.jpg){kind=link}
For years, anti-LGBTQ+ ire masqueraded as “protecting children.” In 2025, that mask is entirely off: Texas' House Bill 3817 would charge anyone identifying outside their assigned sex at birth to employers or government entities with “gender identity fraud," a felony. Let's break down three reasons that make this wrong.
#1- In 1977, Black women in the Combahee River Collective described how identity-based oppression shapes our politics related to identity. The white right’s fixation on DEI and identity politics comes from their biological determinism, the belief that "biological factors" like sex and race determine inherent hierarchies of power.
#2- Sex, not just gender, isn’t binary. Sex chromosomes and anatomy expand beyond “male” or “female” boxes on our birth certificates. "Assigned sex at birth" is a literal assignment. That’s why doctors pick a box for intersex babies, and then perform harmful surgeries to force them into it. Many adults with “hormonal disorders” also defy the binary: women with PCOS can have facial and chest hair, and men with gynecomastia can develop breasts.
#3-Beyond science, culture matters. Pre-colonial Africa had an abundance of genders and relationships, from the jinbandaa and mudoko dako to women marrying women. European anthropologists called them “unnatural” and “beastly.” Centuries later, that language informs cultural and systemic violence.
Identities like transness, Blackness, and womanness aren't inherently inferior or deserving of violence. That violence is a learned choice - and that's the real identity fraud.