Trans Day of Visibility: What it means to be seen

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Happy Trans Day of Visibility everyone. 

Your social media feeds are probably filled with hot takes across the board today, including the latest op-ed in the Wall Street Journal from Jerry Coyne that yes, once again publicly attacks and misrepresents my work (more on that in a moment). I’m going to contribute to that, apologies, but in many ways this piece is equal parts hot take and general reflections on my experience as a Professional Trans Person.

Being nonbinary is sometimes an odd part of the trans experience, just as it is an odd part of the gender experience. Despite people existing beyond the gender binary across cultures across history, the term itself is relatively new. We’ve adapted our language to try and better suit our needs and more accurately reflect our experiences in the shorthand way that we use labels to begin with. 

As just one example, I’ve been rereading Julia Serano’s “Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity” (2007) on and off lately for the first time since I read it in undergrad, and you can see some of those generational language shifts noted in later editions. One thing that fascinated me the first time I read it was the note that at the time that she was writing, in the community spaces she inhabited, “genderqueer” seemed to be the umbrella term for those of us who are neither men nor women, rather than “nonbinary.” To me, “genderqueer” has always been an identity that falls under the nonbinary umbrella. I myself use it at times when I am asked for a more specific label than “trans” or “nonbinary.” I’ll use genderqueer and agender to describe myself depending on the day, and “transmasc” when necessary in describing my transition and how certain parts of that impact my perspectives and experience. But I’m not actually overly attached to those more specific labels, because I’m using these words to describe my experience to other people, and 99% of the time, “trans” or “nonbinary” do the job just fine.

What it means to be “visible” as a trans person varies widely from person to person. But it’s especially complicated as a nonbinary person. Nonbinary people get flack from all sides, including from within trans community spaces for a lot of reasons. There is still a very strong camp amongst trans people that believe that the key to acceptance is to assimilate as much as possible with our cisgender counterparts. The goal of transition, in their minds, is “passing” as cisgender. This narrative in turn is frequently adopted by cisgender people as well, likely because it is the easiest one to digest. Now there is nothing wrong with “passing” or being “stealth,” to be clear. If that is what makes you happy and comfortable and safe I love that for you and will do absolutely everything that I can to support you in that.

But “passing” is a lot more complicated when you’re nonbinary, because being mistaken for cis isn’t the goal, like…that’s the very nature of being nonbinary. You can “pass” in the sense that most people will always forcibly gender you in a binary sense, and your presentation might align, or at least align closely enough, with that gender categorization to provide an assumption of cisness, but that is an inherently different experience than passing as an end goal. There are times when this works to my safety and benefit. Though I have medically transitioned (in ways that make sense for me), most people upon first glance gender me as a woman, and more specifically a white woman. This means that while there is certainly risk associated with things like using a gendered public restroom or locker room, it’s significantly lower than that faced by a lot of binary trans women and Black cis women. For the record I have been harassed and experienced physical violence in public restrooms, especially since being on testosterone, and I generally do not use gendered public multi-stall restrooms without a bathroom buddy unless it’s an emergency as a direct result. As an odd converse of that experience, I also still absolutely experience misogyny because a lot of people, especially transphobic people, perceive me as a woman. Contrary to some people’s opinions, I (and other afab nonbinary folks) don’t identify as nonbinary to “escape misogyny” or because I “hate the idea of being a woman” due to internalized misogyny. I’m pretty sure after over a decade of experiencing violent transphobia and misogyny I would have given up the ghost on that front if that were the case.

But even still I recognize that my ability to sometimes pass as a cisgender woman is a privilege, even when combined with the misogyny and the gender dysphoria that results.

I also have experienced, especially in recent months when I’ve had to be firm about my boundaries regarding my pronouns, that I make being nonbinary “too much” of my identity, especially my professional identity. I hear from plenty of people that they would “respect what I had to say” on trans issues more if I weren’t so loud and insistent about being trans myself. Often people will reference binary trans people that they know, noting that “they almost never bring it up.” I have a couple of responses to this.

First, I would argue that it is ethically responsible to be clear about myself, my perspective, and my identity as an out trans person when it comes to my work. I know I have biases as much as I try to work through them, because everyone has biases. This is why I’m a lawyer, policy guy, and theorist, not a journalist. (Though as my dad, who has been a journalist for over fifty years, will tell you, there’s also no such thing as unbiased journalism.) My work directly impacts me, and my community, and I personally would not feel right not disclosing that on some level. Especially when it comes to my writing and public facing advocacy, the fact that I am trans does matter, because it deeply informs everything that I advocate for.

Second goes back to my earlier point regarding passing. There is no way for me to “pass” as my gender in the way that binary trans people can. And being forcibly gendered is a dysphoria trigger. To say it makes me deeply uncomfortable is a radical understatement, and while I have coping skills developed with the help of a therapist, I am also well within my rights to set boundaries with people to attempt to mitigate the harm. Most people respect them, some do not, but those are boundaries that I have no choice but to communicate for my own health and psychological safety. To ask me to ignore my identity or set it aside is the same as asking me to be closeted. And I’ve done my time in the closet, experienced that pain and its consequences, and I refuse to go back.

Third, I think, relates to the entire point of having a “Trans Day of Visibility” at all. There are not a lot of trans people in the world, and even fewer in the legal profession. There are far more than you think, but it is an objectively small number. I’ve had very few role models to look up to, very few people who I can see as an example of how to navigate both professional and personal life in this weird maze of gendered society. My entire adult life I have always fought to be the person I wish I had around when I was younger. I have and always will fight to make things just a little bit easier for the trans people that come after me. Whether that’s in the form of better bathroom or healthcare policies and professors and managers having more experience with trans folks generally, or through mentorship opportunities and generally being someone that other trans people can see as successfully managing to carve out a space for themselves in this field, I want to make sure I’m making sure that any door I go through stays open for as long as possible.

Lastly, I am loud and proud and transparently visible about my transness because if I am not, the only voices that will be heard are the voices that want us silent at best. As pretty much anyone who follows this blog is aware, I’ve been fighting opposition from some pretty big names in the atheist world, including Jerry Coyne, Richard Dawkins, and Steven Pinker for quite some time now. When I opened up social media this morning, I was not surprised to see yet another piece from Jerry Coyne directly attacking both my work as an expert in the intersection of trans rights and the separation of church and state, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation for standing on the right side of history. This time, Coyne was published in the Wall Street Journal, in which he once again used straw man tactics to describe my work to make himself look like a paragon of scientific reasoning, and to make me and other trans rights advocates sound like anti-science conspiracy theorists on par with anti-vaxxers and young earth creationists. That’s right, in a moment where we are in our final chance to prevent the United States from falling to a fascist dictatorship, Coyne used his access to a massive traditional press platform to…go on yet another anti trans rant and complain that the Wokes don’t worship everything he says just because he’s a biologist.

Since the beginning of this conflict Coyne and Dawkins both have grossly misrepresented my work to further their anti-trans goals, likely because my actual argument undermines them. I never said that sex doesn’t exist or isn’t real, just that it’s not a particularly helpful framework for defining “woman,” particularly in a legal/policy context. I never tried to define the word “female” and nowhere in my work will you see me attempting to do so. What I will say is this: Sex is more complex than a simple binary, intersex people absolutely do exist and have been advocating for their rights and safety for a long time. I also have advocated for complicating how we think of sex by thinking of “biological” and “legal” sex as two separate but overlapping categories with separate functions. But I’ve never “denied” the existence of sex, or even that the majority of humans fall into one of the two binary sex categories. I’ve merely argued the relatively mainstream position that sex and gender are two different, but often related, concepts.

Dawkins went on to promote this piece on Bluesky, once again referring to my work as “silly” (someone get this man a thesaurus) and presenting trans people as some youth fad despite the wealth of historical and scientific evidence to the contrary.

Now some of you might be thinking: “Kat, just ignore these guys, they’re doing this to get attention, stop giving it to them.”

And y’all I really wish that I could. I agree that they’ve almost certainly gone on the anti-trans grift in a last ditch attempt at remaining relevant in a world and movement that is rapidly leaving them behind. Young people especially seem less and less interested in anti-theism, preferring a more diverse and pluralistic approach to atheism and how to interact with religious people.

But the fact remains that Dawkins, Coyne, and many others like them are still massively powerful and influential. They have money and publishing deals and connections, alongside a reputation that makes people want to listen to them. They’ve been around for decades, carrying celebrity status in atheist spaces, and many many people still take what they have to say extremely seriously. And that presents a real danger not just to trans people, but to anyone who cares about bodily autonomy and self determination, especially as they continue to join forces with Christian nationalist elements that are attempting to decimate those rights.

I don’t have that kind of power. Even with the deeply appreciated support of the folks at FFRF, American Atheists, Americans United, and other state-church orgs, I am still pretty new on this scene. I don’t have the money and influence and connections that they have. I don’t have the brand recognition. I don’t have the books and professorships and resume that they do that cause people to take them seriously. While I am more than confident in my abilities and my expertise, I’m also still just a twenty-something public school educated attorney from yeehaw Indiana, now in Wisconsin doing my absolute best to build a better world than we currently have.

I’m loud because I have to be to push back against that level of power and influence. I’m loud because the state-church professional world is small and the number of people that are able to make queer rights their primary focus area is even smaller – you could probably fit those names on one hand – because of how much work there is to do on all fronts. I am loud, I am obnoxious, I am assertive, and I put my sticky queer fingers all over everything I can get my hands on because there are so few people who can.

I have no choice but to be aggressively trans in every aspect of my work. I have to be aggressively visible, or I will be erased by people who want to see my community dead. I have to be aggressively visible for the people who cannot be because they don’t have access to the relative safety that I enjoy working in spaces that mostly allow me to be out and proud. I have to be aggressively visible for everyone we’ve lost in the fight for liberation, and everyone that is yet to come. Visibility comes with risks, yes, but those are risks I would take on a million times over to make sure that one day we can all be visible without fear.

This Trans Day of Visibility, I am reaffirming my commitment to being seen, to opening doors, and shining lights where they need to be shone. I hope you’ll join me.

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Kat (they/them) is a queer lawyer, activist, and theorist focusing on the intersections of law, queerness, religion, and politics, with the occasional bit of theology, political theory, and legal theory thrown in for good measure. Originally from rural southern Indiana, Kat earned their B.A. in Political Science in 2019 before continuing on to earn their J.D. in 2022, both from Indiana University- Bloomington. A former Equal Justice Works Fellow for the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Kat has spent their professional career fighting for the separation of church and state and LGBTQIA+ rights. Outside of work you can find them at a ballet or contemporary dance class, sipping on dirty shirleys at their local gay bar, or playing video games with their cat, Merlin.