Welcome to KnowThis Live I'm Zinhle Essamuah. This week,
the South Dakota Senate passed a bill that would prevent transgender women from
participating in women's high school and college sports leagues.
While proponents of the bill say it's an effort to protect women's sports,
others say it amounts to bullying and transphobia,
strips civil liberties from trans South Dakotans,
and limits participation in public life. Meanwhile,
more than 20 other States are considering bills similar to this one.
Joining me today is Chase Strangio.
He's the deputy director for transgender justice at the ACLU.
Thank you so much for being here with us.
Thanks so much for having me. Of course.
And I want to jump into a bill that was passed in South Dakota.
Just after it was passed,
Republican governor Kristi Noem tweeted 'In South Dakota,
we're celebrating International Women's Day by defending women's sports.
I'm excited to sign this bill very soon.' What will this mean for trans
South Dakotans?
Yeah. So this is part of a very long effort in South Dakota.
And across the country to target trans young people in schools and to target
trans people across the country.
And the latest manifestation of that is targeting trans kids in, in,
in sports. Um, I think what's really important to remember here though,
is that these bills,
what they do is their intention absolutely is to scrutinize and target the
bodies of trans young people.
But they have sweeping implementation mechanisms that require all athletes and
women and girls sports to turn over private genetic information to the state
that allow for the scrutiny of the bodies of young women and girls that we know
are disproportionately going to affect, uh, gender nonconforming individuals,
whether they're cis or trans, um,
and ultimately send a message to trans kids across, out Dakota,
that they're not welcome in the state and that they're not going to be able to
have the opportunities in school and across their lives to participate that
their sister and her peers may have.
But ultimately the consequences of these bills embedding as they do within law
and incredibly restrictive and intrusive notion of sex are going to harm
everyone.
And we know it's not just in sports, right? Um,
there are a record number of bills targeting trans youth in States around the
country,
more than half and more than 60 have already been introduced just since January
and that's more than all of 2020.
Why are we seeing this uptick in these sorts of bills?
I mean, I think what we've seen,
especially since 2016 as a backlash to marriage equality and to increase
visibility of LGBTQ people generally is this effort to target and,
and limit the opportunities for, for transgender individuals. But in 2021,
what we're seeing is an escalation of rhetoric and an escalation in the scope of
these bills, um, which I think in part is a,
is a backlash to the Supreme court's decision in Bostok, um,
including LGBTQ people in federal civil rights protections,
a backlash to the election of president Biden,
and then this increasing desire to, to target, uh,
trans people or anyone who falls outside the gender binary in any way.
And what we're seeing now is this global movement to scrutinize the
bodies of, of young people.
And ultimately what I really think of as a eugenics movement to try to stop
people from being trans.
We have to understand these bills in conjunction with each other.
There are these efforts to bar trans kids from sports,
but they are being introduced alongside bills that would criminalize any
gender affirmation of young people,
particularly targeting the healthcare and wellbeing of trans kids across the
country.
And the animating rhetoric behind these bills is that it is inherently harmful
to be trans, which is not true.
And that the goal is to stop young people from being trans, which they can't do,
but ultimately the consequences are going to be that it's going to be harder for
trans kids to survive.
It's going to be harder for parents and schools to affirm trans young people.
And we know that those kinds of governmental and societal impulses will
make it much more difficult for trans kids to survive into adulthood.
And you mentioned, criminalization.
I know that in States like Oklahoma, um, they've made it punishable, uh,
and a punishable offense to provide any gender affirming care to trans youth.
Um, and there's a huge mental health toll that these kinds of actions can take.
Have you heard from any individuals about the impacts of this sort of
legislation?
Yeah, I mean, right. So right now in Alabama, for example,
they're one vote away from making it a felony to provide gender affirming care
to transgender young people. Yesterday in Arkansas,
house committee voted to move a bill, uh,
that would also make it a felony to treat transgender young people.
This is also happening in Tennessee. There's a vote today.
So this is the sweeping effort to criminalize the medically accepted standards
of care for transgender youth. When you talk to these kids,
they are absolutely terrified. When you talk to their parents,
they are absolutely terrified. Kids that have been relying on the,
these treatment protocols provided by their doctors that are already incredibly
difficult to access at all, are going to have that health care stripped away.
So if you can imagine a young person who is being treated with puberty
blockers,
which just pause their natural puberty so that they can have time
to affirm their gender in ways that feel empowering and safe for them.
In a matter of days, they could have all of that care taken away.
Clinics will shut down.
We are already seeing this happening in the UK and the cost on the mental health
of these young people is catastrophic,
but ultimately the physiological consequences of stripping away ongoing
treatment are also going to be, you know,
absolutely almost impossible to imagine. We've never seen anything like this.
Um, this is an escalation in targeting and consequences,
like nothing we've ever seen before. And it's, it's,
it's really not hyperbolic to say that we know that kids will be so severely
harmed and many will die if these bills that criminalize their healthcare pass.
And I'd be remiss not to mention, you know, you,
you talk about death and I know that there have been a wave of murders in the
trans community, particularly, uh, against, uh, those of color.
I know the human rights campaign tracked a record number of 44 fatalities last
year. Um,
and there have already been at least 10 trans people murdered just this year.
Knowing all of that, what can we do to end this violence?
I mean, I think it's, it's first important to link the,
these proposed bills with the individually perpetrated violence that we're
seeing on the ground, because what,
what the rhetoric behind these bills says is that it's inherently fraudulent to
be trans,
that it's inherently deviant and should be controlled by the state in one way or
another. And that then emboldens individuals to enact violence. Um, and there,
you know, we cannot understand this rhetoric separate from, you know,
sort of the white supremacist and colonial impulses to control and scrutinize
people's bodies, which then contributes to the wave of violence,
particularly targeting Black, uh, Black trans women and girls.
And that's what we've seen year after year.
And the more bills that are introduced,
the more we see an escalation and individually perpetrated violence.
These things are not inextricably linked. And so we have to do, you know,
so many things to counteract that,
including organizing to stop these bills from passing,
organizing to support the community and ensuring that we're investing resources
in translate organizations on the ground.
Because ultimately if these bills pass in places like Alabama, in South Dakota,
that the toll is going to be felt on the individuals living in these places.
And so we have to funnel resources into these States,
into the translate organizations in these days,
we have to change the way we're having these conversations to enable the
material survival opportunities for that, for our communities to,
to fundamentally change over time.
Thank you for this context. And, you know,
we've talked a lot about policy and the overall impact,
but I wonder what are the biggest just myths or misunderstandings you think
people still hold or have about the trans community that you want to make sure
that our viewers get?
I mean, I think, you know,
on sort of a fundamental level that we have to counteract the
rhetoric that assumes that we can easily categorize people into these
binary categories of maleness and femaleness, and think about, you know,
all of our,
our abilities to live in the world as being more dynamic and that we should be
advocating for self-determination and supporting people in the process of
understanding who they are and how to live safely in the world. Um,
in order to, in order to do that,
we can't allow things like the rhetoric around sports, for example,
to take hold and this idea that positions trans people or anyone who in any way
deviates from our understanding of the gender binary to be positioned as a
threat. Um, and so all of these hearings around these bills about sports,
talk about trans girls in particular,
as some fundamental threat to assist people.
And that is just absolutely not true.
We're talking about people who are just trying to live their lives,
who are fighting against their own internal demons,
and then coming into society, coming into school,
and then having every mechanism of power,
trying to limit their ability to live safely and to self determine who they
are. And I think, you know, when we're fighting these bills,
we have to really check our assumptions about the rhetoric. You know,
the people who are interested in introducing these bills,
they don't care about women's sports.
They're not investing in women's sports in the, in the longterm.
What they do care about is perpetrating our myths and misunderstandings about,
about trans people to increase the power and control of the government over all
of our bodies.
And that in order to counteract that we have to mobilize together,
we have to fight for a notion of gender liberation that counteracts the
impulse to cede to the government,
the ability to tell us who we are based on assumptions about the sex
binary, you know, at the time of conception.
A lot of these bills say that sex is determined at the time of conception based
exclusively on someone's chromosomes.
And that is not a safe or beneficial way for us to allow the state to define us.
And that's true for everyone.
Well, Chase Strangio, deputy director of transgender justice for the ACLU.
Thank you for being here with us. Thanks so much for having me, of course.
And thank you to everyone for tuning in.
This has been KnowThis Live I'm Zinhle Essamuah.