Who Will Save The Trans Community?
On leaked emails, true villains, and poetry.
This week I’ll be responding to “2600 pages of hate”. I’ll put the story right up front for the non-paying members, since it’s important.
The Mother Jones article by Madison Pauly
The leaked emails, published by maia arson crimew
A video breakdown by @kachowgirl_ on TikTok
And now, my own thoughts…
Much of my recent work—from this newsletter, to my podcast, to my TikTok videos—has been grappling with the question, “who is my audience?” All good creators/artists should have a clear vision of who their work is for, but when I started making online video, I wasn’t entirely sure. As any social media expert will tell you, targeting “anybody who will listen” is not an effective strategy for marketing yourself or getting the word out.
At the start, my work was for “cis people who are on the fence about trans (or other social justice) issues and need to be pushed in the right direction” and/or “cis people or early-stage trans people who want to advance their understanding of queer/trans issues”. Sounds specific enough. I’ve also made myself distinct from my contemporaries by making content that exceeds what I call “Trans 101”, introductory trans wisdom as simple as “sex and gender are different things!” I’d like to think I act as the next rung in the educational scaffolding from “knows nothing” → “knows what is a trans person” → “understands why transphobia exists and how it connects to other social justice causes” → “all-around social justice expert”.
But nowadays, I’m wondering if my original cause—getting more everyday people involved in pro-trans advocacy—is the best use of my time. The more I study the inner workings of how anti-trans bills came to be, the more I’m starting to believe that they haven’t emerged from everyday transphobia, nor as a grassroots effort from local groups, but as a strategic attack from a well-funded, well-coordinated minority.
This news story only confirms my suspicions.
Recently, the same incredible Swiss trans hacker behind the leaked no-fly list published 2600 pages of emails between politicians and anti-trans hate groups. This Mother Jones article breaks down the connections better than I can, so I encourage you to read it all the way through. The highlights are this:
In 2019, Republican Representative Fred Deutsch of South Dakota started an email chain with key members of several anti-gay & anti-trans groups. The groups assisted Deutsch in crafting an anti-trans bill for his state—even pushing him to make it even worse than it already was.
The groups orchestrating the recent anti-trans bills are the same people who have been pushing for LGBTQ+ conversion therapy, overturning Roe v. Wade and banning abortion nation-wide, and even fighting for the sterilization of trans people in Europe.
These groups consist of conservative think-tanks, religious lobbying groups, and most insidiously, fake “experts” with nice-sounding names like “The Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine”. Much in the same way that “Crisis Pregnancy Centers” appear on the surface to be health care providers a la Planned Parenthood but are actually religious organizations strategically designed to prevent people from having abortions, orgs like the “American College of Pediatricians” are agenda-heavy hate groups whose sole purpose is to push anti-trans and anti-choice legislation.
Even though Deutsch’s 2019 bill ultimately failed, it set the standard for anti-trans bills going forward. Shortly after Deutsch lamented its failure in the email chain, one Alabaman anti-trans “activist” urged, “Please do not say that the South Dakota effort failed!!” and told him that “This is just the beginning.”
The 2600 pages of correspondence—by the way, the entire Christian Bible is about half that length when printed out—includes many horrors, most shockingly a discussion of transgender suicide, specifically how their rhetoric could successfully counter the many peer-reviewed studies that show that gender-affirming care reduces suicidality among trans youth. “We will need to respond to the suicidal thoughts quote,” said Fred, as the group strategized about how to deflect this pro-trans talking point. Because to them, transgender suicide is merely a talking point, another piece on a game board that they must maneuver around or remove from the playing field, and not the lived reality of endangered human beings. Fucking ghouls.
Other tips include specifics on how to frame the discussion. I could do a whole essay about the following quote, which explains the use of “transgenderism”, “gender ideology”, and other code-words by the far-right:
Richard Mast of Liberty Counsel separately advised the group to avoid saying the words transgender, cisgender, or non-binary. “Using them surrenders the language,” Mast wrote. “If the other side’s language frames the debate, we lose.”
This email thread is responsible for several now-enacted anti-trans bills, including ones in Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas, and a month ago, even South Dakota; last month, Deutsch finally succeeded in ending gender-affirming care and detransitioning all minors.
This kind of correspondence between bigoted groups and conservative politicians is incredibly normal. As per anti-LGBTQ+ hate group Alliance Defending Freedom, “Lawmakers often seek advice from experts in law, policy, medicine and other fields as they craft legislation.”
This is one of those conspiracy theories that isn’t really a conspiracy at all.
Do regular, everyday cis people need to be convinced into being pro-trans for transphobia to end? Absolutely; everyday transphobia is what results in us getting fired from our jobs, murdered, etc. Far-right bigots are also relying on the ignorance of the general public in order to pass their evil legislation. Which is why my content will continue, as will those of thousands of other trans people, until our liberation is achieved.
But from now on, I’ll also be keeping in mind that the true enemy is not the casual transphobe—the straight man who refuses to date trans women, the cis lesbians who happen to be TERFs, etc.—it’s the well-funded, powerful bigots who are crafting and influencing the policy that is taking away our direct autonomy.
When the system is this corrupt, when what politicians do is so disconnected from what the American people actually want, it’s impossible to keep pretending as though we can still hash this out with social media discourse. We are past the “discussion” phase. We are past the “visibility protest” phase. We are now in the “hack Senators’ emails and expose them” phase. We are now in the “brick-throwing” phase. We are now in the “build better worlds outside of the system phase”.
How can we build those better worlds? How can we take care of ourselves in a world where the state wants us dead?
Luckily, our elders have the answers. (They often do.) They survived in a time when gender-affirming care wasn’t as widespread as it once was. And they very regularly remind us that despite the violence, we will find a way.
