It's All About Control, Not Protection

Whether it's banning trans existence or outlawing a woman's right to choose, people who support scapegoating one segment of society say they are doing it to protect some vulnerable community like women or children. What they’re actually doing is trying to control already marginalized communities to fit into their narrow view of what’s “normal.”

Nathalie Faulk – Social Justice Advocate and Peaceful Spacemaker

I've heard from many of you that learning about my experiences makes abstract concepts about race or disability feel more real to you. So I asked my friend Natalie, who is trans, if she would talk to me about trans advocacy. Click here to listen to what she says.

The things that struck me about her conversation were the focus on:

• acknowledging human nature and reality (both letting people exist how they are and acknowledging the ways that folks in power try to separate and isolate those without power)
• celebrating ourselves as we are
• creating safe spaces for marginalized people to exist outside the system
• controlling the narrative

Some things you might not know from listening to the audio... Nathalie is the embodiment of affirmation. She always has a positive or uplifting word for whoever she shares space with. She’s an amazing facilitator, full of energy and light to guide groups through hard conversations. She's an artist, activist, and one of my partners at Alternate ROOTS. I’m in awe of the work she does. You can check her out at the Southern Organizer Academy and Last Call.

Not Everything Is Binary

Some cisgendered heterosexual folks are so threatened by the fact that other people have a different experience and gender expression that they want to pass laws that aren’t supported by science and facts. For example, the Tennessee Senate passed a bill creating a statutory definition for sex that would conflict with federal government regulations.

The bill defines sex as a "person's immutable biological sex as determined by anatomy and genetics existing at the time of birth." The bill requires that definition to be used on all government-issued documentation and would prevent trans and intersex folks and from changing the gender on their driver’s licenses or birth certificates. This would conflict with federal regulations like the Department of Education requirement that schools respect students’ gender identity.

It also goes against what we know about basic biology. The video below will be the most informational 30 minutes you will ever get on the biology of sex. Please, bookmark it and make time to listen. Not everything, including human gender, is binary.

Luckily the bill stalled in the Tennessee House. You might hope it was because enough legislators thought it was ridiculous to police other people’s bodies, but no…. It stalled because their bigotry would have risked about $2 billion in federal funding from the Department of Education and the Department of Health combined.

Sometimes Science Wins

As much as our politics has devolved into clannish ideology, sometimes science wins. This happened recently in Louisiana. Louisiana is the only state in the southeast and one of only four states where Republicans control the House, the Senate, and the governorship to defeat a bill that would ban gender-affirming care for trans individuals. If this sounds amazing, it's because it is. How did it happen? One Republican legislator followed the science.

The bill had already passed the Louisiana House with an overwhelming majority. Allies and advocates gave it their all, meeting with state senators to convince them that bodily autonomy is essential and gender-affirming care is not harmful. Republican Senator Fred Mills broke from the Republican majority in committee and voted against the bill, blocking it from going to the Senate for a full vote.

In an interview after the vote, Mills said, “My decision was really, really based on the numbers. All the testimony I heard by the proponents that children are getting mutilated, I didn’t see it in the statistics.” He said a study by the Louisiana Department of Health helped sway his decision. The department surveyed the state’s Medicaid data on gender-affirming care from 2017 to 2021. It found that there were no gender-affirming surgeries performed on minors, prescriptions of puberty blockers were extremely rare, and trans youth had positive mental health outcomes.

Getting through to just one person has made a difference for this whole state. So when you're tempted to give up, remember that if your words and actions can sway just one person, it can have a huge impact for many.

You Can’t Do It Here, There, Or Anywhere

Idaho has some of the strictest abortion laws in the country.

Abortion is illegal after just 6 weeks of pregnancy, except in cases of rape or incest that have been reported to the police or to save the life of the mother, not including if the mother is suicidal. State law allows the father or family members of the aborted fetus to file civil lawsuits against out-of-state doctors who perform abortions outside the narrow guidelines.

Last month, the state legislature passed a law making it illegal for anyone other than a parent to help a pregnant minor to get an abortion in another state, including accessing abortion pills. Adults would face felony charges and 2 to 5 years in prison for driving a minor across state lines or helping them find an abortion provider out-of-state.

While some prosecutors are saying they won’t prosecute some abortion cases, Cynthia Soohoo, Co-Director of the Human Rights and Gender Justice Clinic at CUNY School of Law said, “the law actually gives the Attorney General the power to enforce the law if local prosecutors don’t.”

The states of Washington and Oregon (on either side of Idaho) are working to enact shield laws that would protect abortion providers from out-of-state lawsuits, protect patients by prohibiting the states from cooperating with investigations about reproductive healthcare, and protect “helpers” of women seeking abortion assistance. Helping could mean anything from making the appointment, driving across state lines, or providing financial assistance.

Be Careful With Your Words

You know how I caution being careful about the way the media and politicians use language? Proponents of the law are calling assisting a minor with abortion services “abortion trafficking,” trying to play on images and emotions that come up when people talk about human trafficking or sex trafficking. But trafficking takes the victim’s sovereignty and bodily autonomy. Helping a minor receive medical care supports their bodily autonomy. They are not the same.

This law feels like a huge overreach. Republican lawmakers are arguing about states’ rights and at the same time trampling on the rights of their neighboring states. States don't own the people who live there. This is obviously about control. Saying that you don’t want something to happen in the state where you have power (while it’s still wrong to deprive people of autonomy) is one thing. Telling the people who live where you supposedly govern that they can’t do something you don’t like in a place where you don’t have authority is over the top.

Congress needs to pass a federal law to codify bodily autonomy, including abortion access. While we work on that, what will you do to create safety for vulnerable people? How will you use your voice and actions to create a narrative that let's people be who they are?