Today is the annual International Transgender Visibility Day, which advocates hope will one day be an opportunity to reflect on awareness raised and ignorance vanquished. This is not that year, though: Instead, a renewed wave of anti-trans sentiment has emerged from the political right in the U.S., focused squarely on transgender girls and women.
At issue is a string of similarly constructed state legislation that aims to bar transgender girls from organized school sports for the purpose of “promot[ing] continued fairness in women’s sports,” to use language from South Dakota’s House Bill 1217.
Similar bills have been introduced in some two dozen states. In Mississippi and Arkansas, they will become law this summer. According to reporting from the New York Times, these measures are poll-tested, packaged, and promoted by conservative groups like the American Principles Project, Concerned Women for America, and the newly formed Save Women’s Sports. Together, promoters see the issue as their last chance to curtail LGBTQ+ rights. Beth Stelzer, the founder of Save Women’s Sports, is an amateur power lifter who has been testifying in favor of removing transgender girls from team sports. She told the Times that she opposes “demolishing women’s sports for the sake of feelings.”
But the sports ban legislation is just the tip of the iceberg.
According to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the 2021 legislative session has introduced a record-breaking number of anti-trans measures in statehouses across the U.S. Of the 192 anti-LGBTQ bills currently being debated across the country, 93 directly target transgender people. In addition to barring children from school sports, many seek to prevent transgender people under 18 from accessing affirming medical care. South Carolina’s HB 4047, among other things, would make it a felony for any medical provider to offer transition-related care, and threatens a possible 20-year prison sentence if convicted.
It’s worth your time to read the whole bill.
Along with the coordinated legislative push, 2020 was a record year for violent deaths of transgender and gender non-conforming people. Last year, 44 transgender people were killed, most of whom were poor or otherwise under-resourced Black and Latinx folks. The violence continues apace. So far, HRC has identified at least 12 violent deaths of transgender or non-binary people, and no justice seems imminent.
At this point in columns like these, I’m obligated to point out some good news. In this case, some can be found via the Biden’s administration’s clear signals of intolerance toward LGBTQ-related exclusions.
A February executive order extended federal protections enshrined in the Fair Housing Act to explicitly prevent housing discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation. And in March, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced similar protections in lending through the Equal Protection Credit Opportunity Act, with an interpretive rule, will become final after a comment period. “In issuing this interpretive rule, we’re making it clear that lenders cannot discriminate based on sexual orientation or gender identity,” CFPB Acting Director David Uejio said in a statement.
These are important and overdue protections. But it’s hard not to feel that the tide is going in the wrong direction for the wave of inclusion society needs.
Ellen McGirt
@ellmcgirt
Ellen.McGirt@fortune.com
On point
The Derek Chauvin trial has begun, and it is brutal The ex-Minneapolis police officer is charged with second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter in the killing of George Floyd on May 25, 2020. Frankly, there is no easy way into the testimony of the extraordinary witnesses to the last nine minutes and 29 seconds George Floyd's life; one was only 9 years old at the time. But I’ll give the last word to Daniella Frazier, then 18, who took the video that shocked the world. “When I look at George Floyd I look at my dad, I look at my brothers, I look at my cousins, my uncles because they are all Black," she said. "I have a Black father, I have Black brothers, I have Black friends. I look at them and how it could have been one of them. It's been nights I've stayed up apologizing to George Floyd for not doing more and not physically interacting and not saving his life, [but] it's not what I should have done, it's what he [Chauvin] should have done."
Star Tribune
The Biden administration seeks to boost diversity in the federal judiciary Among the names expected to be brought forward today is U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who will be tapped to take Merrick Garland’s place on the U.S. Court of Appeals. Among the picks are three Black female jurists and the first Muslim American judge slated to serve on a District Court. “This trailblazing slate of nominees draws from the very best and brightest minds of the American legal profession,” Biden said in a statement provided to the Washington Post.
Washington Post
What should we do about Manhattan Beach? It is a question that is likely to come up again and again, as the racist origins of now cities, towns, and neighborhoods become a matter of public debate. Manhattan Beach, a beach town in Southern California, has an ugly modern origin story: “The city once seized a Black family’s oceanfront resort and ran an entire community of Black beachgoers out of town,” reports the Los Angeles Times. Now what?
Los Angeles Times
raceAhead is edited by David Z.Morris
On background
A theological reflection on transgender rights Michael Curry was the first black Episcopal elected to preside over the faith. Since his election in a landslide in 2015, he’s been an outspoken advocate for an inclusive faith — and the bishop of choice for progressive royals. Click through for his “theological reflection” on his decision to join an amicus brief in support of Gavin Grimm, the Virginia high schooler who sued for the right to use the bathroom that corresponds to his gender identity in 2017. It offers a broader look into the kind of faith that evolves with time and deep collaboration. “The Episcopal Church welcomes all persons: young and old, liberal and conservative, high-church and low-church, cisgender and transgender children of God,” he says. And it’s this mandate that informs the conversations that must now happen. “I expect that there will be some brothers and sisters who disagree with my decision to sign the amicus brief,” he says. “While we differ on some matters there is, as the old spiritual says, ‘plenty good room’ for us all.”
The Episcopal Diocese of Olympia
A new narrative for single people Writer Aditi Juneja does a wonderful job weaving pop culture analysis and deft parental coaching into an essay that reveals her evolution on the purpose of partnership, yes, even during a pandemic. “If instead of looking to marriage for self-esteem, self-discovery, and personal growth, we look to ourselves, then we get to ask what marriage adds,” she writes. What emerged, at least for Juneja, was a liberating release from the frustration of waiting for an inadequate partner to "click." It all started with, of all things, a really, really good list. Enjoy.
Bitch Media
What we mean when we say we’re not a racist Greg Howard, then a David Carr fellow at the New York Times, wrote an important essay on our long, tortured history with the idea of being “racist,” and how the toxic nature of the accusation prevents us from talking about real solutions. “Racism ceased to be a matter of systems and policy and became a referendum on the rot of the individual soul,” he writes. “This was a convenient thing for white Americans to believe.”
New York Times
Mood board
Paperboy 'Love' Prince, a Bushwick-based rapper, artist and activist who announced today that they have successfully gathered enough signatures to be on the ballot for the New York City mayoral election. Paperboy identifies as non-binary, and the dress knows no bounds.