Here are some headlines:
- Florida: The state attempting to criminalize gender-affirming care for children as child abuse.
- Kansas: Republicans vote to bar transgender women from women’s bathrooms, prisons, and shelters.
- Missouri: Senate begins debate on health care limits for transgender youth.
- Iowa: Iowa lawmakers pass a ban on gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors.
- Nebraska: A legislator threatens to bring the legislature to a “screeching halt” to prevent anti-transgender bills from passing.
- Arkansas: Arkansas Senate passes a bill with criminal penalties if a transgender person uses the bathroom “while knowing a minor of the opposite sex is present.”
- Kentucky: The Kentucky House of Representatives approves a ban on gender-affirming healthcare for minors over cries of “trans rights.”
- Oklahoma: Oklahoma legislature censures nonbinary lawmaker as proposed gender-affirming care bans move forward.
Does that seem like a lot? These are just stories about anti-transgender legislation from Florida, the home office of The Wild Hunt, and the states surrounding my home state of Missouri this month. I could fill this entire editorial with links if I wanted to go through every state in the U.S. where Republican legislators have decided the number-one priority of the session, over and above all other concerns, is to make life as an out trans person untenable.
Kansas State Capitol Building, Topeka [Aviper2k7, Wikimedia Commons, CC 3.0]
One of my best friends is a trans person living in Kansas. I was talking to them earlier this week about the bills going through the state legislature over there. They felt somewhat protected because Kansas has a Democratic governor who could veto the bills. But even then, they noted, that’s assuming the GOP wouldn’t override the veto – on strict party lines, the Republicans have just barely enough votes to do so – and that calculus could change within an election cycle. If the Republicans gain seats, or if they win the governor’s race in 2026 – Laura Kelly, the current governor, won by just a little over two percent last year – then even that small amount of security evaporates. But it’s still better than Missouri.
“I am in a position where I have none of the power and influence,” they said, describing their conversations with a trans friend of theirs in Missouri who is planning to leave the state. “I don’t know what to do, and am left trading transition notes and synthesizer pics and inviting this friend to my birthday celebration with both of us clearly knowing a movement that’s very powerful in our home state wants us gone.”
I have been sitting with that ever since. How does anyone make a life under those conditions?
I realize that history shows us plenty of examples of how people manage to do that. Queer life in America was largely illegal for most of the country’s history, and yet there has always been a vibrant queer culture here anyway – at least in some places. (The same could be said for all of the other groups that America has persecuted in its history.) But the fact that (some) trans people will (somehow) manage to thrive in this environment does not erase all the harm that will be done. Some trans people will die; many more will be arrested, attacked, and harassed out of public life; and many will come to the conclusion that it’s safer to remain closeted, unable to live the full expression of their lives the way I get to take for granted.
The rush for these bills in GOP-dominated states isn’t the result of a groundswell of local demand, but rather comes as a coordinated national campaign backed by groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom, which provides model anti-trans legislation to conservative lawmakers. If these laws aren’t the result of public demand, it’s unlikely many lawmakers’ minds will be changed by public outcry. The will of the public is a secondary consideration in modern state legislatures at best.
Twin Cities Pride Parade in Downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota, on June 24, 2018. The marcher holds a sign that says “We Heart Our Trans Comm-Unity.” [Tony Webster, Wikimedia Commons, CC 2.0]
So what is to be done? “Go vote” doesn’t cut it – we’re off-cycle, and in any event, state legislatures have been rendered effectively immune to public opinion thanks to gerrymandering. (This is true of both “red” and “blue” states – the Democrats did a fine job of carving up Illinois, where I live now, to ensure their own dominance – but the Republicans have been much more successful at it.) We still have to vote, but to be frank, the damage is going to be done by the time there’s much of an opportunity to vote again – voting is necessary, but it simply isn’t enough.
Nor is it enough to expect trans people to all pack up and move to the blue states. For one thing, it’s not like blue states are immune to transphobia themselves, and for two, despite the ways the American electoral system divides the country into uniform blotches of color, most “red” states have someplace with wonderful queer communities that have a right to exist despite their legislatures. And for three, there’s a word for someone who has to flee their home because of state oppression – they’re called refugees.
No, those of us who hope to be allies to trans people in the red states need to be ready to engage in acts of solidarity, material support, and mutual aid. When it’s clear that the state – in both senses of that word – is out to “eradicate” transgender people, it’s up to us to build communities that can support and protect trans people even in the face of state oppression.
The good news is that Pagans in America ought to be used to these kinds of conditions: we’ve spent the majority of our history learning how to exist and build supportive communities despite constant fears of state harassment. (It must be noted that we learned many of those skills from the queer community in the first place, which, as TWH columnists like Storm Faerywolf regularly point out, has always had a major overlap with Paganism.) Now we need to listen to the trans members of our communities and take deliberate action to help them weather this barrage of state abuse.
I circle with trans and nonbinary people. They are people I ask to critique my rituals and debate my approach to magick; they are the people with whom I write music and essays; they are the folks who turned up to help build my child’s crib. Trans people are my family, and I’m not willing to abandon them at this moment. It’s time for Pagans to step up for our trans siblings.
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