Say what you want about Republicans, but thank god somebody is out there protecting women from the transgender agenda.
What’s the transgender agenda, you ask? It’s all about existing. Or at least that’s what they want you to think. Transgender people might be saying things like, “We just want to live our lives” or “We literally aren’t hurting anyone, so stop hurting us.” But what they really mean is “WE WANT TO END WOMEN’S SPORTS” and “ALL OF YOUR PUBLIC RESTROOMS BELONG TO US!”
And while Democrats are largely “live and let live,” Republicans are on top of things and they aren’t afraid to focus on ruining the lives of transgender adults and kids at the exclusion of just about everything else.
“Since 2021, at least 177 anti-transgender bills have become law in states across the country,” The 19th reports. “The bills largely aim to keep trans girls out of school sports, support misgendering in schools or prevent doctors from treating gender dysphoria in youth through gender-affirming care.”
In a series about the toll of America’s anti-trans war on our wider world, The 19th writes, “Anti-transgender legislation and rhetoric is reshaping all of our lives, from bodily autonomy to education, privacy and the access and use of public spaces. Are we paying attention?”
To which I say, “Good question!” Like, seriously. It’s a really good question. Because anti-trans laws don’t just hurt trans people. And the folks pushing anti-trans laws will never be content to stop there.
Across the country, lawmakers frame anti-trans laws “as a means of protecting cisgender women from trans women,” The 19th reports. “These state bills framed the idea of being transgender as unnatural or biologically impossible; a political ‘ideology’ that contaminated children — as opposed to being a normal part of life — and seeped into mainstream politics. In a second Trump administration, these once-fringe beliefs could well become tenets of the federal government.”
It is a scary prospect. But Project 2025 makes it abundantly clear that transgender people are not welcome in Trump’s America.
Granted, Republicans are disingenuous to say the least when it comes to caring about and/or protecting women. I mean, if they seriously gave a fuck, they wouldn’t have spent decades trying to overturn Roe v. Wade. But now they are all about forced birth. If you’ve got a uterus, they have made it clear who is in charge (spoiler alert: it isn’t you).
If you need an example of how full of shit Republicans are, take how all of a sudden they are the biggest cheerleaders for women’s/girl’s sports. Granted, conservatives literally did not GAF about sports for women and girls until they were made aware of the prospect of someone who did not meet strict, scientific “real woman” criteria playing on such a team.
The same goes for violence against women.
Let’s hop in the Way Back Machine to 1994 when Congress passed the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) (authored, by the way, by then-Senator Joe Biden).
According to the National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV), “The VAWA creates and supports comprehensive, cost-effective responses to domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence and stalking [and] dramatically improved federal, tribal, state and local responses to these crimes.”
But in 2019 when Republicans were in the majority in Congress, they couldn’t be bothered to reauthorize the VAWA. It wasn’t until Democrats got a majority in the U.S. House that the VAWA finally got reauthorized. But only 29 Republicans voted in favor. 172 Republicans opposed it.
Why? Because the VAWA dared to try to protect women from gun violence. It is a well-documented fact that women are killed by intimate partners at an alarming rate and that a huge reason is that their abusers have access to guns. Republicans made it very clear that they care more about the right for violent men to buy and own guns than they do about the right of women to not be murdered.
So the next time you hear a Republican carry on about how we need to protect women from the threat of transgender people using public restrooms, please call them out. Everyone needs to know how full of shit these people are.
The truth is, anti-trans laws help no one. All they do is codify discrimination and hatred that hurts every one of us.
As much as conservatives want to pretend there is a clear-cut difference between the “two genders,” that’s just not how gender works. When there is a “right way” to be a man or a woman, that leaves anyone who isn’t doing it the “right way” open to discrimination and violence.
Republicans fancy themselves the gender police. It’s time for a citizens’ arrest at the ballot box.
