Ohio Republicans Continue War on Trans Youth

The Ohio Republican Party has recently pushed through a new bill which Governor Mike DeWine signed into law on Nov. 27, two days before Native American Heritage Day. House Bill 183, also known as the “Protect All Students Act,” denies LGBTQIA+ students of all ages the ability to use the restrooms, locker rooms, changing rooms, and shower rooms of the gender they identify with. It forces students across the state to use only the facilities of the gender they were assigned at birth and prohibits any school in the state from creating multi-occupancy facilities for the LGBTIA+ community. Bills like this have been put forth all across the nation. Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Utah have already passed similar bills in their states, and even more states have bills like these waiting to be voted on in their respective legislatures.

Governor DeWine's veto against the ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth last year didn’t stop the passage of the bill when the Ohio House and Senate quickly voted to override that veto and likely lost him what little room for bargaining with his party he may have had. With the Governor’s signing of this piece of legislation, the “issue” of transgender students using the bathroom continues to galvanize the hate groups we see already permeating the nation and Ohio specifically.

With the complete dominance of the Republican Party in our federal, state, and local governments, it is the duty of the people to resist their edicts. HB 183 is another tool in the ruling class’ arsenal that reinforces the binary of gender roles and seeks to define our social relation to one another. Transgender people challenge this binary, making their very existence a threat to the [capitalist] economic system. The bill gives Governor Mike Dewine and all the other stooges of the bourgeoisie a way to keep the working class divided and at each other’s throats instead of coming together to fight the real enemy: the capitalist ruling class. As long as we must work to live or starve, as long as healthcare is a commodity and tied to employment, and as long as capitalism exists, there can be no trans liberation. The entire working class must come together to organize, fight, and create a world free of economic exploitation and gender oppression. 
We must educate ourselves on the reality of being transgender in an oppressive society and understand the need for individuals to use the facilities that make them feel comfortable and safe, so we can combat the propaganda that has been shoved down our throats for centuries by the bourgeoisie. By organizing all genders, sexes, races, ages of the working class, we can create systems that we the people decide are necessary for the betterment of our society. When we resist the reactionary elements of our communities and government, we build a sense of solidarity that is crucial to any organizing effort and puts us on the path towards liberation within our lifetime.