It Finally Happened: They're Killing Trans People Over Herb Grinders
It Finally Happened: They're Killing Trans People Over Herb Grinders
You're not crazy. You're not hallucinating. You're not making this up.
Welcome to TRANSlating Everything, a newsletter covering pop culture, news, politics, and the science of storytelling through the lens of a cool trans mom. You can support my work by leaving a tip or choosing a paid subscription to Translating Everything on Medium or Substack.
GOP Mobilization Contributes To Record Deaths Of Trans People
You’re not crazy. You’re not hallucinating. You’re not making this up.
Since early 2021, escalating right-wing attacks on the LGBTQ+ community have contributed to record deaths of trans people.
Being trans, intersex, non-binary, gender nonconforming, or in any way queer means you are likely to suffer—or as too many trans people have discovered, you are likely to literally get killed—from what Crowd Counting Consortium’s data reveals is “a steep and sustained increase in the rate of right-wing demonstrations pushing anti-LGBTQ+ claims.”
In CCC’s data, the monthly share of right-wing events with anti-LGBTQ+ claims stayed at or close to zero from the start of collection in 2017 until mid-2022. By September of [2022], however, it had increased to about 16 percent.
In August 2022, those tragic deaths included trans activist and Harvard student Rodrigo Ventocilla, who died in “extremely disturbing circumstances” after being arrested during his honeymoon in Indonesia.
According to the Bali Police and a Facebook post from Diversidades Trans Masculinas, Ventocilla was detained on 6 August upon arrival at I Gusti Ngurah Rai International Airport, Denpasar, for possession of a herb grinder.
A ****ing herb grinder.
When pressed to offer an explanation, a Bali Police official’s ridiculous explanation said: “Ventocilla died after consuming unsealed drugs on 8 August, while he was in police custody.”
Conservatives are cruel because cruelty is the point
Deaths like Rodrigo’s aren’t an accident. They’re part of a stochastic terrorist movement designed to harm or exorcise anyone who does not fit into Conservative ideology.
Conservatives Are Cruel Because Cruelty Is Their Point (An Injustice)
Strict Fathers believe that obedience trumps all. Rules exist for a reason. Our inner selves are wicked and must be resisted at all cost.
To teach children to always obey without question, a parent must always be prepared to make the pain of disobedience worse for their child than if they had simply obeyed.
Discipline and punishment are vital tools for a Strict Father.
Anyone is welcome into the fold if they are willing to repent and obey.
Science Proves (Again) That Watching Fox News Makes You Dumber Than Not Watching Any News At All (Transgender Soapbox)
Despite its clever branding claiming otherwise, Fox News Channel (FNC) is far and away the most popular mainstream cable news network. Since its inception in 1996, the channel has grown bigger, and bigger, and bigger.
But in 2012, a much-publicized study revealed a shocking crack in the Faux News facade.
Erin in the Morning delivered a blistering series on the ongoing attacks from hateful (and even well-intentioned) people whose actions have a harmful, dangerous, and deadly impact to trans people.
2600 Leaked Anti-trans Lobbyist Emails Show Fundamentalism, Not Evidence, Is How First Anti-Trans Bills Were Drafted (Erin in the Morning)
The list of people on these emails is extensive - anybody that has paid attention to anti-trans policy will recognize most or all of the names. While it should be unsurprising that they are all coordinating in drafting legislation, we finally have direct evidence.
While we could previously claim to know that these bills were drafted in complete ignorance of standards of care and evidence, we now have outright proof. The same ideas drafted in these emails in 2019 are now being enacted and targeted to the transgender community nationwide in 2023, and trans people are paying the price spelled out in these conversations.
Missouri Considers Forcing Detransition On Incarcerated Trans People (Erin in the Morning)
The targets of gender affirming care bans are changing. A new bill that just passed committee in Missouri would force detransition on incarcerated tarns adults as well as trans youth.
Montana House Passes Right To Bully Trans Kids (Erin in the Morning)
Montana HB361 just passed the Montana House. It protects teachers and students rights to "use a trans person's biological sex pronouns and legal name." Critics call it a right to bully.
Oklahoma Bill Would Effectively End Adult Trans Care, Moves To Senate Floor (Erin in the Morning)
Transgender adults continue to be targeted by anti-trans legislation, showing that this was never about sports or minors.
Indeed, once I looked deeper into the attacks on me as a trans woman and the rest of my queer family, I found that the language may have gotten more sophisticated here and there, but it’s the same nonsense claims as ever.
Let’s say it loudly for those in the back:
Believing Trans Kids Isn’t The Same As Grooming Them (Transgender Soapbox)
We finally have the research on parenting that conservatives demanded, so what’s next?
If You Joined The GOP But Don’t Hate Queer People... (Transgender Soapbox)
Conservative candidates promised to disrupt a system that had failed them. Overwhelmingly, white men recognized they would be relatively untouched by conservative policies that hurt queer people but promised birth, transformation, and resurrection.
Fighting back was always going to include collateral damage, but disrupting the system would eventually help everyone. Even the people it hurt.
History recorded the same seductive promise in World War II.
Exposing con artists who use “Centrist” as a shield for violence toward women, queer people, and people of color
James Finn is a long-time journalist, editor for Prism & Pen, and someone I personally consider an ally after I watched him first stand up against and then become yet another target of a serial abuser from my own family.
For more on how I broke free from my identical twin brother (a man with a long history of violence toward women; his aliases built over many years include Daryl Wakeham, James the Argumentative Penguin, and Alison the Celtic Chameleon, among many others), check out the Cool Trans Mom archives: You'll Never Look At Cults, Con Artists, Or Identical Twins The Same Way Again and Medium Faces The Same Fake Problem As Twitter
How James Finn and everyone at Prism & Pen continue to fight transphobia
“The 2024 election season is already a race to the bottom” (Prism & Pen)
The conservative CPAC conference last week hyper focused on transgender and other LGBTQ issues.
Former president Donald Trump took the hardest anti-trans line I’ve ever heard from him. He promised, if elected, to “revoke every Biden policy promoting the sexual mutilation and chemical castration of our youth.” Other speakers were even more crude.
One called for the “eradication of transgenderism,” prompting headlines that refer quite fairly to genocide.
The Intellectual Poverty of Transphobia (Prism & Pen)
Ben Shapiro, for example, argued that trans people were merely locked into delusions created by those around them at a young age. The arguments themselves made by reactionaries don’t matter, what really matters to them are their presuppositions. In this case that trans people are bad and that they shouldn’t be able to exist.
A lot of transphobic arguments are really just unfalsifiable points that exist only to protect emotionally held positions. When actual facts get brought to the table, transphobes never correct themselves. They just move the goalpost or just change the argument up entirely.
The point of reactionary politics is to uphold hierarchy and to uphold the status quo. Anything that challenges these assumptions is met with steep resistance. Reactionaries are afraid of change, afraid of anything that challenges the status quo. That is their guiding principle, what informs their arguments. It has nothing to do with the truth or factual accuracy.
Writing for Prism & Pen, Alex Mell-Taylor reported:
Everywhere we see people comparing trans existence to an insidious threat, a malicious ideology, indoctrination, contagion, or plague. "The leftwing gender insanity being pushed on our children is an act of abuse," Donald Trump said recently.
Through misinformation texts like Irreversible Damage and the film What Is A Woman?, hate activists have erroneously likened trans identity to something inherently dangerous, especially to children.
This language has also not just stayed inside conservative circles either (it was never just there) and has permeated every aspect of our culture. These talking points have been repeated by liberal entertainers such as comedian Dave Chappelle and writer JK Rowling. They have appeared in New York Times editorials and even escaped the lips of loved ones and friends.
Where to go if you’re trans and can relocate
Erin in the Morning reports these as the most protected and safe states for trans people:
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Hawaii
Illinois
Massachusetts
New York
Oregon
Vermont
Washington
Washington, D.C.*
Some states like Minnesota maintain strong cultural acceptance of transgender people but still lack the legal protections of safe state laws and full medical coverage that the top states have, and a right-leaning election cycle could change the tide. Some states like Arizona and Wisconsin saw positive election results that make them likely low risk as Democratic governors have taken over.
Three states - Minnesota and Maryland - are potentially next in line to move to the “Most Protective States” category if they successfully pass their landmark transgender protection bills. Minnesota currently has a bill that would protect transgender refugees and providers fleeing from other states. Maryland is considering a bill that would give those on Medicaid coverage for FFS, hair removal and more. If these bills pass, they will be elevated into the “most protective states” category. New Mexico is considering a bill that would protect the right to gender affirming care.
A final note on my home state of Mississippi
Sadly, Erin goes on to report how bad things have gotten in my home state of Mississippi. I’d hoped things had changed since I’d left. Instead, they’ve gotten worse.
Second Period Anti-trans Legislative Risk Map (Erin in the Morning)
Sadly, we have seen a new addition to “worst states” in Mississippi. Mississippi was originally ranked medium risk on the very first risk assessment map, but as soon as the governor declared that transgender issues were a top priority, it was raised to high. Mississippi passed an extremely cruel gender affirming care ban for trans youth which would result in their forced medical detransition.
The Rocky Mountain West has seen extreme bills moving through at breakneck speeds. Montana has multiple bills that would make it very hard to exist as a transgender person, such as drag bans, healthcare bans, and bans defining transgender people out of the law entirely.
And yet there is hope
What these charts don’t show (but CCC is also tracking) are the frequent and usually successful counters to these anti-queer protests. You can see one in reporter Candace Bernd’s Twitter thread on the recent protest in Katy, but there’ve been many others, too.
We Are All Trans or We Are All Lost (Prism & Pen)
Transphobia (the fear of transgender people) and transmisia (the hatred of transgender people) are the ultimate cudgel to wield against and demonize the smallest and least accepted minority in the world.
Deep-seated historical prejudice is the root of transmisia, the hatred of trans people. Misia literally means hatred. It differs from phobia, which is fear. Fear has always been the excuse to deny the humanity of those different from us. Once people are convinced to deny another’s humanity, hatred follows.
Dr. King said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” We cannot ignore the oppression of any group of Americans and still say we believe in freedom. The extremists see no difference between those they target for condemnation.
We cannot look away as this bigotry rises in our country, backed by the power of the state. Fascism creeps only when citizens do not call out hate. Every citizen who believes in equality, freedom, and justice must stand together in the face of this naked authoritarian push. The first step is to understand this simple truth:
We are all trans, or we are all lost.
Fun stuff
Trans Voices Mix Tape #1 (Translating Everything)
Is Being Anti-Woke The Easiest Grift In The History of Money? (An Injustice)
Can The Most Common Test For Narcissism Help Fight Bigotry? (An Injustice)
Should I Be Willing To Compromise On Trans Issues If It Protects Cisgender People? (Transgender Soapbox)
What Black Panther Taught Me About Protesting With Pride (Illumination)
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