When I read this headline from Reuters you know what got me?
So, what caught my attention?
What struck me was “over 1,000 transgender residents.”
What really hit me was that they passed this draconian law for only one thousand people. In the whole state of Kansas, there are only about one thousand trans people! They passed this law for one thousand people! They took time out of their legislative session for one thousand people!
The Kansas state government has invalidated the driver’s licenses and birth certificates of transgender residents who changed the gender on those documents, in accordance with a law that took effect on Thursday.The move affects more than 1,000 people. The law requires residents to change their gender identification to the sex they were assigned at birth, and also bans residents from changing their gender on those documents in the future.
1,000 people!
Kansas residents were permitted to change their gender markers on driver’s licenses and birth certificates until 2023, when those changes were halted amid litigation initiated by the state’s Republican attorney general, Kris Kobach. Last year, the courts permitted transgender residents to once again make those changes. State lawmakers then introduced the bill enacted into law after the Kansas legislature overrode Democratic Governor Laura Kelly’s veto.
How bitter are these Republicans! They are passing all these anti-trans laws for 1,000 people!
From their rhetoric, you would think there were tens of thousands of trans people in the state… not just 1,000!
The Hill writes that,
The GOP-led Kansas Legislature passed the bill last month. While Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly (D) vetoed it, the Legislature overrode that veto earlier this month.
This is all the Republican doing, they have a super-majority in the legislature!
“This bill is about forcing people into the wrong bathrooms and opening up all Kansans to scrutiny and gender policing by strangers,” said Logan DeMond, ACLU of Kansas policy director, in a release. “Bathroom bans are grounded in prejudice and misinformation, and they don’t actually make anyone safer.”
Once again… only one thousand people have transitioned! All this vitriol directed at just one thousand people!
If you’re trans and living through laws like this, the comparison to Jim Crow probably isn’t an abstract rhetorical exercise. It’s about what it feels like to have the state:
- Reclassify you against your will
- Override how you live and are recognized
- Control where you can safely exist in public
- Signal that your identity is up for debate
The Jim Crow laws and the anti-trans laws share:
- Both both involve government restrictions on a defined group’s rights and autonomy,
- Both singled people out by law
- Both were told by the state that their identity isn’t recognized
- Both experiencing exclusion from public spaces
- Both feared stigma, harassment, or legal consequences
People, you want to know what the Jim Crow laws were like? Well now you know!
When you’re the one affected, you’re not sitting there weighing Dread Scott 1896 Supreme Court* case against modern equal-protection standards. You’re asking: Am I safe? Am I respected? Am I legally recognized?
*The Dred Scott v. Sandford case said Black people could not be citizens and had no rights the federal government was bound to respect. It wasn’t just wrong; it entrenched dehumanization at the highest legal level. And that runaway slaves had to be returned to their "owners"
Today, there are legal cases before the courts involving transgender people and women seeking abortion who travel across state lines for care and face potential legal consequences in their home states.
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