Transgender folk are fleeing to blue states. This didn't begin with Trump coming back into office; aggressive persecution in red states revved up the push out at the beginning of this decade.
Silvaria Lysandra Zemaitis provides a statistical picture.
... Annualized, what we are seeing is a displacement rate of roughly 15% a year. And because trans people are largely not fleeing blue states (which means that the pool of leavers would actually be the 47% of trans adults who live in the 29 states with at least one restrictive law), the rate among trans people in the states doing the persecuting is closer to 29%. Nearly a third, in a year.
... the sheer scale of this movement is breathtaking. Hundreds of thousands of trans people have had to flee persecution within the borders of the United States ....
... To put this in perspective, the last time an American subgroup migrated at these rates was the Great Migration, in which roughly 6 million Southern Black people fled Jim Crow violence and repression. This occurred over a period of decades, in the face of political repression, systematic violence, and legal apartheid. In its fastest decade, the 1940s, 1.5 million left the South—against a Southern Black population of roughly 10 million. Black America fled Jim Crow at about 1.5% a year, at a time when baseline inter-state mobility was higher than it was today. Trans America is fleeing red-state persecution at ten to twenty times that. ....
This should be seen as appropriately alarming to every decent person in the country.
... trans people who cannot afford to run are forced to hide.
Since November 2024, 55% of transgender adults report taking steps to be less visible as an LGBTQ person in their community—at work, at school—compared to 24% of LGBTQ people overall. This is what “eradication” looks like in practice. Instead of forcing the trans person to leave the state, the fascists are forcing the trans person to leave themselves. ...
To subject some of us to this level of terror -- along with migrants and all people of color -- is simply not okay.
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In general, many Democratic politicians know they have to hold the line on trans rights -- however little actual sympathy they may feel. But those who break ranks with trans rights should feel heat. It's sad to see this happening in Ohio where there's an actual contest for governor: Top Ohio Democrats retreat on trans issues, leaving some transgender activists feeling abandoned.
I can begin to understand Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur's defection; she's ancient, a good labor stalwart, and yet uniquely continues to hold a district that has been redrawn many times by Republicans to make it more hostile to her. But for the Democratic candidate for Governor, Amy Acton, to adopt a transphobic trope about "boys playing in girls sports" crosses the decency line.
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Meanwhile, it seems that the trans haters are experimenting with the ballot box. In five states --Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska, and Washington -- citizen initiative petitions have put anti-trans measures up for a vote this fall. This feels awfully familiar to anyone who lived through the gay marriage wars of the early 2000s. For a long time during that period, fear and ignorant revulsion enforced by initiative succeeded across the country -- until it didn't. Before the Supreme Court got around to upholding gay marriage, very blue states had legalized marriage and then voters in Colorado repealed one of these bans which they had passed a decade earlier -- marking the turning tide.
Erin in the Morning warns of this new danger from the transphobes and other all purpose MAGA zealots.
... For transgender people who have sought refuge in blue states to escape the bans spreading through Republican-controlled legislatures, these measures represent a new and more direct threat: the possibility that their neighbors, not distant lawmakers, will vote to strip their rights.
Erin's description of the Washington state proposition suggests to me that it might well encounter successful opposition.
... a ballot initiative funded by conservative hedge fund manager Brian Heywood would institute a K-12 sports ban—and require every girl who wants to play to have her sex verified by a doctor first. The measure’s language is explicit: to be eligible, a student must provide a statement from her health care provider “that verifies the student’s biological sex, relying only on one or more of the following: the student’s reproductive anatomy, genetic makeup, or normal endogenously produced testosterone levels.” That requirement applies not to transgender students specifically but to every girl in the state who wants to play any sport with a sex-separate classification—from basketball and soccer to cheerleading, bowling, and golf. ...
The Missouri trans-hate initiative is a sneaky one. Republican pols have added the anti-trans stuff to an anti-abortion measure as a sweetener. Considering Missouri voters passed a citizen measure protecting abortion rights a couple of year ago, they've got resistance to overcome. Might transphobia get a new batch of abortion restrictions across the finish line? Read about Missouri trials and tribulations here.
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Something delightful to close this catalogue of horrors; how about a little joy? Here's Dylan Mulvaney, a transwoman who appeared in a beer commercial and has been subjected to unrelenting persecution by MAGA bigots ever since, delighting in being herself:
What is it that I have that they don’t? Oh my God, freedom. I am free in a way that they will never have the privilege to experience. And they want to use their power to take away my freedom. But what they don’t understand is that my freedom has zero contingency on what they can provide for me, because my freedom is fully dependent on the moment that I acknowledged my real, authentic self, and every day since. And sharing that with the world? It’s just icing on the cake. But they don’t want me to be able to share that, because it would mean young people realizing that if someone like me can be themselves and find success and freedom, then they can find success and freedom for themselves too.
You go, girl!
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