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In my childhood, trans representation was largely confined to sensationalized daytime talk shows — think “Jerry Springer” — and fictionalized stories of cisgender people reacting with disgust or violence upon learning someone was trans — think of the movies “Boys Don’t Cry,” “The Crying Game,” even “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.”
In the past several years, popular culture in Hollywood and publishing has begun to elevate and even celebrate trans characters. That’s a welcome change. And yet while we can finally, at least on occasion, see or read accurate stories of our lives, this rise of visibility has coincided with and perhaps even precipitated a widespread political assault on trans people across the country.
This duality felt particularly stark at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, last month, where the comedian Will Ferrell and a longtime friend, the former “Saturday Night Live” writer Harper Steele, premiered their film “Will & Harper,” on the same day that the Utah legislature voted on a sweeping bill curtailing the rights of trans people. The film documents the pair’s 17-day road trip from New York to California, which gave Mr. Ferrell a chance to learn about Ms. Steele’s experience as a transgender woman and her decision to come out and live openly as herself at age 59.
The Park City audience gave the film multiple standing ovations. But little attention was paid to efforts to criminalize the presence of trans people in public spaces — including their use of bathrooms and locker rooms — happening just 45 minutes away in Salt Lake City. Indeed, the very premise of the film — traveling across the country — could very well soon switch from comedy to terror, as lawmakers across the United States continue to aggressively train their attention on the bodies of trans people of all ages.
Films like “Will & Harper” allow cisgender people to see trans people’s full humanity, and they give trans people a welcome chance to see ourselves onscreen. Visibility is a gift when you grow up thinking your existence is impossible. But being invisible can also bring protection. I might not have seen myself onscreen in childhood, but neither did I have to deal with dozens upon dozens of bills filed each year questioning my right to use the restroom that matches my gender, have access to health care, learn about the history of trans people in school or worry about which sports teams I was allowed to play on. Though representation of transness onscreen is crucial for building empathy, trans visibility has also contributed to a false sense that the community possesses a degree of stability and power that, in reality, continues to elude us.
Utah’s bill is just one of over 400 anti-L.G.B.T.Q. bills being considered around the country in the first weeks of 2024 alone, a staggering pace of legislative assault on track to surpass the 510 anti-L.G.B.T.Q. bills that were introduced in 2023. Regardless of whether these bills pass — and some of them will not — they are transforming and worsening trans life in the United States as trans adults and families with trans children try to anticipate and respond to the ever-shifting terrain of legislative interference with our lives.
The mere threat that these pieces of legislation could become law is enough to make families question whether to stay put or consider a disruptive move to another state.
Though contemporary political assaults on trans lives began in 2016, it was only in 2019 that the right found a fruitful opening for attack: Since 2020, 24 states have passed bills barring trans kids from participating in sports aligned with their gender identities.
The first bill banning gender-affirming care for minors under the age of 16 was introduced in South Dakota in 2020. That bill failed. But over the next four years, well-resourced anti-L.G.B.T.Q. groups like Alliance Defending Freedom and the Heritage Foundation took aim at the positions of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association and other mainstream medical establishments in the United States, fueling an aggressive, effective public campaign questioning the legitimacy of gender-affirming care. At least 23 states now ban this care for minors. According to the Williams Institute, a U.C.L.A. think tank dedicated to research on sexual orientation and gender identity, over 100,000 transgender youths live in states banning the treatment many rely on to live healthy lives, including pubertal suppression and hormone therapy.
Though much of the public debate over trans people focuses on medical treatment for adolescents, the erosion of care for youth is just one piece of the far-reaching legislative assault on trans lives, which has worsened in the lead-up to the 2024 elections. Hundreds of bills have been introduced in state legislatures across the country that constrain the rights of trans adults as well, by restricting or removing access to gender-affirming medical treatment, criminalizing our use of certain restrooms and preventing us from obtaining identification that matches who we are and how we live in the world.
The underlying aim of this legislative assault is clear to trans people: It amounts to the slow erosion of our legal protections and attacks on our dignity, our humanity and our ability to live safely and participate in public life. Those of us who are trans or who love someone who is trans wake up every day wondering: Will we be able to get the health care that has enabled us to survive? Will our children be taken from us by the state because we are trans or because they are? Will our children be able to go to the right bathroom at school, participate in field trips or join sports teams? Will we be outed when we show identification?
A bill’s passage does not dictate the extent of its damage. Even when these proposals don’t become law, they uproot our sense of security and demand that we reorient our lives. Many families have had to move from states where they lived for generations to maintain the health care that their children need. Even for families with resources, this takes a financial and emotional toll. For others, relocating or consistently traveling for care out of state is prohibitive.
Trans people are constantly trying to understand where we can live safely and where we cannot. But with members of Congress and Republican presidential candidates vowing to federalize these restrictive policies, we can’t help but ask ourselves: Will there be anywhere safe in the United States for trans people in the near future?
In early February, I started working on a memo for my colleagues at the A.C.L.U. focused on how transgender lawyers like me can stay safe as we advocate for our communities in places that criminalize our bodies. As a trans person, I know well the process of taking extreme precautions: Avoid the bathroom. Try not to show ID. But it is my job and my duty to fight for my community, and these laws structurally impair my ability to fight back against them.
Political posturing about trans people in public spaces was never about protecting children, as so many proponents of these bills claim. While the trans community and our allies can and should celebrate trans people on the red carpet and on our favorite TV shows, we can’t lose sight of the fact that each bill contributes to a political movement that imagines a world without us.
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