Sometimes, progressivism feels like a bargaining game with convenience. Political issues often come with their own set of politics. Socioeconomic consequences, legal logistics and partisan ploys convolute the basic foundation of any political issue: empathy.
The third question on the Massachusetts ballot this election cycle is no exception.
Question 3 asks if the state of Massachusetts should uphold the current protections in place for transgender people.
As of now, discrimination against transgender people in public spaces is illegal due to a bipartisan bill backed by Republican Gov. Charlie Baker that was passed into law in 2016 — a bill that the transgender community and its allies fought to pass for years.
As of now, these protections are also being threatened.
As I was phone-banking for the Yes on 3 campaign, I spoke to active Massachusetts voters to encourage them to vote “yes” on Question 3. Many of the voters I spoke to were older folk, many of whom had not heard of the question at all, and many of whom were somewhat unsure of what transgender rights entailed. What I mostly noticed while speaking to them was a focus on the use of bathrooms and how the law (which has already been in place) would affect public restrooms.
S.B. 2407 prohibits discrimination in all public spaces, like restaurants, transit, the airport, literally anywhere that isn’t home or work — expanded from a 2011 law that prohibits discrimination based on gender identity in areas of housing, employment, and post-secondary education.
Essentially, transphobic discrimination is prohibited in private sectors, but Question 3 suggests that public spaces should be fair game.
Question 3 frames transgender expression to be an issue of public safety rather than gender identity. This violently transphobic perspective arose from the aforementioned foundation of any political issue: empathy, or the lack thereof.
One man who I spoke to on the phone while campaigning talked about his four daughters whose safety he would be concerned for if a man would be allowed to enter the women’s restroom. Despite this analysis being a gross misrepresentation of gender identity, it also reflects a self-centric mindset that pervades the conservative school of thought. For a party that focuses heavily on individual rights, the Republican party justifies discriminative policies by framing them as protective measures for public safety.
S.B. 2407 does not promise gender-neutral bathroom everywhere, nor gender-neutral public spaces. We are a long ways away from that. But it does promise that transgender folk are protected by the law if they were to experience discrimination based on their gender identity, meaning if a transgender man were to go to the men’s restroom in a public place, he may do so without being harassed or asked to leave. That same idea exists for transwomen and non-binary people, and this protection expands to every public space.
Cisgender people are not threatened by transpeople. They are threatened by other cisgender people taking advantage of transgender protections, and transpeople are paying the price.
All it took was 32,000 signatures out of Massachusetts’ 4.5 million person voting population to get Question 3 onto the ballot, highlighting a blatant truth about today’s political climate: the country is moving backward rather than forward.
Transgender folk in Massachusetts are also not the only transfolk whose rights are being threatened. In 2017, the Trump administration signed a military ban into law that prohibited transgender people from serving. More recently, the Department of Health and Human Services is leading an effort to legally define gender as a permanent and biological condition determined at birth, essentially eradicating the distinction between gender and sex, invalidating the gender identity of an estimated 1.4 million Americans who identify as transgender.
Transgender people have been fighting for protections for far too long for them to be stripped away. Moreover, the right for an individual’s identity to be acknowledged by their country should be a right afforded to everyone. Now, transpeople are fighting not only for the right to exist safe from harassment, but the right to exist at all. It’s fair time this country starts honoring progressive policies and building onto them rather than breaking them down. This election cycle, I hope you voted with empathy, voted with compassion and voted “yes” on 3.
