Time to speak up for our trans kin
What trans people are going through in our country right now breaks my brain.
In Kansas, there are transfolk who can’t drive, because the state abruptly declared their driver’s licenses invalid if they don’t indicate the person’s sex assigned at birth.
In Idaho, it’s about to become illegal for a transman to use any public restroom designated for men, the expectation being that he’ll use the women’s room. (One such bearded man has chosen to dehydrate himself instead.)
In Kentucky, legislators are working on a convoluted measure that would classify transfolk as mentally ill and thereby revoke their teaching licenses, and encourage parents and others to report any teacher whoseems trans to the state.
Behind all these laws and many more – laws with a Jim Crow/Nazi “turn in your neighbors” aura, laws that compromise a trans person’s ability to work, drive, or simply live – is a sinister dream: the dream of a world in which trans people no longer exist.
But humans who do not fit into the tidy and traditional boxes of male and female have always existed, and always will.
I struggle to write about transgender issues because it all seems so obvious to me.
Adults should be able to live in whatever presentation seems truest and seek treatments of their choosing. Nonbinary or gender-expansive children and youth and their families should be able to access the medical care that they determine is in their best interest. And every cis person has at some point been in a public restroom with a trans person, with zero impact.
“Gender ideology” is a “crisis” made up by powerful people who want to distract the public from the massive federal corruption taking place, and from the huge, systemic harms that (straight, cis) men inflict on women and girls.
The authoritarian playbook also is at work – it calls for creating national unity around perceived internal and external threats. In 1930s Germany, the made-up internal threat was the Jewish community; right now in this country, transfolk are one of the made-up threats.
It’s no accident that the percentage of Jews in Germany in 1933 and the percentage of trans-identified adults in the U.S. today is very similar, between 0.75 and 1 percent. The strategy of demonizing a tiny, often misunderstood minority, and mixing in religious objections, is another way that tyrants punch down for political gain. Which is why it’s so important to step up.
My confession: I haven’t always been a good trans ally.
When I first came out, decades ago, I looked askance at transfolk, drag queens, and anyone else who didn’t hold tight to gender boundaries, even as I myself had never adhered to every expectation and norm for men. I thought acting as “normal” as possible and trying to assimilate were the keys to an easier life. I didn’t understand why the letter “T” was even part of “LGBT,” so distant and different did I see myself.
But I eventually got with the program. I woke up to the experiences of contemporary transfolk and learned how important Black trans women were to the history of LGBTQ liberation. I came to see our freedoms as woven “in a single garment of destiny,” to quote MLK.
And I listened to the stories.
I heard a coworker tell of how her brother never stopped suppressing his desire to live as a woman and drank himself to an early death.
I watched a brilliant young adult blossom as he lived into his identity as a transman.
I cheered a middle-aged couple who chose to stay in their marriage as one of them went through gender confirmation surgeries.
These stories enriched my mind and expanded my heart.
Even as more trans friends and coworkers have come into my life, will I ever understand what it’s like to be trans? Not really – but I don’t need to be able to fully relate to another’s experience in order to believe strongly in their ability to make their own choices. Flourishing takes different shapes for everyone – always has.
So on this Transgender Day of Visibility, in the midst of so much else (overwhelm is a fascist strategy), I hope more of us cis folks will step out of silence and compliance, and will speak up with gratitude for the gifts that transfolk bring to our individual worlds and our shared public life.