Last Tuesday my husband and I drove to Little Rock to add our voices against SB270 – yet another hateful, overreaching bill targeting the transgender community in Arkansas. The bill would have required transgender people to use bathrooms and locker rooms that match their gender assigned at birth, rather than the gender they identify with, and making it a crime to enter the “wrong” room with a minor present.
While there wasn’t cause to pop open the champagne, the conclusion of Tuesday’s emotional day was a victory of sorts. The House committee amended and passed a very watered-down bill, not unlike the recent “Drag Queen” bill, that basically neutered everything that could harm transgender people, and still save face for the Republican majority who could call it a victory.
In all my years as an activist I had never experienced this amount of emotion.
And it was all due to the overwhelming and powerful testimony of people from all over the state, including Eureka Springs.
Local trans activist Ethan Avanzino was eloquent and direct in his speech to the committee, but it was the words of two Eureka Springs’ trans teenagers, Samuel and Kasper, whose confident and moving testimony managed to both shame and educate the majority of white, male, Republican, cisgender representatives.
SB270 was created to “protect children” from transgender people molesting kids in public bathrooms, even though there has never been a single case of that happening in Arkansas.
There were passionate pleas from parents with trans kids begging the committee to stop this bill that would harm their children, not protect them. Full bearded, masculine transgender men pleaded that no one would feel safe (children, parents or themselves) if someone looking like them entered the women’s bathroom.
Republican Senator John Peyton, who co-sponsored the bill, was clearly out of his league. His opening and closing statements and handling of questions would have been laughable, if they were not so dangerous; he actually suggested trans people just shout, “any children in there?” before entering a bathroom.
As a visual artist whose political activist background is often reflected in my artwork, I was compelled to create a large poster/postcard/social media meme that clearly addressed the absurdity of SB270, and to email it to all House Committee members before the hearing.
I thank my 12 participating friends – half of whom are transgender, identifying as men, but were female at birth – for their courage, and for trusting me on this delicate art project.
By incorporating an amalgam of trans and cis-gendered men, the poster was intended as a guessing game (is he or isn’t he?) to demonstrate the illogicality of laws regulating bathroom usage. Any of these pictured men would cause havoc and put themselves at risk of violence if they entered a ladies room and make women feel uncomfortable, even threatened.
My not identifying which of my friends are trans was a “safety in numbers” deal, done to keep them from being targeted, a risk they face all too often for just being who they are.
The portraits were shot face forward with a similar background, and uniformly arranged in three rows, suggesting mug shots, a police lineup, and the reality that any of these trans men could be arrested for simply needing to pee.
All of these anti-trans bills, already have, or will eventually reach the desk of Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders for her to sign into law – hence the question posed to our governor. How would she feel if she encountered any of these six transgender men in the women’s restroom?
I knew the intensity of the poster might cause some controversy, but not in the way I expected.
A trans artist friend I respect saw the meme online and contacted me, concerned that the image would do more harm than good, and how as a trans masculine man, the photo triggered some uncomfortable feelings.
That was obviously not my intent, something my friend acknowledged, but something he still needed to express.
I felt bad – sick to my stomach actually, that a trans person, never mind a friend, would feel horrible over something I created, thinking it would further the LGBTQ+ cause.
In the end, I stand by my work and accept that it will be interpreted differently by others. My goal was to put a human face on the issue and create a dialogue, which it clearly has.
I just read a recent statistic that said 80 percent of the American population does not know a transgender person.
How fortunate I am for knowing so many trans men and women in a town that more than just supports them, but celebrates them.
John Rankine