How 2022 Became the Year Trans Hate Went Mainstream
It was 2014, and Gavin Grimm had just told his mom that he was transgender. Gavin was almost 15, and about to start his sophomore year at a Gloucester County high school in Virginia. Before school began, he went with his mom to ask the school’s administration if he could use the boy’s restroom. Initially, the school allowed it.
But about two months later, the school board implemented a new, restrictive bathroom policy and said that Grimm would either have to use a unisex bathroom, or use the girls’ washroom—the one that corresponded to his gender assigned at birth. Grimm sued the school board with support from the American Civil Liberties Union, and the case made its way through a variety of courts.
In 2021, after nearly seven years of fighting and after he had already graduated, Grimm won. “What I did, what my legal team did, what other trans people in this nation with similar cases have done, it mattered, it made a difference,” Grimm told VICE News. This massive legal victory meant that the U.S. court system upheld trans rights, and recognized the discriminatory nature of restrictive bathroom policies.
Today, however, Grimm is disillusioned.
“It feels like the needle moved a lot less than it felt like it would be back in 2018 when we were having this conversation,” Grimm told VICE News. “The victory was important, but it wasn't the tack to that conversation that I was hoping it would be.”
Grimm has every right to be disillusioned: In so many ways, this year in particular has been devastating as trans rights face attack after attack. Even as victories for LGBTQ people mount, anti-trans rhetoric and legislation has not slowed down, and now it appears GOP leaders and their supporters have manufactured a culture war over transgender and gender nonconforming identities. Hate targeting LGBTQ people, especially trans people and drag queens, has reverberated across the country, and hundreds of bills targeting LGBTQ people have been introduced—about half of them have focused on trans people. States have also tried to equate gender-affirming care with child abuse: In Texas, the Department of Family and Protective Services was tasked with investigating families with trans kids.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/5d383z/anti-trans-violence-2022
Why is it that people, especially RepubliKKKans, can't simply mind their own damn business???
