House Speaker Mike Johnson’s office could hear chants echoing down the halls of the U.S. Capitol building. That’s not totally unusual in Washington, but where the chants were coming from may have been: the women’s toilets. A dozen people organized by Gender Liberation Movement, including prominent trans activists Raquel Willis and Chelsea Manning, crowded the room with signs reading “Flush Bathroom Bigotry.” The scene turned into a standoff with arrests and sitting Republican Representative Nancy Mace calling them “t****y protesters”—a phrase this writer wants on a shirt.
People in most bathrooms just deal with their business and avoid eye contact. So how did this one become contested territory? The incitement came from a bill proposed by Mace that would force people to use the bathroom corresponding to their assigned gender at birth in all federal buildings. Speaker Johnson already signed off on enforcing this specifically within the Capitol building. Nancy Mace has a sick obsession with trans people’s toilet habits, having tweeted about us 362 times within 72 hours! If only this were just about her own interests. The truth is that Mace is the poster child for a Republican Party that is on the offensive leading into the new Trump administration.
What’s Behind These Attacks?
The right-wing’s focus on repressing trans people did not start with Mace and does not end in the bathroom. Over 1,000 anti-trans bills have been considered in state legislatures over the past couple of years targeting bathroom access, gender-affirming care especially for minors, self-identification rules, and access to appropriate sports teams.
Alongside attacks on immigrants and threats to our unions, the incoming Trump administration has set these attacks as a major priority. The Trump campaign spent millions of dollars on ads airing in every swing state saying “Kamala Harris is for they/them, not you” and is already making bold promises on how he will crack down on the transgender menace.
Trans people of all ages are waiting with bated breath for what new headlines each day might bring. Health care bans are already forcing trans youth around the country into unwanted and irreversible pubertal changes to their bodies. Men’s bathrooms are not a safe place for transgender women and the policies against trans bathroom access, reminiscent of segregation. Even when these bills do not pass they have an effect of whipping up transphobia and increasing the threat of hate crimes.
Issues relating to transgender people can be incredibly polarizing, which is what the right-wing’s rhetoric looks to capitalize on. For example, there is an almost equal one-third split between people who feel acceptance of trans people has gone too far, not far enough, or somewhere in between. A 2022 survey demonstrated an even division between people who believe gender is based on sex assigned at birth and people who believe the two are different.
Socialist Alternative stands unequivocally with the rights of trans people to self identify their gender, to use the bathroom corresponding to that identity, to play on the appropriate sports team, and to have full access to gender-affirming care including for trans youth. For the significant percentage of people in our schools, healthcare facilities, and workplaces who oppose these rights, it needs to be made clear that attacks on trans people are intended to drive down the resources and strength of all working class people.
We’ll take one incoming Trump administration policy just as an example. He has said that he will withdraw Medicare and Medicaid funding from any doctor who performs gender-affirming care on trans youth. By playing on fears of harm to children, the administration has been able to drive polarization on the issue of gender-affirming care for minors. The truth is that suicide attempts for trans minors shot up by 72% in years following the passage of state bans on care.
Trump does not care about children. He cares about slashing federal spending that benefits working people. Trans youth are his pathway to cuts on Medicare and also public schools as seen with the threats to school funding for schools that teach an undefined “gender ideology.”
The Working Class Needs To Take Up The Fight For Trans Rights
By far the number one issue on the minds of voters this election was the economy. If not outright supporting transphobia, racism, and misogyny, many people were willing to look the other way on these issues out of frustration with the inflation we have seen throughout the Biden administration.
The economic policies that Trump has been most bold on actually spell trouble for working class people. The tariffs he keeps bringing up will have an effect of increasing inflation. The creation of the Department of Government Efficiency with its goal of slashing the federal budget by trillions of dollars would mean dramatic cuts to social services and lead to layoffs in the public sector. One thing standing in their way is the existence of unions, but they have their eyes on those, too. He and his team have signaled a desire to make public sector labor organizing illegal.
What does it say about the Republicans that they won on economic concerns, but their biggest initial priorities are attacking immigrants and keeping trans people out of the bathroom? These are tactics meant to carry out a divide-and-rule strategy that will weaken our unions and slash our services. The emboldened right-wing is hoping that some strong blows in these areas will demoralize large sections of working people and open the space for their agenda free from the social movements that slowed them down in the first administration.
What does it say about the Democrats that they are willing to blame their losses on being “too woke”? They never ran on trans rights to begin with! The Harris campaign drove itself into the ground by gaslighting people about the state of the economy and aiming to be a continuation of a Biden administration entrenched in genocidal warfare. While protestors were occupying the Capitol building bathroom, transgender Democrat Rep. Sarah McBride was giving up the fight against anti-trans rulings that specifically targeted her! The truth is working people of all identities have more in common and at stake with each other than we do with anyone in the two parties of the billionaires.
Our class can not afford to be soft on these issues. Trans people and immigrants are not the ones reducing women’s resources or cutting across our jobs. That blame lies with the bosses and billionaires who are looking to shore up their system and hoard their profits. Our unions need to stand up against all attacks on union members. Teachers’ unions need to take up organized noncompliance against laws targeting trans youth and faculty. Nurses’ unions need to take a stand against policies intended to harm trans patients and our health care system as a whole.
Escalate The Fight!
The shit-in outside of Speaker Johnson’s office was a small but important display of what will be needed to stand up against the wave of attacks. To really stoke fear, the protestors were threatened with sexual misconduct charges which dropped to trespassing. There is a long history of queer organizers being hit with those types of charges to deter us from being out and active. To strike blows against the right requires that we call them on their threats. The courageous actions of the Capitol building protesters should be met with a wave of escalation that unions and the left should be at the front of.
If the ban on federal building bathroom access passes, then similar direct actions should be organized across the country, but the biggest challenge to the Trump agenda will need to come from broadening that fight out. Change will come from organized, class-based, mass action. In 1979 the gay rights movement had 100,000 people march on Washington, which was only possible through broad organizing efforts.
Socialist Alternative is calling for student walkouts against Trump around inauguration day. In states like Ohio which now has a bathroom law affecting colleges, opposition to these laws should be an important part of these walkouts. Looking beyond inauguration day, the Supreme Court decision on gender-affirming care bans for minors should arrive around early summer. Mass protests against these bans need to be a part of a fighting Pride month, though we also don’t need to wait!
The scapegoating of trans people by both the Republican and Democratic parties demonstrates how desperately this system requires division to maintain itself. Transphobia is an essential tool of a capitalist system in crisis like all other forms of oppression. It is essential and urgent that we resist these transphobic laws. Andour fight must be linked up to other struggles of oppressed people especially immigrants facing the threat of wide scale deportations.
A broad struggle against oppression that linked up with far-reaching demands for working people like permanently affordable housing, good union jobs, and public health care could shake the foundations of this system. If that type of movement took on a socialist character we could radically transform our society and remove the profit-driven basis for transphobia and all forms of oppression to exist.