The Fight for Gender Self-Determination

Over the last two years, a wave of anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ legislation has swept the United States. Proposals in dozens of state legislatures have aimed to stop schoolteachers from discussing gender or sexuality—to prevent kids from using bathrooms or playing on sports teams as their self-determined gender—to force school officials to “out” trans kids to their parents—and to make it illegal for trans kids to get appropriate medical care.

These initiatives target a vulnerable population with no political voice that is already suffering disproportionately high rates of suicide, houselessness, and violence—all of which will be exacerbated by these laws. At the same time, the Supreme Court is in the process of facilitating an assault on reproductive freedom that will also have a disproportionate impact on trans people. Understood as a whole, these laws constitute a concerted attack on the rights to gender and sexual self-determination that LGBTQ movements have struggled to achieve for decades.

Why is this happening now? What does it mean in a global context? And what can we do to resist?