West Virginia released a slew of new anti-trans bills on January 10th, including a bill that bans gender affirming care up to the age of 21 and mandates therapists "cure" trans people.
The bill is one of several proposed in West Virginia this year. Another bill, Senate Bill 195, would target transgender people as being “obscene” and would bar “transgender exposure, performances, or display” to any minor. This could have the effect of barring transgender people from being able to exist in public, as it would be difficult to avoid being seen as a transgender person by a minor. Speaking to this bill, Orr stated, “This is a blatant attempt to criminalize and erase the trans community of West Virginia.”
I honestly can’t find anything to say about these two bills that doesn’t feel overly doomer. It’s probably unenforceable showboating for election season… but plenty of cops aren’t going to know or care. Plenty of MAGA shitheads walking around getting offended by any gender nonconformity are going to see these bills for what they are: a green light to make life even worse for trans people.
It’s weird being at this intersection of “things have improved so much in the past 20 years” and “things have gotten SO drastically worse in the past 2 years”.
I don’t think you’d be overly doomer to be worried about this. You hit the nail on the head that the scariest part of this is that it lets cops do whatever the fuck they want even more (or allows maga fucks to go extrajudicial). It’s just one more legal way for asshats to discriminate against minorities. If this passes, sure, if you’re trans in WV, you won’t likely be arrested just by going outside, but you bet your ass some cops will probably be willing to assault or arrest you for the smallest shit, or that if anybody assaults you for being trans, they can probably get away with it. If a bill like this passes, it would be wise for all trans people in WV to leave if they can, even if it doesn’t mean that trans people are going to be arrested on sight, necessarily.
The non-doomer approach is that it’s blatantly and obviously unconstitutional, even from this SCOTUS. Similar laws have already been struck down. Performance of gender is generally understood to be speech, and thus largely immune from government regulation via the 1st Amendment.
I honestly can’t find anything to say about these two bills that doesn’t feel overly doomer. It’s probably unenforceable showboating for election season… but plenty of cops aren’t going to know or care. Plenty of MAGA shitheads walking around getting offended by any gender nonconformity are going to see these bills for what they are: a green light to make life even worse for trans people.
It’s weird being at this intersection of “things have improved so much in the past 20 years” and “things have gotten SO drastically worse in the past 2 years”.
I don’t think you’d be overly doomer to be worried about this. You hit the nail on the head that the scariest part of this is that it lets cops do whatever the fuck they want even more (or allows maga fucks to go extrajudicial). It’s just one more legal way for asshats to discriminate against minorities. If this passes, sure, if you’re trans in WV, you won’t likely be arrested just by going outside, but you bet your ass some cops will probably be willing to assault or arrest you for the smallest shit, or that if anybody assaults you for being trans, they can probably get away with it. If a bill like this passes, it would be wise for all trans people in WV to leave if they can, even if it doesn’t mean that trans people are going to be arrested on sight, necessarily.
The non-doomer approach is that it’s blatantly and obviously unconstitutional, even from this SCOTUS. Similar laws have already been struck down. Performance of gender is generally understood to be speech, and thus largely immune from government regulation via the 1st Amendment.