The blue tsunami left trans people behind and you might be, too

By Chris Talbot, a trans masc nonbinary queer femboi who is so, so, so tired of this

…put pressure on yourself, your elected representatives, and the organizations where you have sway to protect and support trans people and especially trans children in this moment. Volunteer your time, talent, ties, testimony, or treasure with trans-led organizations doing the work. We have an uphill battle to conduct here and we can’t do it alone.

On November 3—my birthday—in Colorado—a supposed blue state—the general public was tasked to vote on the continued care and dignity of transgender children. At 9:24 am on Friday, November 6, the final Proposition’s results were declared officially, and the electorate did not come through. Both passed with very narrow margins.

Proposition 134 will restrict transgender students’ participation in K-12 and collegiate school sports and could affect their ability to participate in school communities and activities. Proposition 135 will make it unlawful for healthcare professionals to perform gender-affirming care to minors as gender-affirming care is currently defined by Colorado law by specifically prohibiting surgical care.

Prior to this election, Colorado was known as a “sanctuary state” where families of trans youth could go for gender-affirming care and where trans people of all ages enjoyed some of the nation’s best protections. In fact, Erin Reed had named Colorado one of the most protective states, and specifically named our rights to comprehensive health insurance laws and legal enforcement for gender-affirming healthcare as two reasons why we were listed that way.

Similar ballot measures passed in Arizona, Nebraska, and Washington—another previously protective state.

As I sit here a bit stressed, disheveled, and unwashed at 1:58 pm, here are the unedited things I would like to share with our allies, things I would like the nonprofit industrial complex to learn about this election, and a message I want to share with trans youth who are feeling helpless and isolated in this moment.

To the Trans Youth Around the Nation:

I don’t want to say “it gets better” or “everything will be okay.” I can’t promise those things and I don’t think they’re true. Things get better and they get worse and then better… and that’s been the pattern for any marginalized group throughout our history here in the United States.

What I do want to say is that we get better.

For as long as people have targeted our community, we’ve banded together to create the supports that we need. From William Dorsey Swann’s drag balls in the 1880s, to Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries’ mutual aid network and S.T.A.R house in the 1970s, to the Ballroom scene and Houses in the 1970s through today, to the free Trans Masc Weightlifting class offered by Joy Movement Collective where I spent my birthday/election day at, we have always created spaces where we can survive and thrive. And now, we have more connection with each other, thanks to the internet, and can organize across great distances and share advocacy techniques that have worked.

And our tried and true allies get better, too.

In Colorado, the Propositions were short ballot campaigns, which means that there was only a few months to organize against them. But 501(c)3s and (c)4s mobilized quickly to combat the misinformation from the anti-trans organizations pushing these ballot measures. One Colorado, Families Not Politics, Rocky Mountain Equality, Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, Inside Out Youth Services, ACLU Colorado, and many more I’m probably missing did what they could to protect you. They learned important things in the process and will be able to keep moving the needle towards self determination for you in the future.

Another thing I need to say, emphatically, is that this outcome does not reflect on you. I know it can feel like if people vote against your rights that they hate you, but it’s truly that they don’t know you or anyone like you. In my experience, when people say something to me against trans people (or Indigenous people, or Asian people, or queer people, or Scorpios), they’ll always add, “but not you, obviously!” They don’t realize that I’m not an exception; their view on trans people has been purposefully distorted by extremists who spent millions to make trans people frightening. What we truly needed was more time for volunteers to talk to more people to let them know the truth about you and me. Changing hearts and minds takes longer than one election, but the work is happening, I promise.

I know that may not be enough today. And I want you to know you can be in your feelings and feel what you want and need to feel. I’m feeling disappointed and angry myself. But it is my goal to ensure that you don’t lose hope. 

I almost lost hope many times in my life, believing it was never going to get any better and neither was I. But on Election Day, I celebrated my 44th birthday—an age I was positive I’d never see, and one that surpasses the average for trans people. My life is now filled with trans affirmation: I have three trans besties, I’m a trans leader at a trans-staffed and trans-serving organization, and my week often has at least one activity exclusively by and for trans people like me. 

I want that for you, too. If you are struggling today, please find a trusted gender-affirming adult or group that you can spend time with. Commiserate. Shout. Gather in community. Attend a rally. Do what you need to do to feel safe, loved, and supported. 

We will never stop fighting for our rights and neither will our allies. We deserve to survive and thrive, and we’ll get there. This is a moment that spurred a movement, and things will not always be like this. You are not alone and you are so, so, so loved.

To the Allies and “Allies” Inadvertently Causing Harm:

For two+ days, I continually refreshed the Associated Press’ election pages on Proposition 134 and 135, holding my breath as cisgender people around the country posted Instagram celebrations about the blue tsunami, declaring “gender transition for everyone!” and laughing.

I want you to think about what kind of message this sends. Not only are you making trans identity the punchline and playing in our faces, but the anti-trans bigots that have been fed a steady stream of Fox News are seeing their worst fears being “proven” all over the internet.

Their fears involve forced gender “transgenderism” and reassignemnt—the very thing you’re now confirming to them was your goal all along. (Keep in mind political satire literacy has been very low for that demographic.) Do you think that a group of people who have been purposefully taught to hate trans people so much so that they believe schools put litter boxes in restrooms for kids who identify as cats are going to notice that it’s shitposting coming from their cisgender colleagues and neighbors and take it up with them? Or do you think their fear and hatred towards trans people will grow as they see these posts? 

Don’t paint bigger targets on our backs. Celebrate, yes. But keep your celebrations away from the anti-trans talking points that MAGA already believes and fears most.

In seeing the rhetoric from these campaigns and the lack of pushback from most Democratic candidates and voters, I’ve been thinking a lot about my teens and early twenties when George W. Bush was president and Sanctity of Marriage Constitutional Amendments were being proposed all around the country, including in my home state at the time. 

I did silly little actions with my GSA, like “marrying” my best friend Caroline in front of one of the school buildings. But I also volunteered with Fair Wisconsin doing database entry and learning who of my friends, neighbors, and professors were voting against my right to marry, and why. I spent months hearing the worst things about myself, and watching people I cared about buy into the hateful rhetoric.

(This was after all the major queer human rights organizations refused to even take up the anti-bathroom bills sweeping the nation, giving up on trans issues altogether to ensure that cisgender queer people could marry.)

Baby trans Chris and their friends from GSA in a mock wedding on the sidewalk in front of a school building.

For the last few months, similar hateful rhetoric is what children all around the nation were hearing about themselves. Children in Arizona, Colorado, Nebraska, Missouri, and Washington were seeing the fear-mongering pamphlets that were sent to their homes.

And now, even our “allies” are using them as the punchline while declaring a sweeping victory for “everyone.” 

But the victory isn’t for “everyone.” It certainly isn’t for trans kids and in a lot of the won elections for that blue tsunami, it isn’t for any trans person. 

As they often do (and as the exit numbers proved they absolutely didn’t need to), establishment Democrats left trans people in the dust. Instead of standing up against anti-trans bigotry like Abdul El-Sayed did, continually and unapologetically, many participated in moving the Overton window towards more hatred, stoking more fear, agreeing with their Republican opponents that trans people are gross, confused, evil, or dangerous. 

That does something to a child. 

I know because it did a lot to me when I experienced it and I didn’t have a familial or other support system to combat that rhetoric. In my case, it made me distrustful of everyone, isolated, and suicidal (until I discovered spite as a reason to stick around). I don’t want that for today’s trans children and I need our allies, representatives, and the nonprofit industrial complex to step up and share a different story for them.

Push your elected representatives to pick up trans advocacy. Over the course of the election, we kept hearing that “the trans issue” was an 80-20 issue, and Democrats continually threw trans people under the bus to get their 80. When the votes came in, “the trans issue” was 52-48 in Colorado, 56.5-43.5 in Washington, 59-41 in Arizona, and 65-32 in Nebraska. That’s nowhere near 80-20! And in Colorado, it could have been swayed if our candidates had been doing some of the lift the nonprofits carried in demystifying and humanizing the community.

In fact, put pressure on yourself, your elected representatives, and the organizations where you have sway to protect and support trans people and especially trans children in this moment. Volunteer your time, talent, ties, testimony, or treasure with trans-led organizations doing the work. We have an uphill battle to conduct here and we can’t do it alone.

To the Organizations in the Nonprofit Industrial Complex:

Thank you so much to the organizations that worked tirelessly to try and change the outcomes for trans children. Your work was miraculous, necessary, and so, so appreciated.

If that wasn’t your organization, it’s important for you to normalize and support trans people in this moment.

I want you to pay attention to who supported, campaigned, and paid for these anti-trans ballot measures. In Colorado, that included Jeff Coors of the Adolph Coors Foundation, who donated $25k of his money to help ensure Propositions 133, 134, and 135 passed. After you’ve taken note, I want you to reject their money both in drink-for-a-cause events and for Pride. For real. I’ve asked this repeatedly of Denver Pride and they continued to take money from Coors—a company that has had an incredibly long history of funding the campaigns of anti-2TLGBIQA+ politicians—making them the headlining sponsor of the Pride Parade itself. After countless years of many of us saying the same thing, the headlining sponsor was eventually changed to Vizzy Hard Seltzer—a subsidiary owned by Molson Coors Beverage Co. 

Stop selling us out for sponsorship money. Point blank, period. 

When companies that fund anti-trans hate are the sponsors and their products have a monopoly at the event, that means our community is being made complicit in our own oppression. We the people funded the anti-trans ballot measures in Colorado because we funded Molson Coors Beverage Co because Denver Pride continually made them the only show at Pride when that money could have gone to the many queer-owned breweries in Colorado instead. 

Beyond money, I want you to think about what you’re saying to combat the anti-trans rhetoric that has taken over our society. Short ballot campaigns reward fear, which is why anti-trans lobbyists keep bringing them and choosing that strategy. But as the campaign in Colorado showed, having a real conversation and showing our neighbors who trans people really are makes a huge difference.

In August, only 19% of voters in Colorado firmly opposed both measures. On Tuesday, 48% of the voting public voted “no” on both Propositions. This happened because nonprofits in Colorado mobilized people to show up and show out. Just 709 volunteers had 16,621 conversations, moving 70% of the voters they spoke to from a maybe to a “no” vote.

Anti-trans rhetoric has been increasing in the public sphere for the last decade. The anti-trans lobby poured hundreds of millions of dollars into this election to promote anti-trans narratives and to pass all the anti-trans bills across the nation. And way too many nonprofits chose to remain silent.

If one conversation has a 70% chance of converting someone from possibly backing an anti-trans bill to seeing the humanity of and voting to support trans people, nonprofits (if they care about the liberation of us all) need to be doing this work all the time.

Normalize trans people as a practice. Support the trans people who are in your organization. Speak out against anti-trans rhetoric whenever you hear it. 

The same voters who passed the anti-trans Propositions also created a supermajority in both chambers. That’s simultaneously a hard thing to hold as a trans person—because it means that they likely share my values but don’t value me—but it also means that all they needed was a conversation. 

So start having it.

If you want to learn how the conversations moved 70% of undecided voters, take the virtual Speak from the Heart: Storyteller Training for Trans Liberation on Wednesday, November 11 from One Colorado. And then get to talking to people.