Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is a menace to anyone who isn’t a white, cisgender, able-bodied man. We know this, but it bears repeating as we discuss the latest terrible “bill of rights” to get Paxton’s signature. Dated Sept. 7, 2022, a press release from Paxton’s office (brought to our attention thanks to a tweet from journalist Andrea Grimes) celebrates his signing of a “Women’s Bill of Rights.” Of course, Paxton being Paxton, this has nothing to do with protecting reproductive health care or wage equality or domestic violence relief, or anything else remotely valuable or important. Instead, it’s transphobic.
This “bill of rights” is described as attempting to “affirm basic biological truths” and to “fight back against the left.” The press release promises the document highlights “key biological differences” between men and women. It includes a quote from Paxton, in which he pledges to stop the “dangerous agenda” of the “radical left.”
Mind you, people on the “radical left” merely want trans women (and trans folks in general) to have access to safe, age-appropriate health care, bathrooms, and yeah, sports. Protections against discrimination at the workplace, in finding and keeping housing, and again, health care would be great too. So radical, right?
RELATED: Nora Roberts donates $50,000 to save library defunded by residents over LGBTQ books
Campaign Action
The bill of rights, unsurprisingly, is bursting with transphobia and bio-essentialism. For example, it declares that only cisgender women can become pregnant and give birth (not true—many trans men and nonbinary people can and do both of those things, for example). It also purports that cis men are “stronger,” “bigger,” and “faster” than cis women. (Again, this is untrue, as all genders come in all sizes and levels of strength and skill.) It also claims that “unique and immutable biological differences” between cis men and cis women occur not only during puberty but “before birth.”
They go on to assert they believe a person’s sex is defined only as it was determined at their time of birth. The document tries to define “female” as a person whose “biological reproductive system is developed to produce ova,” and a “male” as a person “whose biological reproductive system is developed to fertilize the ova of a female.”
It also argues that there are “legitimate reasons” to separate cis men and cis women when it comes to sports, prisons, locker rooms, domestic violence shelters, and so on. It even attempts to define “mother” as the parent of the female sex and “father” as the parent of the male sex.
Of course, intersex people don’t appear in the document at all.
I don’t generally love to dive deep into what specific transphobia folks are spewing, as I don’t think it’s always beneficial to the cause to center the specific language of hate. But given that Paxton has considerable influence in Texas (we covered, for example, how an opinion of his led to state agencies visiting the homes of trans youth with supportive parents), it is valuable to cover exactly what he and his supporters are in favor of. Why? So we better know what to fight against and how to prepare our language and strategy in order to combat this dangerous ignorance.
Discussing the language here is also important in that it reinforces what many advocates have been saying for years—reproductive health and “women’s rights” are not separate from trans rights. The fight for autonomy in abortion, for example, is the same fight for autonomy for trans folks (not to mention the fact that trans folks do want and need abortions, but I digress.)
All people deserve basic privacy, dignity, and protection from discrimination. Paxton and his lackeys just want to isolate and demonize anyone who doesn’t fit the ideals of the anti-trans extremists working on getting their voter base riled up just in time for the midterms.
The strategy is so apparent it’s almost funny… until we remember that literal lives are on the line, including those of kids.
There is no more effective way for you to help turn out infrequent but Democratic-leaning voters in key congressional districts and Senate swing states this year than Vote Forward. Sign up to write personalized letters to targeted voters from the comfort of your home, on your own schedule, using a statistically proven method and without ever having to talk to anyone at all.