Community voices: On being transgender in America this week

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Being transgender in America feels a little bit like being Schrodinger’s cat.

Simultaneously real and imagined, we exist in public consciousness when it’s convenient for the far right, because perhaps they need an enemy, but our presence there halts when pundits see our existence for what it is — a radical act. Suddenly, we’re characterized as the products of online culture wars, dreamlike figments of a leftist worldview.

But the truth is, no matter the discourse du jour, trans folks have always been here, and we always will be here, even as our institutions fail to acknowledge our presence. Since the first of the year, groups at universities across the U.S. and Canada have been inviting anti-trans thinkers to speak at their campuses, much to the upset of trans students, faculty and allies, who rightly feel that these events are putting them in danger and contributing to the rise of anti-trans rhetoric. And now, those far-right commentators have found a voice in Pennsylvania.

The University of Pittsburgh recently announced that some of its conservative student groups plan to host a series of events focused on “transgender issues” at the end of March. Put on by Turning Point USA and Pitt College Republicans, these events include speakers such as Riley Gaines, a former college swimmer who has been outspokenly against transgender women competing in women’s sports, and Michael Knowles, a right-wing commentator who, at the Conservative Political Action Conference on March 4, said “transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely.” Knowles is scheduled to debate transgender activist Deirdre McCloskey.

Organizers, and even McCloskey herself, have defended the events as a shining exemplar of free speech, which supporters add does not have to equal kind speech. But the problem, as I and the 10,000 signatories of a petition to cancel the event see it, is that events like these are treating transgender people like the subject of some high-brow, pseudo-intellectual debate rather than recognizing us as whole, realized individuals deserving of rights and basic protections. This discourse reduces us to a political talking point and in doing so, dehumanizes us, turning us into an academic hypothesis that can be accepted or rejected. This is fearmongering, not education.

So often, it seems that folks use “free speech” as an excuse to push the precedent to its absolute limit. How cruel can we be, they seem to ask, without getting in trouble? How thin is the line between our protected First Amendment and hate speech? That line, it seems, is a gossamer thread. Without getting into legal differences between the two, because I’m hardly a lawyer, I’ll just say that it seems like calling for the “eradication” of a community ought to fall under the purview of hate speech, and that supporting a speaker who calls for such genocidal things tends to leave an ugly mark on history.

With events such as these rising in popularity, we trans folks asked to engage in these banal arguments to defend ourselves, to defend our very right to inhabit the bodies we inhabit and exist in the spaces we fill. My thoughts on the matter can be most aptly summed up with a borrowed excerpt from Shon Faye’s “The Transgender Issue: Trans Justice Is Justice for All.”

“The ‘topic’ of trans has now been limited to a handful of repetitive talking points,” writes Faye, who is herself transgender. Among these issues, she adds, are whether transgender children should be allowed to transition and whether transgender women should be allowed to compete in women’s sports. She continues: “I believe that forcing trans people to involve themselves in these closed-loop debates ad infinitum is itself a tactic of those who wish to oppress us.”

Faye touches on these crucial points in her book, which should be on every trans ally’s reading list. Behind these “transgender issues” are real people with real hopes, real dreams and real concerns about the general state of things and the future of our community. We lead real lives that are just as mundane and boring as those of our cis peers, and just as special and worthwhile, too. It’s exhausting to see, time and time again, my existence at the center of controversy. Transness has become a political bargaining chip touted by conservative pundits who seem to need a scapegoat, and as a consequence, we trans folks have been going about our daily lives while our academic institutions ponder us like we’re curiosities. Specimens.

My gut instinct is to say that I am — and that we are — the same as everyone else, that we make coffee, go to the bank and wander aimlessly around Target like everyone else tends to do. But I stop myself, because we shouldn’t celebrate each other for our sameness. We should celebrate each other for the things that make us different and unique, that give us different and unique perspectives we can share to contribute to a more understanding society.

Knowles’ call for our “eradication” is not one of those different and unique perspectives, but rather an incitement to violence against us. Though Knowles later backtracked and said he meant to eradicate a way of thinking rather than the trans community itself, the fact remains that you can’t kill the part of me that’s transgender without killing the rest of me, too.

This “eradication” talk is a fine example of the way in which words can have teeth. Trans folks have been feeling, at increasing rates, the impact of this kind of discourse.

The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), which collects data on all reported political violence and protest events around the world, has recorded an uptick in anti-LGBTQ+ demonstrations in the U.S. Anti-LGBTQ+ mobilization — including demonstrations, political violence and offline propaganda activity — has risen to its highest levels since ACLED started collecting data for the United States in 2020. Last year saw almost twice as many anti-LGBTQ+ incidents as 2021, and far-right militias like the Proud Boys and Patriot Front have increased their engagement in anti-LGBTQ+ demonstrations by over three times this year, too, up from 16 events in 2021 to 52 events as of mid-November 2022.

These tensions are felt even for those of us who sense a relative security, far away from states like Tennessee, which recently banned drag performance and greatly restricted transgender health care for minors, and Florida, which also limits transgender health care and is considering classifying it as a form of abuse.

I live in a sunny liberal small town along the Connecticut border, just an hour or so away from New York City. Our crosswalks are painted to look like rainbow flags, and our cafes have signs telling visitors that hate is not welcome here. Nevertheless, in late February, I had a car follow me for winding miles through the pine-lined backroads of upstate New York, trying surprisingly hard to run me off the road and shouting anti-LGBTQ+ obscenities at me (likely in response to my pride-themed bumper stickers.) I left Pittsburgh, my hometown, partially because my work called me east and partially because I couldn’t stop at a gas station in Pennsylvania without being gawked at.

This isn’t to complain. I have a great deal of privilege and comparatively few negative experiences to share. My point is just that this transphobia, this anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment, is everywhere. And it’s everywhere because of speakers like those coming to Pitt this month. In our modern age, everyone has a platform. Not everyone uses their platform for good.

The famed journalist Edward R. Murrow once professed, “I simply cannot accept that there are, on every story, two equal and logical sides to an argument.” Now, in this political arena wherein transness has become an argument, it seems like the “two sides” are those who believe trans people have a right to exist and those who do not. One side advocates for the autonomy of a people and the other, for our eradication. These sides are not equal and logical. There is a clear right and a clear wrong. Where we stand as a society is up to us.