In the past ten years, we lost hope in American politics, realized we were being watched on the internet, and finally broke the gender binary (kind of). So many of the beliefs we held to be true at the beginning of the decade have since been proven false—or at least, much more complicated than they once seemed. The Decade of Disillusion is a series that tracks how the hell we got here.Transgender people entered the 2010s quietly and are leaving it as magazine cover stars and TV show protagonists. That increased visibility pushed society’s understanding of the gender binary, with many people becoming aware of the existence of trans and non-binary people for the first time.
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But the 2010s were also when we learned that mainstream visibility doesn’t always equal rights, wealth, or safety. While visibility brought significant rights gains to the trans community over the past decade, it also brought a significant backlash that currently threatens several decades of progress for trans people. Here are the 10 most significant moments marking the steps toward rights and representation, which were also, in many cases, steps back.
May 30, 2010: The State Department Makes Public Life for Many Trans People Possible For the First Time
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August 22, 2013: Chelsea Manning Becomes a Trans Whistleblowing Icon
“You can almost use her progress in life to track a lot of transgender rights over the last decade,” said trans advocate and writer Gillian Branstetter. “We as a people entered this decade with immense hope, and now we are leaving this decade with immense fear and immense potential for harm. We started this [period of time] with Chelsea Manning in prison and we're ending it with Chelsea Manning in prison.”
May 29, 2014: Laverne Cox’s Time Magazine Cover Puts Trans People in the Spotlight
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“That might be remembered as the point that cis people discovered us, but we were here all along, and we've been doing the work all along,” said Branstetter. The cover did symbolize a new level of representation for trans people in the U.S., resulting in modest gains in legal rights. But with that increased visibility came increased attacks from anti-trans activists and politicians—attacks that the trans community are still dealing with at the end of the decade.Transgender journalist Samantha Allen revisited and skewered the overly optimistic cover three years later. “Imagine a magazine cover today announcing ‘The Transgender Tipping Point.’ The thought is almost laughable,” she wrote. “Whatever burst of momentum there supposedly was in 2014 has given way to a seemingly endless war of attrition between civil rights groups and anti-LGBT groups, with lives hanging delicately in the balance. Yes, transgender people are on TV now. But it’s clearer now than it has ever been that visibility is no silver bullet for transphobia.”
June 25, 2015: Caitlyn Jenner Becomes the New Face of the Trans Community, For Better or Worse
When former Olympian and reality-TV star Caitlyn Jenner first announced her transition —via a glamorous Vanity Fair cover—she became the de facto face of the trans community in mainstream pop culture. But it soon became clear that Jenner was out of her depth in her new role as an advocate for the greater trans community.
Her support for Donald Trump’s campaign for president proved disastrous, and early media missteps as well as her initial discomfort with marriage equality cost her much needed credibility with trans people and the LGBTQ community at large. Jenner is a contemptuous figure, and as a former athlete, most of her fans were the kind of people who didn’t know much about trans people to begin with. It’s easy for cis people to mock both her and her gender identity, leaving many trans people in the frustrating position of defending Jenner’s womanhood while denouncing, well, nearly everything else about her.
Despite that, Jenner remains the highest profile celebrity to publicly transition, and that alone makes her coming out a milestone in the past decade of trans rights.
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March 23, 2016: The Bathroom Bill Is Signed and Organized Backlash Begins
Importantly, HB2 taught the LGBTQ rights movement how to effectively respond to conservative attacks on trans issues. “You can talk to state legislators in any state who will point to this three billion dollar damage done to the North Carolina economy because of the massive outcry over the threat of HB2,” said Branstetter. “It was a huge, huge turning point because it showed that transgender people are not defenseless. We could not easily be used as culture war fodder or a wedge issue. It showed that we have teeth, that we can fight back in a real way.”
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May 13, 2016: The Affordable Care Act Revolutionizes Access to Transition-related Care
Before passage of the Affordable Care Act, a gender dysphoria diagnosis was considered a pre-existing condition by most insurance companies, so trans people were often left without access to even basic health insurance plans for transition-related care. And even if you did have coverage, most insurance companies also specifically excluded transition-related surgeries from coverage plans.
Passage of Obamacare changed that calculus significantly. Not only did the ACA require insurance companies to cover people with pre-existing conditions, the Obama administration put into place a rule to ban healthcare discrimination on the basis of gender identity, ending exclusions of transition-related surgeries.
Suddenly, trans people from all walks of life could afford life-affirming transition surgeries, and hospitals rushed to meet the sudden growth in demand. Earlier this year, however, the Trump administration proposed a rule that would undo the Obama-era rule, threatening access to transition-related care for hundreds of thousands of trans people in the U.S.
June 15, 2017: Oregon Becomes the First State to Allow Non-binary Gender Markers
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Now, at the end of the decade, 16 states offer non-binary gender markers on ID. The administrative moves came in response to a massive growth in people identifying outside of the gender binary. According to Pew Research data released earlier this year, 35 percent of people in Gen Z know someone who uses “they/them” pronouns and several non-binary actors, such as Asia Kate Dillon, now regularly appear on TV and in movies.
July 26, 2017: Trump Bans Trans People From The Military
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November 7, 2017: Danica Roem Becomes First Openly Trans State Legislator
October 8, 2019: Trans rights goes to SCOTUS
The Supreme Court heard the case of trans woman Aimee Stephens, who was fired from her job as a funeral home director and embalmer after informing her employer of her impending gender transition. If the high court rules against Stephens, it will set a precedent for employers to legally fire anyone who they perceive as gender-nonconforming.
Conservative attacks on the trans community are not showing any signs of slowing down, but what we’ve seen in the past decade is trans people bravely claiming public life, demanding rights and respect, and fighting back in a loud and organized way.Aimee Stephens has said the reason she decided to sue was, simply, she “got mad enough to do something about it.” That’s the energy we’ll need for the 2020s.