Law reform projects, while often well intentioned, are unable to protect the ‘more vulnerable’ people in the trans community, or even the majority of trans folks. While it can be true that the more privileged (read middle-upper class white trans folks) many see some level of benefit from the inclusion of nondiscrimination laws, these laws fail to account for systemic oppression and multiple factors of oppression such as race, sex, class, etc. Furthermore, these laws only add to the arsenal of those systems which perpetuate systemic oppression and that are the largest perpetrators themselves of discriminatory violence. As Dean Spade wrote in Chapter 2 of Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law, “Since the criminal punishment system itself is a significant source of racialized-gendered violence, increasing its resources and punishment capacity will not reduce violence against trans people.” [1] If real change were to happen, expanding the power of the police and of the criminal justice system is not the place to start.
[1] Spade, D. (2015). Normal life administrative violence, critical trans politics, and the limits of law. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.