Welcome to Trans Tuesday! This week’s topic wasn’t one I ever thought I’d do, because I thought it was something everyone was aware of. Turns out: no. Every time it comes up people are surprised and horrified. So let me tell you about TRANS PANIC.
I wish this were something cute, like every time I wanted pizza but my favorite pizza place was closed: trans panic! I’m out of HAIR product to make my curls right: trans panic! This movie has a very hot lesbian in it and I’m too attracted to her: trans panic!
Alas, I must inform you, it’s nothing so benign.
Because trans panic, you see, is a (valid and accepted) legal defense people can use in cases of murder, manslaughter, and assault, and it goes like this: “I thought she was a cis woman but we went to have sex and found out she’s trans, and I snapped!”
Or “this person flirted with me and I found out they were trans and so I panicked and killed them.”
You know… normal, healthy stuff.
In the vast majority of the United States, this is a legal and accepted method of defense, in court, that you can use to justify violence against trans women.
It’s similar to gay panic, which you’ve probably correctly surmised is the exact same thing but only for gay folks. Also still legal in many places!
Cishet friends out there, stop for a second and think about what this means. Think about how it would make you feel, not just on its own, but as law supported by the government.
“I was flirting with this nice lady but I found out she was cisgender so I snapped and killed her. You can’t blame me for that!” And the all-transgender government says, huh, yeah, makes sense.
How does that make you feel? Do you want to curl up into a ball and hide?
Almost like maybe that’s the entire intent?
Imagine.
Liiiiiike do you understand the world we’re living in here? Can you imagine what it’s like to be so hated by cisgender people, who control everything and make all the laws, that they say it’s fine if people kill us because the very nature of our existence so upsets them?
Let’s get one thing straight: the law is wrong and fucking awful.
But if you think transphobes are going to stick to only using it in “sexual situations,” I think our terrible president has an “infrastructure week” to sell you. Not that it’s justified even in sexual situations. It’s not okay!
But it’s a short hop from “sexual situations,” to “flirting,” to “she looked at me wrong,” to “I felt like this trans woman was hitting on me so I attacked her,” to simply stating that anytime they want to inflict violence upon us.
All of US history shows you the way shit like that has been warped and weaponized against marginalized populations. Like the Republicans’ push to define existing as a trans person inherently sexual.
“By making standards for obscenity more subjective, IODA could also open the door for conservatives to legally declare trans people in general to be “obscene.” …Project 2025, a… sprawling 920-page document falsely declares that trans people are a threat to children, [states] that transitioning itself is equivalent to pornography, and that pornography must be outlawed in the U.S.”
That would, I’m sad to tell you, make the trans panic defense applicable to all of us, in any situation, in those states where it’s legal.
And if you think this isn’t intrinsically tied in with CHASERS AND THE FETISHIZATION OF TRANS WOMEN, and the way many of us are forced into sex work which “trans panic” would then “let” people assault us over, you’ve not been paying enough attention. They fetishize us, want us to be nothing more than sex objects, work to make it so we’re unhoused and forced into sex work, and then have laws like this to “dispose” of us afterward. It’s fucking sickening.
There’s a case where a cis man was flirting with women he didn’t know were trans. His friends mocked him for not knowing, and when he later flirted (or maybe just talked?) with another woman he found out was trans… he killed her. Just straight up ended her life.
He confessed and it still took two years to even charge him. He took a plea deal down to manslaughter (why was that even offered?!), the jury did not consider it a hate crime (what the fuck?!), and he was sentenced to twelve whole years in prison.
The New York Times (before they became a full-on transphobic right wing propaganda machine) has an account of this story that’s brutal. I’m linking it for the factual evidence, but if you’re trans, I advise you not to read it. The description of what this disgusting piece of shit man inflicted upon Islan Nettles is… beyond awful. But cis people? Maybe brace yourself and take a look at what we’re dealing with here.
Note there was no sex! Likely not even any actual flirting (which, to be clear, would in no way excuse it or make it less awful). It was a brief exchange of words on a street, and a cis man decided it was time for a trans woman to die. And this was a valid defense in 2015 New York.
Sit with that for a fucking moment.
My beloved California was the first state to ever ban this absolute nonsense, and it still didn’t even happen until two thousand fucking fourteen.
I talked about this a bit in TRANS POLITICS 2: YOU MUST VOTE TO PROTECT US, but let me state it again. There were a lot of problems with Kamala Harris’ failed campaign for president. There were a lot of problems with where she stands on some issues. She also failed to directly and loudly stand up for trans people during her campaign.
But her record on the issue is very clear. She led the charge that made California the first state in the nation to ban the trans panic and gay panic defenses, and even co-sponsored a bill that tried to ban them nationwide (it sadly failed).
She’s problematic in many ways, but her record on trans rights was never one of them. That any states have banned it now, in 2026, directly traces back to her efforts to ban it in California, and then lobbying other states to follow suit.
It feels unconscionable that it took until 2014 for it to happen in the most liberal state in the country, and yet pales in comparison to all the places in this country where trans panic is still allowed as a legal defense. See the map above for the thirty states and five territories that have not, and may never, ban it.
If you add in those territories with the states, of these fifty-five regions of the United States… sixty-three percent allow the “trans panic” defense! Our country as a whole is incredibly hostile to trans people. See TRANS KIDS 2: THE INTAKE EXAM AND TRANS FLIGHT for how bigoted and dangerous laws are forcing trans people to flee their homes and seek refuge in safer areas within our own country.
I certainly don’t want to travel to any of the states that haven’t banned the trans panic defense. But you know what’s worse? Trans people live in those states. And I’m so, so scared for them and their safety. I’m angry. I’m fucking repulsed. Aren’t you?? How can anyone justify this?
Trans people cannot change this on our own. We are too small a portion of the population. See TRANS POLITICS 1: STOP TOLERATING TRANSPHOBIA for more on how it is up to cis people to make positive change in the fight for trans rights.
If this all disgusts you, horrifies you, shocks you… please, for the love of pizza and every trans person in this country, do something about it.
Contact your reps about it. Tell them it’s unacceptable. Contact them every time they try to ban our healthcare, our use of bathrooms, our ability to play sports or even exist in public. Call them on it every time. Make transphobic legislation so toxic and awful for them that they have second thoughts.
Anti-trans hate is actually not a popular political decision! Outside of the big bad baby man in charge, many Republicans who campaigned on it in 2024 lost their elections!
They can be stopped. They can be made to see anti-trans hate as politically destructive for them.
And you, cis people, are the only ones who can make it happen.
Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com