There are more than 450 anti-LGBTQ+ bills working their way through state legislatures throughout the U.S. — many of which specifically target the transgender community — according to the ACLU.
One of those bills would require Florida driver’s licenses and other state-issued IDs to reflect a person’s sex assigned at birth rather than their gender identity, a practice already in place following a memo from the state’s Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, URL Media partner Prism reported earlier this month.
“Every single time you’re going to a bar, if you get pulled over, if you’re picking up a prescription, you’re picking up your kids from school, or you’re buying spray paint at Home Depot, all of these day-to-day experiences where you need an ID now have become an opportunity for trans people to be unnecessarily outed in their everyday lives,” Maxx Fenning, the executive director of PRISM FL, told Prism. “That presents a real danger for trans people in the state of Florida.”
But it’s not just Florida that’s actively targeting the transgender community through legislation. Its northern neighbor, Georgia, is also trying to erase any legal recognition of transgender people with a new bill that looks to redefine sex, Prism reported.
“It appears that now what we’re starting to see are these bills that try to redefine sex under state law in such a restrictive way that they really provide severe limits on the ability of transgender individuals to be fully covered under the law and have access to government in the same way that everybody else has,” Jeff Graham, the executive director of the queer advocacy organization Georgia Equality, told Prism.
A similar push is happening in Oklahoma, where Gov. Kevin Stitt issued an executive order that effectively provided legal definitions of terms like “woman” and “female” after lawmakers failed to pass the law.
“One of the immediate impacts we saw is a real disruption in the ability for folks to get gender marker corrections,” Nicole McAfee, executive director of advocacy group Freedom Oklahoma, told Prism.
Despite the renewed legislative push targeting the transgender community, they continue to thrive by sharing their stories, uplifting one another and working together to create spaces full of love, joy and care.
House of Tulip is one such place.
The nonprofit not only provides housing for transgender and gender nonconforming people in Louisiana, but also financial aid, a community closet, workshops, and community support.
“We just try to meet folks where they are,” Mariah Moore, co-founder of House of Tulip, told Prism. “The need is always much greater than the resources that we have available, so we’re trying to do everything we can.”
Nationwide, the organization T4T supports the transgender community by connecting people transitioning with caregivers who draw on their personal and shared experiences of being trans to care for them, Prism reported.
“In the trans community, it’s really empowering to seek community, love, support, and friendship from each other,” Justin Coffman, a T4T caregiver, told Prism. “So, to us, [T4T] represents the power of trans people supporting each other and doing this work on our own terms, taking care of each other on our own terms. Because the reality is that society as a whole doesn’t take care of us, we’ve found this power in each other.”
And there’s reason to hope for a better future, with states like California, Illinois and Vermont, among others, taking steps to ensure access to both gender-affirming and reproductive care, Prism reported.
“In the face of fascist attempts to control our reproduction and gender expression while also increasing state surveillance that violates our privacy, it’s important to recognize the safe havens in our midst,” Sherronda J. Brown wrote.
As we mark another International Transgender Day of Visibility, I hope that we continue to push for all places to be safe havens for the trans community. — Alicia Ramirez
Uplift. Respect. Love.
