How Dan Patrick affirmed my gender identity

Jessica Soukup
Jul 21, 2017 · 7 min read

It was a Texas hot summer day in June. Visually, the day was beautiful even if scorching. I was walking along and having a very nice day shopping at an upscale mall in North Austin called the Domain. The mall is outdoors along a series of streets lined with upscale boutiques and big name brand anchor stores. I often went there to go shopping for several reasons not the least of which, they had a nice parking garage that would keep the makeup I had applied in my car from melting.

I was making my way towards Starbucks. They had single use bathrooms that allowed me to avoid the imposing line in the ladies’ room where I might get challenged for being a transgender woman. These are decisions most transgender women end up making. You never know when you are going to run into a bigot determined to ruin your otherwise happy day.

I remember the moment clearly like it happened in slow motion. The whole interchange was not more than ten or fifteen seconds but when I play it back in my head, it went on for ages. I was walking right past the front of the Apple store. A family was to the right of me made up of an older gentleman and what appeared to be relatives one and two generations younger than he was. I heard the gentleman say that he wanted to go in the Apple Store. That was immediately followed by a sudden aggressive rising of his arm to point and say “LOOK AT THAT! LOOK AT THAT!” I knew immediately that he was pointing at me. My mind raced. I had been noticed. I had been clocked as trans people say. I had been read. How do I respond? Do I turn to him? Do I run? Are other people going to chime in? Will I have to defend myself? I took that Krav Maga class but I don’t know if I can really do that stuff. What if the police become involved? My id doesn’t match my appearance or the name I use. If they arrest me, what jail will they put me in? Will I be with the men and open to assault and rape or with the women and subject to scorn and ridicule?

Remember, all of this happened in seconds. What I did was to keep walking; not because of some grand calculation, not because of some instinctual programming. I kept walking because I was thinking about all of that other stuff and didn’t think to do anything else. I noticed something curious happen. The people all looked at the shouting man. They glanced towards me but then back at him. Their focus was not on me. It was on him.

Fast forward nine months. Donald Trump had won the election and Dan Patrick had begun to lay the groundwork to pass his bathroom legislation using the same methods he and his cohort had used to defeat the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance. In Houston, they had run ads and created a story that described transgender women as men who were really predators waiting to prey on the women and young girls in the rest room. I remember when that happened. I watched from afar flabbergasted because this story those opposed to equal rights (think about that phrase for a second, those opposed to equal rights) had dreamed up was so divorced from the reality that I knew that I could not begin to believe that anyone else bought it. The transgender women I knew spent their time thinking about clothes, hair, relationships and finding big enough women’s shoes. We were shockingly normal and even more harmless.

It was about that time that I heard that the organizers for the LGBT Human Rights Rally to be held on January 20th had not found a transgender speaker. I thought about how the only way that these equal rights opponents had been successful was because they created a false story about trans women and I said, no. There is going to be a trans speaker at that rally so I volunteered. The organizers said yes.

I freaked out. I am an introvert and a computer programmer. I have actually spent the last 30 years interacting with an inanimate object for most of the day. I have had more one sided conversations with stupid computers than other humans. I wasn’t a public speaker. I admit, a friend had roped me into helping out with a few training's designed to help people be better allies to transgender people but talking to 30 academics in short bursts while leaning on my friend, the professor, to do the rest was not the same thing as speaking to a rally. I was determined though that I would be there and make sure that there was a nice normal transgender person to be seen and not feared.

The day came and I spoke. I didn’t really know who else would be speaking and certainly didn’t expect the mayor of Austin, a city council person, Lloyd Doggett and others. Other than complaining about the old white men representing us in congress and then meekly apologizing to Congressman Doggett, it went OK.

I had stepped out of this world I was hiding in and into a world of political activism. I began to connect with hundreds and hundreds of other transgender people doing the same thing. The months that followed were a whirlwind but, I slowly came to understand what had happened that day at the mall.

As part of the leadership team for Pantsuit Austin, a group of feminists that formed on Facebook after the election, I was invited to a women’s leadership seminar. During that seminar they showed a brief video. The video was of a woman protestor who was being confronted by an unhinged right wing counter protestor. No matter what the counter protester said or did, this young woman remained calm and responded casually. The counter protester got angrier and louder and more upset because the young woman wasn’t responding the way he had expected. What was interesting was that the crowd turned on him and moved to defend the young woman. He was behaving outside the rules of polite public behavior and as a result, he became the problem despite his insistence that the young woman was.

This is the same thing that had happened at the mall. The yelling man was violating the rules and became the problem. People looked at him and judged him accordingly.

After the Texas Legislative Session was over and the Texas House had not passed the bathroom bill that Dan Patrick had demanded, he held a press conference. I remember the headlines. “Dan Patrick was Red Faced Angry because they didn’t pass his bathroom bill.” Dan Patrick was the unhinged counter protester and crazy old guy shouting at the mall. Dan Patrick was violating the rules of polite society and his claims that transgender women were to be feared were being seen for the made up garbage that they really were.

We saw the same things at the SB6 hearings. We saw hundreds of calm transgender people, parents of transgender kids, doctors, lawyers and politicians testify. Meanwhile, Senator Huffman and Senator Kolkhorst ignored reasonable suggestions and thoughtful arguments and pushed forward with their bigoted senate bill. Again, behaving outside the range of reasonable behavior. They were the problem.

This week, as the special session began and the specter of a bathroom bill in Texas again raised its ugly head, the playing field had changed.

IBM, the big conservative computer company, big blue as they say, took out full page ads to defeat the bathroom bills and sent senior executives to lobby against it.

The national episcopal church, not exactly the most radical church in the country, organized a rally in opposition to the bathroom bills.

More than a thousand businesses banded together and placed a million-dollar radio ad buy in opposition to the bathroom bills.

Perhaps the most telling were the opinion polls that showed that a majority of Texans thought the bathroom bills were a waste of time and money.

These groups and so many others banded together in opposition to the unhinged and unreasonable bathroom obsessed laws and politicians. They banded together to support transgender and gender diverse Texans.

And, my identity was affirmed.

As the special session moves on and whatever the outcome from Dan Patrick and his bathroom bill obsession, I know the world was not the same place it was at the beginning of the year. I know I have allies. I know there are people who will stand with me and other transgender and gender diverse people and against the unhinged bigots of the world.

Before I felt alone. Now I feel a part of the community and it feels good.

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Written by

Jessica Soukup, feminist, activist, author, and LGBTQIA speaker.

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