Grassroots/Hank Kalet

Anti-Trans Bills Are About Division

Conservatives have trans youth in their cross hairs, and plan to use anti-transgender legislation to wage a new culture war.

Arkansas is ground zero in this assault, as CNN reports, becoming “the first state in the US to prohibit physicians from providing gender-affirming treatment for trans people under age 18,” overriding a veto by Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R). Tennessee has also passed similar legislation, which awaits gubernatorial action as of this writing.

The Arkansas law — Bill 1570 — bans physicians from performing what the legislation calls “gender transition procedures for minors,” which include gender reassignment surgery and other surgical procedures and drug therapies, such as puberty-blocking drugs and cross-sex hormone therapy.

The sponsors of these bills say they protect children. State Rep. Robin Lundstrum (R), sponsor of the Arkansas law, disputes the science and describes the issue as a “choice.”

Some kids “may choose to be transgender when they’re older,” CNN quotes him as saying. “That’s okay, that’s their choice.”

Conservative organizations make the same argument — twisting the science so that it fits the narratives they’re pushing. Emilie Kao, of the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Religion & Civil Society at the Heritage Foundation, told CNN that “most authoritative studies of those people with gender dysphoria who have gone through surgical intervention show that there is an increase in the level of suicidal ideation after going through surgeries.” This is the allegedly humane flip side to the fear arguments, to their claims that men will claim to be trans to sneak into women’s restrooms or locker rooms, as they argued several years ago when North Carolina and other states pushed bills to force people to use the restrooms designated for the gender on their birth certificates.

This conservative narrative, which neatly echoes arguments made about gays and lesbians, both grows from and creates fear, an odd mixture of the authentic and the opportunistic, the exploitative — and the two motivations are linked. Transgender issues remain foreign to many. The notion that gender should be seen as fluid, that sex organs should not define identity, and that the gender designation on one’s birth certificate should not be the final determination are threatening to some. Conservative groups stoke this fear, both to stem the growing acceptance of the trans community and because they wrongly see it as winning politics.

Katelyn Burns, writing about the debate over transgender athletes in Vox, quotes Minnesota state Rep. Eric Lucero (R):

“The last several years have been witness to a rise in the number of confused boys and men mistakenly believing themselves to be girls and women when the science says otherwise, yet demanding to play on female sport teams, use female bathrooms, and even shower with females, causing outrage and concern among parents by the threat to their daughters’ safety.”

Conservative, anti-trans politicians and activists see these bills — on sports and treatment — as an “extension of the bathroom bill debate and are seeking to classify trans girls and women as men under the law, which would then open the door to all sorts of legal exclusions down the road.”

Kate Oakeye, of the Arkansas chapter of the ACLU, told the Washington Post that religious conservatives are “looking for something to make people afraid and claw back the advances that we’ve made in equality.”

And equality is the point. It is why we need to fight back against these anti-trans efforts. These efforts — the Arkansas bill, the anti-trans sports bans — are efforts at limiting civil and human rights for a designated out group. It is about fear and using fear to hold off change.

Hank Kalet is a writer in New Jersey. Email, hankkalet@gmail.com; Twitter, @newspoet41; Instagram, @kaletwrites; Substack: hank-palet.substack.com

From The Progressive Populist, May 1, 2021

Populist.com