College Park resident Tori Cooper says Black Georgians who support limiting the rights of transgender people like her are being manipulated by politicians who have little interest in helping any members of the Black community.
Her comments came in response to President Donald Trump’s recent executive order scaling back the federal government’s recognition of gender identity and involvement in gender-affirming health care, as well as a newly proposed Georgia law that would bar trans women and girls from competing in women’s sports.
“[GOP politicians are] making trans people a part of every conversation because they get these little political wins,” Cooper, a 54-year-old Black and transgender woman who serves as director of community engagement for the Human Rights Campaign, told Capital B Atlanta earlier this week. “We don’t strive to be on the front page of every news cycle simply for being trans. We just want to live and coexist along with everyone else.”
A 2023 Pew Research poll reveals Black people across the nation are almost evenly divided on their view of transgender people, with a slight majority (36%) saying society has “not gone far enough” in accepting transgender identity and 29% saying it has “gone too far.”
Black lawmakers in Georgia say Trump and his Republican allies across the nation took advantage of this cultural divide last year to discourage some Black people from voting.
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Advancing civil rights for all marginalized groups has been a core tenant of the Democratic Party for decades, but continuing to advocate for transgender rights has been a controversial issue for Black Georgia Democrats still stinging from former Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss to Trump during last year’s presidential election.
Political ads emphasizing Harris’ support for allowing transgender inmates to receive taxpayer-funded sex change operations ran on an endless loop in Georgia and beyond in 2024, even though Harris rarely addressed the topic while campaigning.
Polling data shows gender-identity related controversies — such as whether transgender youth should be allowed to receive hormone therapy and surgeries that are already illegal in Georgia — weren’t among Black voters’ top concerns last year in an election cycle largely defined by inflation and fears of Trump becoming a dictator upon his reelection.
But since Election Day in November, members of the Georgia Legislative Black Caucus have acknowledged some among their largely Black voting base have voiced disapproval of the party’s defense of gender-affirming health care and support for allowing trans athletes to compete in women’s sports in Georgia.
“Black folks are very conservative on this issue,” state Rep. Billy Mitchell, D-Stone Mountain, told Capital B Atlanta earlier this month. “In our last presidential election, [Republicans] in this state and federally, they really hit hard on this. … And so we’re going to have to find a way to deal with this.”
Trump’s executive order on gender
The executive order Trump issued Monday following his second inauguration requires federal agencies to use the term “sex” — defined as “an individual’s immutable biological classification” — in place of “gender,” which commonly refers to socially constructed characteristics of men, women, boys, and girls.
It also mandates federal officials recognize two biological sexes — male and female — in place of gender, a rule that GLAAD, a prominent LGBTQ+ advocacy group, says discriminates against nonbinary individuals, according to CBS News.
Trump says gender ideology “extremism” is harmful to women.
“Efforts to eradicate the biological reality of sex fundamentally attack women by depriving them of their dignity, safety, and well-being,” the president wrote in his executive order announcement.
Cooper, a 16-year metro Atlanta resident, was “disgusted” on Tuesday when she learned of the executive order.
“It goes against common sense, and it really goes against the interest of public safety,” Cooper said. “How does it protect women? In what way does this make being a cisgender woman safer?”
How trans women are vulnerable
The new order requires sweeping federal policy changes limiting the recognition of gender identity. It bars taxpayer funds from being used to pay for gender-transition health care, for example, and ensures single-sex spaces, such as rape shelters and prisons, are divided based on biological sex and not gender identity.
The latter policy effectively requires transgender women serving time in federal prison to be housed with male inmates instead of cisgender female inmates, something Cooper says will lead to more violence against trans women behind bars in Georgia’s seven federal prisons, where rape has been “rampant” in recent years.
While at least one instance of a female inmate being raped by man posing as transgender women has been documented in New York City, Cooper pointed out studies showing transgender women are nine times more likely to be victims of sexual assault.
A U.S. Justice Department report released in October found Georgia’s federal prisons fail “to adequately protect people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) from a substantial risk of serious harm from sexual violence and abuse by staff and other incarcerated people.”
“It is not safe for them, even in the carceral system, to be in situations like that,” Cooper said.
The Georgia bill impacting student athletes
Mitchell and other Democrats say Georgia Republicans have seized on the political divide over advocating for trans rights in efforts to satisfy the concerns of their voting base.
Trump’s gender order comes on the heels of GOP lawmakers in Georgia introducing legislation that would require transgender athletes competing in the state to do so based on the sex listed on their “official birth certificate” instead of their gender identity.
The measure known as the “Fair and Safe Athletic Opportunities Act,” or SB 1, codifies regulations already enacted by the Georgia High School Association in 2022. Supporters of the proposed law, including Senate Majority Leader Steve Gooch, R-Dahlonega, say it’s necessary to protect female athletes from being forced to compete against biological males, a position he pointed out is supported by nearly 70% of U.S. adults in a May 2023 Gallup poll.
“It is unfair and unsafe to have biologically born males [participating] in women’s sports — bottom line,” Gooch told Capital B Atlanta via email earlier this month.
Georgia’s SB 1 could have unintended consequences for cisgender Black women living in the state, according to Georgia Sen. Kim Jackson, D-Stone Mountain, the first openly gay woman elected to the state senate chamber.
Jackson suggested that SB 1 may lead to Black women and girls in Georgia being subjected to undue scrutiny about their gender after dominating their competition, akin to the unfair treatment Algerian boxer Imane Khelif experienced last year while competing in the Paris Olympics.
“The only people who were ever questioned about whether or not they were really a girl when I played ball were Black girls who were too fast or too strong,” Jackson said. “This bill opens up really good athletes who are girls who happen to have flat chests and short hair to questions about who they really are. And that hurts.”
Jackson said her research shows there’s only two transgender children in Georgia who would be impacted by SB 1, and they’re being unfairly singled out by the proposed law.
She also said the bill creates a “false binary” by suggesting human beings can only be male or female, which she says is exclusionary to intersex and nonbinary individuals in Georgia.
“It’s denying their existence,” Jackson said. “I believe that all children should have access to collegiate sports. … They should have access to sports in their schools.”
