The Transphobic Texan Moral Panic
Growing up in Scranton, PA, I was taught a very warped idea of what it meant to be trans. You’d be lucky to even hear mention of trans people, and when it did happen it was in the most derogatory nature imaginable. There was no visibility, there wasn’t even invisibility — anyone who was queer would leave the area quietly, seeking to go east to New York City or south to Philadelphia and start their lives over. If you were part of the unlucky majority, you wouldn’t even get to learn what trans people are, at best facing a hard time figuring out your identity.
Recent years haven’t changed this reality. As I’ve written elsewhere, trans rights are sorely lacking, with the closest reliable resources hours away, only accessible if you have hundreds a month to spend on transportation fees. What little trans activist groups there are in the area are severely limited in what can be done, both in numbers and in cash. It represents a continuous uphill battle.
This isn’t just something that exists in northeast Pennsylvania; it’s a reality for trans people all across the globe in small-town areas, especially those with a predominantly conservative culture. While the majority of LGBTQ people in America live in urban and progressive areas, there is a sizable portion of us who are confined to areas overlooked by many activists.
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This is no better seen than with the attempts to criminalize trans people in Texas. Lawmakers had recently interpreted prior legislation in the light that it is equivalent to child abuse to help transgender children with transitioning. This comes directly after a previous bit of legislation that illegalized trans folk playing on sports teams matching their gender identity, instead opting for what’s on their birth certificate.
Greg Abbott (R), the current governor of Texas, and Ken Paxton, the current Texan attorney general, aim to justify this blatant transphobia under the guise that it’s to prevent ‘invasive medical interventions,’ disregarding the fact that the best available evidence from the leading associations of psychology, pediatric care, and endocrinology that puberty blockers are incredibly safe for trans children, and hormone therapy is safe for trans teenagers. Indeed, the current guidelines for medical care of minors prohibit any sort of surgeries being done. All that’s allowed are puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapies — which are time and time again demonstrated to be safe, effective, and reversible (for the rare cases of detransitioners, who are often misunderstood by conservatives).
Texan lawmakers, of course, don’t care about these facts, being no stranger to supporting bigotry, such as with prior denials of systemic racism. They don’t care about the fact that the dozens of anti-trans bills in recent years have caused thousands of transgender people in Texas to call crisis hotlines, feeling intensely hopeless while watching their rights being stripped away in their own homes. They don’t care about the research which shows puberty suppression in trans kids is linked to reduced suicidal thoughts. They don’t care that dozens of anti-LGBTQ bills get shot down continuously, or that the recent letter and opinion of lawmakers is unconstitutional and not legally binding. Instead, what they do care about is generating a moral panic that seeks to villainize and terrorize trans folk.
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This is a phenomenon that’s been occurring globally for a while now. Continuous attempts by bad-faith conservatives aiming to generate a moral panic around trans people, devaluing our every move and portraying us as less than human in any given chance they get. It’s about pushing trans people away from the mainstream, forcing us into hiding from the grander society, portraying us as malicious deviants. In the eyes of those at the forefront of these attempts, orchestrating the oppression of anything that challenges a strict gender binary, trans people are little more than a threat to the very foundation of everything they hold dear.
Scranton isn’t much of a deviation from this trend. I can recount an encounter with a specific local educational leader. They would put on a kind face for news reporters, sharing strong sentiments of how they care for every single person they speak to, and yet behind closed doors speak nothing short of vitriol in regards to trans people. They would share opinions openly with their colleagues of the ‘mental illness’ which they claim is the root cause of transgender people. Laughs would be shared at the expense of the very people they had simultaneously claimed to serve.
Or, perhaps in the case of local politicians who would neglect to comment on trans issues in the public eye, but yet in the day-to-day goings of and interactions with their communities, would go on in depth about their violent wishes against trans individuals, viewing them as ‘unchristian’ and harmful to ‘Western values.’ There would be open talks in support of racist views, of misogynist views, of ableist views. These would be the same individuals who would transform the political scenes of their home areas.
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As a trans person who has directly and indirectly encountered these lot, the act of transitioning within this area has proven nothing short of terrifying. On a good day, I get met with dirty looks in public, while people would seem to either try their best to avoid me. On a more typical day, I’d get jeered at by drivers on the road, I’d hear the snickering and yelling. There were several circumstances where I found myself being followed as well. This is only in Lackawanna county — perhaps the most progressive county in northeast Pennsylvania.
If this is what life is like in the much less hostile state of Pennsylvania, one can only imagine what it is like in Texas. It is an unfortunate fact of life for trans people to be faced with the continuous threat of being who we are — will we get harassed, harmed, or worse, just for daring to dress and act as we are in public? The continuous threats we face in our daily lives, the constant knowledge that all it takes is one wrong person to inflict harm upon us is something every trans person faces.
This fear only multiplies if you’re BIPOC, with the risks of hate crimes, of open employment, educational, and medical discrimination being drastically increased. The voices of QTBIPOC routinely get tossed aside, histories get forgotten about, and struggles dismissed. With Texas doubling down on its opposition to ‘critical race theory,’ it illustrates further the harm that will be coming not just to queer people, but to QTBIPOC especially, as previous Texan policies have routinely met Black and Indigenous folk with intense persecution. The harmful effects of these policies and actions cannot be understated.
The intense human rights violations seen with Texan law are immense, and these effects are especially so in light of QTBIPOC. After all, if white trans folk are being persecuted under these current laws, one can only begin to imagine how their enforcement will only multiply when being applied to QTBIPOC.
There is quite a bit of work to be done, and it’s a terrifying prospect to imagine what might be coming next. The moral panic exhibited by right-wing lawmakers is just one example of a large cultural tide being turned against trans people. There’s a lot that can and should be done — activists nationwide and globally are constantly pushing back against the far-right, aiming to push for basic rights to exist, but there’s still much more to do. We need more voices speaking out about this, publicly showcasing how harmful this is. We need to help raise QTBIPOC voices, highlight the ways in which these policies are intersectional in how they harm the marginalized. The continuous work to push forward is neverending, but it’s a fight that continues to prove to be worth it.
All that matters is that we continuously walk the path of liberation, no matter what comes our way.
