Election Night Monitoring and Some Transgender Thoughts
Let's talk about what's not illegal
First up, the Washington Blade has a page where they are tracking and will be updating election results from 35 different trans, non-binary & genderqueer candidates for office across the USA. State legislative candidates, one US House of Rep candidate, and candidates for other offices, many county/city/town councils, and one school board position that I saw. Oh, and a justice of the peace position, which would be fun. You can find that here, but though they will be updating, it’s not going to be updated on a minute by minute or even 30 min by 30 min basis. Check in there once every hour or 2 if you’re hardcore.
Also, too, there’s a first-in-the-nation polling place set up inside a trans-centric space. The Connie Norman Transgender Empowerment Center is hosting voting. As most Americans know (but those outside the US may not) voting is not restricted to government buildings. The government relies on local non-profits to volunteer their buildings or offices as precinct houses. Very often that means voting in a church. When you do vote in a government building, it’s typically in a local school.
Because you’re assigned a specific precinct, a person typically cannot vote at an alternate location (though you can sign up in advance to vote by mail in many states). For far too long conservative churches volunteering their spaces have essentially forced trans people to see religious messages that may be hostile to our bodies and our lives, though more often hostile merely to our spirits. Surprisingly, this is not actually illegal. It just sucks rocks.
The Connie Norman Center is in West Hollywood, which means few conservatives will live in that precinct. Also, California has extensive vote-by-mail. So not many conservatives will be forced to see pro-trans messages to vote, but on the other hand, can you imagine finally voting in place that actually affirms your existence? If I had the money to live in West Hollywood, I would be damn proud to vote at Connie Norman.
Here, have a pic I stole from the Associated Press, for the purposes of critical comment.
See that “Trans joy is resistance,” poster? That’s the shit we need in voting locations everywhere. Comment on anything else you see in this picture soon, as I’m taking it down after the newsworthiness and need for comment wears off so as not to overtly infringe on the Associated Press IP. Meanwhile, I saw it through AP affiliated org GoSkagit.com if you want to give them a click.
5:08 Pacific:
Let’s also take note of the fact that Mark Robinson, shithole extraordinaire, lost his bid for governor of North Carolina. Given his overt hatred of trans people and cis women and they way he uses us as contemptible things for his own pleasure in addition to how he uses us as contemptible things for his political advancement, every decent person should be celebrating that result right now.
5:45 Pacific:
Democratic House candidate for Delaware-1 Sarah McBride ahead of her Republican opponent 57 to 42 as of 8:30pm Eastern.
Why is this important? McBride, assuming this holds up (and some people are already calling the race for her), will be the first trans member of the US House of Representatives. We’ve had representation in state legislatures here and there over the last 6 years, but until now Congress has been free to legislate trans lives without input from trans people. That should end this January, and I am fucking here for it.
8:30 Pacific
So, some thoughts I didn’t have time to type earlier tonight about voting while trans.
In 1992 I began the slow process of coming out trans to myself and then to important people in my life and then to the world. By the spring of 1994 I had changed my name. When I took my name change cert down to the Multnomah County Elections Office to change my registration, I got this old white lady helping me. Like, really old. Maybe 48 or 50? Ancient. Anyway, as this young trans person I had to come out to this stranger to get this done. I was nervous, and she was not mean, but neither exactly friendly. She was more bureaucratically efficient, which isn’t bad in a public servant, but didn’t help my nerves any.
So at that point I started explaining why I was there and giving her my paperwork and suddenly her demeanour changed. It was like a switch had been thrown. Instantly she was the sweetest, kindest, loving-but-maybe-a-bit-matronizing person you could ever hope to meet. She tells me I’m going to “make a lovely girl,” and I have to bite my tongue to keep my feminist self from replying “Woman not girl,” and my trans self from replying, “It’s not the doctors who make me who I am.”
But again, it was 1994 and we weren’t yet out of the Pat Robertson “Gay men are AIDS-demons” era. Information about trans people was minimal and goodwill towards us was sparse. This elections clerk smiled big and did the absolute best she knew how to do to make me feel happy and supported, and that intent counted for everything. She cared. She wanted the best for me. And she wanted me to fucking vote.
In 1994.
Not many weeks later I headed down to my precinct to vote under my new name for the first time. The vote was being held at St. Philip Neri Church on SE 16th & Division Street, the southern edge of Ladd’s Addition. As Catholic churches go, this wasn’t one of the worst or most conservative, but that doesn’t go a whole long way. I wasn’t happy just walking in the place, despite voting there in the 1992 general and primary. When I got to the front of the line, the check-in table volunteer looked at me, looked at the name on the rolls, looked at my ID, and told me that there was something wrong with my voter registration record and that I could go to the county office to try to fix it if I still wanted to try to vote. She was polite, but firm. There would be no voting if she could help it.
I stood for a few moments. It probably felt longer than the time that actually passed. Her face looked more and more as if she had swallowed something sour. I’m sure mine looked something similar.
County elections wasn’t actually far away, but it was a farther walk than back home. I ate. I drank tea. I stewed. I waited for my then-BFF to get home so I could maybe get some support. A few hours, two conversations later and a dinner later, I went back to vote again in the evening. The check-in volunteer asked me to wait. A problem, you see. She wanted to talk to her supervisor. As she fetched him, I could see the note left next to my name. I don’t remember the exact words, but it was about a man voting, and fraud or … something. Not the word fraud, but something about not trusting me.
The supervisor came over, telling me that there was a problem and that they were worried I might be registered under the wrong name. As if. They weren’t stupid. They knew that there were only two possibilities, one that I was trying to pull off the most demented and conspicuous fraud in history and the second that I was one of those people. To the volunteers staffing the St Philip Neri precinct, it was considered more polite to assume I was a particularly stupid felon.
I was not having it. I politely explained, only a little louder and slower than strictly necessary, that I was a transsexual woman. T R A N S S E X U A L. I explained that being transsexual doesn’t actually disqualify one from voting and that I would very much like to vote now please, but would be happy to explain the medical process of changes to my breasts and genitals if that was necessary.
The supervisor did perhaps the best impression of swallowing a live bullfrog that I have ever seen.
This was 1994.
There is no way to determine whether a trans voter is going to get someone loving and supportive but not entirely informed helping with the process of voting, or whether one is going to get someone more happy to assume a person is in the midst of earning five years in prison if it means that they don’t have to acknowledge a voter is trans. There wasn’t in 1994, and there isn’t thirty years later in 2024. British trans voters faced barriers in this summer’s elections and US trans voters have faced barriers in our primary elections and again today. So when I report the story of a trans empowerment centre running the vote in West Hollywood, I want readers to understand how that is exactly how radical and how giant a positive step forward this is for democratic participation.
Celebrate Sarah McBride representing Delaware in congress. Celebrate Hawaii’s Kim Coco Iwamoto being the first Democrat to defeat an incumbent Speaker of a state legislature in the primary. Celebrate all the trans, non-binary, and genderqueer candidates being elected tonight and over the next few days as vote totals are finalized.
But honestly, let’s also just celebrate each and every trans person who overcame hostile ID laws, hostile volunteers, and other barriers to register their vote in 2024.
8:40 Pacific
From the Washington Blade:
“I’ve always said that trans people make the best natural politicians,” says Alfred Twu, a candidate running for the Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board. “We’re already used to getting personal attacks, nothing really phases us, and we’re even used to explaining our life story to random people.”
I love it. So fucking true. Though I think people know a little better these days, it was downright routine for people to ask me about my genitalia throughout the 1990s and most of the 2000s. Deftly redirecting pushy people towards more productive conversations is a skill that many trans people are forced to develop as a matter of social survival.
11:30 Pacific
Let me be clear that this is not an argument for voting against nominating women, but I do think that Dems and lefties -- including myself among the latter -- underestimate the sexism of the supposedly-centrist voter. Trump is a terrible candidate and he will be a terrible president (again). But because we have never yet had a woman president, all the sexist bullshit still nags at the brains of too many men. They haven’t seen a woman do the job, so they assume she can’t do the job.
Yes it’s fucked up, but I also think it’s true.
Future updates as events warrant.
Crip Dyke also writes for the delightfully cussmouthed Wonkette!
You could also follow me on BlueSky. Pretty sure that would make you cool or something.
Congress will have an out trans person and we're celebrating at the Sprinkles Estate. https://youtu.be/nNUMLxzWx5Q?si=DXHVrarDbF5LuKCu
Ta, Crip Dyke. Trans rights are human rights, and now a trans woman will be a Representative in the US Congress. That is lovely.