Countering Transphobia & Gender Discrimination

Intersex people are born with sex characteristics (including genitals, gonads and chromosome patterns) that do not fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies. Experts estimate that up to 1.7 percent of the population are born with intersex traits. In recent years, awareness of intersex people, and recognition of the specific human rights abuses that they face, has grown, thanks to the work of intersex human rights defenders. Human rights abuses against intersex people include, but are not limited to:

The National Center for Transgender Equality is the nation’s leading social justice advocacy organization winning life-saving change for transgender people.

Transgender Law Center (TLC) is the largest national trans-led organization advocating for a world in which all people are free to define themselves and their futures. Grounded in legal expertise and committed to racial justice, TLC employs a variety of community-driven strategies to keep transgender and gender nonconforming people alive, thriving, and fighting for liberation.

Although to many the term transgender seems relatively new, its roots can be traced back to ancient civilizations. This Pride month, we’ll take a look at the history of transgender people and how they are impacted by law today.

After 36 years I now have male privilege - like a secret agent pushing feminism and undermining the patriarchy from the inside, says the writer Lee Hurley

The movement needs to rethink its rhetoric.

My history of trauma and sexual harassment didn't stop or disappear when I came out as transgender, but most of my community did.

Transgender people face disproportionately high rates of sexual violence — but our current national conversation doesn’t reflect that.

"From suffragettes to sexuality, feminist history is often told as a narrative of women united in the fight against patriarchy. But there have always been limits and fault lines in the feminist movements that centered white women's rights at the expense of all others. As scholar Kyla Schuller argues in The Trouble with White Women, white women, across political classes, have used racism and other hierarchies of power to win their own rights and expand their personal opportunities. Their white feminist politics have come at a great cost, resulting in the sustained exploitation, oppression, and silencing of women of color. The Trouble with White Women details the history of white feminist icons and their counterparts from the 1840s to the present. From Margaret Sanger, who promoted racist eugenics and was in conflict with Dr. Dorothy Ferebee, to Pauli Murray, who fought for a more radical vision of feminism against Betty Friedan's homophobic and racist ideas. Today, that tradition endures. So-called feminists continue to advocate excluding trans people from the movement and promote the Violence Against Women Act that has buttressed the greatest carceral state in the world. But as The Trouble with White Women argues, resistance to these white feminist politics has continually emerged from Black, indigenous, poor, queer, and trans women and their movements for liberation. It is only by understanding this complex legacy that feminism can build a movement that honors the radical work and lives of those who suffer most under patriarchy"--

"In a landmark book, an extraordinary young woman recounts her coming-of-age as a transgender teen--a deeply personal and empowering portrait of self-revelation, adversity, and heroism. In 2011, Marie Claire magazine published a profile of Janet Mock in which she publicly stepped forward for the first time as a trans woman. Since then, Mock has gone from covering the red carpet for People.com to advocating for all those who live within the shadows of society. Redefining Realness offers a bold new perspective on being young, multiracial, economically challenged, and transgender in America. Welcomed into the world as her parents' firstborn son, Mock set out early on to be her own person--no simple feat for a young person like herself. She struggled as the smart, determined child in a deeply loving, yet ill-equipped family that lacked money, education, and resources. Mock had to navigate her way through her teen years without parental guidance but luckily with a few close friends and mentors she overcame extremely daunting hurdles. This powerful memoir follows Mock's quest for identity, from her early gender conviction to a turbulent adolescence in Honolulu that found her transitioning through the halls of her school, self-medicating with hormones at fifteen, and flying across the world for sex reassignment surgery at just eighteen. Ever resilient, Mock emerged with a scholarship to college and moved to New York City, where she earned her masters degree, basked in the success of an enviable career, and told no one about her past. It wasn't until Mock fell for a man who called her the woman of his dreams that she felt ready to finally tell her story, becoming a fierce advocate for girls like herself. A profound statement of affirmation from a courageous woman, Redefining Realness shows as never before what it means to be a woman today and how to be yourself when you don't fit the mold created for you"--

Sex, Gender, and the Politics of ERA is the most profound and sensitive discussion to date of the way in which women responded to feminism. Drawing on extensive research and interviews, Mathews and De Hart explore the fate of the ERA in North Carolina--one of the three states targeted by both sides as essential to ratification--to reveal the dynamics that stunned supporters across America. The authors insightfully link public discourse and private feelings, placing arguments used throughout the nation in the personal contexts of women who pleaded their cases for and against equality. Beginning

"Gendered Citizenship outlines how the original conflict over the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) altered the nature of American Citizenship, creating justification for sex-specific treatment and rights that still exist today"--

"On August 26, 1920, these words became part of the United States Constitution as its Nineteenth Amendment. The requisite thirty- six states had ratified the amendment in the year since its enactment by Congress on June 4, 1919. A revolution in women's rights, spanning over seventy years, came to a quiet conclusion as Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby signed the measure into law in the privacy of his home at eight o'clock in the morning.1 None of the prominent suffrage leaders of the day, including the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) president, Carrie Chapman Catt; or the National Woman's Party (NWP) chair, Alice Paul, were at the signing.2 Catt was later invited to go to the State Department to see the proclamation, but no similar invitation was extended to the more militant Paul. Paul had been a thorn in the side of President Woodrow Wilson, with her White House picketing and willingness to be imprisoned for the vote.3 Ratification was followed by ten years of litigation- most of it in state courts- during which the meaning and scope of the Nineteenth Amendment was contested. In its most literal sense, the Nineteenth Amendment did not confer a "right" to vote per se. Rather, it simply prohibited the states or the federal government from using sex as a criterion for voter eligibility.4 In other words, its ratification meant that state and federal impediments to voting based on sex were now unconstitutional. It did not mean that all women in the United States could vote.5 As a matter of law, the Nineteenth Amendment meant that states could not prevent African American women from voting based solely on their sex. Yet vast numbers of African American women were prevented from voting in the November 1920 presidential election that followed on the heels of ratification.6 They faced the same impediments- poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses, and physical intimidation- used to prevent their male counterparts from voting after ratificat ion of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.7 Those amendments conferred citizenship on previously enslaved persons and barred state or federal restrictions on voting based on race, color, and previous condition of servitude"--

This unique book analyses the impact of international human rights on the concept of gender, demonstrating that gender emerged in the medical study of sexuality and has a complex and broad meaning beyond the sex and gender binaries often assumed by human rights law. The book illustrates which dynamics within the field of human rights hinder the expansion of the concept of gender beyond binaries and which strategies and mechanisms allow and facilitate such an expansion.

At least 150 bills have been filed by Republican lawmakers across the United States that target transgender people, with at least seven states enacting bans on gender-affirming healthcare for transgender youth. Other bills have targeted drag performers, doctors and trans adults seeking transition-related care. For more on growing conservative attacks on transgender people and the LGBTQ+ community, we speak to Chase Strangio, deputy director for trans justice with the ACLU LGBTQ & HIV Project, who says the backlash “at its core has always been about pushing trans people out of public life and eradicating transness.”

Many lawmakers continue to threaten the livelihoods of transgender people and their families. In states across the country, policymakers are targeting transgender young people with bills that prevent student-athletes from participating in the sports they love. Transgender youth want the opportunity to play sports for the same reason other young people do: to be a part of a team where they feel like they belong. Discriminatory efforts like these can make trans youth feel unwelcome on their teams, in their sports, and in their communities.

Bans on youth participation in sports that aligns with their gender identity.

View a list of legislation, organized alphabetically by state, in the below chart. Click on the bill to read more information about it, including sponsors, latest action, and its status.