On April 26, 1938, the Nazi government in control of Germany decreed that all Jews both in Germany and Austria to register all property and assets above a certain value with the government. This helped facilitate government sanctioned theft of heirlooms and livelihoods from hundreds of thousands of Jewish people in the two countries. In June of 2022, in the state of Texas in the southern United States the Attorney General Ken Paxton requested from the Department of Public Safety a list of every Texan who changed their gender on government documents in the past two years. It’s uncertain why this information was requested by the Attorney General, but thankfully DPS did not turn over the requested data this time.
This is frightening for so many different reasons and an escalation of targeted hate and action by Republican politicians on one of the most marginalized, misunderstood, and threatened communities in the country. This year alone we’ve seen Texas lead the way in hate by investigating parents of transgender youth for child abuse and have over 30 anti LGBTQ+ bill introduced and thankfully defeated in the legislature. Even though these bills have not passed to become law, they do have a serious effect on the well-being and lives of queer people and children especially. Each day that a new bill is introduced in a state we have to go in front of people and justify our right to exist in a free society, which takes a huge toll on our mental health let alone the time in our lives that we won’t get back. Time we could have spent on our hobbies, studying for school, practicing sports, or working our jobs. Time we could have spent just being. Instead brave parents and children are forced to speak in front of cowards who care not for those they have to step on and over to take and maintain power and self importance.
Just one day after the mid term elections in early November, lawmakers in Tennessee filed bills to ban gender affirming care for youth including puberty blockers. This is from a state that has enacted laws requiring schools to notify parents when any LGBT inclusive curricula would be in use and allowing an opt-out, preventing trans kids participating in sport, and has also never protected housing rights by continuing to allow discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation. And these are just a few instances of the epidemic of legislative violence against my community. Sadly, the violence against us is not limited to laws.
So far in 2022 alone we know of at least 35 transgender people murdered, and sadly even in death we cannot find peace as many in the media refuse to use their names and gender often deadnaming them. When we get arrested we are often placed in jail cells at odds with our gender leading to higher rates of assault and rapes at the hands of other inmates and officers, these problems are even worse for trans women of color who face not only sexism but racism by our society. This creates the problem that we often fear going to the police when help is needed, leading to people staying in abusive relationships longer which creates more loss.
Our country fails to protect those that need it most while giving everything to those who need it least. A country that protects corporations which profit from the suffering of the poor, defunds schools while giving police military weapons, turned prisons into businesses for profit, where guns have more legal protection than women, where armed vigilantes can shoot unarmed Black kids because Stand Your Ground.
What’s the point?
Power at all costs.
How did we get here?
By letting voices of hate have a seat at the table out of the misguided belief that being able to discriminate is a fundamental religious right.
How do we get out?
I don’t know.