TWIBS: Trump Says Trans Aliens Get Free Surgery
During Tuesday’s presidential debate, Donald Trump suggested Kamala Harris wants undocumented immigrants to receive free “transgender surgery” while being detained or imprisoned, a bogus claim with a very weird source.
Humor by Alyssa Steinsiek
This Week in Barrel Scraping (TWIBS) is Assigned Media’s oldest column! Every Friday, Alyssa Steinsiek digs deep from the well of transphobia and finds the most obnoxious, goofy thing transphobes have said or obsessed over during the week and tears it to shreds.
Transgender operations on illegal aliens in prison!
Transgender operations on illegal aliens in prison!
Transgender operations on illegal aliens in prison!
Hey, so… what the hell was Donald Trump talking about at the presidential debate on Tuesday when he said Kamala Harris “wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison”?
He was, apparently, referencing a 2019 ACLU questionnaire Harris filled out during her first bid for the presidency. Question fourteen on page eight of the questionnaire asked: “As President, will you use your executive authority to ensure that transgender and nonbinary people who rely on the state for medical care — including those in prison and immigration detention — will have access to comprehensive treatment associated with gender transition, including all necessary surgical care? If yes, how will you do so?”
“It is important that transgender individuals who rely on the state for care receive the treatment they need, which includes access to treatment associated with gender transition,” Harris began her five hundred word maximum response. Sounds great, right? Well, the rest of her answer is… uh, somewhat ahistorical.
“That’s why, as Attorney General, I pushed the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to provide gender transition surgery to state inmates. I support policies ensuring that federal prisoners and detainees are able to obtain medically necessary care for gender transition, including surgical care, while incarcerated or detained.”
Harris isn’t lying, exactly, but she isn’t telling the whole truth… which is that, when she was the Attorney General of California, her office tried to block a request for gender-affirming surgery for a trans inmate. When asked about this, Harris shifts blame for the incident to the California Department of Corrections, and states, “When I learned about what they were doing, behind the scenes, I got them to change the policy.”
Harris’s VP Elect, Tim Walz, has a considerably better track record supporting trans people as the governor of Minnesota. Maybe, between Harris’s promises and Walz’ actual history of legislation, we can be hopeful for an American presidency that is at least somewhat supportive of transgender Americans…
… even though, as of the publication of this article, the Harris-Walz campaign has only promised to “enshrine anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQI+ Americans in healthcare, housing, education, and more into law” on their campaign donation website. That sounds nice, I guess, but given the tenor of the last decade or so of American politics, I’d appreciate more than a single sentence shoutout.
Responding to Trump’s hilarious accusations, Harris campaign communications director Michael Tyler told Fox News that the questionnaire was not actually part of her existing platform. That makes sense, I guess, since it’s from… a whole other election. I won’t lie, though, I am sort of impressed that somebody dredged up that singular answer from a five year old Q&A form and convinced Trump to drill Harris with it in the most incomprehensible way possible.
So those are the facts of the situation… but here’s my spin on it: I think she should support transgender operations on illegal aliens in prison.
For a start, as an anti-carceral abolitionist, I generally don’t think people should be imprisoned at all. That’s a complex topic that I won’t get into the weeds on here, but suffice to say, I don’t think being incarcerated should in any way, shape or form disqualify you from receiving gender-affirming care, whether you’re a citizen or not. I would, in fact, love to see foreign-born undocumented immigrants achieving expensive medical care they can’t get elsewhere on the American taxpayer’s dollar! Can you even imagine how many conservatives’ heads would explode if that were actually happening?
My advice* to you, folks, is to cross the border into Mexico or Canada, renounce your American citizenship, cross back into America, get yourself detained and force the government to pay for your transitional surgeries. It’s a foolproof plan!
* I am not a lawyer. I cannot give you sound legal advice. Any legal advice I give you should be considered satirical in nature, and should not be followed under any circumstances.
Alyssa Steinsiek is a professional writer who spends too much time playing video games!
