TWIBS: Kansas Lawmakers Send Me Into Apoplectic Rage
Aly Gibbs screams into the void at the Kansas state legislature, which is evil and must be dismantled brick by brick, for stealing trans people’s licenses.
Opinion by Aly Gibbs
This Week in Barrel Scraping (TWIBS) is Assigned Media’s longest running column! Every Friday, Aly Gibbs digs deep from the well of transphobia and finds the most obnoxious, goofy thing transphobes have said or obsessed over during the week and tears it to shreds.
Hey guys! Hope you’re here to tune into seven or eight minutes of righteous indignation from Aly Gibbs, because that’s what I’ve got for you today.
Here are the facts: In early February, we briefly reported on Kansas House Bill 2426, a piece of legislation introduced (alongside transgender bathroom bans) that would sweepingly invalidate the altered driver’s license and birth certificate of every trans Kansan, and force them to pay to have those documents reissued bearing their assigned sex at birth.
As you probably know by now, that bill ultimately passed in the form of House Substitute for Senate Bill No. 244. Kansas Governor Laura Kelly vetoed the bill, but her veto was overruled by Kansas state lawmakers, and as of Thursday trans Kansans’ IDs have been invalidated. Some of them received mail informing them of the change (but not nearly everybody, as evidenced by Assigned founder Evan Urquhart’s interview with a trans Kansan named Juniper), but because the bill went into effect immediately and without any grace period, merely driving to the DMV to get their license reissued could result in being charged with a class B misdemeanor, the consequences of which can be up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.
This is, to say the least, unbearably tragic. It is perhaps the most direct and aggressive attack on trans Americans since this culture war began more than ten years ago. Like most of you, I am beside myself with grief, and terrified by the historic parallels between the current moment and other noteworthy acts of genocidal aggression from fascist states.
Eclipsing that fear and uncertainty, however, is a much more pronounced feeling:
Incandescent fucking rage.
That these insufferable bastards would wage war so openly and unapologetically against my community inspires in me an anger that can scarcely be contained. Ten years ago, North Carolina passed a bathroom bill that was so disastrous, so universally reviled, that the NBA relocated its All-Star game and companies like Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Dow Chemical—serious heavies in the corporate sector—pressured state legislators to redact the law.
At the time, it seemed like the far-right’s political pivot from demonizing lesbian, gay and bisexual Americans to demonizing trans Americans was absolutely doomed. They lost Obergefell v. Hodges and turned to our community in hopes of clawing back some victory against progress, in hopes of finding an easier target to bully and restrict the civil liberties of… and, for a while, we thought we may have won that battle before it even started.
We were wrong.
In the years since HB 2, we have watched far-right online influencers and politicians work to spread the insidious narrative that our community is somehow dangerous. That we are all inherently sexual predators, that trans women are out to steal from “real” women, or even that trans people are somehow disproportionately responsible for mass shootings. Each of these lies is projection; as a result of what little we have seen of the FBI’s investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, it has become increasingly clear that wealthy, powerful cisgender men engaged in a child sexual abuse conspiracy are largely responsible for the culture war being waged against us. Those same wealthy, powerful cisgender men have bought up corporate media to ensure that the news you receive is as aligned with the fascist state as possible. Meanwhile, Donald Trump (who is featured in the Epstein files countless times) occasionally points out that he’d like to extend his unconstitutional, unlawful Nazi regime beyond the established limits of presidential terms.
All of these things piss me off more than I can express in words, spoken or written. I am disgusted. I am indignant. I am righteously angry, and I hope you are too, because no matter how scared we feel, this is a war and we must remain committed to fighting every single battle and skirmish as fiercely as possible. In and outside of courtrooms, in the news, in the state legislatures, on social media. Everywhere that trans people can exist, we must exist, loudly and in opposition to these rabid ghouls who want to see us eradicated.
I am setting aside my fear because it can’t help me now. In its place, I will exude a determination to protect and support our community in any way I can. If you are outside Christofascist American nationalist gender norms, you are part of my community. We are all enlisted, now, and we must fight for our lives if we have any hope of seeing a brighter tomorrow.
I have no doubt that we will see a better future than these people want for us. We will win this fight, and I’m looking forward to celebrating with all of you when we do.
Aly Gibbs (She/They) is a trans writer who reports on news important to the queer community.
