What a friggin’ mess! This week has been one nasty nightmare after another for transgender people, from the continued attempts by Texas legislators to stop trans teens playing sports, to the Dave Chappelle Netflix controversy. And there was even more if you could bear to look.
A boost, one hopes, will come when trans folks gather in Central Florida this weekend for the National Trans Visibility March, which has so far only been held in Washington, D.C., and virtually, because of the pandemic. Saturday’s march steps off in Orlando for the first time, hopefully giving our embattled community a boost after a bad, bad week.
“Insanity,” Albert Einstein allegedly said, “is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” Texas state lawmakers are yet again trying to ban trans student-athletes, despite failing in the regular legislative session and three special sessions. Texas heard the greatest number of anti-trans bills in the country this year, more than 40 bills—triple any other state. And now the Republican majority appears hellbent on pursuing this fourth-times the charm strategy over the emotional, desperate hearing the pleas of hundreds of witnesses on Wednesday, including an 8-year-old trans girl, a 13-year-old trans boy, their moms and other parents of trans kids.
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“Why are you attacking me? I’m really great," testified 8-year-old Sunny Bryant. “My first visit to the Capitol should have been on a school field trip, not defending my right to exist,” she told these coldhearted politicos, “but if I don’t show up, you won’t see the real stories. Kids like me whose futures will be crushed, opportunities taken away even before I’m given a chance to try.” On that day, he acronym GOP might as well have stood for “Get Out, Punk.”
The Texas House Select Committee on Constitutional Rights and Remedies voted 8-4 Wednesday to advance House Bill 25, which would ban student-athletes from playing school sports unless they competed on teams matching the sex listed on their original birth certificates. Should HB 25 should become law, legally modified birth certificates would no longer be accepted. That’s just cruel.
“He’s 13, he shouldn't have to deal with that," Amber Briggle said of her trans son. "I want him to do well in school. I don't want to have him worry about this because I saw how much it harmed him in April and May.”
The harm is all too real. The Trevor Project logged almost 11,000 crisis calls from LGBTQ Texans this year through August 30, a 150% increase.
Democrats denounce the bill as addressing a problem that does not exist. Rep. Senfronia Thompson of Houston told the Texas Tribune no studies have been done on transgender student-athletes in Texas, as is to be expected these days. Who needs evidence when you have enough hate?
The next step is a vote by the full, Republican-controlled chamber. House Speaker Dade Phelan has predicted HB25 has enough votes to pass. After that, it heads to the Republican-controlled Senate, which will almost certainly approve it; Anti-abortion Svengali Gov. Greg Abbott has pledged to sign it. That would make Texas the 10th U.S. state with a ban on trans student-athletes. If only Sunny Bryant’s impassioned words could change hearts and minds.
“I think maybe you need more trans people in your life. Every time I meet trans kids and grownups, my heart grows,” Bryant said. “Don’t be a Grinch. Let your heart grow.” Trans people of all ages, their moms and dads, too, cheered amid tears.
As The Daily Beast reported Tuesday, comedian Dave Chappelle revealed on Netflix he’s “team TERF,” defended J.K. Rowling and DaBaby, mocked trans women’s genitals and doubled down on what David J. Johns, executive director of the National Black Justice Coalition, called “lazy and hostile transphobia and homophobia.”
Blogger Alvin McEwen wrote Chappelle “can kiss my Black gay ass.” Others noted the comic seems fixated on trans, gays and Jews. Well, that’s because he is. But defenders of Chappelle, including cis gays, labeled critics like GLAAD “thin-skinned,” excusing his punching-down as “just a joke,” or even “art.” Terra Field, a trans woman who works at Netflix, tweeted a perfect response.
“Promoting TERF ideology (which is what we did by giving it a platform yesterday) directly harms trans people, it is not some neutral act,” Field said. “This is not an argument with two sides. It is an argument with trans people who want to be alive and people who don't want us to be.”
Chappelle’s pledge to stop making jokes about us is no different than a bully whose fist hurts after punching us so many times he has to quit to give it a rest.
This terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad week started with a Substack post published by Bari Weiss, written by anti-trans activist Abigail Shrier. The author of Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters claimed two prominent transgender women working in trans health care “blow the whistle” on gender-affirming care and where “they feel it has gone wrong.”
But according to a Facebook post, Dr. Marci Bowers told Toni D'orsay, PhD., her comments were “taken out of context and used to fit a narrative on the part of Ms Shrier.” Shocker. What were you thinking, Marci? I’m sure your intentions were solid, but one trans girl to another: don’t accept a free drink from a douchebag. Shrier took advantage of you.
Conservatives, naturally, jumped at the opportunity to denounce trans anything. “Two top transgender doctors are sounding the alarm,” intoned one Fox News anchor, “in putting the well-being of children ahead of the left’s radical agenda.”
Well, we’re not giving in to the transphobes and TERFs. This weekend we’re marching for the kids and for the 38 victims of anti-trans violence so far this year, including Kiér Laprí Kartier, 21, who was fatally shot in Arlington, Texas on Sept. 30. Hers is at least the fifth violent death of a transgender or gender non-conforming person in Texas this year.
Within weeks, it will be the Trans Day of Remembrance, and 2021 is on track to eclipse the grim milestone set in 2020.
To those bracing for more woe in the weeks to come, all anyone can say is that by remaining visible, trans people win, even when it feels like we’re always losing.
