We Need Less Panic from Trans Media & More Analysis
As legislation targeting the trans community increases, it is important to ground ourselves in the details of the laws that impact us.
by Riki Wilchins
Recently my wife and I were making the 2-hour flight to Colombia to stock up on Vitamin E, and I found myself panicking over Florida’s new anti-trans bathroom ban.
As my wife kept pointing out, I rarely have a problem in public restrooms at the airport, despite the fact that there is always a line, and I am always a foot taller than every other woman in it because a connecting flight just landed from Oompa Loompa Land.
The Oompa Loompas pretend not to notice me while I pretend not to notice them not noticing me, and this usually works fine.
But on July 1, 2023, the Sunshine State had put a target on all my back at government-owned facilities with a new law that restricts transgender people from using bathrooms that align with their gender. The Miami Dade International Airport is owned by Miami Dade County (as the name might indicate) and so qualifies as one such government building.
Fortunately at age 72, I hardly ever need to use the bathroom. Only about as often as I breathe. Or blink.
The airport does have its gender neutral bathrooms — I know the exact location of every one — but the staff don’t always bother unlocking them.
So on this trip I was worried.
My wife assured me I was exaggerating the problem. I assured her she was not transgender and so when she peed she did not need to bother listening to the PA announcements, just in case Airport Security was being paged to her stall.
But here’s the thing: She was right. I was worrying for nothing. I’d absorbed the broad outlines of the crappy law, but not the specific details.
The ACLU has a wonderful primer on Florida’s law which describes these details in, um… detail.
What Fla. Stat. § 553.86. does say is that if I use a bathroom that: a) is in a government facility and b) I am asked to leave by a government employee (NOT an irate Oompa Loompa), and c) I refuse to do so, THEN and only then I may be charged with criminal trespass.
People let me tell you, I make sure I’m in and out so fast that a government employee would have to be The Flash to catch me in the act, and even then I’d just leave.
My bigger point here is that there is understandably a LOT of panic right now in the trans community, but sometimes it’s because we don’t have enough nuance or context. And I think we are going to need those more than ever.
For instance, I’ve just been reading the trans coverage of the NDAA, the defense reauthorization bill which white nationalist Republicans used to ban coverage of gender affirming care for the children of servicemembers.
The coverage is understandably uniformly outraged, angry, and loudly condemning. Which is totally justified–but also not half enough.
To understand Republicans, you have to read everything they do and say in reserve. They always take everything they can get — so what they don’t go for reveals where they believe public support is not currently on their side.
I’m hardly a legislative expert, and the NDAA reauthorization is just one example. And to be clear, this is only the first drop on the much larger meter. Republicans are pushing further and further out in their attack on trans people, and none of us knows yet where they will stop.
With that said, here’s one take on what they DIDN’T do (yet):
Ban adult trans servicemembers’ hormone therapy, which is still covered (surgery is not).
Make affirming care for trans kids of servicemembers illegal (as 26 states have done, including FL).
Make providing affirming care grounds for removal from their home by the local Dept of Child Services as states like Texas did.
Finally, despite scores of trial balloons floated on the Right since 2019 to move the legal age of care in red states to 25 or even 29, NDAA tops out at age 18 even though servicemembers’ children are covered until age 21 (to age 23 if they’re in college).
About 900-1599 kids seek hormones or blockers yearly through TRICARE, the servicemembers health plan. Every single one of them who can’t get treatment is a tragedy and I’m not here to imply differently.
But I want us to remain grounded by a sense of the scale of the harm being done with different legislation and the actual details of what each measure contains and will do to us.
I am also deeply sensitive to the fact that I am writing this from the (somewhat) safe vantage point of an educated adult white person (although in a state which is trying to cut off my hormones after 50 years). In addition, almost all such measures disproportionately impact those who are low-income, of color, and/or young.
But none of this is exactly my point.
When you’re in the fight of your life, it’s vital to know exactly what fight you’re in.
And right now, our gay and trans press–wonderful as they are–are better at giving us outrage and panic click-bait than stats, graphics, in-depth analysis and context so we have the knowledge and perspective to understand what it is we’re fighting, who is going to be hurt, and how.
For a sense of what that could look like, here’s The 19th’s detailed rundown on federal trans bathroom bills like the one pushed by Rep. Nancy Mace. And the detailed analysis of all bills by Matt at TransLegislationTracker.com. And of course Erin Reed’s famous Risk Map.
Performative cruelty is the beating heart of MAGA-vile, so there’s going to be a lot of it coming at us.
They’re going to head-fake 500 things they never try to enact just to enjoy our pain and outrage, and they’ll actually try to enact 50 things that never get into law, and they’ll enact 50 things that are instantly stayed by the courts or—like Florida’s bathroom bill and its Don’t Say Gay law (recently mostly gutted by the courts)—are much less than they appear on closer inspection.
And yes, some very, very bad things will get into law and policy. We know that.
But if everything is equally horrible and equally outrageous, then we’re not getting informed, we’re just getting panicked…just like I was about my trips to the bathrooms at Miami Dade Airport.
Trans news media and trans influencers are still very new; but not so new that those of us doing it can’t step up our game a notch for what’s coming at us all.
Riki Wilchins writes on trans theory and politics at: www.medium.com\@rikiwilchins. Her two last books are: BAD INK: How the NYTimes SOLD OUT Transgender Teens, and When Texas Came For Our Kids. She can be reached at her Gmail at Trans Teens Matter.