In the first major speech of the opening night of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Sen. Ron Johnson, speaking in his home state, said Democrats’ “fringe agenda includes biological males competing against girls and the sexualization and indoctrination of our children,” a reference to trans athletes and what he sees as liberal support for trans children. Later that evening, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia was even more explicit. “Let me state this clearly: There are only two genders,” she said, as the crowd erupted into cheers. “And we are made in God’s image, amen. And we won’t shy away from speaking that simple truth ever.”
Greene has been at the center of multiple transphobic incidents during her congressional career, perhaps most notably when she used signage outside her office to taunt her then-office neighbor, former Rep. Marie Newman, D-Ill., who has a transgender daughter.
Trans pundits and intellectuals have been warning that these days would eventually come. And now they’re here.
Sean O’Brien, who this week became the first Teamsters president to attend the convention, later used his social media account to endorse a written piece from Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., that included this sentence: “The C-suite long ago sold out the United States, shuttering factories in the homeland and gutting American jobs, while using the profits to push diversity, equity, and inclusion and the religion of the trans flag.”
O’Brien’s post was followed by a response from the Teamsters social media account, which said that “unions gain nothing from endorsing the racist, misogynistic, and anti-trans politics of the far right.” But that public rebuke of the Teamsters leader and the Republican senator was deleted.
Even former President Donald Trump got in a dig about “men playing in women’s sports.”
Trans pundits and intellectuals have been warning that these days would eventually come. And now they’re here. The party that met in Milwaukee this week is largely unpopular and has few legislative ideas or successes. But it has had success with its anti-trans agenda. Hundreds of transphobic and punitive anti-trans laws have been put on the books throughout red states in the Deep South and Mountain West over the last four years.
It’s not surprising, then, that when putting on a national show to tell voters the story of the 2024 Republican Party, transphobia would lead.
It’s clear from the rhetoric at the convention that Republicans hope to escalate their state-level attacks on trans rights into a full-blown national campaign. There have been hints that the party’s proposed pornography ban is actually designed to permanently silence trans public figures such as myself and that it seeks to drive trans life completely underground. It’s a terrifying time to be transgender in America, and many of my trans friends who have the means are looking to flee the country should Republicans retake power. We’ve already seen a mass internal migration of trans people and families with trans kids fleeing oppressive red states with vehement anti-trans laws already in force. A Republican takeover of the federal government this fall would turn that migration international. As for me, I’m not leaving. I have kids here and loving family members. I will resist with everything I have until I’m in the ground. We have a phrase in the trans community that I find myself thinking of often these days: “death before detransition.” The phrase couldn’t be more appropriate right now as I stare down the specter of another Trump term and thousands of Republicans who hate people like me potentially taking over the federal government. For trans people in America, this election will shape our individual futures for the rest of our lives. Death before detransition: If conservatives want a country free of trans people, these are my terms.
Katelyn Burns is a freelance journalist based in New England. 
