As you read this, Transgender Day of Visibility will have just passed on March 31. It is a day where some trans people choose to make themselves known for the sake of putting a human face you know on a previously hidden condition.
No doubt, greater awareness of us in society has improved our fortunes, but it has also been greeted with a backlash of resistance. I recently read of a bus touring the east coast of the United States from Boston to Washington, D.C. with a message painted on its side that reads, “It’s biology: Boys are boys, and always will be. Girls are girls, and always will be. You can’t change sex. Respect all.” For emphasis, silhouettes of boys and girls, with the letters XX and XY printed conspicuously close to the genital region, adorn the sides.
According to Joseph Grabowski, spokesperson for the anti-LGBTQ group and bus sponsor National Organization for Marriage, the purpose of their rolling billboard is to embolden citizens to express views of trans people as unnatural. In their twisted logic, it is an exercise of free speech and not transphobia. Presumably, it is this concept to which the “Respect all” portion of their slogan refers, but as we have seen through hate crimes across the U.S. in the wake of electing an anti-intellectual president who wears his prejudices on his sleeve, the respect they seek is the ability to not respect at all.
However, research by professional medical and psychological associations find that being transgender is a legitimate condition that requires medical and societal accommodations to allow for our wellbeing. Unfortunately, basic human rights to health, sustenance, and to exist outwardly in society are too much to ask of those who prefer when we were relegated to the shadows. It appears that many of those who elected Trump anticipated a return to those days and he seems to be willing to oblige.
The Trump administration, while generally inept at media messaging and the legislative process, has been cagey enough to know that full frontal assaults on new institutions like marriage equality would risk angering an American public that is largely supportive of its gay citizens. Nonetheless, if you’ll permit me a moment of gloating, in a previous article I sounded the alarm bell on how the administration could chip away at all of our rights by exploiting the misunderstanding of transgender people and the schism between the T with the rest of the LGB. Well, the administration must have had a look at my playbook, because that is exactly the strategy they are executing. I also expressed a fear that, outside of LGBTQ orgs and trans people, on the whole the reaction from the community would be initial outrage followed by a lack of action. Again, to my chagrin, that fear has proven to be well founded.
You may think I’m being unduly harsh, but this isn’t a time to be asleep at the wheel. The administration took two steps to possibly put a bigger play in motion with repercussions that will eventually impact all of us. The Department of Justice indicated they would not prosecute cases of gender identity discrimination based on Title IX sex discrimination, saying it is unclear if it is applicable, despite more than a decade of precedent. They also rescinded the Obama era guidance on protecting gender identity in our public schools by stating it was a local issue.
It is that last piece that is so dangerous. Instead of attempting to create legislation, like a national version of HB2 in North Carolina that would be sure to meet with protest and resistance, they will literally do nothing to enforce existing federal law. They are leaving it to individual school districts and states to take the heat for active discrimination and rolling the dice that the lawsuits to come might break in their favor or at least take years to wind through the court systems. The immediate impact has been that a pending March case before the Supreme Court brought by trans student Gavin Grimm, which would have created a national precedent on gender identity for schools, was instead remanded back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and now faces an uncertain future.
If this tactic proves successful for Trump, it could be applied to other larger issues. So-called “religious freedom” bills to discriminate against gay people in largely Republican-controlled state houses all around the country would seem to be the logical next step and indeed have already been introduced. All the while the Trump administration, with its stalling tactics, is buying time during which one more liberal or moderate Supreme Court justice might leave, and increasing the chances that a conservative-leaning high court would support any new such laws resulting from these bills. So what started as a strategy to curtail the rights of transgender people might soon be employed to discriminate against our entire community.
Perhaps I’m being alarmist, but anyone who has been paying attention to Trump’s first 100 days in office, can’t help but be alarmed. True, he has been blocked in some of his more radical executive actions, but he has also been stealthily successful in others. I’m fearful we won’t wake up to the ramifications until it is too late.
Melody Maia Monet operates a YouTube channel on transgender issues. You can view her videos at https://www.youtube.com/melodymaia.
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