I was invited to speak on a Humanists for Harris call today alongside members of Congress and leaders of the (Secular) Humanist Movement about transgender rights and disability rights. I was especially excited to be on there with Harvard Humanist Chaplain Greg Epstein. Greg Epstein and other Humanist Chaplains including James Croft and Chris Stedman, as well as Harvard Divinity School fellow Casper ter Kuile, have been a big inspiration to my work and research as an anthropologist on how secular ritual can provide a sense of belonging. Also on the call was Rep. Jamie Raskin, Rep. Jared Huffman, Carl Sagan’s wife Ann Druyan and daughter Sasha Sagan, and Heman Mehta of the blog Friendly Atheist. My speech was as follows:
Speech at Humanists for Harris
Thank you for welcoming me on this call with members of Congress and leaders of the Humanist movement. I have always been a grassroots organizer, but I also started my professional career working for the American Humanist Association, fundraising for humanist causes, and thanking many of the people on this call for donating to the organization. Later I became a communications professional in the LGBTQ movement, in addition to serving on nonprofit boards including the Secular Student Alliance. I am now an anthropologist looking at the ways we can create a sense of belonging for transgender and disabled people.
I am on this call because we are at a point where one candidate for president, Kamala Harris, believes I am human, and another who believes I am not human. I have an agender flag behind me, as I am agender and nonbinary and transgender. It is a flag I got for Coming Out Day last week. I thought of ironing the flag this morning, but I didn’t, because there is a culture in the LGBTQ community of not ironing your pride flags, out of solidarity for all those who have to keep their flags folded an hidden away in a closet or a drawer because they cannot be fully out.
I am fighting for a world where all trans people can be out and accepted.
We need a federal government that will fight for transgender people. And frankly, we need a federal government that is doing more than it currently is to stop states passing anti-transgender laws. This year saw 2024, we’ve already seen states consider or pass 550 anti-trans laws. 47% of trans people have considered moving because of anti-trans laws in their state. And as of August 2024, 39.4% or 118,300 trans youth aged 13-17 are living in the 26 states that have passed bans on gender-affirming care.
As Rep Jamie Raskin said we need mass organizing, but we need it for more than just voting. We need grassroots organizing.
As disability justice activist Lydia XZ Brown (Democratic Party) ran for election to the Maryland House of in 2022, we are voting for the conditions we will be fighting under
We need to fight for trans children being denied the right to simply be themselves, and the rights of them and their parents to make their own decisions about their lives, including gender-affirming care, without anti-trans politicians getting involved. They are being told they will be separated by their kids and possibly face criminal prosecution for supporting those kids in getting gender-affirming care. Likewise, teachers and medical providers are being told they will lose their be prosecuted if they support trans kids.
But that is not the only fight. We need protests at the Supreme Court for Reproductive Justice. We need to rally for solidarity with those affected by settler colonialism and the Islamophobia. We need to fight for labor rights.
And as a Sociocultural Anthropologist, I have to point out that the idea that as secular humanists, as one panelist referenced, we are not moving away from “primitive society” that was somehow close-minded because of religion. Instead, we have so much evidence for societies that were more accepting of difference, of transgender people, than we are seeing now by politicians. As an anthropologist, I believe this is not necessarily about Progress, or moving forward to build an entirely new society, but also looking back to other cultures that have been more accepting.
Humanist Chaplain Greg Epstein was on the call, someone I really look up to, and like him, I believe there is a place for pastoral care and ritual for humanists that gives them a sense of existential belonging. Transgender people need that sense of belonging in a world that is increasingly telling them that they don’t belong, that they don’t have a right to be out, and even that that their very identities are not real. In my work as a SocioCultural Anthropologist, I am doing research on ways we can build what I am calling a “transcendental sense of belonging” for transgender people. And humanists have a role in doing that.
Ultimately though, politicians also have a major role in making sure transgender youth, and all transgender people feel they belong. And that is why I am on this call, supporting Kamala Harris for President, and to advocate that not only do we need to vote for her and other politicians who will fight for humanists, for transgender rights, for labor rights, for reproductive rights, and for disability rights, we need to continue doing grassroots organizing. We have one candidate for President who will not be open to any of those issues, and another candidate who will be. We need an administration in the White House to push the Harris administration to take our rights seriously, and our fight does not end at the ballot box. Thank you.
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