Transgender people are facing an unprecedented, unwavering onslaught of attention lately in the U.S.
Hundreds of anti-LGBTQ and specifically anti-trans pieces of legislation are being introduced and passed throughout the country, accompanied by a string of recent incidents that suggest shifting attitudes toward trans people writ large. Democratic Montana Rep. Zooey Zephyr, who is transgender, has been silenced in the state House after she told her colleagues they would “have blood on your hands” regarding legislation to ban gender-affirming care. (She sued Republican leadership and lost.) And TikTok star Dylan Mulvaney faced backlash for working with Bud Light on a brand partnership so much so that people actually began boycotting the beer.
All this comes after a Pew Research poll found last June that 60% of Americans think a person’s gender is determined at birth, but an even higher number, 64%, favor or strongly favor protecting trans people from discrimination.
So what’s going on? Is all this vitriol because a group of Americans actually hate trans people, or is it about the quest for political power and trans people are simply caught in the crossfire? Experts say it’s a bit of both.
“Transgender adults and children have been under this fearful gaze more than ever,” says Moe Ari Brown, licensed marriage and family therapist. “This moment is vital to notice as it signals a resurgence of oppression around civil rights for everyone, not just transgender people.”
‘Their cruelty is the point’
Transgender people go to school. They go to work. They drive their cars, grocery shop and pay their bills like the rest of us. But in the political arena their entire lives are reduced down to debates about their gender.
Anti-trans messaging has spiraled into the culture war issue du jour for some Republicans ahead of the 2024 election in an effort to rile up voters – though less than 5% of voters pointed to transgender issues as topics getting them out to vote in 2022, according to data from the Human Rights Campaign. Still, some lawmakers continue to elevate harmful, false messaging about trans people.
“It is a small group of extremist politicians who are desperate for power and attempting to use trans people to obtain it,” says Andy Marra, executive director of the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund. “Their cruelty is the point.”
Plus: “The vast majority of these restrictive bills do not pass, but their impact is still dangerous: LGBTQ youth report that these political discussions negatively impact their mental health,” GLAAD CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said in a statement. Forty-one percent of LGBTQ youth considered suicide attempts this past year, according to The Trevor Project.
The truth is that transgender youth make up just 0.7% to 1.4% of the population in the states with the most anti-trans bills: Texas, Missouri, South Carolina, Iowa, Tennessee and Oklahoma, according to the Equality Federation. There are 1.6 million trans people in the U.S. over age 13 – a sliver of the U.S. population of more than 330 million.
“All of this anti-trans rhetoric is absolutely about power and control, though some people may also hate trans people,” says Shanna Kattari, associate professor at the School of Social Work and in the Women’s and Gender Studies Department at the University of Michigan. “We are seeing the pendulum swing back in response to all the progress towards equity and justice that has been made over the past decade or so.” Such progress includes Supreme Court decisions in favor of marriage equality and federal job protections for gay, lesbian and transgender workers.
“(Some people) may hate or rather resent the freedom and self-determination that many of us who are trans hold when we choose to name ourselves against a society that continues – for generations – to deny our existence and corrupt our memory,” adds SA Smythe, assistant professor of Black studies at the University of Toronto,
Where does this hate come from? “Many of the phobias and isms in our society stem from fear of difference and the unknown,” Brown says.
‘I can’t unsee the parallels’
Brown also likens anti-trans sentiment to past (and ongoing) civil rights issues in the U.S.
“I can’t unsee the parallels between transgender bathroom discussions now and segregated bathroom discussions in the 1960s,” Brown adds. “In the 1960s, the same fear tactics were used to justify why people of color should not be allowed in bathrooms designated for white people.”
What’s more, cisgender people may be subject to laws targeting transgender people. “We’ve already seen this with women in sports – policies were put into place to harm trans girls and women, yet we are finding that some cisgender women are being questioned, and Florida has even proposed asking their high school age female athletes to report their menstrual cycles to their schools,” Kattari says. (This did not come to pass in Florida, though other states indeed ask these questions.)
The trans community exists – and will continue to exist – in society despite rollbacks of their rights and general discrimination. Cisgender people can be allies by educating themselves about the trans community; calling elected officials; reaching out to trans people in their lives; and raising money for trans-led equality organizations, experts say.
Brown says: “Allies should shift from seeing themselves as separate from what transgender people are experiencing. We all must see ourselves as being impacted by what happens to one of us.”
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