Two Anti-Queer Stories You May Have Missed
We can’t let the increasing audacity of the anti-trans movement be swept up in the 24-hour news cycle.
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It’s been a busy week over here at Transing Boundaries.
From being quoted in an excellent reported piece on the state of diversity and inclusion for women, trans people, people of color, and beyond in the secular advocacy world by Chrissy Stroop over at The Flytrap, to my tiktok comments being flooded with people calling me a heretic for daring to suggest that Radical Traditionalist Catholicism is not the only way to practice Catholicism, to the election of a new pope (thoughts on that coming next week, I want some time to research and digest because those feelings are to put it lightly, complicated), my social media feeds have been truly a clusterfuck of content lately.
So when I was trying to figure out what to write for the Friday blog I wanted to revisit two stories that popped up in between all of that that you might have missed.
As bathroom bans have become increasingly prevalent, trans advocates (including myself) have been warning about the fact that it will eventually lead to the policing of gender expression, even for cisgender women who do not meet the power that be’s standard of femininity ad nauseam. And that certainly was proven true by the story out of Boston that broke early this week about Elizabeth Victor and Ansley Baker, a same-sex couple who were using the public restroom at the Liberty Hotel during a Kentucky Derby party. According to Victor, she was approached by a hotel security guard while her girlfriend was using a stall, demanding that Baker provide proof of her biological sex, demanding ID and pulling at Baker’s pants while she was still in the stall.
In a May 6 interview with CBS Baker described the incident:
“All of a sudden there was banging on the door,” Baker said. “I pulled my shorts up. I hadn’t even tied them. One of the security guards was there telling me to get out of the bathroom, that I was a man in the women’s bathroom." As they were being escorted out of the restroom, Baker told the outlet that other women waiting in line heckled her. "Someone said, 'Get him out of here,' referring to me. 'He's a creep,' also referring to me," she said.
After being removed from the restroom, hotel staff demanded to see ID to prove Baker’s sex, and the couple was ultimately told to leave the hotel. The hotel’s formal statement claimed that they were removed because one of the women “put their hands” on a member of the security staff during the altercation, but forgive me for being skeptical about that being the sole reason for their removal.
Both Baker and Victoria are cisgender women, and even more importantly, Massachusetts does not prohibit people using public restrooms, locker rooms, or changing rooms in line with their gender identity. From what I can make out the couple had done nothing objectionable that would have been out of place in a public restroom either. Meaning that even if either of them had been trans, they had done nothing to legally justify Baker’s removal.
Nothing that is, except for the fact that Baker presents more masculinely.
Baker has short hair, and while I do not know if she identifies as butch or masc specifically, she certainly falls into the category of gender-nonconforming. Gender nonconforming women have always been harassed in public restrooms, but in my professional opinion as an attorney and policy guy, these issues are being exacerbated in the modern era by the anti-trans panic that has been overtaking the United States. Much of the point of this flood of anti-trans legislation is not necessarily to get it to pass, though that is certainly an added bonus in the eyes of the Christian nationalist movement, but to get people to pre-police gender and gender identity, scaring people into changing their public presentation into being palatable to the white Christian supremacist gender standard. Vox reported on this phenomenon all the way back in 2016, and it seems like it’s only going to get worse.
Now let’s be clear here, no one, cis or trans, deserves to be harassed in a public restroom. People should have the fundamental right to access the restroom when they need to without fear of harm and harassment. Trans people are not a threat in public restrooms, in fact, a study of sexual violence and privacy crimes in public restrooms in Massachusetts showed no statistically significant difference between rates of sexual violence in comparable cities with trans bathroom protections vs. without. But it's important to understand that the gender policing of Christian nationalism will not stop with trans people.
Trans liberation is the liberation of free expression.
This very much feels like a repeating of the historical mistakes of the past. I’ve had conversations with butch queer elders over the years where they mention not only harassment in public restrooms and similar spaces, but in being caught up during raids in gay bars where trans women and drag queens would be violently rounded up by the police. And in fact it seems that we are headed back to those days as well, as evidenced by our second story.
On May 2, the same weekend that Baker and Victoria were harassed, police conducted a raid on a Pittsburgh gay bar during a drag show featuring Amanda Lepore. The 133 patrons, along with staff and performers were forced to wait outside, in the rain, while 25 armed police officers in bullet proof vests, alongside firefighters and liquor compliance conducted a “compliance check.” In a statement made by Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey, the raid “was driven by a report to the city’s Bureau of Fire, specifically asking for a check on overcrowding[.]” The identity of who reported the bar is unknown, and while the bar officially has a max occupancy of 70, it had completed renovations expanding the space during COVID, and has been waiting for an updated permit from the city, meaning the city was well aware of the expansion when the report was made. The event host, a performer who goes by the name of Indica, stated that she had been tipped off about the raid by undercover officers, meaning that there were even more members of law enforcement present. Interestingly, some police officers reportedly asked Amanda Lepore for pictures while everyone was waiting on the sidewalk.
The event that was raided is a recurring one, not dissimilar to the weekly drag shows at many other gay bars across the country. It seems from what I can tell that yes, it was bigger than normal, with Amanda Lepore drawing a larger crowd. And yes, max occupancy regulations exist for a reason, being one of the biggest examples of the phrase "regulations are written in blood." But I fail to see how that reasonably merits anything beyond maybe a couple of firefighters checking in, much less dozens of police officers and other law enforcement officers.
This too brings to mind an ugly and frightening history. Never forget that Pride as we now know it started because of a raid on the Stonewall Inn in New York City. Raids on gay bars hold a horrifying history of an era of police harassment and violent criminalization for queer people in the United States. And while they haven’t gone away, they too are being exacerbated by the recent rise in obscenity laws, drag bans, the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), and other laws that seek to characterize queer existence as “pornographic.” The more the Christian nationalist movement builds a social moral panic around our existence through legislation, again regardless of whether it passes, the more likely the police state will find any reason to intimidate and disrupt our community spaces.
I want to be very clear here that my strongest take, and the take that is behind all of the work on this blog, is that transphobia in the United States and other western countries (with more complexities in other countries impacted by colonialism) are driven by Imperial Christianity and its twin sibling, Christian nationalism. The Christian nationalist movement is hijacking the government to commit what are becoming increasingly terroristic actions against anyone who does not meet their standard of white Christian acceptability. Because that is what all of this amounts to: legalized terrorism.
The FBI defines terrorism in two ways, depending on if it is international or domestic:
International terrorism: Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups who are inspired by, or associated with, designated foreign terrorist organizations or nations (state-sponsored);
and
Domestic terrorism: Violent, criminal acts committed by individuals and/or groups to further ideological goals stemming from domestic influences, such as those of a political, religious, social, racial, or environmental nature.
Using the feds’ own definition, we are rapidly hurtling towards, if not already experiencing (and I do lean towards the latter, but will allow for some wiggle room so as to avoid accusations of hysteria) state-sponsored Christian terrorism in the United States, especially if we slightly alter the definition to recognize that the state doing the sponsoring gets to determine what actions are and are not “criminal.” Whether it’s hotel staff feeling empowered to demand proof of a person’s sex in a state that does not prohibit trans people using the bathroom, or armed law enforcement being deployed under suspicious pretenses to intimidate a queer community space, we’re seeing the Christian nationalist movement push their ideological goals via both private and public actors acting in ways that risk sincere physical violence.
I don’t point this out to scare anyone, but we need to recognize just how dire our situation has become. Trans people are one of a few canaries in the fascism coal mine, and the mainstream brushing off of our fears and concerns is increasingly unjustifiable. I don’t know how to communicate further that the brakes are failing, and we’re rapidly moving past the need for an emergency brake to the need for spike strips to deflate the tires and an entire team of engineers and mechanics to build a new car.
I’ve mentioned before that resisting this movement is going to look different for everyone. And I still believe that, and I don’t fault anyone who is considering or has already returned to the closet for their own safety and that of their families. Survival is also resistance. Me though? I’m not going anywhere any time soon. I’m going to keep publicly fighting and pushing, even if the consequences escalate in the way I fear they’re getting ready to in the next one to two years. I've made my peace with it.
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Kat (they/them) is a queer lawyer, activist, and theorist focusing on the intersections of law, queerness, religion, and politics, with the occasional bit of theology, political theory, and legal theory thrown in for good measure. Originally from rural southern Indiana, Kat earned their B.A. in Political Science in 2019 before continuing on to earn their J.D. in 2022, both from Indiana University- Bloomington. A former Equal Justice Works Fellow for the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Kat has spent their professional career fighting for the separation of church and state and LGBTQIA+ rights. Outside of work you can find them at a ballet or contemporary dance class, sipping on dirty shirleys at their local gay bar, or playing video games with their cat, Merlin.