Pride Month under assault
"Pride" doesn't quite capture the urgency of the moment, does it?
On anti-trans legislation, corporate pride, and what we can do
Dear friends,
A couple of weeks ago I got to meet with a church group here in California who wanted to learn how to show up well for their trans family in other states.
There’s good reason to want to figure that out. The ACLU is tracking 452 anti-LGBTQ bills in the U.S. this legislative session. Of those 452, 118 are anti-trans health care bills, and there’s a slew of trans athlete bans, public accommodations bans, drag bans, and education gag orders about gender identity, sexuality, and expression. Religion is being used to prop up this legislation, although as the PBS NewsHour recently covered, there is active engagement in both pro- and anti-trans legislation.
I reached out to LGBTQ activists I know in several states dealing with the most oppressive legislation (Texas, Florida, Missouri) and asked what they would have us do. I could tell how dispirited they were after years and years of fighting the right wing assaults on the queer community and women and people of color. To a person, they said, “fund the efforts to help trans people get out of this state.”
***
I’ve been thinking a lot also about the backlash against corporate pride. Partly this is because my partner, otherwise mostly conscious of his environmental impact, treats June at Target as a sacred holiday with every glittery product they offer a household necessity. That “genderfluid” coffee mug people were making fun of? I totally own one. And so the removal of a trans artist’s work and the moving of some Pride displays to the back of stores felt really personal.
I recently listened to an episode of the “If Books Could Kill” podcast focused on the backlash against corporate pride. The co-hosts talked about both Target and Bud Light (although they noted the right is targeting 20 corporations), and how in 2022, all the extremist-related deaths in the US were caused by right wing extremists. (Most news sources discussing this fact use the Anti-Defamation League’s “Murder and Extremism in the US, 2022” report from February of this year.)
The podcast I listened to talked about how corporations are generally following national trends of support and solidarity among the US population when they engage in Pride campaigns. And given the fact that the threats they receive from the right might not lead to violence but also might, they are inclined to equivocate in order to stay safe. They know the people destroying their displays and threatening violence are not the majority. But they can’t guarantee their safety. Which means they absolutely are bargaining with terrorists, which sets a scary precedent.
***
My mother and I have been watching the Netflix show Transatlantic, about the efforts to help people escape the Nazi regime in the year before the US joined the war. One of the people featured was the philosopher Walter Benjamin. The Nazis hated him for being Jewish and for engaging Marxism/materialism in his philosophy, and for actively speaking out against fascism.
One of the hosts of If Books Could Kill quoted Walter Benjamin, who risked and lost his life standing up against Nazis and fascism. The host talked about how Walter Benjamin talked about the “aestheticization of politics” as a dangerous proto-fascist occurrence. I had to look that up to understand it better. It turns out what he meant was that fascism allowed people to express their beliefs publicly without gaining any political power, and they felt seen and respected even though they gained nothing in terms of power or rights.
Benjamin, it turns out, called on us to politicize art rather than aestheticize politics. In other words, don’t let ourselves feel honored unless we are tangibly benefitting from what the politicians on our side are doing. I don’t benefit from other people’s rights being stripped away, and my outcry should be oriented towards improving conditions, not simply making others’ conditions worse.
***
There’s one last thing I’ve been thinking about, and then I’ll try to tie all of this together.
A PBS NewsHour story from March of this year talked about how the majority of Americans support trans rights…but that number is beginning to decline after years of it increasing.
I listened to a six-part podcast series about Henry Kissinger last year, and the podcast noted that Kissinger grew up in an incredibly anti-Nazi town. But the Nazis kept visiting, creating a culture of fear but also just shifting cultural narratives and norms, so that by the time the Nazis were beginning to gain power, Kissinger’s town voted majority Nazi for the first time.
The people who are threatening trans safety and freedom, who are threatening women’s and childbearing people’s reproductive rights, who are threatening Black and Brown and immigrant people’s wellbeing and lives and enfranchisement: they are using tools of violence. They are using tools of bullying. They are also taking up so much narrative space that people who aren’t constantly thinking about these issues receive far more negative messaging and queer and trans people than positive.
So I find myself thinking about Kissinger’s birthplace of Fürth, Germany. How do we make sure we’re not the next Fürth?
***
Here are a few things we can do this Pride month in light of how serious the threats against LGBTQ+ people are in this country, even if that does not seem to be the case in your immediate community:
Give to an LGBTQ+ rights organization in a state facing anti-LGBTQ+ legislative attacks. Also look into whether a local or state ACLU chapter is at work; they are often the ones keeping legislation from being implemented by taking those laws to court.
Explore what protections your organization or workplace has in place for trans people and other members of the queer community. Also, explore how those policies get implemented. A friend of mine who worked for a famously pro-trans company found that his requests for protection from harassment were unsuccessful. He noted that sometimes policies are in place to make people from the dominant culture feel good more than to actually protect people on the margins; so explore how successful implementation has been. Simply asking those questions can put on people’s radar that other people care and are watching.
Revisit some of my content from last year, on alternatives to sir/ma’am, on how using pronouns can create a rich conversation, and on using LGBTQ+ suppliers.
Let corporations know you want them to support LGBTQ+ people. In the 2010s, corporations used their power to shut down states who were passing anti-gay legislation in places like Indiana. They’re not pushing as hard right now. There’s two reasons for this: 1) the right has done a great job of creating a tsunami of bills all at once all over the country, which makes it harder to respond, and 2) they don’t think support for trans people runs as deep, so it’s not worth the risk. Remind them to do what’s right and that you’ll support them in so doing.
This one might feel thin, but talk to your friends and family about why LGBTQ+ inclusion matters to you. It turns out that 80% of Americans think they don’t know a trans person. It’s not our job to out trans people or to make trans people do all the educating work. So share your stories of how queer and trans people have made your life or your community better. Share the challenges you know they face. Share why that feels wrong to you. And if you’re not sure how to do that, think about what rights you think everyone should have. Think about the things people believe about trans people that aren’t true, and be prepared to share stories that counter those stereotypes. I suspect you’ll have more ideas about how to do this well than I do, and you know your people better than I do. The important thing is to remember we might be the best line of defense against the rollback in public opinion that a small minority of extremists is trying to effect.
This was a REALLY long newsletter. Thanks for sticking with me.
This is a scary time for a lot of us and the people we love.
As my friend Courtney said to me yesterday, “We’re all we have.” So let’s keep showing up for each other.
Thanks for being on the journey with me,
Sandhya
If you happen to be spiritual and are looking for Pride resources, I got to contribute last year to the book "Colors of Hope," which has devotional reflections and activities related to each stripe of the rainbow flag. I was assigned pink...which was in the original flag and stood for sex. Imagine having to write a devotion on that! But it turns out the reason it was part of the first flag and the reason it got removed are really interesting! You can find it HERE.