Imara Jones was filming a documentary during a road trip in California when she took a break to scroll through the news. A story about state lawmakers in Idaho banning transgender girls from playing on female sports teams in public schools caught her attention; it was the second anti-trans legislation Jones had seen passed in 2020. She turned to her producer and told her they needed to look into “this anti-trans thing.” Dozens of similar bills were introduced in statehouses across the country soon after.
A year later, Jones launched her podcast The Anti-Trans Hate Machine: A Plot Against Equality to investigate the religious extremists, conservative political groups and billionaires pursuing an anti-trans agenda.
Since then, the urgency of her work has only increased. According to the New York Times, Republicans have spent more than $65 million on anti-trans TV ads in recent months, despite their negative impact on the safety and well-being of trans people and little evidence of their effectiveness in influencing voters. And in 2023 and 2024, more than 500 anti-LGBTQ bills were introduced annually.
Anti-trans issues work best in very close elections, where the margins are very small
Imara Jones
On her podcast, Jones — a Black trans journalist and founder of the TransLash Media platform — examines the anti-trans industry with a conversational tone while centering the voices and experiences of trans people. “I’m convinced that when you see the same thing happening in different parts of the country at the same time, that’s something to watch,” Jones said. “I think coincidence is always a great breeding ground for journalism and to look under the hood at what is going on.”
In the first episode of the season, Jones looks at how the Proud Boys paramilitary group uses anti-trans rhetoric to cause political unrest. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), far-right militias have grown in unprecedented numbers in recent years, while political violence in general has also increased.
For transgender people, such rhetoric can lead to increased violence against them and thoughts of suicide. A recent report from LGBTQ+ advocacy group The Trevor Project found that suicide attempts among trans and non-binary youth have increased by as much as 72% in states that have passed anti-trans laws.
“We know that trans people in general have experienced more violence since there has been an increase in anti-trans rhetoric in terms of hate crimes,” Jones said. “So we know that people’s safety and well-being are affected just by its impact [public] conversation.”
Jones hopes that through her work, the press and political leaders will see anti-trans rhetoric as a serious threat to democracy and community safety.
“The biggest solution is to take these attacks seriously,” Jones said, “to understand how they are being used for paramilitary violence, for political violence, to destabilize communities, to politically undermine democratic conversations, to take away voices” .
A ‘transmoral panic’
Anti-trans ads are now being deployed by the Republican Party because of the close presidential election, Jones said. During their debate in September, for example, Trump attacked Kamala Harris’ 2019 comments about her support for gender-affirming surgeries for incarcerated transgender people. “Anti-trans issues work best in very close elections, where the margins are very close and you’re just trying to convert one or two votes per district, and that’s enough to help you win,” Jones said.
Another reason why anti-trans ads are particularly salient now is because the Republican Party is using them to court voters who supported Republican candidate Nikki Haley, who ran on an anti-trans platform, she added. Many of those voters are suburban women who are Republicans but sometimes vote Democrat in local elections. Both parties are now competing for their votes. “Harris is playing for the Nikki Haley voter, and there are indications that she is gaining enough ground to maybe put her over the top,” Jones said. “That’s exactly the type of population that would be receptive to anti-trans messages.”
Christian nationalists and right-wing politicians view transgender people as collateral damage in their pursuit of political victories, Jones said. And bundled with anti-trans rhetoric, there is backlash against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies. A “transmoral panic” among the far right has led to an increase in legislation banning both DEI policies and trans protections, says Emerson Hodges, research analyst for the Intelligence Project at the SPLC. At the Intelligence Project, Hodges tracks hate and extremism through personal and online monitoring.
“Anti-LGBT groups that have alliances with trans exclusionary groups are also pushing what they call ‘viewpoint diversity’ to roll back DEI protections in statehouses and corporations,” said Hodges. Billed as including different perspectives in an argument, viewpoint diversity is problematic because it promotes the false narrative that DEI is a threat to white Christian men,” he said, “and they use that to push these anti-trans, anti-LGBT bills” .
Related: If Trump wins the election, he could launch a “catastrophic” rollback of LGBTQ+ rights
Along with an increase in suicide attempts among transgender and non-binary people, anti-trans legislation could lead to violence against transgender people of color, Hodges said. According to HRC, twenty-seven transgender people have been murdered this year, 74% of them people of color and 48% black. “As we look at these trends of violence against trans people,” Hodges said, “it is important to remember that these trends of violence are influenced by legislation and the politicization of trans affirmation.”
While Jones started her podcast in 2019 to highlight the dangers of anti-trans legislation, she hopes to one day celebrate the lives of trans people. But first, political leaders must work to create a society where trans and gender non-conforming people can live without fear of violence.
“We would like to focus on telling all the good news and positive stories surrounding trans people from all walks of life and backgrounds,” Jones said. “But the world will have to cooperate a little to enable us to do so.”
