Professor Julio Capó, Jr. just published “Trump's Troop Ban Is Part of a Long, Dark History of Accusing Trans People of Threatening National Stability” in Time. It situates Trump's trans military ban in the much longer history of state violence—inflicted by the very state these service members risk their lives for, even as that state is the major source that is killing them within and outside of the armed forces—against trans people.
He explores this largely through the life of a trans woman and "ex-GI" named Charlotte McLeod who married a man in 1959 in Miami and inadvertently sparked a panic about family values and moral stability.
“McLeod challenged the state’s power to dictate what her body should look like, what duty it should perform and in whose service. She challenged people to rethink the ‘naturalness’ of gender and sex at a time when such norms were held up as Cold War imperatives intrinsically linked to false ideas of national security.”
Find the full article here.
