I’m saying queer now

From 2023 to now, according to the Trans Legislation Tracker, there have been 1,276 anti-trans legislative bills introduced into the congresses of various states across the country. Most of the focus has been on trans athletes in sports, but for me, for visiting or possibly living in states as an adult, three that are tracked on Trans Formations Project that were passed this year stuck out in a brief scan as affecting me the most as somebody who has completely transitioned both legally and physically: MS SB2753, ID H0538, and UT HB0257. These bills seek to define sex as genetics, chromosomes, or genitalia at birth and criminalize the use of public facilities not associated with that sex or make a condition of employment that people may not be required to use your name or pronouns. Essentially, these bills make public life not only entirely impossible for transgender individuals socially but have also sought to criminalize it.

I’ve lived and worked in Idaho—that’s where I first realized I was trans—driven twice through Utah. Now I can’t even take a piss there without getting arrested.

These are only a few of the states with legislation like this. Trans Legislation Tracker notes 2021 as the infection point of anti-trans legislation, including Arkansas’ “Save Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act,” a ban on gender-affirming care which became law despite a veto by the Republican governor at the time. “Don’t Say Gay or Trans” passed the next year in Florida.

But this doesn’t stop at if I go on a road trip. This year both Georgia and Kentucky introduced and passed online censorship bills initially intended at educating minors or protecting minors against sexual assault, which were amended into censorship bills last second to apply to any materials “considered ‘harmful to minors’ if the average person would consider that it appeals to a prurient interest and if it is devoted to or principally consists of descriptions of real, simulated, or animated sexual acts or nudity, and if it lacks literary, artistic, political, or scientific interest to minors. This could be used to apply to queer and trans content,” according to Trans Formations Project. Oftentimes, these types of censorships are applied to things as simple as shirtless T-boys. Additionally, Louisiana is now requiring all publicly funded schools to report “all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) trainings or activities around race, color, sex, national origin, culture, gender identity, or sexual orientation” to their legislator, and it is unclear as for what purpose, but the bill directs to report on “bathrooms being available in the school” and “excludes any activities ‘directly affiliated’ with Title IX.” Texas “prohibits institutions of higher learning from holding diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) trainings or activities around gender identity, sexual orientation, race, color, or ethnicity, except programming developed by an attorney. It also prohibits institutions of higher learning from maintaining a DEI office or hiring an employee or third party to perform the duties of a DEI office” while Georgia is barring “schools [from] teaching anything divisive about race, sex, religion, or national origin.” It seems apparent that these online censorship bills are linked to this and extend beyond minors and queer and trans content.

With a national landscape like this, one might be wondering what it is like living in a trans refuge state. As early as 2021, Minnesota’s Governor Tim Walz signed an executive order banning conversion therapy. I am extremely grateful. I do not know where I would be without this. Even still in 2017, my parents were telling me “Gay is an addiction” and asking me to move out because I had not “recovered” after I told them I was unchanged about being gay after they coerced me into getting coffee with a renown ‘ex-gay’ (though she does not call herself that) conversion therapist while I was living with them just after I had moved back after having fallen on hard times.

An excerpt from “Everyone Bleeds” from Gene’s poetry collection Bodies in Transition

A poem based on recollections from journal entries, psych notes, and letters and reports about discrimination written at a couple hospitals across the Midwest

In April 2023, Governor Walz would sign another bill that would allow me to transition physically without fear of being committed again. After buying my own condo in June 2022, I ended up getting on testosterone. My parents and brother flipped their shit. I was forced to cut them out again to stop receiving the hate messages. Trying to educate them on trans people’s bodies while I was still learning and help them understand that I was not asking for their views, I was asking for their support—was just eating up too much time, leaving me feeling drained, and I was aware could affect me in a negative way for my mental health if I did not have the determined mindset that I did. I had work to focus on, doctor’s appointments to go to, a house to keep, and a book to write. My sister informed me several times that my parents discussed hospitalization again. They said that some people need to be hospitalized because it keeps families together, stops people from around them from suffering, and keeps the peace, while discussing my ‘mental illness,’ which is code word for me being transgender. I let her know that this time I was prepared with a full team of professionals taking care of my mental and physical health. I was not going to let anything stop me from transitioning into the body I knew was mine.

A poem imagining what it would be like to have all my legal sex documents in order even before I got them in order

For some reason, once I got my second gender-affirming surgery in August 2024, my parents seemed to change their minds a little about showing support. They made meals for recovery and bought aftercare groceries. They started calling me Gene and trying to use my pronouns. There seemed to be some progress, but there also seems to be an unwillingness to accept the previous ways they have harmed me. They are willing to acknowledge that they did them, just not that they were wrong. For example, they see introducing me to a renown ‘ex-gay’ conversion therapist when I first moved back to Minnesota, had nowhere else to go, and was physically unwell as a loving act. They do not see the trick in telling me she was receiving death threats to get me to hear her perspective as wrong. I did not nor do I care what she has to say, nor am I interested. It is a perspective I have heard all my life. I also believe it is harmful to the queer and trans community. It is a perspective that even in the safe environment of gender-affirming therapy that we covered. Unlike her, though, we don’t point to mental illness or drugs as the reason people were gay or trans and de-transitioned; we talk about it as hiding for safety because some people do not get the support they need after transitioning and feel unsafe, and how rare it is that people actually de-transition, but that it needs to be discussed. Additionally, I read in Kate Bornstein and S. Bear Bergman’s Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation that sometimes what looks like de-transitioning is actually just a variation of someone’s gender spectrum because they are genderqueer. The important thing is for trans people to be loved and supported for who they are and how they identify and allowed to explore their own resources in their own community.

That means we must be able to find them in places like Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

That means we must be able to find them online—no matter the age—kids are queer and trans, too!

One of Gene’s art pieces

That means we must stop legislating racist, sexist, and transphobic bills based in eugenics like Nazis. Have you checked your Testosterone levels lately? I’m high for a biological male.