Trans Guidance Ruling: Actual Facts
While doing a short talk on 21st Century gender today, I felt I had to say something about the news that the WH will not be supporting trans students’ bathroom use.
Here’s a few things we know:
- the attempted suicide rate for trans people is 41%
- the Obergefell SCOTUS ruling legalizing same sex marriage correlates with a decrease in suicides by LGBTQ+ youth
- trans people are at risk of violence, bullying, and harassment in bathrooms, not cis people
- men do not to pretend to be trans or get more access to women to sexually assault them. rapists are usually known to their victims.
- men who do rape and sexually assault generally do not get convicted
- trans people do not sexually assault, harass, or bully cis people while in bathrooms
- there are approximately 150,000 students in the US who identify as trans
All of which, added up, means that this tiny, marginalized, misunderstood minority of trans people need safe access to bathrooms, that they need bathrooms to get an education, that there is little risk to cisgender students when trans students use the bathroom, and that this whole idea that this is about preventing violence against women or children is completely fucking ridiculous, unfounded, and frankly, insulting to every woman and every feminist and every survivor (including the male ones) of sexual violence in this goddamned country.
Here’s NCTE’s FAQ on what the withdrawal of guidance means.
Love to all the trans people out there. I’m with you.
Donate.
PayPal now has a cool option to create a donate link, so I did:
https://www.paypal.me/helenboydbooks
Recently I surprised a friend who was under the (incorrect) assumption that professors make a lot of money. They don’t. I’m not working for a non-profit, so I don’t get paid that way either. And while I’m happy that I get to do a lot of events of various kinds, even educators need to pay their bills.
So if you like what I do, consider donating.
Here’s a short list of what I do on the regular:
- run an online group for partners of trans people
- run the MHB community forums
- answer calls / find resources for people who need them
And here’s an idea of what I do in the space of a month:
- Talkback for tonight’s performance of Hydrogen Jukebox at Lawrence.
- Next Friday a cultural competency lecture on gender diversity, also at Lawrence
- Next Saturday a workshop on trans advocacy for trans families at the WI LGBTQ Summit
- I’ll be around to answer questions at an ‘I Am Jazz’ reading at the Appleton Public Library
- A few weeks later, I’ll do the keynote for a fundraiser for Rainbow Over Wisconsin.
Obviously when I do talk for organizations and companies, they pay me, but when I work for LGBTQ events, educational resources, or trans specific orgs, I don’t charge.