David Remnick: Since the beginning of this year, legislatures around the country have introduced hundreds of bills that restrict, at least in some way, the rights of trans Americans.

Erin Reed: As of right now, we are at around 500 as of this morning, and last year, we had 550 the entire year.

David Remnick: Erin Reed is a journalist and trans advocate who compiles the data from around the country.

Erin Reed: In fact, last year, that 550 number, that was twice as many as the year before.

David Remnick: Now, these bills are not all being voted into law, but these aren't isolated cases. It's happening in state houses all over the country. On the program today, I'll be speaking with Judith Butler, one of the most influential thinkers on this subject, about what's motivating the attack on trans and LGBT rights. First, we wanted to hear from Erin Reed about the wave of anti-trans legislation in the United States. She talked with producer Jeffrey Masters.

Jeffrey Masters: Erin, we're talking about these anti-trans bills more broadly, but I want to get specific for a second. Using Florida as an example, which has passed and proposed some of the most restrictive laws in the country, can you talk about what those bills are and how they're affecting people who live there?

Erin Reed: Florida just last year passed a ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth, which is something many people have recognized. What also happened there was they passed a restriction on transgender adults that very closely mirror the trap laws that were used to target abortion providers over the last two decades, basically stating that nurse practitioners could no longer provide care, providing misinformation forms very similar to the abortion misinformation forms that we've seen and more.

These restrictions essentially are designed so that many clinics cannot meet those restrictions and therefore must close down. Another thing that I'll mention is that Florida has a bathroom ban, a criminal bathroom ban that could throw you in jail for up to a year for using the bathroom of your gender identity. That makes it a very difficult place for trans people to travel in already.

Jeffrey Masters: How is something like a bathroom ban enforced, if at all?

Erin Reed: We have seen, actually surprisingly, a lack of enforcement in Florida. The fear is still there. I think that a large way that the bathroom bans are enforced is through self-policing or through making people too scared to go to a bathroom. However, this has caught the eye of the DeSantis administration in Florida, which has issued rule changes to mandate that colleges and universities begin to enforce this legislation. They don't tell them how to, like, how do you do it? Do you require everybody to carry a birth certificate? Do you card people as they go into the bathroom?

The reality of this is that it's going to be enforced on people who are publicly trans, who are out as trans, and it's going to be used to basically call police whenever somebody says, "Oh, there's a trans person," or "there's a man in the bathroom," is what's likely going to happen. We've actually seen this. There are videos of police being called against "men in the bathroom" who actually turn out to be cisgender women who are gender nonconforming, which are common targets of the legislation whenever police are actually called.

Jeffrey Masters: My home state is North Carolina, and in 2016, I know you know this, but they passed the HB2, which, among other things, banned trans people from using the proper bathroom that aligns with their gender identities. We saw, in response, a tremendous backlash from the business community, and also the sports world, the NBA, the NCAA, both move games outside the state. Why do you think we're not seeing a similar response today from the business community?

Erin Reed: You're right. PayPal pulled out. We saw $3.7 billion in revenue lost by the state of North Carolina. It was an unmitigated disaster. We actually have information from some email leaks that came out, as well as some very public statements from these organizations that oppose trans care. They licked their wounds for four years and created a plan to bring this issue back up. Their plan was multifold. Number one, they focused on several states at once. It was much harder for a business to boycott multiple states than it is to boycott a single state in North Carolina.

Number two, they focused on business-friendly states. These are states like Florida and Texas, where it's very hard for a corporation to boycott. Then there's a third rung of this. I think this is a very important rung to note because it's something that queer people have had to experience from these major anti-trans influencers. That is, there is a sort of violent hate component to this, where now if a corporation comes out in favor of trans people, they're going to get bomb threats. They're going to get real threats to the lives of employees.

We saw what happened when Target had a Pride display. In multiple Target stores across the country, there were videos of conservatives walking in, videotaping themselves throwing things on the ground, yelling at employees, getting confrontational. The company received bomb threats as well, resulting in them putting Pride displays at the back of the store or eliminating them altogether.

News Excerpt: Just over a week from Pride Month in June, the company is removing certain items and making changes to its LGBTQ merchandise nationwide. Target releases--

Erin Reed: That kind of an impact is, it's very scary, I think, for many of these people that might, otherwise, want to stand up for trans employees and trans people.

Jeffrey Masters: Are there any examples of businesses that are pushing back on any of these states?

Erin Reed: There are multiple businesses that have, I think, gathered through the chambers of commerce. While the businesses themselves have not been as public because of that backlash, what we have seen is the chambers of commerce come and testify against anti-trans legislation stating that, "Hey, this is going to hurt our local business community. It's going to make LGBTQ people not want to move here. It's going to make companies not want to hold conferences here anymore." We saw this in Missouri. We saw this in Ohio. We've seen this in a number of states where the chambers of commerce have come out strongly against the bills.

I want to note that the trans community is very small. We don't take up very much space in public. We are 0.5 to 1% of the American public. We are at a natural disadvantage to people that have billions of dollars and huge platforms. I think that what fighting back looks like, what a successful resistance looks like is an allyship with reproductive health care movements, with disability movements, with other movements that are also marginalized. I am pleased to say that as somebody that's been reporting on this for a long time now, I'm seeing those connections made. I think that the movement building that is going on right now is very important. I think that people are recognizing the ways in which these fights are very closely interconnected.

David Remnick: Erin Reed's newsletter is called Erin in the Morning, and it comes out on Substack.

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