Trans Day of Visibility Statement by the Women’s & LBGTQ+ Work Team of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization
On Transgender Day of Visibility, Freedom Road Socialist Organization unites with the masses of transgender people who refuse to be erased from public life. This past year saw an escalation in anti-trans Executive Orders from the Trump administration and reactionary legislation in states across the country. The struggle for visibility has been hard-fought and must be defended. Now is the time to hit the streets to demand trans liberation.
Attacks on trans healthcare have taken center stage in Trump’s anti-LGBTQ agenda. While 27 states have already enacted laws to limit gender affirming care for trans youth, Trump intends to ban this healthcare nationwide by blocking Medicaid and Medicare funding for all services at hospitals that also provide pediatric gender-affirming care. Trump has given hospitals an ultimatum: end their youth gender-affirming care programs or face bankruptcy. Already, this has resulted in a pause in care at many facilities, including those in states where gender-affirming care for youth is still protected under local law.
The Trump-appointed 4th Circuit Court takes these attacks a step further, ruling that West Virginia’s Medicaid program can exclude coverage of all gender-affirming care procedures, even for consenting adults. The decision opens the door for similar bans in other states. This was never about protecting children. Attacks on trans youth chip away at the bodily autonomy of all trans people, and we are seeing the true plans of reactionary forces take shape in real time. Our enemies seek to eliminate gender-affirming care in its entirety and to stamp trans people out of existence, and we must fight them on every front.
The civil rights of trans people in the United States are extremely uneven and precarious. Laws vary from state to state. In Kansas, the drivers licenses of trans people are being revoked en masse. Conversely, in Minnesota, a trans refuge bill was passed to protect patients and providers of gender-affirming care. Depending on where they live, trans people face bathroom bills and sports bans, are forcibly misgendered in schools, left unprotected from workplace discrimination, and more. But this polarization also offers fertile soil for the seeds of struggle. Organized resistance is the only way to beat back these attacks, defend our gains, and truly improve the conditions in the lives of transgender people.
Across the country, members of Freedom Road Socialist Organization have led the fight for trans liberation by protesting cuts to gender-affirming care, opposing anti-LGBTQ bills, rallying their communities against hate crimes, and demanding justice for stolen trans lives. FRSO is involved in yearly events for Trans Day of Visibility, Trans Day of Remembrance, as well as protests during Pride Month that revive the revolutionary spirit of Stonewall. Campaigns to lower the cost of name changes and bolster sanctuary resources for trans refugees ignite the struggle for trans liberation year-round. Where people stand and fight, there are victories to be won.
In its accelerating decline, the U.S. Empire will continue to launch repressive attacks against working and oppressed people as a means to prevent revolutionary change. We must help those fighting for liberation of any kind to see trans liberation as intertwined with their own. Visibility is only the beginning. One day, trans people will be more than visible—they will have the political power to take their destinies into their own hands.
