June 13, 2025

Now, Walt Whitman was a pervert, but he was the best poet that America ever produced. And if he was standing here today and somebody called him a fruit or a queer behind his back, or to his face, or over these airwaves, that person would have to answer to me.

- Maurice Minnifield, a surface-level bigot, displays unexpected allyship in Northern Exposure’s “Brains, Know-how, and Native Intelligence” (aired 1990-07-19)

Happy Pride, friends. Or should I perhaps say Wrathful Pride? Because I’m pretty mad right now.

Recently, someone asked me how the world was different when I was a kid. I thought about how gay people couldn’t tell you they were gay, and how I myself was in denial about being bi. And then I thought about how I didn’t know trans people existed. Now, I know they exist (in fact, I know at least 8 of them personally). Sounds like we’ve made progress, right? Sure. Yay. Let’s celebrate the wins (and there have been some.)

Recently, though, I’ve become quite frightened by a certain paradox: trans issues are openly discussed, in the negative. In other words, a category of people I scarcely knew existed 20 years ago, is now supposed to be my enemy.

Huh?

When I was a kid, it never occurred to me to contemplate the genital configuration of people using the ladies’ room in adjacent stalls to mine. In fact, that still rarely comes to my mind, except when it becomes a legislative issue in nineteen separate states (source). Nor was I especially bothered by classmates or friends who wore their hair or clothes in non-gender-conforming ways. Perhaps it was a little strange when it happened, but I didn’t think it was a problem. I still don’t, and yet, “gender transition for minors” now inspires rabid anger among some of my fellow citizens. Fifteen states require schools to contact a child’s parents if that child asks to use a different name or pronouns (source). Twenty-five states - half the country - have gone to the trouble of banning gender-affirming medical care for minors, regardless of medical advice (source). In 2025 alone, 920 anti-trans bills have been introduced across 49 states (plus the federal legislature), of which 112 have become law (source)

Why the change?

That depends on whom you ask. Our president wrote in a day-one executive order that he was simply “defending women” because “efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being” and have “harmed women.” (I recommend you steel yourself before reading this source.)

Has it?

Nope. The president is a liar, always has been a liar, and is lying about this.

There are lots of things in the US that harm women. For instance, the fact that child marriage is legal in 37 states; that women are more likely to live in poverty because there’s a gender pay gap; the lack of meaningful protection against pregnancy and parenting discrimination; the criminalization of miscarriages; that 41% of American women experience intimate partner violence; or that for 63% of murdered women whose cases get solved, it turns out they were killed by their male partners.

(source, source, source, source)

Notice that none of the above have the slightest connection to the question of whether “woman” has a biological definition. They’re 100% social problems. My dignity is not affected by whether the law says all women have to produce egg cells. It is, however, affected by the fact that I would’ve died last October if I’d had my ectopic pregnancy in certain US states.

Well, we're glad you didn't die.

Thanks! I am, too! And in the spirit of it being a cool thing when people don’t die, let me talk about what’s making the world more dangerous for trans people.

For instance: immediately following the inauguration in January, the US State Department stopped issuing or renewing passports for American citizens whose legal gender no longer matches the gender marked on their birth certificate. They also eliminated the “X” option for gender, which naturally makes life more complicated for intersex, non-binary, and trans passport applicants. Most egregiously, for passport applications that were already in process, the documents got “set aside” rather than returned to applicants. This left at least one man without a passport, birth certificate, or marriage license.

Do people really need passports, though?

Uh. Yeah. In addition to international travel, passports are important for proving citizenship. And in March, this government began deporting immigrants without due process, including at least one who had a legally indisputable, Supreme-Court-affirmed right to stay in the USA. (He’s since been returned to face criminal charges that were invented out of whole cloth.)

Are the “taking away proof of citizenship from trans people” policy and the “deporting anyone who doesn’t have proof of citizenship” policy, likely to collide and get a trans US citizen deported?

Yup. Bet on it.

It's dangerous for trans Americans, in other words.

What the hell is going on in the US?

In short, trans people are being demonized. Only about 1% of the US population identifies that way, and yet, efforts to stop them from living their lives are taking up a huge amount of political energy. I suppose you don’t need me to explain why it’s a bad sign when the government starts telling us to resent a teeny tiny minority that has done nothing wrong. Still, perhaps it’s worth discussing how it feels to be living through the “First they came for” poem.

Recently, I was talking to my beloved husband, web admin, and co-researcher, Bryan, about modern politics. He mentioned that the rise in manosphere content and anti-LGBTQ + anti-DEI backlash has put him, a straight white man, in an awkward position. To paraphrase:

Every time I’m upset about anything, someone pops up to ask, “Have you considered blaming women or minorities?” And I’m not at all interested in doing that!

- Bryan, an ally

When he said that, I thought about ways in which I, a white cisgender woman, feel that same pressure. I realized that when I’m upset about anything happening to women, someone seems to pop up and whisper, “Have you considered blaming trans people?” And I’m not at all interested in treating anyone else the way the patriarchy treats me.

Only a fool fights in a burning house.

- Kang (a Klingon Commander), Star Trek's “Day of the Dove” (aired 1968-11-01)

Why are we being divided like this?

Interesting question. None of the political controversies over trans people is based on a real-world problem. Every statistic shows that trans people using the same bathrooms as cis people is perfectly safe. Trans soldiers - who were fired en masse this year - served in the US military from 2016-2019 and again from 2021-2025 with no problems (source).  Despite hysteria about “surgical and chemical mutilation of minors”, hardly any trans minors are actually receiving gender-affirming surgeries; in fact, one national study counted only 5 in 2019 (source). Mind you, that’s 5 out of 42.9 million teenagers who live in this country. Regretting transition, at any age, is vanishingly rare (source). So the fact that we have political controversy over these non-issues means that somebody made up the idea that these should be issues.

Why would they do that?

To keep us from complaining about the real issues, I’m thinking.

You were taught to waste your anger. It's convenient for girls to be angry about nothing. Girls who are angry about something are dangerous." - The Bird King (2019) by G. Willow Wilson

For 50 years, the Religious Right exploited abortion as a wedge issue, in part because they had to drop their support for racial segregation as too politically unpopular (source). As a result, Roe v. Wade - which used to be popular even among evangelicals, though never Catholics - was overturned. This led to us having a country where some states would literally have killed me for my ectopic pregnancy.

Now, right-wingers are using trans issues the same way. Dividing feminists over the issue of whether to include trans women and men in their movement is a convenient way to keep us angry over nothing.

Is it working?

Uh, kinda. TERFs are now a political movement and J.K. Rowling has spent millions getting legal protections stripped away from British trans people. The US government is defining gender so narrowly that intersex people - who are as common as gingers - now no longer legally exist. And some analysts want us to believe that Kamala Harris lost last year because Democrats support trans people too much, even though it was barely an issue in the election. Blaming a minority for your bad fortune - gee, where have I heard that before?

If we don't work together, we're gonna die here.

- Captain Kirk, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock

For the record, no trans woman has ever hurt me or any woman I know. Neither has a trans man, and I do know a few trans men (who are barely mentioned in right-wing discourse unless it’s a way to shame men for not being “manly” enough…and do you need me to tell you how horrible that is?) Any attempt to make me blame them for the troubles in my life and in my country is nonsense.

Feminists need to take a deep breath and ask themselves “What does your worst enemy want you to do?” and when the answer is “hate people whose gender is not like yours”, understand that that tells you something very scary about your worst enemy.

Specifically: they’re neo-Nazis.

Seriously? Nazis?

Yes, seriously. The OG Nazis burned research into transgender people and threw gay men into concentration camps. They did the same to a wide variety of minorities - including, of course, the Jewish people - so “being opposed to people who act like Nazis” is a really great way to practice intersectionality.

You can change your name, but you can't change what you are.

- Sam Bolinski calls out Nazis in MacGyver's "The Ten Percent Solution" (aired 1989-11-20)

What should we do?

Soylent Green, cultures, and political movements are all made out of people. That is both the bad news and the good news. It means we got to this point because people decided to be mean and exclusionary; it means we can get past it when people decide to be kind and inclusive and supportive.

And we absolutely can do that.

Chris: Well, if it's any consolation, Maurice, you know, your feelings [of prejudice] aren't instinctual. 

Maurice: Well, how the hell could that be a consolation? 

Chris: It's learned behavior. 

Maurice: So? 

Chris: So, you can unlearn it. 

- Northern Exposure's "Seoul Mates" (aired 1991-12-16)

Donate to transition funds. Call your representatives. Protest. Let your trans friends know that they can call on you for help. Shut down transvestigations. Correct people who misgender or deadname. If you struggle to remember the right pronouns or names, recognize that this is your problem and you can fix it. Build communities that don’t tolerate intolerance.

There is only one thing on this earth more powerful than evil... And that's us.

- Buffy the Vampire Slayer rallies her troops, "Bring On the Night" (aired 2002-12-17)

Right after the election, DFGRR said on Instagram that the free world needs citizens who’ll keep it running and not let it collapse into dystopia. Ultimately, letting the Nazis have their way would constitute a surrender. And I won’t surrender. I intend to survive these hard times, bringing everyone I care about with me, and that is a threat. Because I care about an awful lot of people, and lots of people put together are a movement.

I'm just naturally lazy, but I will fight if I have to - and it's starting to look like we have to.

- Lt. Col. John Sheppard's battle cry, Stargate: Atlantis' "Condemned" (aired 2005-08-12)

Keep your sexy lamps burning in this troubled Pride Month, and in all the months to come.