The current wave of anti-trans legislation is nothing new. It’s been going on since 2021, when Republicans figured out that attacking trans kids (particularly athletes) could prove fruitful at the polls.
But 2025’s anti-trans bills are something different. Even before we have to face the many problems created by the incoming administration, we have to contend with the continuing attacks on the trans community that are set to ramp up in the next few months. Consider the newly-released House rules package that places a new bill at the top of its list of priorities.
lol of course the house rules package lists the anti-trans “define them out of existing in statute” bill as the top priority for this congress
— jael holzman 🤍 (@jael.bsky.social) January 2, 2025 at 8:06 AM
The proposed bill would limit the definition of sex to conform to a person’s “reproductive biology and genetics at birth,” which basically gives schools carte blanche to exclude trans athletes from playing in their correct gender category in school sports.
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But this kind of bill has even broader, scarier consequences, as many activists have already pointed out.
the house package lists confirm that trans people are enemy number one. and enemy number two, for those curious, are all immigrants. this is a congress dedicated to harm. their primary objective is to remove people they don't like either from public life or from the country entirely. just to start!
— Lina Morgan (@alinaisyou.bsky.social) January 2, 2025 at 8:58 AM
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“This is not a “ban on transgender athletes,” trans journalist Gillian Branstetter stated on Bluesky. “[I]t’s a sex testing mandate.” As we’ve seen in past scenarios, bills like this don’t just victimize trans athletes, but anyone who doesn’t conform to a certain idea of cis womanhood.
Related
Some folks have nothing better to do than create trans panic narratives…even around cis people!
“This is how they went after the entire LGBTQ+ community in Florida by claiming the ‘Don’t say LGBTQ+’ bill was to ‘protect children,” commented queer media consultant Alyssa MacKenzie on Bluesky in response to the screenshotted bill. “It was to remove any reference of trans people in history. And just like this bill will be used to target trans people, it’ll target ALL LGBTQ+ people.”
As we’ve seen before, it’s an extremely slippery slope between forcing people to be excluded based on their assigned gender at birth and mandating increasingly invasive measures to “prove” someone’s sex.
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