature giving users 37 different gender options. He said, “It’s called ‘Why Democrats Lost the Election.’ ”

The concerns didn’t stop at personal safety from violence. They went from protection against harm to mandating that society play by their rules of thought, of language, of allocation of scare resources.

This is not only because Donald J. Trump’s administration is filling up with people who oppose L.G.B.T. equality. It’s because the Democrats may now dismiss our urgent needs as unaffordable luxuries, and back off the fight. As a local Democratic official in Ohio put it in a memo to the Clinton campaign: “Look, I’m as progressive as anybody, O.K.? But people in the heartland thought the Democratic Party cared more about where someone else went to the restroom than whether they had a good-paying job.”

This is a somewhat disingenuous description of the issues on many levels. Is it an “urgent need” to penalize people for not using a preferred pronoun? Some think so. Others think it’s an easy enough accommodation. Still others think it’s a bastardization of language to pander to special snowflakes.  But do most people think it’s an “urgent need”? Hardly.

Nor is it just people in the heartland, which serves to villify a large portion of a nation as being not merely wrong, but a bunch of racists and sexists who the enlightened can easily blame and hate.  On the twitters, one nutjob proclaimed that she couldn’t care less about the harm done in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, because they were just “white Trumptrash.” What sort of twisted mind cares nothing about human beings because of their presumed choice of candidate?

Nor was the battle between physical harm to transgender people and “a good-paying job.” These were regular, working people trying to survive, to feed their children, to afford a phone, even if it wasn’t the latest iPhone. They weren’t obsessed with whether their Tesla would have the upgraded sound system. They wanted to feed the kids again that night.

On the other side were cries about the harm done by words, by the inadequate appreciation of hurt feelings, by the lack of sacrifice of other people’s rights to accommodate trans’ interests. There were accommodations that were readily available that could assure the safety of trans students from getting beaten in the high school bathroom, such as being given access to a private room, but that made them feel stigmatized.

So let’s be real about this: it wasn’t just a matter of safety from physical harm as claimed, but that plus their feelz. Arguing against a strawman on the one side, with a disingenuous argument on the other, is precisely why those loathsome deplorables in the heartland, whom you rushed to call racist and sexist and a few other -ists, ran the other way. You were chasing them away.

It’s understandable that you are offended at having your concerns dismissed as “boutique issues.” Why do you not understand that others are offended at your dismissing their concerns? Why do you think it’s perfectly acceptable for you to call them names, to manufacture false arguments to trivialize their concerns, when you demand better for yourself? Why are you immune from your own hypocrisy and blindness?

But there is one more issue to be recognized, and it’s a significant one. You are the tail demanding your right to wag the dog. The argument of how marginalized people should have their day comes at the expense of the majority. You don’t have the numbers to demand that a nation bend to your will. If you did, you wouldn’t need to play this lying game. Instead, you use ridicule, ad hominem attacks, narcissistic demands, all at the expense of other people’s legitimate concerns, which you dismiss with words like “privilege,” that only resonate with those who don’t have hungry kids to feed.

So is it your fault that Clinton lost and Trump won? In part, yes. The Democratic party stood for you, for your concerns, for your interests, and that came at the direct expense of others. Rather than work together for everyone’s welfare, you demanded they sacrifice theirs in favor of yours. You trivialized theirs because yours are more important to you. You drove them away. And yes, really. That’s why you were a significant part of the problem.