On the morning that started writing this, I watched a legislative hearing from Ohio concerning yet another attempt to take away affirming health care from transgender youth.

I also read up on a bill pending in Virginia that would keep transgender students off their school playing fields, which including calls for “physical inspections” to keep kids and sports cis.

Oh, and that way yet another bill in Texas would ban “drag performances” under a distinct legal definition:

Take a deep dive through this proposal, and you find that this could mean that a trans person performing karaoke in an Austin or Dallas bar could run afoul of this. Right now, this bill has one supporter for certain, but the fact that this idea is even in the discussion is frightening.

At the same time, Boston Children Hospital was receiving the “all clear” after another bomb threat. After a similar incident in September, Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson took to the airwaves to say the threat was “the hospital playing the victim here”. Is it any wonder why some feel emboldened to make such threats?

Transgender Day of Remembrance is the day when transgender people, and those who support them, mourn the loss of those in our community taken violently. According to the Human Rights Campaign, 32 transgender people in the U.S. were killed due to anti-trans violence this year.

This litany leave me a state of cold fear every time we do it. I’m afraid of being number 33, or 34, or any number in this macabre roll call. Yet, I also look at violence that isn’t directly physical but no less harmful.

I think of the violence of the willful dehumanization that Lia Thomas went through. The University of Pennsylvania swimmer chased a championship dream while being misgendered, body-shamed, defamed, and held up as a threat by people seeking votes.

She was left to face it mostly alone. Her school and conference only spoke up after so many supporters, from Penn law school students, to advocates and athletes, shamed them to it.

Karleigh Webb

Covering the ugliness people brought Lia Thomas…