In June 24, 2022, I woke up early. I often find myself waking up early or June mornings. Maybe the heat of a new day. Or maybe it’s anxiety, before “opinions” from the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS).1 That day, I opened scotusblog just in time to see the Dobbs decision appear on the feed. States could officially enforce restrictions on abortion care.
Coincidently, I had a friend staying with me. She was going through a hostile breakup with her boyfriend, and my roommate had just moved out for the summer. We agreed that it would be best if she stayed in the empty bed.
On the 24th, I had woken up before her. When she woke up, she wandered over to my side of the apartment and found me wallowing sadly in bed.
There’s no pleasant way to tell someone that they have less rights.
Dobbs was a massive blow to the concept of bodily autonomy, and the leftward backlash was swift and fierce. Some states even protected the right to abortion care by referenda, in the democratic tradition(?) of curbing the whims of your elected representatives. Many bans remain, and they have proven deadly.
Last Wednesday, I woke up early and felt a pang of anxiety when the link to the Skrmetti decision appeared. I hadn’t gotten out of bed yet, and it was a bad sign that Chief Justice Roberts authored it. A six justice majority legitimized Tennessee’s ban on affirming care for trans youth, another blow to the right to make health and medical decisions for oneself.
The majority opinion in Skrmetti, which carefully avoided citing Dobbs, is rather broad. One legal historian called it “very narrow, except for the gaping hole at the center of it.” It allows the American government to restrict any medical treatment, particularly when “uncertainty” exists about the practice.
The possibilities are endless and devastating for all of us.
The suggestion of “uncertainty” in the medical practice of trans health care is a new invention. Trans and intersex folx, including youth, have sought transition-related medical interventions from Western medicine for over 125 years. Over time, interventions have been carefully monitored for safety and efficacy.
The alleged controversy has been created in mainstream media, similar to debunked theories that SARS-CoV-2 originated in a lab. The New York Times is particularly culpable due to the work of science reporter Azeen Ghorayshi and former opinion columnist Pamela Paul. Ghorayshi was cited 14 times in amicus briefs in Skrmetti supporting Tennessee’s ban. Paul was cited 7 times.
For her part, Paul explicitly laid the blame for Dobbs on the shoulders of trans people, just 8 days after the SCOTUS decision overturning Roe was released. Paul’s thesis relied on the idea that Dobbs happened because women are undergoing “erasure” at the hands of queer and trans people.
By her logic, recognizing the existence of trans and gender non-conforming people who require reproductive health care muddled the rights of “women” as a political class. Likewise, the existence of trans women further devalues claims that “women” deserve specific protections in the eyes of the law. Both claims should be put to rest after Skrmetti, but I doubt they will go away.
Further, transphobic animus is not specific to the United States. This TERF2 logic has supporters elsewhere, perhaps the most famous being JK Rowling. In April, the anti-trans activism of Rowling and other British TERFs led to a UK Supreme Court ruling that trans people are legally their sex assigned at birth (even after completing the UK’s legal gender recognition process). Since then, the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has been collaborating with anti-trans activists to rewrite regulations around trans inclusion.
TERF-ism is the engine that powers the current anti-trans movement by inventing reasons for cis women to feel victimized by trans and gender non-conforming people. It is a feminist philosophy in that it centers the concerns of some cis women and a regressive philosophy in that it polices the boundaries of gender. As such, it is an heir to the exclusivity of past feminist movements which have primarily catered to white, middle class, cis/straight femininity.
The ideologies of Paul, Rowling, and their ilk are ultimately feminisms of scarcity (to use a term from Jules Gill-Peterson in A Short History of Transmisogyny). Their worldview argues that there is a limited amount of womanhood to go around and only some are deserving of it.
Scarcity feminism is intimately connected to the scarcity politics of capitalism. It is a product of some women’s attempted assimilation into capitalism without modifying its oppressive mechanisms. To quote Gill-Peterson: “Their assimilation into a whole is always a concession to the fear there isn’t enough to go around, whether it be money, power, language, or even gender.”
Scarcity feminism punches down, rather than up at the power structures that are ultimately responsible for misogyny. Notice how Paul chose to blame trans people for the Dobbs decision - not the six SCOTUS justices who voted for the decision and not the right-wing legal movement which dedicated years of work with the specific intent of overturning Roe.
In doing so, American TERFs have allied themselves with totalitarian approaches. Trump, and the anti-queer base of his party, seized upon Paul’s grievances to appeal to women in the 2024 campaign. Rowling has taken a creepy vigilantism approach, calling for cis women to photograph people in the bathroom for documentation in case someone turns out to be trans.
In either world, we are all worse off…
The decision in Skrmetti relied heavily on a “largely moribund” SCOTUS case from 1974: Geduldig v. Aiello. Geduldig concerned California’s disability insurance program which provides financial payments to workers who cannot work due to temporary disability. In creating the program, the California legislature explicitly excluded pregnancy and pregnancy-related complications from coverage.
In 1973, four cis women sued California after their benefits were denied. Three plaintiffs experienced complications during pregnancy that required them to take additional time off of work, and one had a typical pregnancy which (obviously) still requires time off work. Plaintiffs argued that the exclusion of pregnancy from coverage was discriminatory based on sex (assigned at birth3).
By 1974, the case reached SCOTUS. In June, the court released its decision which found that the California insurance was not discriminatory on the basis of sex (assigned at birth). Rather, the law simply divided the population into two groups: those who are pregnant and those who are not. To the court, it was merely incidental that the pregnant people were all assigned female at birth.
This was 1974. One year after Roe v. Wade established a nationwide right to abortion care. The same nine justices examined Roe and Geduldig.4 Both cases interpret the Fourteenth Amendment in light of the rights of a pregnant person.
Yet, Roe and Geduldig arrive at different views of justice. Roe affirmed a pregnant person’s autonomy over their body, while Geduldig excluded pregnant people from economic benefits to compensate for time taken off work in the peripartum period.
In 2025 only Geduldig remains in use, although the court ostensibly had an opportunity to overrule it in Skrmetti. Instead, they revived the case: Tennessee’s legislature simply divided adolescents into two groups, those who have gender dysphoria and those who do not. To the court, it is merely incidental that the group of people with gender dysphoria are all trans identifying.
In recent history, progress has been dependent on appealing to the same institutions that systematically oppress. We can (and should!) celebrate progress when it occurs. We should also recognize that such progress is fragile because it is reliant on the goodwill of entrenched powers.
As Gill-Peterson astutely observed in A Short History of Transmisogyny, the state is the ultimate policeman of the gendered order. Efforts to corral gender deviance always go hand-in-hand with state power and violence. In doing so, political institutions seek broad social control now and determent for the future.
It is therefore not a coincidence that bodies are under restrictions in other ways too. ICE has spent weeks kidnapping people in my community and in other locales around the country. SCOTUS (with no explanation) recently greenlit the deportation of these kidnapping victims to any random nation without the ability to legally challenge their trafficking.
What, then, do these displays of authority say about our political leaders? They don’t yet have the control that they so desperately seek. Without it, they are weak and exposed. They are changing the legal rules of engagement because they are afraid of the autonomy we still have. Their spectacles are merely a charade to convince us otherwise. The choice remains ours. Do we capitulate to the charade, or do we continue our work and our lives with our heads up?
No path ahead is risk-free, but there are ways through and around. The proposed Medicaid ban on trans health care was been struck from the American budget bill by the Senate parliamentarian. Recent data from the #WeCount project shows that legal abortions in the US increased in 2024 in spite of state bans. These outcomes required solidarity and the sharing of political, material, emotional, and financial support. These bonds are an investment for our future.
We can reject the politics of scarcity. If they want more, we can give them more.5
from the archive
