As a trans person, thank you so much for this article. We need all the support we can get, especially as Dems seem perfectly willing to throw us under the bus now, with the approving the NDAA, despite the little inclusion that strips trans kids of people who have served of healthcare.
As another trans person I second this sentiment. We don’t have a champion that counters the most vocal of the right wing. We are all we have and I’d like to think that we are all we need, but we need more.
What the fuck is so hard about letting doctors decide what medical treatment people need?
What the fuck is so hard about letting sports leagues and conferences determine who is or isn't eligible to play in them without some legislation mandating a conclusion?
What the fuck is so hard about minding your own business?
We can try to explain to people why it is important to accommodate people with trans status but frankly I'm fucking sick of doing it. They don't have to like trans people, or understand it. (Even as somebody who fully supports trans rights and has trans friends I don't really UNDERSTAND it - it's their life, their experience, their consciousness, not mine.) They just need to stop caring. They just need to pay attention to LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE. Maybe something that actually affects them.
What Florida is doing is horrific. Forcibly detransitioning someone is beyond cruel. Anxiety, ptsd and suicidal ideation will likely be the upshot. Maybe that’s the real motive behind this or maybe it’s just the sadism.
Florida is challenging Texas for the most cruel and horrible state award. They will eventually come for all Queer people and women and mentally ill and neurodivergent and everyone except rich straight white men.
As a country, we seem to be getting more cruel and more ignorant every day.. This is torture, plain and simple. The real criminals are the prison wardens and guards perpetuating this. If this is not the beginning of Nazi Germany, right here in the USA, I don't know what is. And it won't be recognized until it's too late.
I have one FB friend who has transitioned since we "met" on FB. She is still the same incredibly funny and kind human being. I have actually only met 1 transition woman in my life, a co worker from several jobs ago.
Even if I didn't know a single transition human being, I would still care about and defend the entire community.
Thank you for your unwavering resistance. We already have cops killing people of color largely without consequences, I suspect the rest of the LGBT+ community (like me)is on their checklist of undesirables to "remove " from their Gilead. 🤬😭😩😭🤬
Human beings that have gender dysphoria and transition (or don't) are not "known" in true numbers. Society has required masking to survive. People not seen are not counted. So scared for what is ahead.
It is so crazy to me that a governmental body is even equating being trans with having gender dysphoria in the first place. One doesn't equal the other. I've actually never had a transgender client that has gender dysphoria: they've come to me for various goals they are working on, but never because they themselves are uncomfortable with their own identity. If their goals have to do with being trans at all, it's usually that they have discomfort over other people in their lives being uncomfortable.
About 72% of transgender, gender expansive, and other folks who live in a gender different from the one assigned at birth. This means whether they are living post or before transition, they do not reveal their trans status. This is called in the community "living stealth". It is done to protect ourselves from discrimination and physical and sexual violence. Trans women are 3x more likely to be raped than cisgender women.
We would prefer not to be raped and murdered.
Living stealth is an attempt to escape being raped and beaten. In death we are frequently misgendered and our murders are frequently unreported and the police frequently don't even investigate. As an advocate I frequently ask police to get the facts right, to investigate and arrest perpetrators for their hate crimes. Our true number of murders is far greater. But fewer than 3% of the killers of Trans Americans will ever be investigated, arrested, arraigned, tried, convicted, and sentenced, going on to serve 7 years plus in prison, the average time served for murder-to-manslsughter in the United States.
If you've ever wanted to kill someone and avoid any consequences, kill us. Our lives are not valued in this country and law enforcement and prosecutors have always been clear about this, and the legislators in 37 states are making it even easier to target us for discrimination and predation.
Banning people from public life, from sports, from schools, from public service, from various occupations, from bathrooms, from gyms and fitness centers, swimming pools, that's obviously done to eliminate and eradicate us and doing so to a targeted minority ALWAYS HAS MEANT THAT, so no one can pretend this isn't happening RIGHT NOW.
Yet here on Substack I receive at least one message or comment every day telling me transgender people aren't being targeted, we aren't being genocided, we're just not being allowed healthcare, property rights, employment rights, the ability to access healthcare, education, housing, public accommodations, THAT'S ALL. We're not being genocided, these laws are just to "protect women and children". If we're being erased and disappeared, it's just a feature, not a bug.
So we can't complain, right?
I don't honestly know if they believe what they're saying or are just sealioning, trolling, harassing, or concern trolling me and other TGE Americans. Maybe they believe we shouldn't be genocided "in a bad way", just permanently removed from public life and visibility...as if these weren't actually the same things, a Venn diagram that's sadly close to a god-damnned circle.
Maybe they just don't see a need for creating an expensive Gestapo, pricy new concentration camps, and large footprint industrial crematoria when we already have a perfectly functional militarized police, surveillance state, and for profit incarceral industrial complex built for the "war on drugs", "war on terror", and for America's war on Black and Brown people. America can just use existing infrastructure and not even have to go all retro-SS and swastika-y.
Aside from the obvious what are we to do? How do you stop something when those in the driver's seat are the ones committing these crimes. A single person is powerless against this. When a whole state is doing this what are we to do? Go to jail? Demonstrate? I am not giving up or not wanting to be of use but how? How do we, the common ordinary average citizen, how can we help? We need to stop this before it gets any bigger but how the loonies are in charge! The court system is broken and nobody wants to fix that or anything else. We need dynamic leadership. We need away forward and upward. Until we the people in an organized united group start to undo the damage it will go on unabated. The victims will suffer and be ignored. But this is not the 60's and this is not the civil rights movement. This time they are coming for our freedoms but so far nobody seems to care. So far my fears of a Hitler like Germany happening here are coming true. They could not stop it then. What makes you think you can stop it now. Especially when so many Americans voted for this to be.
We start by not going along with it. By objecting and calling people out any time they mention this as if it were acceptable. Friends, family, coworkers. Speaking out against the news media that is trying really hard to normalize this shit.
We spread the word of what is happening and make it clear we do so in disgusted horrified terms so nobody listening thinks we're just bringing up another minor news story.
We do let ourselves get conditioned to accept any aspect of this.
>> "Especially when so many Americans voted for this to be." <<
The vast majority of who either really didn't think Republicans would follow through or still don't get that they themselves will end up being the Republican's victims. There is going to be a shit-ton of buyer's remorse coming (it already is) and we need to help push that along.
Unfortunately, we do have a playbook but it’s not a satisfying one — in fact, it’s an absolute nightmare. The same resistance methods that were used then may be needed again. Allies and rebels are going to be forced to pretend to comply or be neutral on the surface, so they can work underground in secret. There’s a time for speaking up, but there’s also a point when keeping your mouth shut becomes a crucial tool to protect those you shield. We all hope it doesn’t come to that — that speaking up and visibly fighting back will continue to be way forward, kicking and screaming.
but if you adopt this playbook too soon you create the conditions for us to get targeted. the only people needing to be worried about speaking up about trans rights are trans people. and we’re speaking up now. don’t hide behind us when we’re being targeted. please.
Make noise - let things be known - drag this filth out into the harsh daylight. I wonder how many people in Florida actually KNOW that about this? So tell the world, loudly.
Yes, if/when (don’t give up hope before you have to) the worst comes, you might need to be sneaky, but until then, please remember to use your voices to help those with less privilege than yourselves!
(I know I’m saying all this in 2nd person - I’m not American, or in US)
You say make noise. All well and good, BUT, all the major news outlets are now controlled by people like Bezos who are cowing to rump. They will never print or broadcast the truth or speak out against djt, dear leader using Hitlers play book controll the press. This is only the beginning look up any number of history books on Hitlers Germany and you will immediately see where we are headed. Rump wants to "round up" "those people" so did Hitler. When the problem of holding that many souls, especially when you don't care about them, the options about long-term holding of such prisoners become very limited and bleak. At some point down this road we are just beginning to travel we will hear how much trouble they are, how costly, and how much money it is taking from our treasury just to keep "them" alive, then some genius is going to come up with "a final solution" and just as in Germany this country will be in the mass murder phase. It will mean putting a lot of people to work in the killing and disposal of all those people. We know because our people have faced this before. We know because it was us and a whole lot more who were killed in those concentration camps. We were talking about this when rump was talking about doing this but nobody was listening. Now that the grim reality is coming into focus and people are getting scared, now they and you are concerned, and just like before when people said oh it can't happen here, they won't let it happen here, it is happening again. Mankind never really understands their folly. They never learn from history until it happens to them, but then it is too late. The wheels are in motion and millions of people are going to die, soon and for a long time to come. The armies of darkness will be marching soon. They will come for your neighbors, your family, your friends, and then one awful day they will come for you. They will take you kicking and screaming from your house, they will not care and you will finally understand what we have saying but then it will be too late for you. If you think I am being overly dramatic talk to a Holocaust survivor or read about it in a history book you don't have much time left.
you never know if you can stop it but you can at least try. trans people tried to tell you we were getting targeted. no one fought back. fascists always pick the least understood group and paint them as a danger.
I lived in W Germany when I was in high school. In college, I majored in German, and studied modern German history. I've had gut-wrenching visits to multiple Nazi concentration camps. I've seen armed soldiers marching and in tanks on city streets in a divided Berlin, and been in vehicles routinely stopped and searched for no reason. I have a family member by marriage who escaped the Russians as a teen. I've seen the aftermath of authoritarianism, and never imagined I'd ever see it in my beloved United States.
Six years ago, I was in couples counseling when the therapist opined that transgender was a passing fad. I informed her that not only was it real, I personally had a close trans family member, and also had 4 close friends with trans family. I also have at least a dozen friends or acquaintances who are gender-fluid or nonbinary. I told her she'd better open her mind and get used to reality. Uncle Ogre, I'd bet that you've actually met, and probably know fairly well, more than just that one trans person. It's just that, like gays and lesbians at one time, they are forced to hide themselves because they don't know whom they can trust. Given what's happened/happening in this country since that escalator ride that took us to Hell, I can't blame them, and I don't often mention their reality when I talk about them. God help us all, and keep the different among us safe, until sanity prevails once more.
It always makes me shudder when I hear people report their therapist said things like this. Seperate from why you think it's for you to decide that how someone feels (about their gender or anything else) is a "fad": Why is such an opinion relevant to share in a session that should be about your clients in front of you?
Also, yes, I have seen an increase of other individuals in the LGBTQIA+ community being concerned for their safety in a world where people dressed as Nazis feel empowered post-election to be marching in the streets.
On the positive side: many clients under 18 that I have had in the last five years, when I've asked about their gender identity (a standard question for an intake), they have been perfectly comfortable telling me about their journey of considering their gender and sexual identity. They don't feel they have to identify a certain way. They treat it as a question to be determined by each person as a normal part of determining their identity. I find that heartening.
This. Is. Exactly. What. They. Did. To. Gay. Men. And. Lesbians. The gaslighting, the so-called treatments, the sanctioned conditioning, the feigned concern…they just wanted us dead, chemically castrated, powerless, and silent. They’ll start making it illegal again soon — enforced institutionalization in mental hospitals probably. Soft eugenics is next. This is all totally fine and not at all dystopian and pure evil. Good times.
Cruelty is the point. They pick on the most vulnerable first, then work their way up to the rest of us, who are trying to lay low and not be noticed. I wish I wasn’t such a coward or maybe I just need to find an efficient manner to fight back against these bullies.
Thank you for writing this, we need all the allyship we can get. The 8 past years have been scary, but the accelerated pace of the last few months is terrifying
I have to keep consoling my (trans) son that THEY aren’t coming for him. I told him they can try but they’ll have to go through 230 lbs of angry protective father to do it.
Generally it’s a rule that the people that get othered don’t have any nefarious plans; they just want to live their lives and be left alone.
As a trans person, thank you so much for this article. We need all the support we can get, especially as Dems seem perfectly willing to throw us under the bus now, with the approving the NDAA, despite the little inclusion that strips trans kids of people who have served of healthcare.
I am so sorry--the world is failing you.
As another trans person I second this sentiment. We don’t have a champion that counters the most vocal of the right wing. We are all we have and I’d like to think that we are all we need, but we need more.
What the fuck is so hard about letting doctors decide what medical treatment people need?
What the fuck is so hard about letting sports leagues and conferences determine who is or isn't eligible to play in them without some legislation mandating a conclusion?
What the fuck is so hard about minding your own business?
We can try to explain to people why it is important to accommodate people with trans status but frankly I'm fucking sick of doing it. They don't have to like trans people, or understand it. (Even as somebody who fully supports trans rights and has trans friends I don't really UNDERSTAND it - it's their life, their experience, their consciousness, not mine.) They just need to stop caring. They just need to pay attention to LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE. Maybe something that actually affects them.
Women every where are asking the same thing!
What Florida is doing is horrific. Forcibly detransitioning someone is beyond cruel. Anxiety, ptsd and suicidal ideation will likely be the upshot. Maybe that’s the real motive behind this or maybe it’s just the sadism.
But they WANT them to commit suicide - one less mouth to feed. Bastards!
Yes, it's definitely state sanctioned torture.
Florida is challenging Texas for the most cruel and horrible state award. They will eventually come for all Queer people and women and mentally ill and neurodivergent and everyone except rich straight white men.
As a country, we seem to be getting more cruel and more ignorant every day.. This is torture, plain and simple. The real criminals are the prison wardens and guards perpetuating this. If this is not the beginning of Nazi Germany, right here in the USA, I don't know what is. And it won't be recognized until it's too late.
It’s the politicians (and wonks behind them) coming up with this shit who are truly evil! Let’s not give the cogs in the machine too much credit…
True, but nothing would be done without complicity.
I have one FB friend who has transitioned since we "met" on FB. She is still the same incredibly funny and kind human being. I have actually only met 1 transition woman in my life, a co worker from several jobs ago.
Even if I didn't know a single transition human being, I would still care about and defend the entire community.
That's just who I am.
My apologies, my phone "corrected" what I was typing, I should have proofread what I was posting.
The head shaving reminds me of what they did to women who slept with Nazis. It is designed to humiliate the woman.
Thank you. You are correct.
Thank you for your unwavering resistance. We already have cops killing people of color largely without consequences, I suspect the rest of the LGBT+ community (like me)is on their checklist of undesirables to "remove " from their Gilead. 🤬😭😩😭🤬
ARRRGGGHHH! I am already so angry over the fucking MAGATS. I don't know how long I'll survive what's coming!
Human beings that have gender dysphoria and transition (or don't) are not "known" in true numbers. Society has required masking to survive. People not seen are not counted. So scared for what is ahead.
It is so crazy to me that a governmental body is even equating being trans with having gender dysphoria in the first place. One doesn't equal the other. I've actually never had a transgender client that has gender dysphoria: they've come to me for various goals they are working on, but never because they themselves are uncomfortable with their own identity. If their goals have to do with being trans at all, it's usually that they have discomfort over other people in their lives being uncomfortable.
About 72% of transgender, gender expansive, and other folks who live in a gender different from the one assigned at birth. This means whether they are living post or before transition, they do not reveal their trans status. This is called in the community "living stealth". It is done to protect ourselves from discrimination and physical and sexual violence. Trans women are 3x more likely to be raped than cisgender women.
We would prefer not to be raped and murdered.
Living stealth is an attempt to escape being raped and beaten. In death we are frequently misgendered and our murders are frequently unreported and the police frequently don't even investigate. As an advocate I frequently ask police to get the facts right, to investigate and arrest perpetrators for their hate crimes. Our true number of murders is far greater. But fewer than 3% of the killers of Trans Americans will ever be investigated, arrested, arraigned, tried, convicted, and sentenced, going on to serve 7 years plus in prison, the average time served for murder-to-manslsughter in the United States.
If you've ever wanted to kill someone and avoid any consequences, kill us. Our lives are not valued in this country and law enforcement and prosecutors have always been clear about this, and the legislators in 37 states are making it even easier to target us for discrimination and predation.
Banning people from public life, from sports, from schools, from public service, from various occupations, from bathrooms, from gyms and fitness centers, swimming pools, that's obviously done to eliminate and eradicate us and doing so to a targeted minority ALWAYS HAS MEANT THAT, so no one can pretend this isn't happening RIGHT NOW.
Yet here on Substack I receive at least one message or comment every day telling me transgender people aren't being targeted, we aren't being genocided, we're just not being allowed healthcare, property rights, employment rights, the ability to access healthcare, education, housing, public accommodations, THAT'S ALL. We're not being genocided, these laws are just to "protect women and children". If we're being erased and disappeared, it's just a feature, not a bug.
So we can't complain, right?
I don't honestly know if they believe what they're saying or are just sealioning, trolling, harassing, or concern trolling me and other TGE Americans. Maybe they believe we shouldn't be genocided "in a bad way", just permanently removed from public life and visibility...as if these weren't actually the same things, a Venn diagram that's sadly close to a god-damnned circle.
Maybe they just don't see a need for creating an expensive Gestapo, pricy new concentration camps, and large footprint industrial crematoria when we already have a perfectly functional militarized police, surveillance state, and for profit incarceral industrial complex built for the "war on drugs", "war on terror", and for America's war on Black and Brown people. America can just use existing infrastructure and not even have to go all retro-SS and swastika-y.
Aside from the obvious what are we to do? How do you stop something when those in the driver's seat are the ones committing these crimes. A single person is powerless against this. When a whole state is doing this what are we to do? Go to jail? Demonstrate? I am not giving up or not wanting to be of use but how? How do we, the common ordinary average citizen, how can we help? We need to stop this before it gets any bigger but how the loonies are in charge! The court system is broken and nobody wants to fix that or anything else. We need dynamic leadership. We need away forward and upward. Until we the people in an organized united group start to undo the damage it will go on unabated. The victims will suffer and be ignored. But this is not the 60's and this is not the civil rights movement. This time they are coming for our freedoms but so far nobody seems to care. So far my fears of a Hitler like Germany happening here are coming true. They could not stop it then. What makes you think you can stop it now. Especially when so many Americans voted for this to be.
We start by not going along with it. By objecting and calling people out any time they mention this as if it were acceptable. Friends, family, coworkers. Speaking out against the news media that is trying really hard to normalize this shit.
We spread the word of what is happening and make it clear we do so in disgusted horrified terms so nobody listening thinks we're just bringing up another minor news story.
We do let ourselves get conditioned to accept any aspect of this.
>> "Especially when so many Americans voted for this to be." <<
The vast majority of who either really didn't think Republicans would follow through or still don't get that they themselves will end up being the Republican's victims. There is going to be a shit-ton of buyer's remorse coming (it already is) and we need to help push that along.
Unfortunately, we do have a playbook but it’s not a satisfying one — in fact, it’s an absolute nightmare. The same resistance methods that were used then may be needed again. Allies and rebels are going to be forced to pretend to comply or be neutral on the surface, so they can work underground in secret. There’s a time for speaking up, but there’s also a point when keeping your mouth shut becomes a crucial tool to protect those you shield. We all hope it doesn’t come to that — that speaking up and visibly fighting back will continue to be way forward, kicking and screaming.
but if you adopt this playbook too soon you create the conditions for us to get targeted. the only people needing to be worried about speaking up about trans rights are trans people. and we’re speaking up now. don’t hide behind us when we’re being targeted. please.
All that needs to happen is for every individual person to sit in their chair at home doing nothing because what can one individual do?
What can you do?
Join an organization in your community that supports trans people.
Join a national organization.
When there is a protest, SHOW UP.
When money is needed donate.
The same internet in your hand right now holds the answers to your question of what can one person do.
Make noise - let things be known - drag this filth out into the harsh daylight. I wonder how many people in Florida actually KNOW that about this? So tell the world, loudly.
Yes, if/when (don’t give up hope before you have to) the worst comes, you might need to be sneaky, but until then, please remember to use your voices to help those with less privilege than yourselves!
(I know I’m saying all this in 2nd person - I’m not American, or in US)
You say make noise. All well and good, BUT, all the major news outlets are now controlled by people like Bezos who are cowing to rump. They will never print or broadcast the truth or speak out against djt, dear leader using Hitlers play book controll the press. This is only the beginning look up any number of history books on Hitlers Germany and you will immediately see where we are headed. Rump wants to "round up" "those people" so did Hitler. When the problem of holding that many souls, especially when you don't care about them, the options about long-term holding of such prisoners become very limited and bleak. At some point down this road we are just beginning to travel we will hear how much trouble they are, how costly, and how much money it is taking from our treasury just to keep "them" alive, then some genius is going to come up with "a final solution" and just as in Germany this country will be in the mass murder phase. It will mean putting a lot of people to work in the killing and disposal of all those people. We know because our people have faced this before. We know because it was us and a whole lot more who were killed in those concentration camps. We were talking about this when rump was talking about doing this but nobody was listening. Now that the grim reality is coming into focus and people are getting scared, now they and you are concerned, and just like before when people said oh it can't happen here, they won't let it happen here, it is happening again. Mankind never really understands their folly. They never learn from history until it happens to them, but then it is too late. The wheels are in motion and millions of people are going to die, soon and for a long time to come. The armies of darkness will be marching soon. They will come for your neighbors, your family, your friends, and then one awful day they will come for you. They will take you kicking and screaming from your house, they will not care and you will finally understand what we have saying but then it will be too late for you. If you think I am being overly dramatic talk to a Holocaust survivor or read about it in a history book you don't have much time left.
you never know if you can stop it but you can at least try. trans people tried to tell you we were getting targeted. no one fought back. fascists always pick the least understood group and paint them as a danger.
I lived in W Germany when I was in high school. In college, I majored in German, and studied modern German history. I've had gut-wrenching visits to multiple Nazi concentration camps. I've seen armed soldiers marching and in tanks on city streets in a divided Berlin, and been in vehicles routinely stopped and searched for no reason. I have a family member by marriage who escaped the Russians as a teen. I've seen the aftermath of authoritarianism, and never imagined I'd ever see it in my beloved United States.
Six years ago, I was in couples counseling when the therapist opined that transgender was a passing fad. I informed her that not only was it real, I personally had a close trans family member, and also had 4 close friends with trans family. I also have at least a dozen friends or acquaintances who are gender-fluid or nonbinary. I told her she'd better open her mind and get used to reality. Uncle Ogre, I'd bet that you've actually met, and probably know fairly well, more than just that one trans person. It's just that, like gays and lesbians at one time, they are forced to hide themselves because they don't know whom they can trust. Given what's happened/happening in this country since that escalator ride that took us to Hell, I can't blame them, and I don't often mention their reality when I talk about them. God help us all, and keep the different among us safe, until sanity prevails once more.
It always makes me shudder when I hear people report their therapist said things like this. Seperate from why you think it's for you to decide that how someone feels (about their gender or anything else) is a "fad": Why is such an opinion relevant to share in a session that should be about your clients in front of you?
Also, yes, I have seen an increase of other individuals in the LGBTQIA+ community being concerned for their safety in a world where people dressed as Nazis feel empowered post-election to be marching in the streets.
On the positive side: many clients under 18 that I have had in the last five years, when I've asked about their gender identity (a standard question for an intake), they have been perfectly comfortable telling me about their journey of considering their gender and sexual identity. They don't feel they have to identify a certain way. They treat it as a question to be determined by each person as a normal part of determining their identity. I find that heartening.
This. Is. Exactly. What. They. Did. To. Gay. Men. And. Lesbians. The gaslighting, the so-called treatments, the sanctioned conditioning, the feigned concern…they just wanted us dead, chemically castrated, powerless, and silent. They’ll start making it illegal again soon — enforced institutionalization in mental hospitals probably. Soft eugenics is next. This is all totally fine and not at all dystopian and pure evil. Good times.
Cruelty is the point. They pick on the most vulnerable first, then work their way up to the rest of us, who are trying to lay low and not be noticed. I wish I wasn’t such a coward or maybe I just need to find an efficient manner to fight back against these bullies.
Thank you for writing this, we need all the allyship we can get. The 8 past years have been scary, but the accelerated pace of the last few months is terrifying
I have to keep consoling my (trans) son that THEY aren’t coming for him. I told him they can try but they’ll have to go through 230 lbs of angry protective father to do it.
Generally it’s a rule that the people that get othered don’t have any nefarious plans; they just want to live their lives and be left alone.