I wish I could say this will be the last time I need to write about the threats transgender people are facing in 2024. I’ve had to write a lot about it this year, and really it gets hard to not just write a column that just repeats a string of vulgarities over and over again to describe my disgust with what is going on.
I would much rather be writing about some cool things going on, like the trans and nonbinary swim meet being organized by some friends in Washington. It sold out in less than 24 hours. I’m pretty chuffed for them.
Yet I also feel it’s important that my readers do know what’s going on in the world, and how precarious things are right now. I want people to be safe, and I want people to know just what transgender and nonbinary people are having to face right now.
For example, the Supreme Court’s decision in both Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo and Relentless, Inc. v. Department of Commerce, which overruled their 1984 ruling in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, upending 40 years of policy about how regulatory agencies work in this country. It has the potential to destroy the power of the Federal Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, and other such agencies.
Not before it is used to harm transgender people, however.
It took nearly no time at all for a federal judge in Mississippi to cite the decision in deciding that the Biden administration cannot enforce new anti-discrimination rules to protect trans health care unenforceable. Adding to it, a judge in Kansas blocked Title IX protections for LGBTQ+ students in Kansas, Alaska, Utah and Wyoming based on the same precedent.
No doubt, this is the tip of the iceberg, and I expect we will see challenges to LGBTQ+ protections across the board in the next few months, all thanks to a rogue Supreme Court.
This will also play well into the hands of a potential second Trump administration, who could potentially win the presidency in November. A lot of those who would come in with such an administration are backing a thing called Project 2025. This is a project created by the Heritage Foundation to bring a large number of hard right “reforms” to our all-too-fragile democracy.
In and among rules that would see the end of our National Parks, the end of contraception, and the death of no-fault divorce, Project 2025 seeks to criminalize pornography.
It is important to note, however, that their definition of pornography might differ a bit from yours or mine. For them, “transgender ideology” is pornographic, and in criminalizing such they are actually seeking to criminalize my very existence as pornographic.
Of course, Project 2025 goes farther than this. It is a draconian, authoritarian document. It is so bad that presidential candidate Donald Trump, as well as his cronies, are now busy trying to act as if they haven’t been pushing it for months, even as they continue to push for the very things the project seeks.
Yet, these two are but the tip of the iceberg, as we see trans support slipping across the country and world, and once strong allies of ours backslide. These are, to say the least, very bleak times.
This said, however: not all is lost.
All of this can still be fought against. This is July, and not November. Even with enemies at the Supreme Court, and threats lurking around the presidency, we can mount a defense, and we can halt this.
No, it won’t be easy, and yes, it will take all of us.
Each of us needs to stand up against these decisions. The popular media has made it clear that they will not do it, so it is up to us to educate our friends, trans and otherwise, of the stakes. It is up to us to protest and make our voices heard. It is also up to us to find and secure allies with a common cause: feminist organizations, disability rights advocates, anti-racism organizations, abortion and sex-worker advocates, union and labor activists — to name just a few. We are stronger when we stand with others.
This is also not to say we should simply blindly follow those in power now, or diminish our needs for the sake of a coalition that would ditch us in our hour of need. We need to stand true to our principles, and expect others to champion them, just as we might champion their needs. It would be pointless to stand tall, only to see those we support cut us off at the knees.
We also need to stand up for each other. We are all hurting, and we need each other at this time. Look to your trans and nonbinary friends, and reach out to them. If we are truly a community, we need to act like it. Even when we speak a different dialect of transness, we need to find the harmonies that bind us together.
The right is counting on our apathy. They want us to be hopeless. They expect us to think our cause is lost. I’d be lying to say that isn’t seductive, after months — no, years — of having to fight back against their machinations, and in particular at a time when it truly does feel like the wolves are not only at the door, but have found opposable thumbs.
We need to hold onto whatever tattered shred of hope we have, and drive them back. Our lives depend on it.
Gwen Smith is mad as hell. You’ll find her at www.gwensmith.com.