Saving Trans World

The Importance of Advocacy in 2024

We are in the election year, now. I promise to try to stay as far away as possible from the horserace and focus on issues and trends that need attention. One that will have my attention for the whole year, and beyond, is the assault on trans people across states dominated by Republican legislators. I want to start there because I am a trans person and feel personally challenged to step up.

Why, you might ask, the trans issue with so many other problems the Republican cult is making even worse: immigration, the war in Ukraine, the climate disaster staring us in the face, abortion rights, not to speak of the Republican threat to democracy itself. I have written about many of these; I know their urgency. As my last column suggested, there are responses emerging in the public and private sectors, much local and national activity on these issues, and, important here, many defenders and protectors out there doing wonderful work.

The trans issue stands out because the trans community is small and has so few defenders. According to the Williams Institute, there are about 1.3 million people, or 0.5% of all U.S. adults, who identify as trans in some way, and about 300,000 youth, or 1.4% of youth between 13 and 17, who identify as transgender. Of the 1.3 million adults who identify as transgender, 38.5% (515,200) are transgender women, 35.9% (480,000) are transgender men, and 25.6% (341,800) report that they are gender nonconforming. Research shows that young people ages 13 to 17 are significantly more likely to identify as transgender (1.4%) than adults ages 65 or older (0.3) – my demographic. Getting and keeping attention on the assault on the trans community is hard; finding allies sometimes harder.

By contrast, other groups that have experienced serious discrimination are huge, providing a substantial constituency for attention, defense, and social change:

Women - 171,000,000, 50.4% of the population

Latino/a - 65,000,000, 19.1%

Black – 46,000,000, 13.6%

Asian American and Pacific Islander – 23,500,000, 6.6%

Gay/lesbian – 23,000,000, over 6%

Indigenous – 6.6 million, 2%

Within the Queer/LGTBQAI+ community, self-identified gay and lesbian Americans are four times as numerous as the trans community, distributed across the country.  As writer/researcher Sasha Issenberg told the New Yorker in 2021, these numbers and the geographic spread were critical to the speed with which gay marriage became legal in the US: “The likelihood of anybody in the country coming to know somebody as a neighbor or a family member or a classmate who’s gay or lesbian is probably more or less equally distributed. And we’ve seen across gay-rights issues, not just marriage, that the best predictor of liberal attitudes has always been how somebody answers the question ‘Do you have a friend, family member, or co-worker who’s gay or lesbian?’” 

My brother is gay, as are other relatives.  He came out in 1960 at the age of 16, an act of incredible courage. And it meant I had close proximity to a gay family member all my life, which I took to be the most natural thing in the world.

The small number of trans people in the country, and the extremely small number of trans youth leaves this community highly vulnerable.  Republicans have been exploiting that vulnerability to the max, as they search for emotional and fear-driven issues that can divide America politically.

So, I rise in defense of my community, those of us who live on the naturally-occurring gender spectrum, from trans male to trans female, to fluid and non-binary (me).  What an easy target we are. Not enough of us to matter, not enough families to count, totally overwhelmed in Republican-dominated, heavily gerrymandered state legislatures in more than 20 states.

According to the Human Rights Campaign, 21 Republican state legislatures have now passed laws that ban gender affirming care, some of them applied to adults as well as teenagers. Legislatures in 24 states have passed bans on trans participation in sports.  Ten have banned trans bathroom use. According to Erin Reed, an outstanding trans researcher focusing on anti-trans legislation, there were more than 500 anti-trans bills introduced in 2023, banning access to bathrooms, sports, medical care, invading their privacy through such things as a parental notification requirement, forcing trans people out, and banning drag performances. Already more than 270 such bills have been introduced in this short new year, according to “Trans Legislation Tracker.” 

You can bet the Republican Party and its candidates are thumping the tub about the supposed “danger” to America posed by this tiny handful of people who seek only to be who they truly are. Like me. I live in Oregon, where the legislature is considering ten bills that would restrict trans rights. I do not expect them to pass; the legislature is in Democratic Party hands. But even here, hate and fear are alive and well.

Consistent with my admonition last week, there is and will be a reaction to this onslaught. There are defenders of trans rights across the country: the Human Rights Campaign, the National Center for Transgender Equality, the critical data work of the Williams Institute at UCLA, GLAAD, the Trans-Gender Law Center, the trans work of the ACLU, and more, as reported in them, a leading trans on-line news source. They are doing the research, advocacy, and defense work the trans community badly needs. They need the resources to do this work, so I encourage your support.

The community of support could be even larger. Look around you or search yourself. For me, “trans” is an umbrella category – it includes many people who do not disclose their own gender identity, but live it nonetheless. An even larger number of Americans resonate to the notion of “trans.” Men who recognize that they have “feminine” characteristics or personality traits. Women who can relate to their “masculinity.” As the son of a very “masculine” mother, I have seen this reality up close. The stereotypes we apply to men and women are binary; the reality is much more fluid for many of us.

I believe it is the fear of this reality, the end of the binary, that frightens people. That fear that is being exploited by politicians on the right. If you can see the fluidity in yourself, you can step up in defense of your family and friends. In defense of a community that does not have the resources and numbers to do this job by itself.

2024 will be a hard year of assault and a welcome year for the opportunity to educate and promote freedom for the trans community.  I will have more, a lot more, to say on this as the year moves forward.