NO MORE LIP SERVICE: IT’S TIME FOR THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION TO STAND FOR TRANS RIGHTS
Earlier this month, I came across the following tweet:
On another day, I might have breezed past this data point with a shudder of rage and a cursory “like,” but it arrested my attention this time:
Perhaps the fact that I went to grad school in Austin in the 1990s was one reason for my pausing over it. I’ve been transfixed the past few years by the dispiriting devolution of the state’s current GOP leadership into cynical, cruel Trumpian batshittery where the trans community is concerned. Texas was among the most rabid to push for the bathroom bills that recently plagued the nation. Now, the state is all in once again in the new red-state rush to ban trans girls from playing sports in school, and to ban trans youth from receiving gender affirming health care. The latter measure is particularly harmful since puberty is such a fraught time for trans folks: receiving gender affirming care, including puberty blockers to prevent unwanted permanent physical changes from occurring, can make a life-and-death difference. Indeed, Governor Asa Hutchinson of neighboring Arkansas, who was down with the sports ban, vetoed his state’s health care bill and called the state legislature’s subsequent override of his veto a “step way too far,” observing that it “puts a very vulnerable population in a more difficult position.” Pfft, replies the Texas GOP, which is upping the ante and seeking to define as child abuse “administering, supplying or consenting to provide” medical care “to anyone under 18 ‘for the purpose of gender transitioning or gender reassignment’.” If the bill is signed into law, that Texas mom and others like her could, according to a staff attorney with the ACLU, “face punishments including two to 10 years in prison and having their children placed in foster care.”
So: where is the Biden administration?
To be fair, the administration has already taken some historic steps to promote the trans community. There is, for example, the appointment of Dr. Rachel Levine as Assistant Secretary for Health in HHS, and the recent nomination of former naval aviator Shawn Skelly for the position of Assistant Secretary of Defense for readiness. There’s also President Biden’s rescinding of Trump’s trans troop ban, the EO he signed on his first day in office greatly expanding Title VII protections for all LGBTQ+ Americans (following the 2020 SCOTUS decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, Ga.), and the administration’s creation of a Gender Policy Council to address gender-based discrimination more broadly. All of these actions are undeniably positive.
Another thing that has to be acknowledged is that the new administration inherited a colossal mess. The #FormerGuy and his goons took a wrecking ball to many areas of federal oversight (the environment, policing, education, etc.) with their raze-and-loot approach to governance, criminally mismanaged the COVID-19 response, created a humanitarian crisis on the southern border, and cynically poured gasoline on any flames or even smoldering embers of discord they felt would serve their ends. Trans rights must compete with a pandemic that has killed over half a million Americans to date, the aftermath of the January 6th uprising and the ongoing threat of white nationalist domestic terrorism, red-state assaults on voting rights, systemic racism in policing and a rise in anti-Asian hate crimes, an economy that’s still in recovery, chronic problems in our nation’s health care system and infrastructure, the mounting global menace of climate change, and an opposition party in thrall to a sociopathic grifter and to a base committed to an alternate reality that no Hollywood producer would touch.
In light of all that, many will likely argue that my question should instead be: why does the trans community deserve more consideration at present than it has already received?
To which I respond: no, my question stands as is, for a few reasons.
The main reason is the vulnerability of those being targeted and the disproportionate cruelty of the legislation. To those who give a fuck about us as something other than political footballs, the vulnerability of trans youth is not in question. While adolescence in particular isn’t easy for anyone, trans folks at this age frequently face elevated levels of bullying from classmates, and various forms of mistreatment and abuse from teachers, school administrators, and other people in their communities. Given all this hostility, it’s little wonder the risk of suicide is higher by orders of magnitude among trans youth than it is among their cisgender counterparts. Pile on the ongoing assaults by their states’ leaders and the toxic trolling (including death threats) of bigots who take their cues from these leaders, and you more or less guarantee negative outcomes for many. Arkansas Gov. Hutchinson understood this much; and in the wake of the legislature’s veto override, four teens in the trans clinic at Little Rock’s Arkansas Children’s Hospital attempted suicide. With an estimated 45,100 youth at risk of being denied access to care by these bans, there’s no reason to believe that the Arkansas cases will be isolated. Nor do trans folks simply age out of their struggles: those of us denied gender affirming care in our youth who make it into adulthood are more likely to struggle with suicidal ideation throughout our lives. Denying trans youth access to health care in the name of “protecting” them, if it doesn’t kill them outright, might very well scar them for life.
But of course protecting trans folks is beside the point, as the testimony the pushers of these bills are ignoring underscores. The evidence of medical research, for starters. There is general consensus among researchers that our insistent, persistent, consistent knowledge of who we are is real, and that that insistence derives in no small part from the fact that there’s a biological component to being trans. Yet Christiana Holcomb, legal counsel for the SPLC-designated hate group Alliance Defending Freedom, which has played a major role in drafting these bills, justifies the medical bans by asserting, “Our laws should protect every child’s opportunity to have a natural childhood.” “Natural,” evidently, is a quality independent of biology — at least as 21st-century medical science (pfft) understands it. Where treatment is concerned, there’s a similar consensus that the distress surrounding gender dysphoria can be alleviated by relatively straightforward, if not minor medical intervention. GOP Senator Charles Perry, the lead sponsor of the Texas bill, however, blithely brushes the doctors aside, and remains willfully ignorant of the protocols surrounding treatment, when he asserts that his legislation would “protect children from…irreversible procedures.” Two data points for the senator to consider: (1) surgical interventions are “typically reserve[d]…for adults” and only “occasionally pursued during adolescence on a case-by-case basis;” (2) the effects of puberty blockers are reversible. Pfft, science.
Needless to say, the testimony of the group most affected by these bills, the trans community, is being dismissed out of hand. Among the many trans children and adolescents to appear before state legislatures considering bans is ten year old Kai Shappley. During her testimony before the Texas legislature on April 12, a video of which went viral on social media, she observed, “I’ve been having to explain myself since I was three or four years old.” Not only is that statement heartbreaking, it’s also an assertion of the reality of trans identity. By the same age (3–4), I knew that my gender identity didn’t align with the one I was assigned at birth, though growing up half a century earlier in a small town in a rural state, I had neither language to explain this dissonance nor any societal forum in which my explanation would be validated. As different as our experiences growing up trans are, though, the common thread is that we both knew who we were from a young age. And in my own case, I can confirm that despite my best efforts, that knowledge has persisted through the subsequent decades. Like our cis counterparts, we are who we are, full stop.
Herein lies the ultimate cruelty of the health care bans. Providing gender affirming care to trans youth doesn’t just address the gender dysphoria: more basically, it acknowledges and validates the identity of the individuals receiving it. It tells them, We see you, we hear you, we believe you. Denying gender affirming care sends the opposite message: We don’t believe you. Your condition isn’t real. You don’t exist. The health care bans aren’t about protection, nor are they merely a curtailment of our rights: they’re about erasure.
The second reason my earlier question stands as is, is that while there are only so many hours in the day, standing up for trans rights needn’t be an either/or proposition. The new administration has demonstrated its ability to multitask, and its commitment to employing the powers of a robust, functioning federal government was on ample display during President Biden’s address to Congress last Wednesday night. Pushing back against the cynical, hateful red-state blitzkrieg of anti-trans legislation shouldn’t take time away from addressing climate change, domestic terrorism, or police reform since different areas of the government will by and large be addressing them.
Finally, if we’re to take the Biden administration at its word, the need right now where trans rights are concerned is as much about messaging as action. During her March 8 press conference, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki responded to a question about Biden’s views on the trans bans by pointing to his day 1 EO as evidence of his belief that “[hashtag]trans rights are human rights.” She also noted that in light of the 2020 Bostock decision, these bills are illegal under federal law. That’s all well and good, but equally as telling was her somewhat mealy-mouthed response to a question about the administration’s support for the Equality Act, and her admission that she was “not aware of discussions directly with state legislatures, state legislators,” specifically about the anti-trans bills. Given the fractious nature of our politics, it’s unlikely that legislators like Texas Senator Perry would change course after a call from the feds. Making the calls, though, would nonetheless communicate an important message to the trans youth and their families across the nation who are in the crosshairs of these bills. So too would more vocal and consistent affirmations of support and assurances of redress to come from President Biden, VP Harris, and others in the administration. That’s what Kai’s mother Kimberly Shappley, one of many parents of trans children who have indicated that they’re considering moving to another state if these bills become law, is asking for:
“Even if they can’t do anything right now, tell us what your plan is…Kamala Harris had a trans flag outside of her office. OK, if you’re an ally, why aren’t you loudly telling my kid she’s gonna be OK? Why aren’t you loudly saying, ‘You know what, Mrs. Shappley, you don’t have to move; we’ve got your back’.”
This seemingly simple ask points to a persisting frustration where the advancement of trans rights is concerned: despite the readiness of allies like the VP to embrace symbolic gestures, and despite the positive polling numbers where support for our rights is concerned, too often that support stalls at lip service. The current state of affairs reminds me of these admonitory lines from the Irish poet W.B. Yeats’ “Second Coming”: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.” The cynicism and cruelty animating the GOP attacks on one of our nation’s most vulnerable populations are certainly “full of passionate intensity.” The reason red state legislators and conservative hate groups have targeted trans youth, moreover, is that they’ve sussed not only that the GOP base eats it up, but also that they’re much less likely to receive substantive pushback for it. Put another way, the trans community continues to be low hanging fruit because the conviction that we’re worth defending, if not lacking entirely, is in too many camps lukewarm at best. It’s time for this hesitancy to end. The president’s shoutout Wednesday night was encouraging: “To all the transgender Americans watching at home — especially the young people who are so brave — I want you to know that your president has your back.” Good: now tell us what your plan is. Interrupt this bigotryfest, stand with us forcefully and unequivocally, and show the nation that the statement “trans rights are human rights” is more than a hashtag.
