Imagine this was your child:

In elementary school Ryan (now 16) felt that he was a boy. Before puberty he thought “there wasn’t that much of a difference between boys and girls” and he “could manage existing in the middle.”… But as puberty approached, he grew increasingly anxious about the impending changes to his body. He started throwing up every morning before school. As his voice changed, Ryan wanted to stop talking altogether. His parents took him to a therapist, and after two years of psychotherapy and consultations with his parents and doctors, Ryan’s physicians prescribed him the “male” hormone, testosterone. Ryan began to find his voice again. He started raising his hand in class, participating in school, and looking at himself in the mirror. Ryan says now that treatment saved his life. To his parents, it’s simply not an option to cut him off from this care. His mom says “I worry about his ability to survive. [L]osing him would break me.”¹

What Ryan experienced is known as “gender dysphoria.” Gender dysphoria is a medical condition marked by a profound unhappiness with one's biological sex, and a desire to live as or become a different gender.

To get a sense of this, imagine feeling that something is about to overtake you that is completely out of your control. That puberty and all the associated physical changes would make you feel completely out of body, sick in the skin you're in. 

What Ryan received—what he feels saved his life—is known as “gender-affirming care.” This is a set of treatments—ranging from psychological counseling to medications that delay the onset of puberty, to gender transition surgery—which help bring a person’s physical features in line with the gender they identify with. (For minors, gender transition surgery is very rare.) The American Medical Association, associations of pediatricians and of psychologists, and other major medical associations recognize gender-affirming care as an appropriate treatment for gender dysphoria. (While there are real medical questions, and ongoing scientific debate, over the right course of treatment for people experiencing gender dysphoria—these fascist attacks have nothing to do with those real questions. They are about viciously scapegoating and dehumanizing trans people and violently enforcing strict patriarchal gender roles.)

Keep Ryan and his parents in mind as you read what follows.

****

On June 18, the Christian fascist majority on the Supreme Court ruled that Tennessee’s State Bill 1 (SB1), which bans gender-affirming care for trans people under 18, is lawful. The ruling in this case, United States vs. Skrmetti, was decided in a 6-3 ruling. (Skrmetti is Tennessee’s Christian fascist Attorney General; he represented the state in this case.) 

The ruling in this case gives a green light for the 27 other states in the U.S. that have restrictions on gender affirming care. And it contributes to the vicious fascist dehumanization of trans people, and moves to "eradicate" trans people from public life.

The Christian fascists have openly said this is their goal. In 2023, a prominent fascist speaking at the annual CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) meeting said: “...there can be no middle way in dealing with transgenderism. ... Transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely.” And since the first day of the Trump fascist regime, they have worked systematically and all-sidedly to make this real. Purging trans people from the military, passing executive orders that deny the existence of trans people, viciously threatening teenage athletes. All justified through dehumanization and anti-trans hysteria.

Vicious National Impact of Tennessee's Anti-Trans Law 

In Tennessee and in states across the country, thousands of kids like Ryan will be left with no way out, except to completely uproot and move to a state where this care is legal, if they can afford it.

But even that avenue is narrowing. According to the ACLU, since 2021, 25 states have flat-out banned gender-affirming care, and there are now 156,500 transgender youth who live in 32 states where access to gender-affirming care has been restricted or was at risk of being banned due to legislation filed this legislative session. Most of these laws are being challenged in court. And although the Skrmetti decision doesn’t automatically mean that these other laws will also be upheld, Skrmetti does strengthen their chances, and will certainly give impetus to more bans as well as to other attacks on transgender rights.

Let’s be clear—this will translate into the spiritual or physical destruction of tens of thousands of lives around the country. Rates of suicide among transgender youth are already terrifyingly high—by one estimate, “as many as one-third of transgender high school students attempt suicide in any given year.”² The mushrooming of anti-trans laws and poisonous atmosphere of contempt for trans people is very likely to make those rates even worse. 

And in a crime on top of a crime, the section of the national suicide prevention hotline that caters to LGBTQ young people will close because the Trump regime just cut this funding!

Christian Fascist Logic Built into the Supreme Court Ruling 

The majority on the Supreme Court ruled that SB1 does not violate the "Equal Protection Clause" of the Constitution by discriminating on the basis of sex. (The Equal Protection Clause³ means that laws passed by states, or nationally, must provide equal protection for everyone and cannot discriminate based on being part of a special grouping [i.e. discrimination against women, or Black people etc.]) 

But this is bullshit. SB1 forbids certain medical treatments if they are part of what's required for gender-affirming care. For example, doctors may prescribe hormone blockers to young boys or girls if they have a medical condition where puberty happens too early. But it is now illegal in Tennessee for that same doctor to prescribe hormone blockers to young boys or girls if they have the medical condition of gender dysphoria.

This is open—and now legal—discrimination against trans youth. And what did the Supreme Court say to justify this?

It upheld Tennessee’s sick logic that "these prohibitions [against gender affirming care] are intended” to “protec[t] minors from physical and emotional harm” by “encouraging minors to appreciate,” rather than “become disdainful of,” their sex.

Let's translate what the fascists on this court and the Tennessee Attorney General mean by “appreciate your sex." They are most assuredly not talking about feeling comfortable with your body. Rather, what comes through here is more along the lines of: “appreciate and learn to fit yourself into your assigned (oppressive and suffocating) gender roles in the patriarchal ordering of society.” 

This is the logic of Christian fascism—now stamped into law. 

Stigmatization, Demonization, Isolation—Setting Trans People Up for More Repressive Attacks

The fascists aim to punish transgender people, to humiliate them and to make it impossible for them to exist as trans people. Trans people are being forced to have their official documents and identification marked with their sex at birth, even if it contradictions their gender. And they are being subjected to many other forms of public humiliation and endangerment. 

Not only were trans people forced out of the military en masse at the start of Pride Month, but the Pentagon claimed that being transgender was a form of dishonesty, claiming that being transgender was inconsistent “with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.” And now it turns out that the discharge papers of trans officers are marked with a “JDK” code, meaning they are “not clearly consistent with the interests of national security.” 

Trump has made the dehumanization of trans people a central feature of how he's whipping up his fascist social base, including against his political enemies. On June 15, Trump posted on Truth Social that “These Radical Left Democrats are sick of mind, hate our Country, and actually want to destroy our Inner Cities… That is why they believe in Open Borders, Transgender for Everybody, and Men playing in Women’s Sports.”⁴ (Italics added.) 

The next day, June 16, Don Jr. followed this up by claiming that “the radical transgender movement is per capita the most violent domestic terror threat in America, probably the entire world.” (Emphasis added.)

What is behind this?

These fascists are driven by a dark ages revenge against any gains made to uprooting traditional patriarchal gender roles, with the retrograde (backward-ass) notion that women are supposed to be breeders, homemakers and domestic caregivers, and men are the strong defenders of the family, home and the nation. The Christian fascists think these roles are fixed at birth and sanctified by a non-existent patriarchal god.

As one Republican state attorney general put it in celebrating the Skrmetti decision: “Boys are boys and girls are girls.”

The very existence of trans people and the overall challenging of these suffocating, soul-crushing gender roles challenges all this. The assertion by LGBT people in general of their right to live and love differently brings them into sharp opposition with the enforcers of the old order, and in turn raises deep and much needed discussion more broadly about human diversity.

And because of big political and economic changes over the last decades, these fascists have an existential sense that this has all "gotten out of hand," and needs to be violently slammed backwards. (For a deeper understanding of what has given rise to this fascism, listen to Bob Avakian's social media message REVOLUTION #118, This system has brought forth Trump/MAGA fascism: People, in their millions, must put an end to this fascist regime—NOW—before it is too late!)

This all-out fascist assault is aimed at driving trans people out of public life. And it is also about isolating trans people from the rest of the population, and inciting “unofficial” MAGA violence and/or justifying state violence.

As we said in our May 26 article,

The Trump regime is waging an all-sided war on trans people: criminalizing their existence, preventing them from existing in public spaces, blocking their ability to get medical care and viciously dehumanizing them. The patriarchal assault on women and LGBT people is a driving force in the overall fascist program of open white supremacy, ugly America-first xenophobia (hatred of so-called “foreigners”), scapegoating of immigrants and rule through open violence and terror.

The specific way that an irrational hysteria against trans people is being whipped up calls to mind the kind of lies that throughout history have fueled lynch mobs and genocidal violence.

Thrown Under the Bus by the Democrats

And where are the Democrats in all this? Leading Democrats have for some time argued that “culture war” issues (like defending the basic rights, dignity and survival of transgender people, or of immigrants) are a "distraction" from the things that should be focused on: inflation, health care, etc. In fact, right after the outrageous Skrmetti decision, Senator Chuck Schumer, one of the top Democratic leaders, posted: “Republicans’ cruel crusade against trans kids is all an attempt to divert attention from ripping healthcare away from millions of Americans. We'll keep fighting and we'll keep marching on.”

While giving brief attention to the "cruel crusade against trans kids," Schumer immediately pivots to imply that the escalating and highly dangerous persecution of trans people is a distraction from the “kitchen table” economic issues, and that those are the things that people should “keep fighting and marching” about. And Schumer is letting us know that the Democrats are perfectly willing to throw trans people under the bus so they can “reach across the aisle” to form alliances with “moderate Republicans” and “swing voters” over health care cuts. 

This is like someone in Germany under Hitler’s Nazi rule saying that Hitler is persecuting Jewish people to distract everyone from the Nazis' failing economic policy.

As the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian said in his social media message REVOLUTION #115, The Trump Fascist Regime Must Go—NOW—before it is too late!:

The Democrats as a whole are both unable and unwilling to fully recognize and act in line with the understanding that the “norms”—“politics as usual” and the “regular way things are done”—cannot stop this Trump fascist regime, which is determined to defy and trample on these “norms,” including the Constitution and the rule of law it establishes. (Right now, major Democratic Party politicians and operatives are “debating” whether it is necessary and “good politics” to stand up for the rule of law and due process of law, in the face of Trump’s flagrant violations of this! No political force that really cares about the basic rights of the people could “debate” whether it should stand up for those rights!)

The Hour Is Getting Late

What we are describing in all this, and what is concentrated in the Supreme Court’s attack on gender-affirming care as well as the broader attacks on trans people, is developing as a major part of MAGA’s drive towards a fully fascist lockdown of society. 

Trans people must be defended—as a part of going on the offensive against this whole fascist assault. 

In a different social media message, Bob Avakian put it this way:

Everyone who wants to see an end to oppression based on race, sex and gender—and an end to cruel, murderous oppression and lawless tyranny overall—needs to be actively involved, now and in an ongoing way, in the massive movement that is urgently needed to defeat this Trump/MAGA fascism—to create the conditions in the country where this fascist regime cannot govern, cannot remain in power, and cannot carry out the even worse horrors it is moving to violently enforce.

And while we unite all who can be united in this fight, we need to open up a wider debate and discussion about what is driving this fascism, and what kind of radically different system is both necessary and possible. The question has to be asked: what kind of society insists that people’s lives, and their very being, must be so narrowly confined and constrained by an accident of biology at birth? Why constrict the relations between people to a set of social relations forged in oppressive societies hundreds of years ago? Who could we be—and what kind of liberating society can we bring into being—if we work to shatter and overcome all "tradition's chains" that serve to reinforce these traditional and oppressive gender roles? 

The sweeping vision and concrete blueprint for this is laid out in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America. A society aimed at uprooting and abolishing all relations of oppression and exploitation and emancipating humanity as a whole.

In the Name of Humanity, We Refuse to Accept a Fascist America!

The Trump Fascist Regime Must Go NOW!

We Need and We Demand: A Whole New Way to Live, A Fundamentally Different System.