Tennessee has recently passed a bill, effective July 1st 2024, declaring it a class-C felony to “recruit, harbor, or transport an unemancipated minor within this state” for transgender healthcare procedures, carrying a sentence of 3-15 years in prison. This applies over state lines and states that do not have anti-extradition laws relating to trans rights can extradite you to Tennessee.
Notably: the bill is vague. This means: telling stories of your own transition, describing your healthcare experiences to an open group chat, describing your trans experiences on a public website, creating trans health guides online, describing how you have gotten DIY HRT, describing anything to do with trans healthcare, even as a cis person, can result in a class-C felony conviction.
Given that being arrested in any capacity for transgender people can be an incredibly dangerous experience (CW: SV), I strongly suggest you begin caring about opsec, stop referring to where you live, use VPNs, stop using apps like Discord, and stop using social media sites that track your IP or user agent fingerprint while unprotected. Remember that for a bill like this to be challenged in court, you have to be arrested first.
Will discuss creating / linking to a transgender matrix chat so that we can help people to move off of things like discord.
Yeah it isn’t like being a communist where you can just shut up in jail and have no repercussions from other inmates. If you’re trans in prison you either have to just sit with dysphoria in prison or be horrifically abused for being out.
I’d also like to point out the very high profile case of Chelsea Manning. She was considered to be in such danger in prison due to being trans that solitary confinement, a known torture method, was safer than being in general pop by the wardens.
The link I posted in the main article was of a trans woman being sent to a county jail and abused was for a traffic offense, even.