OP-ED
Trans existence challenges the fundamental tenets of fascism and exposes the fragility of authoritarian power.
By Zane McNeill ,
November 20, 2025
Hundreds of people protested in New York City, on February 3, 2025, against U.S. President Donald Trump's executive order signed January 28, 2025, to restrict gender transition procedures for people under the age of 19, and reports of a local hospital group cancelling appointments for young people in response.CHARLY TRIBALLEAU / AFP via Getty Images
In 2025, over a thousand anti-transgender bills were introduced in 49 states across the country. Of those, over 100 have passed so far this year, continuing the trend of five consecutive record-breaking years of anti-trans legislation from 2020 to 2024.
In recent years, I have watched these state-level attacks on transgender people spread across more than half the country, with many of these policies now being embraced at the federal level. In June, the Supreme Court ruled that Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care was constitutional, effectively opening the door for similar bans in 26 states. This term, the court will also consider the constitutionality of transgender sports bans — which have been adopted in 27 states — and whether states can prohibit LGBTQ conversion therapy.
At the same time, Donald Trump has made targeting transgender people, especially youth, a cornerstone of his administration’s agenda. According to Advocates for Trans Equality, “This administration has aggressively targeted trans people, seeking to force the nation back to an imaginary time where people like us didn’t exist—where gender is a prison to cage us, instead of a canvas to express our true selves.”
Since the first day of his term, he has rescinded Biden-era LGBTQ equity executive orders; signed executive orders defining sex as an “immutable biological classification”; limited diversity, equity, and inclusion governmental programs; directed agency heads to take action to end gender-affirming care for trans youth; and ended public service loan forgiveness for government employees who work with transgender youth. The Trump administration has also issued a national security memo calling people and organizations “domestic terrorists” if they support “extremism [on] gender” or “hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family,” and Vice President JD Vance has implied that being transgender, or advocating for transgender people may make you part of “a terrorist movement.”
These anti-trans policies have led to an increasingly emboldened far right movement that feels vindicated by the federal government. I know this because I have been on the receiving end of their targeting.
In September, two friends and I publishedBe Gay, Do Crime: Everyday Acts of Queer Resistance and Rebellion, a book that highlights a different moment in radical queer history each day. We wanted to curate a collection of moments in LGBTQ history that challenge the sanitized narratives often centered on wealthy, white, gay assimilationist perspectives and legal victories. Instead, we aimed to include global, people’s-history perspectives and to explore how, for hundreds of years, communities have resisted the criminalization of LGBTQ identities and fought for diverse visions of liberation using a wide range of resistance strategies.
We were excited to wear our “Be Gay, Do Crime” shirts and connect with people — especially young people — who are facing queer erasure in their classrooms, medical discrimination, and high rates of bullying and harassment. I wanted to help create this book because it is exactly the kind of resource I needed when I was a young closeted bisexual nonbinary person— to feel seen, affirmed, and welcome.
In recent years, I have watched these state-level attacks on transgender people spread across more than half the country, with many of these policies now being embraced at the federal level. In June, the Supreme Court ruled that Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care was constitutional, effectively opening the door for similar bans in 26 states. This term, the court will also consider the constitutionality of transgender sports bans — which have been adopted in 27 states — and whether states can prohibit LGBTQ conversion therapy.
At the same time, Donald Trump has made targeting transgender people, especially youth, a cornerstone of his administration’s agenda. According to Advocates for Trans Equality, “This administration has aggressively targeted trans people, seeking to force the nation back to an imaginary time where people like us didn’t exist—where gender is a prison to cage us, instead of a canvas to express our true selves.”
Since the first day of his term, he has rescinded Biden-era LGBTQ equity executive orders; signed executive orders defining sex as an “immutable biological classification”; limited diversity, equity, and inclusion governmental programs; directed agency heads to take action to end gender-affirming care for trans youth; and ended public service loan forgiveness for government employees who work with transgender youth. The Trump administration has also issued a national security memo calling people and organizations “domestic terrorists” if they support “extremism [on] gender” or “hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family,” and Vice President JD Vance has implied that being transgender, or advocating for transgender people may make you part of “a terrorist movement.”
These anti-trans policies have led to an increasingly emboldened far right movement that feels vindicated by the federal government. I know this because I have been on the receiving end of their targeting.
In September, two friends and I publishedBe Gay, Do Crime: Everyday Acts of Queer Resistance and Rebellion, a book that highlights a different moment in radical queer history each day. We wanted to curate a collection of moments in LGBTQ history that challenge the sanitized narratives often centered on wealthy, white, gay assimilationist perspectives and legal victories. Instead, we aimed to include global, people’s-history perspectives and to explore how, for hundreds of years, communities have resisted the criminalization of LGBTQ identities and fought for diverse visions of liberation using a wide range of resistance strategies.
We were excited to wear our “Be Gay, Do Crime” shirts and connect with people — especially young people — who are facing queer erasure in their classrooms, medical discrimination, and high rates of bullying and harassment. I wanted to help create this book because it is exactly the kind of resource I needed when I was a young closeted bisexual nonbinary person— to feel seen, affirmed, and welcome.
Be Gay Do Crime was released by PM Press in September 2025.Zane McNeill
Yet after Charlie Kirk’s murder on September 10, the far right was eager to blame my community — a pattern it follows after nearly every act of gun violence to avoid addressing gun control. The week after our book was published, a self-described “investigative journalist” (who was previously arrested after posting photos on X of a woman in a grocery store wearing a keffiyeh “for the purpose of terrifying, harassing, or embarrassing” her) shared a post about our book, calling it a “blueprint for ‘Queer Rebellion.’” A poster for an event for the book at Firestorm Books featuring one of the other editors garnered the attention of far right influencers like Andy Ngo and organizations including the Manhattan Institute, the National Conservative, and Catturd, a far right troll on X favored by Elon Musk.
Libs of TikTok, a notorious anti-LGBTQ page with 4.5 million followers founded by right-wing propagandist Chaya Raichik, called the book event poster “a symbol of lgbtq t*rrorism.” One commenter asked, “So when do we classify them as terrorists?” Another demanded that the government “put them in mental institutions and don’t let them out till they prove they can behave.” Others tagged the FBI, the Department of Justice, and Donald Trump, which might be funny if our government weren’t actively surveilling the web and actively trying to criminalize anti-fascist organizing, transgender people, and trans allies.
Efforts are underway to erase us from history, re-pathologize our identities, and push us out of public life.
I share this to emphasize how frightening it is to be transgender in the U.S. right now. Efforts are underway to erase us from history, re-pathologize our identities, and push us out of public life in an attempt to justify the surveillance and criminalization of our communities and to make it easier to enact and inspire violence against us.
In fact, as a result of years of anti-trans rhetoric, transgender people are experiencing rising levels of harassment, violence, anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation. Since 2024, 55 percent of transgender people have taken steps to be less visible, and many transgender youth and their families have been forced to leave red states, only to face the loss of gender-affirming care even in “safe haven” states. Some have even fled the country entirely.
At the same time, the LGBTQ suicide hotline has been defunded, making it clear that anti-trans policies are intended to kill us, making every transgender suicide a murder that falls squarely on the hands of politicians. According to Advocates for Trans Equality’s 2025 Trans Day of Remembrance Report, 27 transgender people were murdered and 21 died by suicide from November 2024 through October 2025. The actual numbers are likely higher due to widespread misgendering in news reporting.
But we will not stop fighting. Our very existence challenges the fundamental tenets of fascism and exposes the fragility of authoritarian power. We show that gender is diverse and mutable. We challenge the authoritarian myth that people are born into fixed categories and exist only to reproduce for the nationalist state. Instead, trans and intersex people show that people can find joy in their bodies and resist the rigid binary of woman/man and the heterosexuality on which authoritarianism depends. We are powerful, beautiful, and free — and that terrifies them.
Yet after Charlie Kirk’s murder on September 10, the far right was eager to blame my community — a pattern it follows after nearly every act of gun violence to avoid addressing gun control. The week after our book was published, a self-described “investigative journalist” (who was previously arrested after posting photos on X of a woman in a grocery store wearing a keffiyeh “for the purpose of terrifying, harassing, or embarrassing” her) shared a post about our book, calling it a “blueprint for ‘Queer Rebellion.’” A poster for an event for the book at Firestorm Books featuring one of the other editors garnered the attention of far right influencers like Andy Ngo and organizations including the Manhattan Institute, the National Conservative, and Catturd, a far right troll on X favored by Elon Musk.
Libs of TikTok, a notorious anti-LGBTQ page with 4.5 million followers founded by right-wing propagandist Chaya Raichik, called the book event poster “a symbol of lgbtq t*rrorism.” One commenter asked, “So when do we classify them as terrorists?” Another demanded that the government “put them in mental institutions and don’t let them out till they prove they can behave.” Others tagged the FBI, the Department of Justice, and Donald Trump, which might be funny if our government weren’t actively surveilling the web and actively trying to criminalize anti-fascist organizing, transgender people, and trans allies.
Efforts are underway to erase us from history, re-pathologize our identities, and push us out of public life.
I share this to emphasize how frightening it is to be transgender in the U.S. right now. Efforts are underway to erase us from history, re-pathologize our identities, and push us out of public life in an attempt to justify the surveillance and criminalization of our communities and to make it easier to enact and inspire violence against us.
In fact, as a result of years of anti-trans rhetoric, transgender people are experiencing rising levels of harassment, violence, anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation. Since 2024, 55 percent of transgender people have taken steps to be less visible, and many transgender youth and their families have been forced to leave red states, only to face the loss of gender-affirming care even in “safe haven” states. Some have even fled the country entirely.
At the same time, the LGBTQ suicide hotline has been defunded, making it clear that anti-trans policies are intended to kill us, making every transgender suicide a murder that falls squarely on the hands of politicians. According to Advocates for Trans Equality’s 2025 Trans Day of Remembrance Report, 27 transgender people were murdered and 21 died by suicide from November 2024 through October 2025. The actual numbers are likely higher due to widespread misgendering in news reporting.
But we will not stop fighting. Our very existence challenges the fundamental tenets of fascism and exposes the fragility of authoritarian power. We show that gender is diverse and mutable. We challenge the authoritarian myth that people are born into fixed categories and exist only to reproduce for the nationalist state. Instead, trans and intersex people show that people can find joy in their bodies and resist the rigid binary of woman/man and the heterosexuality on which authoritarianism depends. We are powerful, beautiful, and free — and that terrifies them.
.JPG){kind=spacer}
No comments:
Post a Comment