SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
trans rights
Anyone Telling You to Fear Your Trans Neighbors Is Lying to Hide Their Real Agenda
Mostly, they’re hoping you won’t notice the precedents they’re setting to take away your healthcare and invade your privacy.
Apr 04, 2026
It’s a distressing time to be a trans person just trying to mind your business.
This March, the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention issued its third “red flag” warning about the risk of “anti-trans genocide” in the United States, warning about laws and policies designed to “criminalize” the entire trans community “based solely on its existence.”
In February, Kansas invalidated the IDs of all trans people in the state with a single day’s notice. Finally, just recently, the International Olympic Committee mandated that all persons competing in women’s events must submit to genetic screening—which will also ban all trans women and many intersex people from participating in Olympic sports.
As a trans person trying to walk my dog, pay my bills, and answer work emails in time to fold the laundry and make dinner, it’s profoundly stressful to say the least.
Dozens and dozens of peer-reviewed, scientifically valid studies in dozens of countries and contexts show that letting people make their own choices about how they live their own lives in their own bodies is very good for their well-being.
But it’s been this way for years. The tide of contemporary anti-trans legislation has grown from 2016’s famous (and failed) “bathroom bill” in North Carolina to a wave of speculative legislation funded by conservative billionaires creating division by stoking manufactured mass hysteria.
The numbers are staggering: a 668% increase in anti-trans legislation from 2021 to 2025, according to the Lemkin Institute. Since we all huddled down on our couches and started a sourdough hobby in 2020, the Institute says, we’ve had six consecutive record-breaking years in anti-trans bills introduced across the country.
But the horrors don’t stop in the legislatures.
A recent executive order banning trans people from the military calls trans people inherently dishonest and dishonorable. The US 4th Circuit Court of Appeals just ruled that states can legally compel trans adults like me to “appreciate [our] sex” by banning our access to gender-affirming healthcare. And when a Texan politician called billionaires a more dangerous 1% of the population than trans people, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s pastor said he hoped the man would be crucified.
For all the hate we’re getting these days, you’d think trans women were scooping up Olympic gold medals and firebombing suburban dog parks.
The reality is much less exciting, underwhelming even. We remain, by and large, humans with less money; less political power; and maybe more opinions on animation, philosophy, and colored hair dye than the average bear.
It’s estimated that there are less than 10 trans athletes of any gender in the entire NCAA. Only one openly trans woman has competed in the entire history of the Olympic games, and she didn’t place. In fact, the British Journal of Sports Medicine recently found no scientific evidence that trans women have a single competitive advantage over cisgender women in sports.
But dozens and dozens of peer-reviewed, scientifically valid studies in dozens of countries and contexts show that letting people make their own choices about how they live their own lives in their own bodies is very good for their well-being.
The American Medical Association, the largest association of physicians in the United States, just affirmed that hormone therapy, sex-reassignment surgeries, and other procedures that change a person’s physical sex characteristics are successful and medically necessary. These procedures have some of the lowest regret rates around: lower than hip replacements, lower than cosmetic surgeries, perhaps even lower than Harry Potter tattoos.
The people telling you to fear your trans neighbors are lying to your face and inventing a scary fantasy. Mostly, they’re hoping you won’t notice the precedents they’re setting to take away your healthcare, invade your privacy, and send you on a surprise trip to the DMV.
And if you’re a woman in sports, they’ll want your genetic data. I haven’t looked at a history book in awhile but I’m pretty sure that’s a red flag.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trump's GOP Attacked Our Rights Mercilessly in 2025, But We Will Not Be Erased
The Trump-Vance administration believed they could turn back the clock on the LGBTQI+ community by cutting services, weaponizing laws and regulations, and trying to erase our identities. They have deeply underestimated us.
Jan 14, 2026
As a Black queer advocate and policy professional, I have never been naive about politics. But 2025 surpassed even cynics’ worst fears. The Trump-Vance administration didn’t just change laws; it dismantled protections, erased identities, stripped away care, and declared that some lives don’t matter.
Black and brown communities already battling racialized policing, economic precarity, and limited access to care suffered new blows on multiple fronts. For women, girls, transgender youth, disabled people, queer folks, immigrants, the message was clear: Not only your rights, but your bodies, your health, and your lives are expendable.
President Donald Trump’s January 20, 2025 executive order “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth” redefined gender as a binary fixed from birth. Across agencies, “gender” became “sex,” and gender identity was erased from federal recognition and protections.
Trump’s January 24 executive order reinstating Hyde Amendment-style restrictions cut virtually all federal funding for abortion, and clawed back health funding for reproductive services. The 1977 Hyde Amendment banned using federal funds for abortion (except in cases of rape or incest or a life-threatening pregnancy). Doubling down on it disproportionately impacts women, girls, low-income people, and communities of color.
Communities of color, LGBTQI+ people, women, girls, and transgender youth are not disappearing. We are organizing; we are resisting; we are making care, dignity, and justice real.
By mid-2025, all federal support for LGBTQI-specific crisis services through the national suicide prevention hotline 988 was suspended—a direct blow to people who rely on them when they have nowhere else to turn.
Over the course of the year, health-equity protections, data collection on sexual orientation and gender identity, nondiscrimination guidance, and federal support for queer and trans-inclusive care were all revoked.
Taken together, these actions aren’t just policy changes; they symbolize structural denial of the needs, identities, and very existence of people the administration doesn’t want to see in its vision for America, or indeed the world.
Last year it overhauled how the US reports on human rights, categorizing abortion access, gender-affirming care, and protections for LGBTQI+ people as “human rights violations” while ignoring systemic racism, police violence, economic inequality, and state-sanctioned oppression. This brazen rewriting of global norms on human rights gives cover to oppressive regimes and undermines US leadership and moral standing.
So where do we go from here?
We need to hold ourselves accountable for building real equity in real time. We must reclaim care as a form of resistance. Our laws at every level must guarantee access to healthcare, behavioral health services, gender-affirming care, mental health support, comprehensive data collection, and nondiscrimination protections. They must guarantee reproductive autonomy and community safety for everyone, and especially for those denied these rights the longest. Care, autonomy, and safety are imperative at all times, and can’t be suspended or soft-pedalled when ideological winds shift.
Those most impacted by the shifts must shape the path forward: Women of color should be at the center of reproductive health and justice efforts. Queer people from historically marginalized communities should guide design of mental health and crisis-response systems. Transgender youth should lead national conversations about their own safety and autonomy.
2025 was not just a bleak moment in our history; it is a warning about our future. It shows how quickly rights can be erased, how destructive the raw exercise of power can be, and who gets scapegoated for the ensuing chaos.
But it also demonstrates our strength and resolve. Communities of color, LGBTQI+ people, women, girls, and transgender youth are not disappearing. We are organizing; we are resisting; we are making care, dignity, and justice real.
The Trump-Vance administration believed they could turn back the clock by cutting services, weaponizing laws and regulations, and trying to erase our identities. They have deeply underestimated us. We are not waiting for permission to exist. We are still here. We are still building. And we will not be erased.
Keep ReadingShow Less
The Psychology of Resistance
What famous experiments really teach us about fighting authoritarianism today.
Jul 06, 2025
In my last article, I detailed how U.S. President Donald Trump misunderstands the fundamental truth about human nature. He projects his own transactional worldview onto all of us, imagining that we're all determined to step on others to rise. I pointed out that our true nature is represented by the millions who have taken to the streets to speak out against injustices, by people like Mahmoud Kahlil (finally free!), and the mothers and fathers facing deportation whose children cry out as masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials abduct them outside schools. Our fundamental nature is rooted in care for one another. We are not killers but carers.
But what do we do with that information? How does that help us resist what's happening now?
To answer this, I want to talk about psychology, my disciplinary home, and what we can learn from some foundational studies about manipulation, power, and resistance. If you've taken psychology in high school or college, you've likely learned about these three infamous experiments: Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment, Sherif's Robber's Cave Experiment, and Milgram's shock experiments.
If evil is inevitable, then resistance is pointless.
The rudimentary takeaway from each might sound like this: Ordinary people will do extraordinarily evil things in certain circumstances. This conclusion reinforces a cynical view of humanity that is both lazy and tragically disempowering.
Cynicism about human nature, fueled by the findings from these experiments, is lazy because it stops us from asking harder questions about systems, power, and how change actually happens. If we're all monsters deep down, then there's no point in organizing, no point in building better institutions, no point in fighting for justice. We can just shrug our shoulders and say, "Well, I guess this is who we are," and watch each other burn.
This kind of fatalism is exactly what those in power want. It lets us all off the hook, we don't have to show up for each other, we don't have to do the difficult work of dismantling harmful systems and speaking truth to power, we don't have to take responsibility for preventing the continuation of harm. If evil is inevitable, then resistance is pointless.
The cynical view, supported by the "findings" of these experiments, is dangerous propaganda that serves authoritarians.
What Really Happened in Zimbardo's, Sherif's, and Milgram's Experiments
Let's first correct the record on each of these studies, because the actual truth reveals something very different about human nature and gives us a roadmap for resistance.
Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment supposedly showed that people become sadistic when given power over others. In 1971, Zimbardo recreated a prison environment in Stanford's basement, paying students to act as guards or prisoners. It quickly devolved into what appeared to be guards relishing their role as violent dominators, torturing and abusing the "prisoners." Zimbardo, who had given himself the role of the warden, allowed it all to happen and instigated much of it.
Zimbardo, Sherif, and Milgram all built their careers on lies about human nature that serve authoritarians.
While the narrative pushed by Zimbardo, that good people will become evil in certain roles, made him famous, the truth revealed by the experiment is that we will try our best to meet the parameters of an assignment that are articulated to us. The students were acting because they wanted to make Zimbardo happy. They weren't revealing some dark truth about human nature; they were trying to be good research participants, following what they thought were the experimenter's expectations.
Sherif's Robber's Cave Experiment claimed to show how easily children form hostile groups. Sherif brought boys to summer camp and arbitrarily organized them into two teams with the exciting names of the Rattlers and the Eagles. The story, according to Sherif, goes that they quickly degenerated into "wicked, disturbed, and vicious bunches of youngsters," burning flags, raiding camps, and inventing weapons made of socks and rocks.
When psychologist Gina Perry dug into the archives, she found that this was a manufactured narrative with the boys actually wanting to be friends with each other. To get the outcome Sherif wanted to report, the one that could make him famous, he had to manipulate everything, rigging games, tearing down tents themselves and blaming the other group, stopping the boys when they tried to make peace symbols for their T-shirts. When the boys figured out they were being manipulated, the experiment collapsed.
Milgram's shock experiments supposedly proved that 65% of people will follow evil orders, delivering potentially fatal electric shocks to strangers when told to do so by an authority figure. For decades, this has been cited as proof that we're all potential Nazis, just waiting for the right circumstances.
But when researchers finally got access to Milgram's archives, they discovered he was more director than scientist. Anyone who deviated from his script was bullied and coerced. The man in the lab coat would make eight or nine attempts to force people to continue, even coming to blows with participants who tried to stop.
Not only that but a large percentage (44%) of the participants didn't believe the study to be real, they didn't actually think they were delivering real shocks. Among those who did believe the shocks were real, the majority refused to continue.
So how did Milgram get his results? Psychologists Alex Haslam and Steve Reicher discovered that participants weren't submitting to authority; instead they were trying to help with what they believed was important scientific research. When told their contribution would benefit science, participants expressed relief: "I am happy to have been of service" and "Continue your experiments by all means as long as good can come of them." It turns out people weren't mindlessly obedient. People were being tricked into thinking they were doing good.
The Real Lessons: How to Resist
What can we learn from these manipulated experiments? The true lesson isn't about human evil, it's about how some people will do anything to establish fame and power for themselves. Zimbardo, Sherif, and Milgram all built their careers on lies about human nature that serve authoritarians.
But buried in their own data is the real story of resistance. When researchers analyzed who successfully resisted in Milgram's experiments, they found three key tactics:
- Talk to the victim—Connect with those being harmed;
- Remind those in power of their responsibility—Hold leaders accountable; and
- Repeatedly refuse to continue–Don't give up after the first "no."
We can develop these capacities through practice and education. This is one reason we must fiercely protect our universities; they are critical sites where communication skills, critical thinking, and moral courage can be cultivated. It is not surprising that college students are often on the frontlines of fighting for justice, from the civil rights movement to anti-war protests to today's demonstrations for Palestinian liberation and immigrant rights. It's why being in community and knowing our neighbors is a necessary strategy of survival and resistance. It's evidence that calling our representatives and holding them accountable actually matters. We can resist questionable authority just as those participants in Milgram's studies who refused to continue did. And we can get better at it.
Why This Matters in Trump's America
My discipline of psychology has repeatedly told us lies that benefit men seeking power. As I shared in my previous article, Trump is exploiting a myth about us being fundamentally evil because it serves him to have us believing that, even though we are actually wired toward care. When we find ourselves in situations where we're asked to dehumanize someone, to cause someone harm, we now know what to do. When psychologists peeked into the actual archives of these famous experiments, that was the truth that was revealed.
As Trump's administration invents cruel ways to tear apart our communities, as they bomb Iran to distract us from domestic cruelties, as they tell us that entire populations are threats to justify dragging us into wars, we must remember the true lessons of these experiments. Powerful men will mislead us and try to convince us to act against our nature. Elon Musk and others who hoard wealth and power tell us that empathy is weakness, that caring is "civilizational suicide," that we must choose between compassion and survival. But the protesters and a few brave lawmakers standing between ICE agents and families know better. They understand what those manipulated experiments actually prove: that our instinct is to refuse to cause harm, to protect each other, to resist when asked to participate in cruelty.
Taking a lesson from the real truth behind these experiments, we must always reach out to those who are being hurt, know them, see them as fully human, refuse to let anyone talk us into dehumanizing our fellow community members. We must relentlessly remind those in power of their responsibility to the collective good. And we must refuse, refuse, refuse to be complicit in systems of harm, no matter how they're justified to us.
Now is the time to reach out to our trans community members under attack. Now is the time to create mutual aid networks and join ICE watches in our communities. Now is the time to call our senators and refuse to let this country be dragged into war with Iran. Now is the time to refuse to give up our democracy, to refuse to turn on our immigrant community members, to hold on tight to our LGBTQ beloveds. Keep protesting. Keep refusing. Keep holding on to one another. Keep being true to our human nature.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular