This past year was a massive one for transgender visibility, and the conversation that began in mainstream America in 2015 will continue to grow and evolve. A fight looms between those recycling the same hateful rhetoric used against people of color, Jews, or women, and those want to embrace diversity by protecting and empowering minorities. Beyond the singular Woman of the Year, here are just a few of the moments from 2015 that will have lasting impact on lives in the non-binary and transgender community.
Make no mistake: The argument is never about transgender humans peeing — it’s about transgender humans being.
Pope Francis compares trans people to nuclear weapons, while Reform Judaism unequivocally embraces equality.
In February, the shepherd of the planet’s 1.25 billion Catholics wrote in a new book, "Let's think of the nuclear arms, of the possibility to annihilate in a few instants a very high number of human beings…or of the gender theory, that does not recognize the order of creation." He doubled down in March: “Gender theory is an error of the human mind that leads to so much confusion," he said.
Meanwhile, the Union for Reform Judaism, which guides affiliated American synagogues serving roughly 10% of the world’s 14 million Jews, sweepingly affirmed its “commitment to the full equality, inclusion, and acceptance of people of all gender identities and gender expressions,” and will encourage “physical site needs that ensure dignity and safety.”
These statements don't represent the beliefs of all Catholics or Jews, but the difference a global leader preaching dangerous thinking that can lead families and communities to abandon their children, or worse, try to “fix” them. This is especially problematic in the heavily Catholic developing world, where there are fewer places to turn for help. As more religious communities open their arms to trans people, Catholicism will fall further behind modern times.
This year proves there is a place in organized religion for any trans person who chooses, it just might not be the sect you were assigned at birth.
Photo: REX/Shutterstock.
The 2016 Republican presidential nominees felt compelled to weigh in on transgender Issues.
The Garden State gets a mention for Republican Gov. Chris Christie’s second veto of a bill that would allow trans individuals in New Jersey to update vital records without genital surgery. Not everyone wants surgery, can access it, or is healthy enough for it. But transgender people do need documents that correspond to their identity. Idaho, Ohio, and Tennessee still do not allow trans people to make changes at all. Clearly, trans people must choose wisely where to be born.
Christie claimed, “That’s not what I wanted the law to be in New Jersey. It doesn’t make any sense to me, and that’s why I vetoed it again.” He also said the bills lacked “appropriate safeguards,” despite endorsements from legal and medical authorities.
Another GOP presidential contender, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, claimed the Colorado Planned Parenthood shooter “was registered as an independent and as a woman and a transgendered leftist activist." Although the source of this speculation was widely dismissed, Cruz linked the country’s 700,000 peaceful transfolk to anti-choice terrorism. A trans activist is more likely to get hormone prescriptions at a local Planned Parenthood or volunteer there as a patient escort than to attack it.
Candidate Ben Carson — an actual physician — asked, “How about we have a transgender bathroom? It is not fair for them to make everybody else uncomfortable.” Should they drink from special fountains, too? Meanwhile, Mike Huckabee revealed his inner creep. “I'm pretty sure that I would have found my feminine side and said, ‘Coach, I think I'd rather shower with the girls today,’” he said. Despite progress of trans people winning over hearts and minds just by existing, 2015 reminded them that much of our nation, and perhaps its future leaders, view them as inferior fraudulent perverted terrorists.
Photo: MediaPunch/REX/Shutterstock.
Chelsea Manning will receive hormones in prison.
Whistleblower Chelsea Manning is serving 35 years in a military prison for her role in feeding information to WikiLeaks. Manning came out as trans just after her conviction by an Army tribunal. This year, she successfully appealed military policy to add medically necessary transition treatment to her health care while incarcerated. Critics have questioned whether taxpayers should fund these expenses, but a better question is: Why do inmates receive free health care, while the working poor struggle to afford it?
In 2015, we continued to debunk the myth that gender transition is prohibitively expensive. A November Journal of General Internal Medicine article looked at the cost-effectiveness of trans benefits. The result: “The budget impact [is] approximately 1.6 cents per member per month [and holds] good value for reducing the risk of negative endpoints —HIV, depression, suicidality, and drug abuse.” The Affordable Care Act and many state-level decisions are upholding that insurers must include transition-related care, but many people still struggle to get coverage.
Photo: U.S. Army/AP Photo.
The end is near for the U.S. ban on trans military service.
Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’s 2011 repeal did not change military medical standards, which exclude those with “transsexualism, exhibitionism, transvestism, voyeurism, and other paraphilias.” Coming out, or being outed as trans, meant risking immediate discharge or disqualification from enlisting at all. As of July, the Pentagon halted these dismissals.
Some trans soldiers, such as former Navy Seal Kristin Beck, have received millions of dollars in precision training over their distinguished careers. Our armed forces must stop forcing choices between duty and personal authenticity. Beyond 2015, we will discover just how the nation will support its approximately 15,500 active and 134,000 transgender veterans.
Photo: Kent Nishimura/For The Washington Post/Getty Images
Trans people care about marriage equality, too.
For a single day in June, the 50 states glowed with rainbows. For transgender individuals, the Supreme Court ruling makes moot any question over birth sex, transition status, paperwork consistency, or whether a people consider themselves within the binary or male or female at all. Marriages can no longer be voided if a partner comes out or transitions, nor can those be grounds to question our parenting or withhold custody of children. It is a relief to owe no explanations, and leave the details of love where they belong: between the consenting adults who found it within each other.
Photo: David McNew/Getty Images.
Nikki Araguz Loyd wins her widow’s benefits.
Nikki Araguz Loyd, lost her husband, Captain Thomas Araguz, in 2011, in the line of duty as a firefighter. His family sued to strip her spousal rights and kept her from her stepchildren. Despite being legally a female — down to her birth certificate — a Texas judge annulled her marriage simply because she had been born male, ruling it an illegal same-sex union. After she appealed and the Supreme Court affirmed the right to wed regardless of gender, Araguz Loyd was able to restore her marriage and will finally receive death benefits.
Photo: Michael Zamora/Corpus Christi Caller-Times/AP Photo.
Aiden Dowling is runner-up for Men’s Health magazine cover contest.
Trans women didn't own all the headlines in 2015. Many belonged to Aiden Dowling— bodybuilder, heartthrob, and owner of his own custom clothing shop. He and others like him are expanding society’s definition of “men’s” health, which is incorporating new vocabulary for concepts like “gestational daddies” — transgender males who carry pregnancies.
As a reminder: If you have rely on the contents of a guy's pants as the measure of his manhood, there must have been nothing else standing out first — qualities that include, but are hardly limited to: honesty, loyalty, dependability, selflessness, handiness, hunkiness, and (when groomed) hairiness.
Photo: Courtesy Of @Alionsfear
Activist Jennicet Gutiérrez interrupts President Obama, raising voice on immigration.
Undocumented trans woman Jennicet Gutiérrez raised her voice at a White House Pride celebration, prompting a response by the president, and a security escort out of the room. Gutiérrez risked her own deportation, but her heckling went viral, raising concerns over trans immigrants who are kept by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) alongside males detainees, placing them at exceptional risk of physical and sexual abuse. in addition to access to medical care for trans needs, this remains a problem in many prison systems, whether civilian, military, or immigration. Transgender immigrants often flee persecution in their home countries, which they will face again if deported.
Just days after Gutiérrez’s protest, ICE issued a memorandum outlining the standards for placement of adult transgender detainees. Late this year, amid the stories surrounding the influx of Syrian refugees to our shores, the White House indicated it was setting aside spots for particularly urgent cases, including Syrian LGBT applicants for asylum.
Photo: Courtesy Of Jennicet Gutiérrez.
Transgender people are still dying.
We leave 2015 bittersweetly, pausing to remember more than 20 murdered transgender individuals reported in the U.S. this year — disproportionately women of color, as well as just as many reported youth suicides, and those whose names we will never know. We cry for Jennifer Laude of the Philippines, whose killer, U.S. Marine Joseph Pemberton, was convicted by a Filipino court in December of a count of homicide, rather than premeditated murder. Having claimed a “trans panic” defense for strangling her and leaving her for dead, because he was shocked when she disclosed herself, he stands to face only 12 years in prison rather than a life sentence.
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