AnarchoNinaAnalyzesThe ongoing anti-trans pogrom in America continues largely unabated, and vastly under-reported. Mirroring the peculiar UK style of trans persecution, three states (and counting) are now trying to pass laws that would end state recognition of trans people under the guise of protecting women's rights. These bills would legally categorize sex based on reproductive capabilities, and would likely result in banning changes to birth certificates, driver's licenses and other forms of identification; in addition to the usual restriction of bathroom access based on assigned gender at birth clauses common in anti-trans crusader bills.
"Should these bills become law, an increasing number of states will not legally recognize transgender individuals. The implications of such legislation are profound: individuals who have long since updated their identity documents may face the reversion of those documents back to their assigned sex at birth. These state-issued identification documents could then be employed to enforce additional anti-transgender laws, including bathroom bans. Moreover, these restrictions are bound to create complications for transgender individuals who have legally updated their federal documents to align with their gender identity, as these documents would conflict with their state-issued ones."
Although it is indeed important to take what amounts to the forced outing of trans people seriously, I think far too many people are sleeping on what it actually means to end legal recognition of trans identities in our society. While this all might seem like a giant game of pretend to cisgender people laughing at fascist politicians in Red States, the simple truth is that if, legally speaking, trans people don't exist, then they cannot legally be considered the target of persecution or discrimination for their trans identity. Laws like these so called "Women's Bill of Rights" not only harm trans people psychologically, and expose them as public (and even state-sanctioned) targets for hate crimes, but they are also a very clear precursor to further acts of legal persecution designed to chase trans people from public life, justify their segregation from society, and yes quite possibly eliminate them entirely.
If you want to *legally* end trans people, one of the easiest ways to start that process is to begin by insisting that there really is no such thing as trans people at all. This is part of a historically documented process of dehumanizing, and legally "unpersoning" a target group. Once trans people don't legally exist, you can quickly and efficiently strip their civil rights; and after that part is accomplished - all bets are off. This is literally the historically recognized recipe for a pogrom; which is what trans people have been trying to tell the rest of America is what's going on here, all along.
Nicole Parsons
