- I think anyone who's concerned
about the future of our democracy,
anyone who's concerned about living in this world right now
has to care about the trans struggle.
Because, at the end of the day,
what we're fighting for
is the ability to choose and live your own life.
- [Crowd] We're here, we're queer, get used to it.
- Because, we are connected by our resilience,
by our unbreakable spirits.
- I think some of the most salient things
that we hear over and over again
are that trans kids are getting surgical interventions
as part of some experimental treatment for gender dysphoria.
This is not true.
There are no people who are receiving surgeries
to treat gender dysphoria when they're young children.
For example, we often,
when there's a headline about trans healthcare
related to minors,
there will be an image of an operating room
to connect in people's mind the idea
that what we're talking about is surgical,
when a lot of times what we're talking about
is just affirming how a young person dresses or identifies.
- What we're seeing is other people's projections about us
are prioritized over our actual lives.
- Right.
- And, that's why it's so important
to actually regard the lived experiences of trans
and non-binary people.
We have all the data that shows us time and time again
that we're more likely than our cis counterparts
to experience workplace discrimination, houselessness,
that we're more likely to be denied healthcare,
experience physical and sexual violence.
And, yet there's this production of us
as these dangerous, violent entities,
which goes directly against the actual statistics
that we have.
- Trans kids belong in sports.
We will strike down every single one of these bills,
because trans people are resilient.
- We are seeing hundreds of proposed bills
being introduced every year now
attempting to restrict the ability of trans people
to access healthcare,
restricting the ability of educators
to talk about history,
to name the truth of the world.
We're seeing more and more bills
that are banning trans people from sports,
from locker rooms, from restrooms.
And, all of this, of course, we know,
is part of a larger effort to really banish us
from public life generally.
And, really just to banish us all together.
- We can agree to disagree
unless the root of our disagreement is in my right to exist.
- And, when we look at the most perhaps
insidious laws that have already passed,
we're headed to a place where states around the country
are criminalizing the healthcare
that every major medical association in the United States
supports for trans people.
- They're actually even trying to make it
so that you can't challenge gender at all.
And, I think it's really important
to connect the dots here for people
that the goal has always been about disappearing trans,
intersex, and non-binary people.
- We're here.
They gonna make room for us.
- We have been told to be silent for too long.
- It's difficult to live in this world as a trans person,
because, at a fundamental level,
discrimination against you can exist
when people don't think that you exist.
So, because they don't think that we're real,
then nothing that we're going through is real.
- I am escaping this country's ideology
of what a woman is supposed to be.
- If we let this type of erosion occur
in the context of trans people,
it leads quite far into the erosion
for many, many other people.
And, it is not just about trans people,
because it is about the power of this state
to limit our ability to realize
our full identities in our bodily autonomy.
We've seen it with the reversal of Roe v. Wade.
We are going to see it again and again
with erosions on people's rights
that they thought were very well settled.
And, I think the sports example is a perfect one.
You have these lawmakers who stand up
in legislative hearings
talking about how important it is to defend
and invest in women's sports,
lawmakers that have never once invested
in pay equity for women athletes,
for women's coaches,
that have never once invested in girls sports programs
in their states,
all of a sudden saying this is the main issue
that they care about.
So, what they're doing is creating an apparatus
of scrutiny over the bodies of athletes
who are women and girls and women in girls sports
and policing them.
And, we've already heard one example in Utah
where some girl won a competition
and the first reaction from the opponents
was to say I wanna see her birth certificate.
I want her to undergo genetic testing.
That is where we're heading.
That is the history of sex regulation in sport,
to look at any athlete who is seen as not feminine enough
almost always going to be Black athletes in this country
and then start to scrutinize, and test,
and regulate their bodies.
And, that's what this is about.
It is about the same lawmakers who are banning abortion,
who are limiting access to resources for communities,
who are trying to censor educational curriculum,
now going after the ability of all women and girls
to thrive in sports.
- It's a boomerang effect, right?
Like, they're trying to see what they can get away with.
- Exactly.
- It's a slippery slope.
These legislative and judicial attacks on trans people
are actually creating a culture
that's gonna impede and invade
on everyone's bodily autonomy.
I think anyone who's concerned
about the future of our democracy
has to care about the trans struggle.
Because, at the end of the day,
what we're fighting for is the ability
to choose and live your own life.
There's rising economic inequality in this country.
People feel a deep sense that they can't live a good life.
And, when people have that kind of sorrow,
they're looking for an easy culprit to blame it on.
It's easier to blame trans people
than it is to actually
hold your own politicians accountable.
- There is this deep seated anxiety
that if things are changing,
if the world seems unpredictable,
there has to be something we can control.
And, I think the trans person,
the way the trans person,
the way the trans body is figured in society
is as something that is a threat.
I think trans people,
I think we offer this beautiful example
of how we can control and determine our destinies,
our bodies, our identities.
And, so we cause a lot of anxiety for people.
- We make freedom real.
We make autonomy real.
We make healing real.
We make individuality real.
We make beauty real.
And, I think that's why they target us
is because it's easier to believe
that freedom is a hypothetical.
- [Speaker] To those who are still with us,
we see you, we respect you, we love you,
and we will keep fighting alongside you.
- What is so consistent,
when I observe trans life across the world,
is an insistence on pursuing joy.
When you come from a community that is so often harassed
and tormented,
joy can feel like a luxury.
But, I know that in my life,
the only way that I can continue going
is when I remember, oh. wait.
we come from a long and sacred legacy of people
who lived impossible lives,
who the world tried every attempt to make us obsolete,
and yet we did the opposite of that.
We made ourselves glamorous, and fabulous, and flamboyant,
and loud, and vocal.
- I think if anything can come from this moment
and the moments moving forward,
it's exactly what you say,
which is to draw upon those beautiful legacies,
those allowed, those vibrant,
those extra legal legacies of power building,
and care taking, and joy,
experience collectively,
that's gonna be the path forward.
It has been bad before.
It will be bad again.
And, the consistent truth in all of those times
is that trans people existed.
Trans people found a way to care for each other.
And, trans people experienced joy and fabulousness.
And, that is what we bring
into these next years of struggle.