What a difference a year can make. It has been approximately a year since President Donald Trump was elected into office by a vast majority of white comfortable-in-skin men and women who it seems were afraid of losing some of their influence and privilege, and have to be seen as equal to people of colour and sexual minorities. Since President Trump was elected, we have seen him really dig his heels in and try to discriminate against all these minority groups. He first of all targeted Muslim immigrants with what he called a ‘Muslim Ban’, allowed for ‘Bathroom Bills’ that tried to force transgender children from using assigned gender bathrooms and then went after transgender people in the military by trying to ban them as well. The American court system has largely kept Trump’s influence in check and protected these groups, as it is meant to do, but it has also exposed the racist and bigoted underbelly of America’s cis majority.
But it seems these minorities and the American public doesn’t want to be perceived as bigoted anymore, because during the special elections earlier this week, they turned out en-masse and voted for the very people their president has sought to marginalise. It was especially important in the state of Virginia who voted in journalist, metal band singer and transgender woman Danica Roem into its legislature. Roem is the first openly transgender lawmaker elected into office in Virginia’s history. It is even more important that she won her seat over delegate Robert G. Marshall, an ultra conservative lawmaker, who tried to pass a ‘Bathroom bill’ discriminating against transgender people just this year. For an openly transwoman to win over a lawmaker who was in power for 13 years and three presidents is mind boggling, and we are only just starting to unpack what that may mean for politics in America and trans people everywhere.
Roem’s win, isn’t the only trans-win in the special elections. There is also Andrea Jenkins, who won a Minneapolis City Council seat, and became the second transgender person ever (after Danica Roem) to be elected into public office through an election, and the first trans person of colour to achieve this.
She was the first of two transgender person of colour elected in Minneapolis, the second being a transgender man named Phillipe Cunningham.
So what does this mean for America’s future, and by extension ours. American policy affects the rest of the world, in direct and indirect ways, and as transpeople gain representation in America’s legislative system, they can begin the fight to ensure that America uses its influence to fight for the rights of transpeople, everywhere. But even more urgent is the idea of representation. This breaks down a barrier many transpeople thought uncrossable, and the value of seeing yourself in places you thought you didn’t have permission to enter is priceless.
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