In the past five years, the United States has seen more proposed anti-trans legislation than in the previous two centuries combined. While hostility toward gender nonconformity and trans life is not new, today’s transphobia has evolved into a more coordinated and overt campaign—marked by a rising tide of legal restrictions, cultural repression, and manufactured panic. Historically, attacks on trans communities were often informal, extralegal, or conflated with broader persecution of gay and lesbian people. But the 2020s have ushered in a new phase: explicit, codified, and legally sanctioned transphobia at the center of reactionary agendas.

Across the globe, religious, governmental, medical, and educational institutions have unleashed increasingly sophisticated legal and cultural attacks targeting trans lives. In response to this intensifying repression, trans studies scholars Eagan Dean (Clayman Institute postdoctoral fellow), Ava L.J. Kim (Assistant Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at UC Davis), and Susan Stryker (historian and Clayman Institute Distinguished Visitor) gathered for a conversation with Adrian Daub, Director of the Clayman Institute, in an event titled “Trans Persistence Under Attack.” The discussion examined the historical roots of today’s anti-trans movement, explored strategies for resistance, and asked what lessons history offers for surviving the present.

The panel emphasized that trans persistence is not just about existence—it's about endurance in defiance of social, economic, and legal enforcement of gender conformity. Today’s anti-trans campaigns seek to erase not only trans lives but also trans memory and history. Stryker and Daub framed this as part of a broader “attack on expertise,” where transness is treated as a recent phenomenon through a kind of “politically forced amnesia.” This false narrative tries to render trans identities as new, illegitimate, and threatening to the social order.

Such efforts are deeply rooted in history. Nearly a century ago, the Nazis destroyed Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin, an act that presaged decades of state-sanctioned gender control under the guise of “protecting the common people.” Daub pointed out the eerie rhetorical parallels between that era and today’s anti-trans discourse. Much like the Nazis, contemporary anti-trans actors invent a distorted “common sense” about gender rejecting science and social progress in favor of fear and control. Shadow organizations like the American College of Pediatricians (a conservative group whose name mimics the respected American Academy of Pediatrics) manufacture institutional credibility to legitimize transphobic ideology, as both Stryker and Kim noted.

One major departure from historical trends is that contemporary attacks target transness explicitly and directly. As Stryker observed, trans people are no longer merely labeled as “strange,” “promiscuous,” or “queer”—they are now being targeted precisely as trans. Earlier laws often regulated behavior (such as cross-dressing or public “indecency”) and were applied disproportionately to the poor, racialized, or those outside the nuclear family model. Today’s legislation aims to eliminate access to gender-affirming care, restrict discussions of trans identities in schools, and criminalize transition itself.

This shift may reflect the increased visibility and language surrounding trans life in the 21st century. However, opponents of trans rights have weaponized this visibility—reviving old homophobic tropes and casting trans existence as a threat to children, families, and societal stability. As Dean noted, everyday individuals are now acting as self-appointed gender enforcers, no longer just spectators of “rare” gender nonconformity but active agents of repression, both online and in daily life.

Media narratives mirror this evolution. In the early 20th century, trans individuals often appeared in news stories as curiosities—both shocking and sensational. But today, anti-trans figures use media platforms to promote fear, moral panic, and political scapegoating. Whether in medical clinics, classrooms, or public life, trans people now face a more pervasive and personalized surveillance of their gender expression.

The panel’s discussion offered vital insights into the historical continuities and modern transformations of transphobia. It also raised important questions about the limitations of relying solely on a “rights-based” approach to achieving trans inclusion. Instead, panelists called for robust community-building, mutual care, and grassroots support that do not depend on state approval or legal recognition to affirm trans lives.

Source: https://gender.stanford.edu/news/continuities-and-developments-anti-trans-efforts-and-resistance