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For a few years now, whether we’ve noticed it or not, gender has become a test to pass or fail.

Since 2021, at least 177 anti-transgender bills have become law in states across the country, according to the Trans Legislation Tracker. The bills largely aim to keep trans girls out of school sports, support misgendering in schools or prevent doctors from treating gender dysphoria in youth through gender-affirming care. 

But no bill works as a scalpel; we are all taking this new gender test. How are cisgender women of color being harmed by anti-trans rhetoric in sports? Is anti-trans rhetoric making it harder for low-income girls to access free menstrual products at school? Does it threaten to make jury pools less diverse?

At The 19th, we have been asking deep questions about what anti-LGBTQ+ bills mean for our transgender, nonbinary and gender nonconforming readers. We are also invested in understanding the toll they take on our wider world. Anti-transgender legislation and rhetoric is reshaping all of our lives, from bodily autonomy to education, privacy and the access and use of public spaces. Are we paying attention? 

Not too long ago, it looked like the movement to pass anti-LGBTQ+ legislation was doomed to fail. In 2017, backlash from entertainers, athletes and corporate America pushed lawmakers in North Carolina to repeal a law that forced individuals to use public bathrooms based on the gender on their birth certificates. In 2018, voters in Alaska rejected a similar measure, while in Massachusetts, they chose to retain LGBTQ+ anti-discrimination protections already enshrined into law. To most, the writing was on the wall: In the land of marriage equality, going after LGBTQ+ rights was a political non-starter. 

Then came 2020. 

Just before COVID shuttered statehouses, Idaho squeaked through two anti-trans bills. One barred trans girls from playing on sports teams. The other blocked trans people from updating their birth certificates. The Idaho laws were among more than 75 anti-trans bills to hit statehouses that year, an unprecedented number. 

The door had been cracked open. 

Within the next two years, Republican lawmakers and conservatives running for office would reach new extremes in anti-trans rhetoric. Schools started banning Pride flags as political speech. States like Texas and Florida became bellwethers for anti-LGBTQ+ policy nationwide. 

Anti-transgender bills flooded state legislatures. This time, these bills strategically did not reference transgender people, even while proposing ways to restrict their lives. Instead, lawmakers framed these measures as a means of protecting cisgender women from trans women — as if trans people were a threat or, worse, as if they did not exist at all. 

These state bills framed the idea of being transgender as unnatural or biologically impossible; a political “ideology” that contaminated  children — as opposed to being a normal part of life — and seeped into mainstream politics. In a second Trump administration, these once-fringe beliefs could well become tenets of the federal government. Project 2025, a policy blueprint created by the conservative Heritage Foundation, serves at once as foundation and guidepost for this effort, while the virulent language used to describe trans people during the Republican National Convention sets the tone for what may come.  

To understand how the anti-trans agenda could reshape all of our lives, our reporters have set out to examine how anti-trans laws are impacting the lives of Americans, whether or not they are trans. The goal is to connect the dots that will show how these laws, intended to target a small minority, are rewriting the future for all of us, and for generations to come. This is the Toll of America’s Anti-Trans War.

This series will be updated with new stories throughout the week.

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