Erin Reed

This bill would literally ban trans youth from unisex restrooms "unless they had bottom surgery." 1) Trans youth do not get bottom surgery. 2) North Dakota has a bill that would ban bottom surgery for trans youth. So it's an all out ban from UNISEX restrooms! It's cruel.

It's so transparent that Republicans only care about targeting trans kids and are in favor of solidifying the gender binary. The bill also explicitly legalizes intersex surgeries on intersex kids. It's entirely about targeting trans youth, and nothing else.

This is not "one lone senator submitting a crazy bill" anymore, and I want to confront that line of logic early. We are now at 7 states with proposed drag bans. Most have multiple sponsors. This bill has 4 senate sponsors.

One issue that states will have when passing anti-trans laws is that people can still obtain that care out of state or they can ship in medication, similar to the self managed abortion issue. Anti-trans and anti-abortion activists are now targeting patients and caregivers.

In the article, I show the video of exactly how this vote went down. Senator Kennedy struggled to find a reason that cis teens should be allowed breast implants while trans youth should be banned from gender affirming care. He settled on "we've done implants for a while"

Furthermore, if this bill passes, it would affect me personally. I travel to and through West Virginia fairly regularly, sometimes to hike with my son. This bill could make it illegal for me to travel there with him. Or even be in front of kids there period.

I don't think we can ignore the threat to the trans and drag communities these laws present. I worry that with the sheer number of anti-trans and anti-drag laws being proposed, and far right tactics to enforce those laws, we could see one or more passed.

It seems that Republicans are in a rush to be as cruel as possible for trans people. The bill could also ban the practice of taking your trans youth outside of the state to obtain the care, if it determines the "consent" occurred within Mississippi's lines.

They are no longer making pretense of targeting the drag community alone. Now they are explicitly targeting transgender people. Nebraska has recently done the same thing in dropping the pretense, although they don't explicitly spell out transgender people, just gender identity.

There have been over 20 legislators to cite "kids identifying as cats" to ban basic accommodations for trans people but this is the first bill to actually attempt to put it into law. This is how far anti-trans panic has gone. https://twitter.com/tylerkingkade/status/1580954470372212736

Now we have a bill that bans ALL accommodations for trans students explicitly. It seeks to erase trans people from schools and adds on the litterbox hoax at the very end of the section.

The bill banning gender affirming care for trans youth in Mississippi passed with a 78-28 margin. This bill should absolutely be taken seriously in the state. Mississippi's under-18 ban went from committee hearing to full house floor vote in under 24 hours.

Although the language is not completely clear, the language leaves it open for an overzealous prosecutor to define "consenting to administering gender affirming care to a person" to include the trans person getting the care themselves. You can consent from 18-21 in Mississippi.

The law that it applies the definition to is 61-8A-1. The penalties for "intentionally distributing, offering, or displaying to a minor any obscene matter" is 5 years in prison and $25,000. remember that this law defines "transgender exposure" as "obscene matters"

The law is SB252, and it also spells out many other provisions, such as not allowing "obscene matter" within 2,500 feet from schools. This brings us back to 3 articles laws from the 1960s. It explicitly targets "transvestite and transgender exposure, performance, or display"

Likewise, if you take medication back into the state and administer it, you would be guilty of "consenting to or administering" it.