Solidarity with Our Trans Coworkers

November 20 was Trans Day of Remembrance, which honors the lives of trans people lost to anti-trans violence. The day before, there was a mass shooting at a gay bar in Colorado Springs.

As of this writing more than 100 anti-trans bills have been introduced across the United States. These bills are aimed at restricting transgender youth from receiving gender-affirming health care, excluding them from playing sports on teams matching their gender and making it difficult for them to use public restrooms. In addition, there have been more than 40 bills attempting to limit what teachers can say about LGBTQ people and over a dozen “religious freedom” bills, some of which would allow health-care workers to deny care to patients if it violates their conscience. The ACLU is tracking all these bills — you can find that tracker here.

Put bluntly, our country is in the midst of another moral panic:

“A moral panic is a widespread fear, most often an irrational one, that someone or something is a threat to the values, safety, and interests of a community or society at large. Typically, a moral panic is perpetuated by the news media, fueled by politicians, and often results in the passage of new laws or policies that target the source of the panic. In this way, moral panic can foster increased social control.” (Ashley Crossman, ThoughtCo)

 Here are some well-known moral panics in American history:

What we are seeing now is outlined in the above definition of a moral panic: new laws and policies. Hateful rhetoric against trans people is linked to the violence against them. What is driving this series of legislative attacks? How is it that more than 100 anti-trans bills have appeared in state legislatures just this year? State legislators are being heavily influenced by conservative and right-wing organizations to introduce these bills — well-funded organizations such as:

  • Alliance Defending Freedom. ADF is a conservative Christian legal-advocacy organization with chapters across the United States and Europe. ADF has been fighting against LGBTQ equality since the organization was founded in 1994. ProPublica reported that that the organization’s total revenue for 2019 was $60,949,233, almost all from private contributions.

  • The Heritage Foundation. Heritage, founded in 1973, is perhaps the most influential conservative think tank in the United States. In the 1990s, Heritage was one of the most aggressively anti-gay forces in the country. Its 2018 annual report listed revenue of $86,808,369, over half which comes from private contributions.

  • American Legislative Exchange Commission. ALEC, also founded in 1973, brings together conservative legislators, activists, donors and corporate leaders to push policies at the local level. ALEC is known for writing “model legislation,” pre-written bills that politicians can copy outright or adapt to take back to their home legislatures. In 2021, ALEC CEO Lisa Nelson attended the 40th anniversary meeting of the Council for National Policy and discussed ALEC’s participation in the Back to Neutral coalition, which brings together groups “urging American corporations to cease their radical political activism and return to their core missions…providing their customers the best possible products and services to maximize shareholders’ return on investment.” The organization’s 2020 taxes reported $7,978,103 in total revenue, again mostly from private contributions.

The Back to Neutral stance is particularly insidious as it positions neutrality as both desirable and possible. There is no neutrality in a country where transphobia, ableism, homophobia, sexism and racism exist — and have existed for hundreds of years. To desire “neutrality” in the face of these prejudices to allow them to continue unchallenged.

It’s also telling that this coalition’s main worries are customer satisfaction and shareholder investments. Concern regarding the treatment of workers in absent. It shouldn’t come as a shock that Heritage and ALEC are also known for their aggressive anti-union stances. Dividing working-class people has been a tried-and-true strategy for the ruling elite. Even as America’s infrastructure fails, cost of living rises faster than wages and social safety nets disappear, these right-wing forces would have us believe that trans people are the biggest existential threat our nation faces.

Meanwhile, in its 2015 report, the National Center for Transgender Equality noted that:

  • More than three-quarters of respondents who were out or perceived as transgender at some point between kindergarten and 12th grade reported experiencing some form of mistreatment, such as being verbally harassed, prohibited from dressing according to their gender identity, disciplined more harshly or physically or sexually assaulted.

  • The unemployment rate among respondents was three times higher than the unemployment rate in the general U.S. population.

  • One in six respondents who had ever been employed reported having lost a job because of their gender identity or expression.

Unions are built on the concept of solidarity — working people looking out for each other. You know what that looks like. It’s what we did with Local 328’s recent fight for a new contract. We demanded dignity, for ourselves and for each other — dignity through fair wages and dignity through freedom from harassment and discrimination. We must have solidarity with our trans coworkers and union members — here at OHSU, and elsewhere in the world.

Resources:

TJ Acena3 Comments