Iowa just passed one of the most chilling bills ever written. Lets talk about it.
The bill, signed into law by state Governor Kim Reynolds, became the first in the country to outright strip protections for trans people.
The state of Iowa just signed into law a bill that repeals civil right protections for trans people. Let that sentence sink in for just a moment. A state has now made it legal to discriminate against a minority. This is one of the most vile anti trans laws I’ve ever seen, and its implications could potentially lead to a domino effect of laws across the States.
The bill, which was split into two identical bills, HF 583, and SF 418, passed their respective heavily Republican controlled chambers, with the former passing in the House 60-36, and the latter passing in the Senate 33-15.
But before we go any further, I want to talk directly to the Governor of Iowa, Kim Reynolds, for just a moment, and to the legislature.
Do you really think that this law will do anything good? If anything, as we have already seen with anti trans laws in the past, it will only create a more hostile environment and will further increase anti trans hatred.
This isn’t going to do what you think it will. Actually no, I lied. I think it will do exactly what you, and the Republican Party at large, want to do, which is to eradicate trans people, because you see us as predators and abusers of women. This, and many of the laws that are likely to follow, like the law proposed in Texas which would ban HRT flat out for all Texans, for example, are just furthering this. Adding the separate but equal doctrine, the same one that was used for Jim Crow laws, brings them back to the Jim Crow era, and sets a nasty, nasty precedent. That states can just rip protections from a group of people because they believe that you “can’t change who you are”. There will be blood on Gov. Reynolds hands from this bill.
Now then, let’s break down what exactly the law says, though, before we get too vitriolic.
It first starts with an establishment of definitions. Establishing females as “When used in reference to a natural person, a "female” means an individual who has, had, or will have through the course of normal development ,or would have but for a developmental anomaly, genetic anomaly, or accident ,a reproductive system that at some point produces ova, and defining males as an individual who has, had, or will have through the course of normal development ,or would have but for a developmental anomaly, genetic anomaly, or accident ,a reproductive system that at some point produces sperm.
At least they did their homework before cooking up bullshit.
Then shortly thereafter it amends previous state laws and guidelines that contain protections for trans people, removing them from the nondiscrimination section of figures. You know those blurbs that say, such and such does not discriminate hiring on the basis of? Yeah, they removed the phrase gender identity from that.
Here is an excerpt of one of the sections, relating to job hiring:
Sec.2. Section84 A.6, subsection4, paragraph a, Code 2025, is amended to read as follows: a. The department of workforce development, in consultation with the department of education ,shall establish a system that allows the department of education, school districts, charter schools, area education agencies, and accredited non-public schools to post job openings on an internet site. The system must include a mechanism for the electronic submission of job openings for posting on the internet site. The system and each job posting on the internet site must include a statement that an employer submitting a job opening for posting on the internet site will not discriminate in hiring on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, gender, age, physical disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion ,marital status, or status as a veteran.
They struck through the word gender identity, effectively saying, Hey guys! You can now just flat out not hire someone because they're trans!
Just in case you need one more piece from the law:
With this section effectively saying, You can also now just choose to pay someone less than what their salary says so because they're trans! Wage discrimination? What the hell is that?
You get the idea.
The Iowa statehouse is trying to strip rights away for their trans citizens, for what? So the R’s in the statehouse can take a victory lap saying that they are “defending women” (which we will get to)? Utter bollocks.
Speaking of, State House Judiciary Chair Steven Holt, who spearheaded this bill, in what can only be described as a colossal contradiction, says that the bill isn’t propagating discrimination at all.
I say colossal contradiction because this directly contradicts comments made by his colleague, State Senator Jason Schultz, in an interview with The Hill, saying that state law needed to pick between protecting sex and gender identity, that they couldn’t do both (even though they very well could)
“We had to pick one side or the other and not go halfway,” Schultz said Thursday.
Thankfully, this bill was met with backlash, as it should have. Protests were abundant in the statehouse, especially on Thursday, when the House and Senate were voting on it. After the House voted on the bill, boos could be heard raining down in the hallways, with chants of “No hate in our state!” and “Who’s next?” breaking out shortly after the Senate voted on the bill.
There were also impassioned speeches on the floor railing against this. Among them, was Representative Aime Wichtendahl, who is transgender herself, railing against this and noting the cruelty in the bill, saying:
“I must confess, it pains me to be here today,” Wichtendahl said. “It pains me to see how the rights of an entire group of people can be so quickly and easily discarded. It pains me to hear the slander, the stereotypes and the fear leveled at the trans community, my community, my friends and my family, my people. People who just want to live their lives to be themselves and to live free of fear.”
and going on to explain the impacts this bill could have on transgender Iowans:
“This bill revokes protections to our jobs, our homes and our ability to access credit. In other words, it deprives us of our life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. I bring this up because the purpose of this bill, and the purpose of every anti-trans bill, is to further erase us from public life and to stigmatize our existence. The sum total of every anti-trans and anti LGBTQ bill is to make our existence illegal, to force us back into the closet,” Wichtendahl said.
But her impassioned plea fell on deaf ears, with them signing the bill on Friday.
No doubt about it, this bill is going to further the sum total goal that Rep Wichtendahl noted. I’m glad that this bill did meet heavy backlash. I am also incredibly angry at the Republican reps who genuinely believe that they are supposedly saving women. In fact, if anything, it will hurt them. For example, do any of you remember what happened at an Arizona Walmart involving Kayala Morton?
She was going inside the restroom with her girlfriend, who handed her a tampon, and while she was peeing, officers came banging on the doors, flashing flashlights and asking her to leave. After she finished on the toilet, she lifted up her shirt to prove that she was in fact a woman. Rather than seeing that and going on their merry way, the officers go on to say that she “looked like a man.” Kayala, by the way, is a lesbian and a stud, a masculine presenting woman.
I say all of this to say: These anti trans laws that are being passed under the guise of “protecting women” are going to be used in ways that go counter to this. Not only is this just a clever way to legislate trans people out of existence, but can be used in cases like Kayala’s, disproportionately affecting women of color.
This law in Iowa is only going to be used to further Republican’s overall goal: to eradicate trans people from public life.