Criminalisation of trans identities
Up until the mid-Twentieth century wearing clothing ascribed to the opposite gender could get you arrested, imprisoned, and executed in many countries. Even in 2023 there are still nations on earth that will actively prosecute, incarcerate and potentially execute you for being gender variant. Trans identities have been criminalised, with trans women, transvestites, and assigned male at birth gender queer folk the main targets. Trans people were, and in some cases still are, seen as deviants, inverts, disordered, and criminals. Walking while trans can get you arrested, kissing a man can get you arrested, wearing affirming clothing could get you the noose.
Trans rights are much more than simply advocating for the right to affirm your own identity. This is the very life blood in our veins, the ability to actively be ourselves in society. It is not enough simply to live behind closed doors and in Narnia deep closets. To love one must thrive, and by criminalising trans identities, the wearing of whatever clothing you like, even the act of being intimate and in love with whomever you like you strip folk of the ability to thrive.
This is why it is essential to not dehumanise, to not treat folk as sub-human, and to see trans people as an everyday part of the world we live in. Trans people are slain by knives, guns, nooses and hands around throats because the world fears and hates them. To exist in the world as your affirmed self runs the gauntlet of laws, societal pressures, and the weight of history. To be yourself is an act of courage, to live is to fight the very forces that seek to criminalise the whole or part of your identity. Just because the State says you have a right does not mean that it will not find a way to prosecute you for something else related to who you are, or that someone else will act as a vigilante and do it for them.
Hate speech is pernicious on many levels, least of all because it punches down. Gender queer and trans folk have always been a minority within society, and even those cis folk who wear gender non-conforming clothing run foul of these laws an expectations. Hating someone because they are different from your normative experiences is a sign of fear and weakness, a manifestation of cowardness and misunderstanding. We hate because we fear, we fear because the other is different. The only way to overcome fear is compassion and understanding.
In criminalising anyone who does not confirm to rigid cisnormativity society both instils and reacts to that fear. Instead of embracing and just getting on with gender non-conforming folk, the law is weaponised against them, and hate is whipped up to disguise other ills within society. Why criminalise and pathologise trans identities? Why whip up fear of drag queens and queer identities? Because trans and gender queer folk are minorities and subvert the normative messages society wishes to promote.
Much has happened in the last 50 years to decriminalise cross dressing, same sex relationships and sex, and the ability to be oneself in public. However, this does not mean that should the police, courts, or governments wish to they can roll back the minimal protections offered. To be trans is to be at the whims of the 99.5%, the 200 against one. Even with all the scientific evidence in the world it comes down to the gut hatred and fear of trans folk, the visceral reaction to drag queens, and the whipped up manufactured media froth against trans. Hate has nothing to do with reason or evidence, and everything to do with gut feeling and spite.
Laws are never wholly objective, they are a societal reaction to events and social commentary. Criminalising trans and gender queer identities happens because society wishes it so. The application of those laws by the police and courts happens because regular everyday folk carry out those laws. It is the banality of society that demonises and hates. Fear is delivered straight to our phones and inboxes because it sells. We elect our politicians in part due to the fear of the other. First they came for immigrants, then they came for single mothers, then the Muslims, then the left, and then, once more, for the trans folk. Stepping stones of fear and hate, each an easy target because they lack political power.
The law is an instrument of the collective will, the State a function of how we wish society to potentially be. Trans people are vilified, hated, feared precisely because we affirm ourselves in the face of what is expected. When politicians are elected to enact anti-trans, anti-gay, and anti-abortion legislation they are drawing from the same poisoned well of a deep reaction against progress and hope. Fear and hate are poisons that seep through us to twist compassion inwards, only for those we know, not the strangers who truly need it.
Doing the right thing is not a momentary donation to the right charity, wearing a rainbow pin badge, or having trans friends; doing the right thing is fighting unjust laws, electing politicians who embrace hope over fear, and a renunciation of corporations who sponsor hate speech. To change the law and fight unjust laws takes more than protests and petitions, it takes boycotting companies who promote hate, it takes talking to your friends when they say transphobic and homophobic comments, it takes treating trans people as they are without exception. In sum, it takes a whole society to actively fight against the criminalisation of trans identities. The 0.05% cannot do it alone. This is an all of us thing, not just for the strangers on the other side of the screen.
