“When you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”
This was Donald Trump, more than a decade ago, talking to Billy Bush about assaulting women, but it has proven to be the ultimate expression of Trumpism.
When Matt Lauer, a rich celebrity, asked Trump, another rich celebrity, about North Carolina’s discriminatory “bathroom bill,” Trump ultimately declared he “would be fine with [Caitlyn Jenner] using any bathroom she chooses” in Trump Tower.
Jenner, like Trump, is a reality TV star with complicated lines between business and family. Of course she can pee wherever she wants.
But trans people who aren’t stars and who have to go to the bathroom in less glamorous places than Trump Tower are shit out of luck after the administration declared in late February it would not protect the rights of trans students.
Jenner spoke out against Trump’s reversal on trans issues, telling him to call her. But because she is also a star, her plea misses the point. Trump attacks the most vulnerable.
If Trump wanted to understand how it feels to be denied access to basic services, he could talk to Gavin Grimm, a trans high school student whose lawsuit against his Virginia school district — for forcing him to use a refashioned janitor's closet instead of the men’s room — was scheduled to reach the Supreme Court later this month, but was sent on March 6 back to a lower court because of the new guidelines set by Trump’s Justice Department.
Or when Trump spoke at the ultra-right Conservative Political Action Conference in late February, he could have talked to Jennifer Williams and Jordan Evans, the two trans women who stood out in the hallway holding a “Don’t Tread on Me” flag and a sign that said, “Proud to be Conservative, Proud to Be Transgender, Proud to be American #sameteam.”
“We spent the last year fighting for transgender rights and being part of a presidential campaign, [and] we didn’t know what we were walking into,” Williams said of the anti-trans fervor once again spiking in the ruling party.
Williams has attended the conference since 2006, when she was working on a film called Fear of a Black Republican. She felt that the conference and the conservative movement was moving toward the libertarianism of Ron Paul and away from the “traditional values” of Mike Huckabee.
Until 2016 she attended the conference presenting as a man, rather than as Jennifer, her authentic self. She says she was received warmly when she reintroduced herself last year — her friends asked if she was still a conservative, and when she said she was, they were cool.
But after a brief moment of high hopes, the mood shifted.
First, Milo Yiannopoulos (then of Breitbart News) got a keynote spot on CPAC’s program. Yiannopoulos regularly has called trans people “mentally ill” and used a December speech in Milwaukee to mock a trans student.
Like Yiannopoulos, some openly gay people at CPAC seemed eager to diss trans people in order to cement their own endangered status among the bigots. One conservative lesbian blogger sitting in the press section “explained” to a Breitbart editor how trans women were really just men who like to dress in women’s clothes and masturbate. “Autogynephiles,” she said, talking high and punching down.
“It’s going to be hard for the administration to go after lesbian, gay and bi people because they have numbers, they have resources, they have money. We don’t necessarily have that,” Williams says. “You’re going after transgender people.... We’re only .6 percent of the population.”
Williams was briefly relieved when Yiannopoulos was disinvited from CPAC, but then, the night before the conference began, the regime rescinded the Obama-era directive offering federal protection for students to use the facilities that correspond with their gender identities rather than their birth certificates.
So when Williams and her friend walked in with their signs and their flag, they didn’t know what to expect. “I was really worried because people were hyped up. We didn't expect it to be the issue du jour by 8 in the morning, walking into CPAC with 11,000, 12,000 conservatives of all different stripes from all over the country.”
Although Williams’ access to public facilities is legally protected in Maryland, where the conference took place, she and her friend located single-occupancy restrooms where they knew they would be safe.
“Hopefully nothing bad will happen, I don’t expect it to. This is my tribe, just as LGBTQ is my tribe. People at CPAC don’t start fights,” she said. “But there’s always that one person you have to be careful about.”
Williams is especially worried for young trans kids. “When I grew up, we had no hope, and you knew that if you were going to be out and proud and live your life authentically, it was just going to be tough,” she said. “These kids have had a great run for several years making life better and easier so they can live openly. But now if I’m them, everybody knows who I am. What's going to happen to me now?”
The fear, she says “has to be overwhelming, because at least the federal government had your back. Now they don’t.”
At its best, the federal government protects the minority from the tyranny of the majority. But Trump’s populism says fuck that shit.
On the same day Trump press secretary Sean Spicer said that trans protections are “states’ rights issues,” he also said that recreational cannabis would be a federal issue. In this regime, there are no real principles, only power and the repression of anyone vulnerable enough to repress.
Williams has placed whatever hope she has left in the courts. “If we lose the Gavin Grimm case, it could be pretty dismal for a long time. I don’t want to say ‘until a Democrat gets elected,’ because I’m a Republican committee person,” she said. “Hopefully our party will be the ones to make freedom happen for everyone.”
That’s the thing about freedom: If it doesn’t happen for everyone, it doesn’t happen for anyone.
