Resisting transphobia

It began as a small group who came together to remember the lives of two Black trans women who had both been murdered just outside of Boston, only three years apart. When Rita Hester was murdered on November 28, 1998, in Allston, MA, Gwendolyn Anne Smith was surprised to learn that none of her friends had remembered Channel Pickett, who had been murdered nearby in Watertown, MA, on November 20, 1995. 

The first Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) took place in November 1999, in Boston and San Francisco. By 2010, TDOR events had grown to over 185 cities in 20 different countries. TDOR is now recognized on November 20, the anniversary of Chanel’s murder. And sadly, this annual event continues to grow each year, both in places holding events and in the victims lost to transphobia from the previous years. 

People come together collectively at these somber occasions to hold moving vigils where we light candles, read the names of the victims, share their pictures, tell their stories, provide space for grief and anger, and reaffirm the value of the lives of trans and gender nonconforming people.

Over the last year, at least 58 known trans people were killed by transphobia in the United States alone. About half of these individuals were killed by violent means, and at least 21 were lost to suicide. The majority of suicides were under 24 years old. Internationally, the number of reported murderers of trans people was 281. Sex workers (34 percent) and activists (14 percent) were the most targeted occupations. The majority of these murders were of trans women and transfeminine people (90 percent), and 88 percent of the victims were trans people of color. We also know that because of systemic discrimination and the frequency of misgendering the victims, these numbers are much higher than can be reported. 

You can read the stories of some of these remarkable people at the Trans Remembrance Project. 

As part of the past week of events, the Vermont Tempest chapter hosted an event, “Resisting Transphobia,” in the backdrop of the recent tragic death earlier this month of Middlebury College student and trans activist Lia Smith. We share the remarks from the three panelists, edited for clarity here.

 

Eric Maroney: I want to begin by acknowledging that there is grief and pain in the room this evening—that whenever a group of targeted or marginalized people gather (especially in a moment of such outward violence), grief and pain are present, and that many of you are sitting with and holding a very intimate version of this pain—the very recent loss of a friend, our trans kin.

In honor of that loss, I thought I would offer a passage from labor journalist Sarah Jaffee’s excellent book Grief and Revolution in a World on Fire as a frame for what is to follow. She writes: “Grief is Rupture. It is a sudden, abrupt, even violent break from the status quo—even if you were expecting it, even if you had felt it before.” Reflecting on her own loss, Jaffee continues, “I was not expecting the howling storm, the black hole it opened up inside me. Grief is rage and anger and frustration and sadness and sometimes a horrible kind of joy; it is less an emotion than a state of being. It is being undone. It is a realization of one’s own vulnerability.”

I would add,  as Jaffee does in the book as well, that collective grief is also a source of power. Our task this evening (and beyond) is an enormous one: it asks that we sit with our collective mourning, yet also move through it, arriving at the place where we can refuse the violences that have called us together.

With the time I have remaining, I would like to offer a few observations that, I hope, will help us consider how we can arrive at that refusal.

First, the violent, authoritarian political reaction coming from the White House, coming from the state, is not a culture war. Nor is it a simple backlash against a progressive identity movement that has “gone too far too fast,” as Sarah McBride, the first openly trans congresswoman, suggested to Ezra Klein during an appearance on his podcast earlier this year. Instead, we have to understand the attack on gender nonconforming and trans people as inextricably linked to crises within capitalism. Neoliberalism (the form of capitalism we live under today) is a form that favors deregulation of industry, disinvestment in public goods, and an unfettered free market. It is no longer working. Since the Great Recession of 2008, global capital has struggled with slow and low growth. This was exacerbated by the COVID-19 shutdowns in 2020-2021, which initially led to an economic downturn, followed by a surge in inflation. For context, in the 17 years since the Great Recession, the average U.S. GDP has remained below 3 percent for all but two years. In comparison, U.S. GDP reached 3 percent or above in 30 of the years between 1961 and 2007, with a record growth of 7.4 percent in 1984. That level of profitability and growth is no longer sustainable (and there are many reasons for that, which I don’t have time to get into here). While the Democrats seemingly have no plan to address the social and political crises wrought by this economic instability, Trump and the MAGA Republicans have offered a kind of neoliberalism on steroids, pairing severe neoliberal domestic policies with authoritarianism and repression. The recent attacks on healthcare and SNAP benefits are an example of this. Trumpism seeks to withdraw from what remains of the welfare state, redirecting tax dollars towards military spending and border policing, while also deregulating industry in hopes of restoring profitability. Importantly, however, this dismantling of public goods and entitlements is not automatic. It requires both brute force (the images of violent ICE raids coming out of places like Chicago and elsewhere are an example) and ideological cover (the sorting of whole groups into those who are deserving and those who are disposable). According to this right-wing logic, trans people are among the disposable, and our “fraudulent” efforts to gain access to public goods like education and healthcare serve as a wholesale justification for further deregulation, disinvestment, and gatekeeping, which is harmful to the class as a whole. There is perhaps no clearer example of this ideological misdirection than the USDA website, which, following the administration’s refusal to fund SNAP benefits during the government shutdown, published the following in a big banner splashed across their landing page:

We are approaching an inflection point for Senate Democrats. They can continue to hold out for healthcare for illegal aliens and gender mutilation procedures, or reopen the government so mothers, babies, and the most vulnerable among us can receive critical nutrition assistance.

In a rhetorical deflection that is strikingly similar to Reagan’s “welfare queen”, the statement positions trans people and undocumented people as both dishonest and undeserving, standing in the way of the patriotic citizen’s access to legitimate and necessary care.

The attack on gender nonconforming and trans people is fundamentally about disciplining ordinary people into accepting greater exploitation. Restoring profitability requires the reduction and stagnation of wages, but it also requires that the employer class invest less in the reproduction of working people, invest less in education, invest less in healthcare, and invest less in the infrastructures of care more generally. But just because these care infrastructures are anemic, thin, hollowed out, doesn’t mean the need for care ceases to exist. Whether the state invests in healthcare or not, people will continue to get sick. Whether it invests in education, children (and adults) will continue to learn, and the group that is responsible for performing this often unpaid and always underpaid work will continue to be women and feminized people. In this way, the attacks on trans and gender nonconforming people are also about shoring up the borders around womanhood so as to reinstitute or stabilize the gendered exploitation capital has always relied upon. This is, in part, why the disingenuous claims of TERFs or FARTS (feminist appropriating radical transphobes) are so insidious: the attack on trans folks is also an attack on ciswomen. Let’s remember that during the COVID shutdowns, we all experienced a brief Keynesian experiment. After decades of abandonment, money was suddenly made available to sustain some (not all but some) working families. Economic Impact payments and an Enhanced Child Tax credit were provided monthly to many American families. Although short-lived, poverty fell to a record low of 8 percent, raising expectations for what is possible. The retrenchment of traditionalist gender roles, along with the attack on trans people, is about beating those expectations out of us.

So what do we do? Where do we go from here?

Listen, I adored the Mamdani trans ad; I loved that he showed up at Papi Juice—a queer POC party space at two in the morning to get out the vote. His campaign and victory show that Democrats don’t have to throw trans people under the bus to win. One of the things we have to do is remind them of that—at every turn, we must remind them that trans issues are not the third rail in politics. But electing progressive officials is not enough. I’d argue that working within the Democratic Party is often a distraction and diversion of resources from the real work of movement building. Remember, the attack on trans people is not strictly ideological—it’s material, and winning material victories alongside the seemingly cultural ones will take an enormous fight, one that requires trans and cis folks alike to organize in our schools and our workplaces. It’s imperative that we tie the attack on trans people to the crises of capitalism more broadly. That we emphasize the relationship between the attacks on trans people and the attacks on social provisioning (public goods), but that we also attend to the unique violences trans people experience while also uplifting and celebrating the beauty of trans lives.

Clarissa (Lars) Gold: One of Vermont’s shortcomings is its hubris around trans rights. It thinks itself immune to the effects of the attacks on trans people. I’d like to highlight a few instances that suggest Vermont is not willing to stand up for its trans residents, particularly its trans students. Recently, we have come to have Zoe Saunders named as our Secretary of Education. Saunders relocated from the Broward County school district in FL, where she served in a role that oversaw school closures and consolidation. Since relocating to Vermont, she has brought the manifest to our state and has publicly admitted a willingness to engage with the Trump administration with regard to their dissemination of anti-trans content. There was an anti-trans probe directed by the administration that asked schools to sign on and commit to compliance with Trump’s ban on DEI and definition of DEI, or risk losing financial support under Title IV. It took the Vermont attorney general and the agency of education way too long to shut down that probe–a probe that was legally faulty from the get. The Trump administration has continued to push these ideological structure tests. They came after us again and threatened that if the schools did not pull gender-based content from the curriculum, particularly in domains like health and sexual education, education would lose federal funding.

The Vermont education system is very sensitive to funding at the moment. We don’t have enough of it. We are currently trying to renegotiate how money is spent on public education in the state with Act 73–an act that is imperfect. It was done with haste and represents another faulty attempt by the legislature to repair a broken funding formula. We are trying to save the education system we have left. Districts are scrambling to pull all the levers they have on a local level to preserve their school systems, which means cutting personnel. That is the only lever the local level has. And when we cut personnel, we often cut those who represent the most diverse intersections. These are the people who are seen as expendable. This perpetuates harm to students because when students don’t interact with trans people like me, or like my Black coworkers, or my disabled coworkers. And this robs students of their right to an emancipatory education.

I sit at an interesting intersection: I am a laborer, a childcare laborer, which I think more high school teachers would be better off seeing themselves as. The reality is, we are in the business of taking care of human beings who are at a very vulnerable and impressionable stage in their lives. Part of educators’ work is deconstructing the violence on a curricular level, too. I am a biology teacher, and I could get into all the specifics about preventing harm from that vantage point. Biology is not binary. But we have to do more than simply resist in our individual classrooms. I am a union worker, and the Vermont Teachers Association leaves much to be desired in the way of political voice. We are the largest union in the state, but we are tepid. We could be doing much more to stand with our trans students, our trans teachers, and workers outside our sector. There is much room for cross-sector collaboration there.

I want to wrap up with some words from Leslie Feinberg, who reminds us how issues of transness and labor intersect. Trans is a threat to capitalism, which is why it is scapegoated. We are a threat to capitalism because we do not rely on the same systems of consumption that fuel the beast. Our very state of being begets a different kind of relationality. In the words of Feinberg, “The struggle against intolerable conditions is on the rise around the world. And the militant role of transgendered [sic] women, men, and youth in today’s fightback movement is already helping to shape the future.”

Ambrose Moore: I am a junior at the University of Vermont (UVM) and a military brat. Community is important to me. A community that doesn’t tolerate those who are different but empowers. My military family is tolerant but not empowering. I would even say they weren’t accepting of me (as a trans person) until very recently. I came out to my parents multiple times, but the only times they seemed to accept the idea that I am trans is when I was experiencing a breakdown after therapy. I have come out many times, but my parents don’t seem to hear it. When I came out to my father the most recent time, I remember he mentioned that the most recent school shooter was trans–this was not a great thing to hear. When I asked him who does the majority of school shootings [heterosexual cisgender white men], he just walked away. Tolerating trans people can be, using the correct name or pronouns, but still making it clear you believe I am wrong. And this is not just an issue I have had with my military family, but in leftist spaces as well. Some leftists insist they use they/them pronouns with everyone, but I have found that’s often not true.

I am with an organization called Trans Plus. We are a college student-led group of trans individuals. We host social events to empower our community and create space for trans students actually to feel wanted. Moving around a lot as a young person, that’s something I have struggled with. As Trans Plus, we have been discussing whether to make a statement about Lia Smith, but we have been reluctant because there’s this idea that when someone passes, their death should not be politicized. And I understand and respect that point of view, but I also need people to understand that Lia’s death is already politicized, and so was her identity and life before that. That’s a fact.

Some people insist that not everything is about politics; I disagree. I don’t even know what bathroom to use. I’m scared of using the men’s room and experiencing harassment or worse, and I’m afraid of going into the women’s room because I make people uncomfortable. Either way, I make someone uncomfortable. UVM has gender-neutral bathrooms in the majority of buildings, but not all. Trans Plus was created to create a space where trans students can talk about these issues, whether it is gender, sexuality, or something else. It’s a space we can share and connect without fear.

Ultimately, we decided to write a statement about Lia. I wanted to emphasize queer resources in Vermont, but writing it was difficult, and I did have to work at it longer than I normally would have because this is an act I have considered myself in the past. But knowing my identity is politicized has also radicalized me, and I am thankful for the support system I have today. I consider myself a socialist. I believe healthcare and education are basic necessities, but I also remember growing up and not realizing that not everyone had access to these. I learned that many people can’t go to the doctor when they are sick, but as I transitioned, I also learned that even having health insurance could not guarantee me access to gender-affirming care. My parents allowed me to use their insurance, but they would not allow me to use their coverage for HRT. I was told by my parents that, due to their tolerance but not empowerment, they would not allow me to use insurance for this care. HRT is expensive. If you are paying out of pocket, it’s about $150.

I got really involved here at UVM after I left Texas because I wanted a community, not just where I could be myself, but where organizing and movements happened, too. Earlier this year, Trump pushed universities to sign a compact that would give them access to federal money. All the university has to do is promise to teach what the Trump administration values and prioritizes. Trump is already stepping into fascism, but that is a step very far into fascism–trying to buy our universities. UVM was not asked to sign that compact, but that’s not enough. We have no safety right now. The UVM administration has thrown its hands up and chosen to keep silent, hoping the university will not be noticed, that it won’t be attacked.

The administration seems to think that if we keep quiet, we will be okay. But if you don’t have policies codifying the protection of queer and trans students, if you don’t have policies codifying the protection of students of color, immigrant students, international students, then we will not be okay. What happens when ICE comes to campus? What happens when Trump takes our funding? What happens when a trans student gets attacked? These liberal institutions want to wait to mount a defense until after they are individually attacked. That is not a winning strategy.

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