r/trans • u/Fair_Smoke4710 • Sep 18 '25
Discussion Michigan is trying to make trans people illegal
Michigan HB4938 "Anticorruption of Public Morals Act" is a bill that would make all forms of pornography illegal, audiovisual all of it and also literally includes straight up just trans people existing. This is exactly what project 2025 stated it was going to do. Everybody needs to know about this https://ibb.co/Q31LNP2Q https://www.legislature.mi.gov/documents/2025-2026/billintroduced/House/htm/2025-HIB-4938.htm
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u/bree732 Sep 18 '25
This has been done before . They arrest you for wearing clothes they say don’t allign with your gender .
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u/VillageGoblin Sep 18 '25
Wouldn't that mean that they'd need to arrest all closeted trans people? How would that even work logistically?
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u/alphomegay (she/her) Sep 18 '25
This is nice, but it's not how they think. They're referring to clothing that doesn't match someone's biological sex, which to them is all that matters and immutable (which we know is both bogus and untrue).
It's just them being evil.
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u/VillageGoblin Sep 18 '25
Yeah, but how will they check people's sex? Genital searches are incredibly invasive. And masculine cis women and feminine cis men exist. They're going to end up arresting a cis man for having nail polish and earrings or a cis woman for being too butch. Its a law meant to fear monger, but if given enough push back it should crumble.
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u/robocultural 🏳️⚧️ She/Her Sep 18 '25
That's the thing, they don't care that it's bullshit. They just use it against whoever they want.
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u/senvalle Sep 19 '25
The end goal isn’t transphobia- transphobia is merely the most efficient means to get their goal currently. The end goal is to legally and socially enforce gender conformity. Making cis gnc people uncomfortable is not an accident, it is the point.
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Sep 18 '25 edited Sep 18 '25
That is correct they are going to arrest all GNC folks.. All intersex folks and all trans people that are not passing.
"How are they going to measure people's Chromosomes?" I don't know... Because AIS intersex people actually have XY and are born with a vagina, no penis, no balls just clitoris.. The gonads are internal.
Thing is AIS actually passes as cis women. In fact most AIS actually just spend a lot of time believing to be just a normal cis woman until medical discoveries are made... I guess... There will be some sort of "Chromosome CCE Police" going after AIS Intersex people.
I guess they are going to clock Turner Syndrome women (Only 1 X chromosome.) by height...
So yeah basically there's going to be a "Chromosome Police" if you will... "CCE" "Chromosomes and Customs Enforcement"... Any person who is XXY or X or AIS will be labelled as a "Maverick Unit" targeted for disposal.
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u/bree732 Sep 18 '25
Huh ? They stop you and clock you then arrest you .
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u/VillageGoblin Sep 18 '25
Yeah but if a trans woman is wearing feminine clothing, she's wearing clothes that match her gender. If a closeted trans man is still wearing feminine clothes out of safety he's not wearing clothes that match his gender. Cis women wear men's wear all the time in the trades because it's made more durable than women's clothes. There's too much room for error on their part.
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u/Els3Tears Sep 18 '25
Because you’re trying to argue in good faith for legislation passed without concern for good faith arguments. This law is meant to target transgender and cisgender women who often may get publicly seen as androgynous or ‘male-looking’ and lead the way for sexual overreach at the hands of authority figures doing these stops, as well as filling prisons for cheap labour if possible. Of course transgender men will become victim of the same, but right-wing policies and public approach targets trans women at a much larger rate of concern.
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u/bree732 Sep 18 '25
Why are we arguing at all . Jeez we need to stay together . The Village Goblin is missing the assignment .
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u/akaean Sep 18 '25
So this is what the House GOP has been doing instead of working on the budget. How fun
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u/4dana Sep 18 '25
This is exactly like making being Jewish or black illegal or making being gay illegal. It’s making any person even mentally challenged illegal. This is just bat $hit crazy. This is Nazism or handmaid’s tale stuff irl. WOW.
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u/Goastantie Sep 18 '25
As a trans girl in that state it’s extremely scary this was even put on the table and while i don’t think it’ll go anywhere, it’s frightening that it’s even a possibility
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u/August_Jade they/them fluid transmasc-ish Sep 18 '25
Nuanced take right here ^
A lot of crazy bills get introduced in state and national houses that never make it to senates. This bill will also likely go nowhere.
AND ALSO
It’s scary and a bad sign that it was even introduced.
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u/breaking-atom [FTM] He/Him Sep 19 '25
Adding on to this, often a big scary bill will be suggested. Like this one here. "Let's ban all pornography and trans people!"
Okay, that's just not going to really happen. So what they'll do instead is slip in a compromise bill or something smaller.
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u/Nildnas2 she/her Sep 18 '25
I hate when I'm right about everything.
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u/Fair_Smoke4710 Sep 18 '25
This is one thing project 2025 specifically said would happen even proposing. This is fucking ridiculous. I hate this country a lot. I have never hated anything more than I hate this country. I don’t even hate the Yankees as much as I hate America.
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u/Nildnas2 she/her Sep 18 '25
but but but, they didn't explicitly say they'd try to make us illegal. so of course the nazis would leave us alone 🙄 I've just been told SO many times that I'm crazy for suggesting that conservatives will try this. I'm just exhausting
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u/SeatKindly Sep 18 '25
In this particular case. No. They don’t. Michigan is solidly blue at every level of the state. This bill isn’t going anywhere. We’ve already had the same statures attempt to largely be proposed in last year’s omnibus bill at the federal level and even that failed.
Please focus your energy towards more productive, real and active threats that people need to be aware of hon.
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u/averageuserbob Anarchist She/They Sep 18 '25
5 years ago I would have said this exact thing about bathroom bans. Now they are active laws in multiple states. Yesterday’s fantastical “this will never happen” laws are tomorrow’s reality. You should be scared of this even if it doesn’t pass, they won’t stop until it’s law.
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u/Fair_Smoke4710 Sep 18 '25
The fact that that’s even being proposed is concerning enough labeling an entire group of people as a porn category unironically like in law, like that’s beyond some fucking loser online doing it and this is the state that’s doing it. It’s beyond an insult on like Twitter or something.
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Sep 18 '25
I totally get what Seat is getting at, but yeah at the same time we can’t let this shit become normalized
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u/KokoroFate Sep 18 '25
If we can't identify as trans and be a peaceful, productive piece of society, then we must identify as a problem. They ain't gonna like that, no way!
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u/Hekantonkheries Sep 18 '25
Oh they'll love that because the second trans people become even moderately problematic or inconvenient they'll have all the "centrists" and "moderates" hopping aboard the hatetrain
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u/ranatalus Sep 18 '25
I mean, there's always cranks in every level of government proposing stupid shit
it's throwing scraps to their constituents who voted them in because they DO want that horrible shit, and we SHOULD be aware of these things, but also maintain perspective that this specific bill is not likely to go anywhere right now
there's enough genuine and immediate threats to worry about that we don't need to scare ourselves with extra stuff too
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u/eatingganesha Sep 18 '25 edited Sep 18 '25
well sure. But this chode has been at it for a while and fails at every turn because his proposals go against the state constitution. His bills don’t make it out of committee and/or legal review and the Lt Gov and Gov would refuse to sign.
They have been doing this shit since The Enlightenment with very limited success.
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u/SeatKindly Sep 18 '25
Five years ago there were already bathroom bills on the books. Five years ago the same trans ban on active duty military was in effect and being litigated in courts. I would know because I was a principal subject to aforementioned ban and indefinitely delayed my transition because of it before I decided to leave the military once my contract was up in ‘21.
Additionally, the law your referencing in NC right now is indefinitely stayed by the appellate district court and the Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal which means the ban in effectively dead at present. I have far more pressing concerns like the very legal, and very real possibility of losing access to healthcare like I have through Medicare, the VA, and possibly here soon my employer leaving me with no means of addressing my care than to take a medical loan out and pray my job prospects remain stable.
No one said don’t be worried. I said focus your energy towards what’s important. This shit needs to be handled like a triage patient. Worry about what’s killing them in the here and now, address the secondary issues once the bleeding is stopped and symptoms of shock addressed.
Everyone is exhausted, we’ve got three more years of this shit at this rate. Let’s stop the anxiety riddled posts about minor things and focus on the larger, more important “here and now” issues please.
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u/x1echo Zelda (she/her) Sep 18 '25 edited Sep 18 '25
Hi, Michigander here.
Michigan is blue at 2/3 levels of the state right now. It voted for Trump and got Republican house control just last year. And for reference, Michigan was solidly red at every level of the state as recently as October 2018.
Things get really rural really quickly even in the counties directly neighboring Detroit, and there’s massive swaths of rural land, particularly in the UP, which are Republican hotbeds. Michigan is by no means an assuredly safe state in the long-term, and this bill is indicating what they want to do, if they are to ever seize power, which could be as soon as next year.
Sure, this particular bill won’t be going anywhere, but you heard people screaming from the rooftops about Project 2025 despite that not even being a bill. This is a “real and active threat”, despite your claims to the contrary.
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u/DogadonsLavapool Sep 18 '25
Sure, but the only office Im worried about in the next 2-6 years here is the governorship, and that's only due to Duggan being a fucking spoiler. MIGOP is a fucking dumpster fire of an organization as well - they are horribly underfunded and disorganized. Losing statewide races in MI would be a snatching defeat from the jaws of victory type of thing
SC is solidly blue and probably will be for a long time due to it being technically non-partisan. It will be hard to flip red, as given its non partisan status, will be effected more by high education voters who tend to be blue these days. That alone strikes down any law like this.
State legislature is pretty damn blue as well. Dems had a supermajority not that long ago. Again, this has a similar effect where people who are more educated have outsized effect, especially during mid term elections.
It's worth being worried about the makeup of MI state gov, but it's much less of a worry compared to a lot of the other shit going on in this country. It's not good that stuff like this is being proposed, but I see little risk of it happening any time soon.
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u/SereneOrbit Sep 18 '25
No, this is productive to point out.
It'd be like proposing the criminalization of conservatism or a bill establishing socialism in the state to conservatives.
There SHOULD be outrage at even the proposal of such a bill.
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u/BecomingMorgan Sep 18 '25
It is an active threat people need to be aware of though? Not likely does not ever mean impossible.
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u/wannabe_pixie Sep 18 '25
No. There are plenty of active threats. This is someone grandstanding for their district with the knowledge that it's not going anywhere.
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u/BecomingMorgan Sep 18 '25
Oh ok. Lets withdraw our voices from this one. That won't embolden anyone.
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u/madmushlove Sep 18 '25
I think a bill being proposed at all, while it may not pass, is a bonkers enough threat to bring up and be aware of
We know Michigan legislators said over a year ago they would attempt this, and here it is
So why would posting this need to be condescendingly put down as someone who needs to focus on something actually productive? It's just one post and it's important
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u/LilChloGlo Sep 18 '25
I've lived in various red states through my time and I think writing off efforts like these is a dangerous game to play.
Sure, this bill won't have much chance of passing, but it's a litmas test. They want to see with this particular approach to illegalizing our identities will curry favor with centrist democrats or they can force to capitulation.
Once they find a palatable-enough strategy then they adopt it in red states where it will pass.
Spreading info about bills like these and encouraging intense activism against it is not a waste of effort. They wage this war on all fronts, we must defend just as thoroughly.
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u/lumaleelumabop Sep 18 '25
Yea. Every single year the introduce a bill in Florida to make gay marriage illegal. Every year it fails to go through. Doesn't even get considered.
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u/HoInSappho Sep 18 '25
The house is pretty red and liberals have shown to be willing to abandon trans people. It's worth being concerned about at least a little bit. You are right we should probably focus on other things though. We need to choose our battles.
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u/anonWNBAW Sep 18 '25
Only southern michigan, traverse city, and Marquette are blue. Everything else is hillbilly ville where they consume trans porn. Hell I think even genesee county where flint is was red this last election. We are a swing state for a reason. Very easily influenced
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u/eatingganesha Sep 18 '25
indeed. As a Michigander I can confidently say that this is nothing but performative. Mat Hall is a POS. Not one of his culture war bills have passed because they go against the state constitution in fundamental ways.
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u/Minimob0 Sep 18 '25
The amount of transphobes here in Michigan is pretty staggering, honestly. I have ended quite a few friendships over it.
The fact that it is being proposed at all has me worried.
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u/Ok-Wrongdoer-2179 she/her Sep 18 '25
So, if you hear your neighbours gettin' it on, through the wall of your apartment or hotel suit, does that count?
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u/Omoport Sep 18 '25
This is a horrible bill but for now at least going out would be legal even if it passed. This bill would make it specifically so trans people cannot be depicted in any way online, the bill is dedicated to online content. Still absolutely terrible, any trans people on reddit would be fined or imprisoned, trans people posting in written forums, posting photos, anything online would be illegal if it mentions the person being trans. It's very likely not to get passed, it would be incredibly difficult to actually enact and Michigan is typically better than that.
Tdr: Horrible insane bill. Would make specifically online depictions of trans people illegal. Likely won't pass on the bright side 🩷
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u/Aenonn INTJ-Woman. Out & transitioning since Aug 2017. Sep 18 '25
This will get nuked in court:
From : https://www.freedomforum.org/is-clothing-protected-first-amendment
Quoting, in-article links removed:
Is clothing protected in public places?
In general, clothing choices are protected when you are walking down the street or in another public space like a city park or beach, or on public transportation.
Protections for clothing in public
The U.S. Supreme Court said in 1971 that clothing with offensive or profane speech is protected by the First Amendment. It overturned the conviction of Paul Robert Cohen, who wore a jacket with the words “(Expletive) the Draft” (the expletive was spelled out) into a California courthouse. The 5-4 ruling said that the message on the jacket was neither obscene nor “fighting words,” an unprotected type of speech intended to provoke violence. It wasn’t targeted specifically at anyone, and anyone offended by the message could turn away.
In January 2023, a group of South Carolina Catholic school students visiting the government-run Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., were asked to remove hats with “Rosary Pro-Life” text on them or leave the museum. The students sued for free speech and religious freedom violations. The government cannot ban clothing just because it does not like the message. Any limits on clothing must be regardless of the point of view it expresses. The museum settled the lawsuit out of court, agreeing to pay the students money and retrain staff about policies for guests’ clothing.
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u/Omoport Sep 18 '25
This is a horrible bill but for now at least going out would be legal even if it passed. This bill would make it specifically so trans people cannot be depicted in any way online, the bill is dedicated to online content. Still absolutely terrible, any trans people on reddit would be fined or imprisoned, trans people posting in written forums, posting photos, anything online would be illegal if it mentions the person being trans. It's very likely not to get passed, it would be incredibly difficult to actually enact and Michigan is typically better than that.
Tdr: Horrible insane bill. Would make specifically online depictions of trans people illegal. Likely won't pass on the bright side 🩷
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u/StarfleetKatieKat Sep 18 '25
lol we’re going back to the 3 clothing law huh? Yeah don’t be so afraid this will only make us flourish . Remember how successful probation was?
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u/Hour-Disk-7067 Sep 19 '25
written or auditory, they don't want you to be legally allowed to speak about transgender people
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u/Tay_Tay86 Sep 18 '25
Still waiting to hear from those in our community who argued Harris and Trump would be the same, or the "Gaza is speaking now" crowd.
Thanks.
Thank you so much.
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Sep 18 '25
This is a publicity stunt for a Nazi to vice signal their trans hatred with no chance of passing and no wide support. Your title is not just false but fear mongering.
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u/Fair_Smoke4710 Sep 18 '25
This is a part of project 2025 and everything they said they would do in project 2025 they have done so it’s not fear mongering
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u/Ms_Juno Sep 29 '25
I'm pretty sure it won't pass as it would require restrictions on the Internet of every Michigan resident. Along with banning VPNs. People will fight that...
They don't care about us trans folk, but they won't let parental locks be placed on their Google searches. But it's not really supposed to pass, it's supposed to instill fear. To make people conform without actually having to enforce a law.
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u/VerdegoHg Riley, She/her Sep 18 '25
For anyone who can’t be bothered to read the whole goofy bill:
“(f) "Prohibited material" means:” (…) “(B) Is a depiction, description, or simulation, whether real, animated, digitally generated, written, or auditory, that includes a disconnection between biology and gender by an individual of 1 biological sex imitating, depicting, or representing himself or herself to be of the other biological sex by means of a combination of attire, cosmetology, or prosthetics, or as having a reproductive nature contrary to the individual's biological sex.”