Yesterday, the governor of South Dakota vetoed a trans-antagonistic bill that passed in the state senate last month. While I am grateful to trans activists and allies for helping defeat this bill, I have no gratitude toward Governor Daugaard, who seems to be more concerned with saving money than respecting basic human dignity.

Preventing this discriminatory legislation  – which would have  limited school restrooms and locker rooms to students of the same “biological sex” – from becoming law is maintaining the status quo, not progress. Real progress is making laws to help protect trans people, like the Berkeley initiative to designate all single-stall restrooms as all-gender. If we’re to stem the tide of bullying and trans-antagonistic violence, we need to create a world where trans people are fully respected and accommodated, not merely tolerated.

I fear that these “bathroom bills” will only continue to surface. In a country where a substantial portion of the electorate believes that Donald Trump would be a good president,* we must be ever-vigilant of the assault on anyone outside of the boundaries of cisheteronormativity and whiteness. We cannot allow conservatives and TERFs to continue reducing us to our body parts and birth-assigned genders.

* As mentioned before, I am registered with no party and support no presidential candidates. Do not suggest or even hint that I am obligated to support a Democrat in order to keep a Republican out of the White House. There are plenty of places to stump for your favorite candidate; my blog isn’t one of them.