||| FROM ORCAS ISLAND PRIDE |||
Today is Trans Day of Visibility. Today, we honor our trans brethren that have passed away, and celebrate the lives of those of us still living.
We did a screening of the film Heightened Scrutiny in February alongside a Q&A with the director, Sam Feder. From now until the 5th of April (04/05/2026), it is available for free streaming! Find it here. We highly recommend this look into the fight that has been happening around the country regarding tans rights.
Part of that fight is to keep the work moving. Over 700 anti-trans bills have been introduced since the beginning of 2025. Kansas invalidated driver’s licenses for trans individuals in one fell swoop. Just today, on a historic day for trans people, the Supreme Court ruled that Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy on queer kids was unconstitutional. The Lemkin Institute, which is an organization that catalogues and fights against genocides in the world, has labelled the current climate as “the trans genocide in the U.S.”
Even here, in Washington state, which is considered a “sanctuary state” by many, anti-trans bills have been introduced. Our board president has put together a quick link to comment publicly and vote against the bills currently in the Washington state House and Senate.
If you have not already, we urge you to please, please, PLEASE comment and vote against these bills. They are designed to wipe out a core part of our community, the part that fought for and are the whole reason we have anything to fight for. For Marsha P. Johnson to Harvey Milk, to the thousands of unnamed trans people in history, to the hundreds of trans black women that are the backbone of queer rights & activism in this country:
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And I would urge everyone to SUPPORT these bills. Young people and women are being harmed every day in Washington State because of the ideology of “gender identity” and these bills seek to rectify at least some of that.
HB 1038 will help to prevent the harm that puberty blockers, wrong-sex hormones, and surgeries do to young people. Puberty blockers can cause infertility and stunt growth (brain, vision, bone development and more). Wrong-sex hormones often end up requiring subsequent medicalization for life, can and often do sterilize people and dramatically increase the risk of cancer, heart attack and stroke, and more. And of course the surgeries dismember and castrate people, including young people.
SB 5097 will help protect girls sports. As is clear to everyone with eyes, boys have significant physical advantage over girls, which only grows as they get older. If girls’ sports aren’t for girls’ only, then essentially girls have no fair sport at all. This is profoundly sexist and unfair.
SB 5136 protects the rights of parents and guardians by using the students’ given name in public schools. Social “transition” for children in schools, which is often when and where student change their names and often without their parent’s knowledge and consent, is a major psychological intervention in the lives and psyches of children and young people. This social “transition” is the first phase of a pathway that is very difficult for children to get off, one that can lead to the irreversible physical harms outlined above.
HB 1629 protects women in prison. The reason women have sex-based rights, including the right to separate spaces, is because men as a class pose a threat to women. You can’t include men in the category, no matter how they identify, and still preserve those protections. This is perhaps nowhere more acute than in the prison system, where women are uniquely vulnerable. To lock a man in a prison cell with women is a form of torture. These women deserve protection from men, no matter how they identify.
And IL 26-001 will allow parents and guardians to closely monitor what is being taught and told to their children in school, medical settings, and more, which just makes common sense.
I urge everyone to SUPPORT these bills.
As a resident of Orcas Island, I support the trans community here on Orcas Island. Thank you for bringing these issues to us. I hope more people on Orcas step up to visibly support the trans community and fight against the harmful transphobic rhetoric that even pops up out here in the islands as illustrated by the comment on this post.