By Rio Nero
This article is based on a speech given by the author at an Oct. 19 rally and open-mike speakout outside the Statehouse in Columbus, Ohio. The event was organized by the Central Ohio Local Committee of the Coalition to Protect Trans Lives. The group was also responsible for organizing last year’s March to Protect Trans Youth, which took place in Florida.
We picked Ohio as the location of the next National March for Trans Lives, in the spring of 2025, due to the vicious attacks on trans existence that are occurring in our state.
There are nine legislative attacks on trans people that are currently gestating in the belly of Ohio’s state government. House Bill 68, vetoed but not dead, seeks to enact the so-called “SAFE act,” which, through the language of Parent’s Rights, would make it impossible for transgender youth to access any form of gender-affirming care and would also forcibly instate sex-segregated sports from elementary school through college, with the intent to ban transgender women and girls from participating in women’s sports.
House Bill 245, with language that implies that simply being trans in public is a form of drag performance, seeks to criminalize drag performances that occur in any location where they could be witnessed by children. House Bill 151, House Bill 214, House Bill 8, and Senate Bill 83 each leverage anti-trans attacks at various levels of the educational process, seeking to ban educational and literary materials about Queer people, criminalize teachers for allowing transgender youth to present as such in school as well as for refusing to out Queer children to their parents, and give parents the right to abuse the faintest hint of gender nonconformity out of their children.
House Bill 183 bans trans students from using the bathroom that aligns with their gender; House Bill 6 independently seeks to ban trans women from participating in women’s sports; and finally, House Concurrent Resolution No. 9 seeks to ban “wokeness” in general from the military, including Queer people. Together these bills are launching a cohesive attack on the existence of gender-nonconforming and transgender people.
It is true that all of these are partisan bills, put forth by the Republican Party, and for some it would follow that the means through which to oppose these bills is to entrust our rights to the care of their political competitors, the Democratic Party. But the task of ensuring our continued existence, or of improving it, is not one that can be achieved through faith in the political competitors of the Republicans. The Democrats have met these legislative attacks on transgender people with complicit silence.
While Republicans campaigned for office through scapegoating immigrants and transgender women for the failures of capitalism, Kamala Harris didn’t offer so much as a throwaway sentence to the plight of trans and Queer people. Instead, she competed for the most anti-immigrant stance! The Biden administration, which oversaw the rampant targeting of drag and Pride events by right-wing groups in 2022 -2023, has addressed the struggle of trans and Queer people with the statement: “We draw the line at surgery for minors.” These are not the sentiments of a political party that we can rely on to protect our rights. These are the sentiments of a political party that is trying to scrape votes off of the transphobes who want us eradicated!
We are faced with the reality that capitalist political parties, though perhaps different in the voter blocs they make appeals to, are not interested in ensuring the rights of transgender and Queer people. This task falls to us. To protect the lives of Queer people, we must build our own power. This is done by organizing ourselves into democratic, decisive political formations—based in the working-class elements of the Queer community and with bottom-up leadership models—which can mobilize on behalf of the interests of transgender and Queer people.
It’s important that working-class Queer people lead the struggle because the working class runs society and has nothing to gain from making compromises with the capitalist parties—which seek only to exploit us.
Imagine if, as a result of the hypothetical instatement of House Bill 8, a school threatened to fire a teacher for using the appropriate pronouns for their trans students. If we had built well-organized coalitions for Queer rights with involvement from unionized teachers, these teachers could, with coalition support, choose to strike until the legislation is repealed. Teachers could, with enough political support, refuse to enforce the legislation en mass, rendering it useless. The same principle applies to healthcare workers and HRT bans.
Imagine if we organized to the extent that the passing of any one of these transphobic bills was met with the mobilization of multiple sectors of society’s workforce! Imagine if, in 2022, when fascist groups were terrorizing Pride events, we had organizations dedicated to Queer liberation that could have coordinated across state lines to bring out event defenses of hundreds of people, driving these fascist groups back underground.
This is what trans power would look like. There are no shortcuts through the political parties of capitalists and landlords that can win us our liberation, or even protect us in the short term. Our rights will be won as all oppressed people have won their rights historically—by forcing concessions from the ruling class. Our liberation will be won through the overthrow of the capitalist world economy and its replacement with a society that seeks to provide for people, not exploit them for profit. The political parties of capitalists and landlords will not protect us. We protect us!
We invite everyone to participate in the building of the upcoming march—to be held in Columbus, Ohio, in the spring of 2025—and the Coalition to Protect Trans Lives.
Photo credit: Workers’ Voice