Over the course of one February afternoon earlier this year, Weinberg fourth-year Cyn J. went from feeling confident in their upcoming postgraduate plans to feeling pure dread and anxiety.

Cyn was in class scrolling through Twitter when they noticed that their home state of Texas was trending. Clicking on the trend, they quickly recognized the reason: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton released an opinion that providing gender-affirming healthcare to minors is child abuse under state law. Within a week, Texas Governor Greg Abbott wrote a letter instructing state agencies to follow this opinion and open up child abuse investigations for trans minors who receive gender-affirming care.

Cyn then realized that scrolling Twitter in class that day was a mistake. They were quickly overwhelmed watching their feed fill with commentary about Texas and the South at large. The worst part? They were “disappointed but not surprised.”

While it has been a few months since the initial opinion was released, these policies are still having real-life impacts on Northwestern students. By classifying gender-affirming care as child abuse, Gov. Abbott is requiring all people who work with kids to report families with transgender children attempting to seek care to the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.

Cyn was originally planning to return to their hometown of Dallas, Texas, to teach with Teach for America. “What I want to do in Texas wouldn’t be safe for myself, and it wouldn’t be safe for the people who I would be caring about, who I am actively trying to help,” Cyn said. They now plan to stay in Illinois after graduation.

“[This policy is] still going to affect me in the way I interact with people because it’s just going to be more transphobia thrown my way,” Cyn added.

Less than two months after the Texas letter was released, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed two bills which largely impacted trans youth. The first is HB 322, which requires all multi-occupancy restrooms in K-12 public schools to be divided strictly by biological sex. The second is SB 184, which prohibits minors from receiving gender-affirming medical care. Both make life significantly more difficult for trans youth in the state.

The first bill forces trans students to either find a single-stall restroom or go to a restroom that does not reflect their identity – mirroring both the “Bathroom Bill” and the “Don’t Say Gay” Bill – while also prohibiting discussions of gender identity and sexuality in classrooms in 5th grade or younger. In regards to the second bill, a minor is defined as anyone under 19. The second bill also requires school employees of any office to notify a student’s parents if they become aware that a student is trans or questioning their gender.

On top of bills targeting trans youths’ access to medical care and appropriate bathrooms, legislators in Iowa, Kansas, Idaho, Utah, Kentucky and Indiana have passed bills barring trans students from competing on sports teams that correspond with their gender identity. Of those states, both Iowa’s and Kentucky’s bans on trans students in sports have already been enacted.

Of youth between the ages of 13 and 17, only 0.7% identify as transgender and 0.44% of high school athletes are transgender. With the amount of trans people in sports being a small minority, Assistant Professor of Communication Studies TJ Billard said there are other intentions in these bills beyond just participation in sports.

Anti-trans legislation “is an attempt to remove trans kids from social life,” Billard said. “So [trans kids] and their families would basically be ostracized to the point where they might as well not exist.”

Billard described the laws currently in litigation in Alabama and Texas as “a logical conclusion of everything that’s been happening in the last few years,” as trans youth are increasingly becoming the targets of political attacks.

When Cyn returned to social media, they noticed how their social media feed went through the news cycle of the Texas letter, feeling that there seemed to be an implicit statement being made: “Well, I guess we’re just gonna ignore it until something worse happens. Or oh, now there's another [bill], there’s more states that … agree.”

“[Texas] is someone’s home,” Cyn said. “There’s like other aspects I think people aren’t considering which is ethnic and racial background in Texas. Texas is very diverse. I know people think of Texas and the Cowboys, conservatism. But it’s still a very diverse state. I came from a community that was predominantly people of color, immigrants, etc. And, for me, that felt like a very safe space.”

Cyn and Billard both cautioned against treating Texas like an isolated incidence of transphobic policy. For Cyn, this caution is intertwined by the common trope that bigotry is a uniquely Southern concept.

“Texas may be a prominent example. And it may be a large example,” Billard said. “But there’s absolutely no reason to think or believe that it couldn’t happen anywhere else or that it won’t … This isn’t an issue for Texans. It’s an issue for everyone.”

Under the legislation in Alabama, I would not have been able to receive top surgery when I was 18. The first adult I came out to was a teacher. This legislation also puts those teachers who create safe and welcoming environments for their students in difficult situations. It forces them to choose between a student’s trust and well-being and their own job.

Thumbnail image “Transgender healthcare rally” by Victoria Pickering licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.