Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality

by Helen Joyce

era are routinely deployed in support of gender self-identification. To cite just one striking example, when North Carolina passed a state ‘bathroom law’ in 2016 that barred people of one sex from facilities intended for the other, the Department of Justice sued the state, alleging discrimination (the law was repealed a year later in the face of a boycott organised by the ACLU). ‘This is not the first time that we have seen discriminatory responses to historic moments of progress for our nation,’ declared then-justice secretary Loretta Lynch – as it happens, a black woman from North Carolina. ‘We saw it in the Jim Crow laws that followed the Emancipation Proclamation. We saw it in fierce and widespread resistance to Brown v. Board of Education [the Supreme Court ruling that ordered school desegregation] . . . It was not so very long ago that states, including North Carolina, had signs above restrooms, water fountains and on public accommodations keeping people out based on a distinction without a difference.’