CW: Transphobia. PSA for anyone who supports trans people: Begin using secure communications like Matrix now. Do NOT wait or delay.

www.erininthemorning.com Tennessee Senate Passes Bill Making "Recruiting" For Trans Youth Care A Felony

The bill could have far ranging impacts in Tennessee and outside of the state, and could be broadly used to target health care professionals across state lines.

Tennessee has recently passed a bill, effective July 1st 2024, declaring it a class-C felony to "recruit, harbor, or transport an unemancipated minor within this state" for transgender healthcare procedures, carrying a sentence of 3-15 years in prison. This applies over state lines and states that do not have anti-extradition laws relating to trans rights can extradite you to Tennessee.

Notably: the bill is vague. This means: telling stories of your own transition, describing your healthcare experiences to an open group chat, describing your trans experiences on a public website, creating trans health guides online, describing how you have gotten DIY HRT, describing anything to do with trans healthcare, even as a cis person, can result in a class-C felony conviction.

Given that being arrested in any capacity for transgender people can be an incredibly dangerous experience (CW: SV), I strongly suggest you begin caring about opsec, stop referring to where you live, use VPNs, stop using apps like Discord, and stop using social media sites that track your IP or user agent fingerprint while unprotected. Remember that for a bill like this to be challenged in court, you have to be arrested first.

Will discuss creating / linking to a transgender matrix chat so that we can help people to move off of things like discord.

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I disagree with the idea that people should be so overcautious as to only communicate the ideas they support or share in closed, secure, completely anonymized spaces. Generally speaking, it is my belief that overzealous Left-wing security culture does more to harm the movement in the long run than help it.
How and what you choose to communicate is a personal decision, and you should make your own threat assessment to decide what to do. It's important to protect yourself. It's also important not to so easily allow ourselves and our beliefs to be siloed off to private corners of the Internet and not expressed openly in public.
I'm a junior member of the PSL and this is their party line. Use your real name, don't hide your face, tell people exactly what you believe and who you are, if it is at all feasible for you to do so. The more people brazenly and publicly oppose the Capitalist order, the better. I don't share my real name on the Internet because I don't want groypers harassing me, but I have zero fear of fascists breaking down my door and killing me in my home. This sort of thing is exceedingly rare and, if it did happen, I would die a martyr.
- Getting arrested as a trans person means you have a high chance of being put into the wrong jail cell. Rates of violence against trans women in jail are astronomical. How you do not comprehend this is beyond me.
  
  I do understand it. People should make their own personal threat assessments when deciding how private and secure to be with online and public communications.
  What I'm pushing back against is not people making a personal decision to be more private and secure, which is their right; what I'm pushing back against is the insistence that queer and leftist people and groups should constantly be hiding themselves and their ideals away from the public at large.
  I can make an analogy to something told to me by a Union representative: if you are worried about retaliation for support for the union, the best way to protect yourself is not to distance yourself or hide your affiliations; it's to loudly and proudly support the union, so they have a better case to claim your firing was retaliatory.
  All revolutionary left-wing politics are inherently escalatory. You bait the oppressors into overstepping their bounds and giving people an excuse to be outraged. It's any one person's right to choose not to participate, and I won't hold it against them, but I believe it is unwise to recommend that the community at large hides itself away in anonymity. Our strength is in numbers, organization, and solidarity.
  
  I believe it is unwise to recommend that the community at large hides itself away in anonymity
  Just to be sure, you are trans yourself, right? I'm trying to figure out which community youre referring to

75 comments