Transgender Identity is Not a Disability (And Other Reasons Iowa HF2082 is Cruel)
(Iowa HF2082 failed spectacularly in the Iowa statehouse today (FYJD), in large part because of the overwhelming opposition to the proposal that showed up to support trans Iowans. As with any bad idea in the Iowa legislature, the notion of stripping gender identity from the civil rights code could always be revived in some form later on or in future legislative sessions. I submitted this piece to several outlets ahead of the Jan 31st committee hearing, and figured I would publish it on my own since it likely won’t see print.)
Iowa HF2082 seeks to make Iowa the first in the nation to remove gender identity as a protected class under the Iowa Civil Rights Act and reconstruct it as a “disability.” This framing spreads harmful misinformation under the medical model of disability and undermines our shared goal of creating a safe and inclusive future for Iowa’s families and young people. We should understand that HF2082 is both unnecessary and cruel, as transgender identity is not a disability and disability is also a protected class under Iowa Civil Rights law.
A strict medical model treats disability as a problem of impaired individuals who need to be “fixed” by medical intervention in the same way that, say, a cancerous tumor needs to be removed for a patient to be cured. This is certainly how our transgender friends, family members, and neighbors have been spoken of by many of our elected officials: as a problem to be solved or a malignancy to be surgically removed from the body politic.
The proposed legislation deliberately ignores the social model of disability where the problem is not inherent in individuals; rather, disability is the product of an exclusionary, inaccessible, and disabling world. This is also the argument for using the identity-first language of “disabled people”, as in, people who are dis-abled by ableism in society. Solutions, then, must also exist in the world by making society more inclusive, accessible, and accommodating; not less.
As HF2082 continues the anti-LGBTQ political attacks for which 2023 set a record, many LGBTQ families in Iowa have chosen to leave rather than be subjected to further discrimination. Last year, I had to learn from the New York Times that a former Ankeny High School student of mine, a very talented young artist and thinker, fled with his family from Iowa to Minnesota. “It was their son’s safety that worried them,” the article read, “as Iowa Republicans passed anti-transgender laws and used what they felt was dehumanizing rhetoric.”
They are not alone. A recent Hulu documentary highlighted LGBTQ Midwesterners who have been uprooted by fear and discriminatory legislation, including an Indianola family of five with a transgender parent that moved to Maryland in 2022. They told the Des Moines Register they, “needed to leave Iowa for Maryland to put themselves in the best mental health position as parents,” adding, “Indianola was a happy place for the family’s children to grow up, but Maryland is a better place for their family as a whole.”
And college educated students already leave the state at higher rates than our neighbors, including one University of Iowa student who told KCRG last May, ”I don’t feel safe outside of Iowa City. And I can’t imagine myself living here long term out of fear for myself, potentially for children in the future and friends.”
Proponents of HF2082 believe that their legal recategorization will justify “gender dysphoria” as an individual problem, but by placing it within the medical model of disability they simply highlight their own role in reinforcing exclusionary and discriminatory policies and practices in creating an unhealthy environment for LGBTQ Iowans. It’s a vow to trap people in a medically-bounded and legally controlled life as a transgender person in Iowa for which the only solution is to leave. The state of Iowa loses when young people take their talents, passion, and the fruits of their education elsewhere.
So let us collectively oppose HF2082 and put it in the dustbin of failed, dehumanizing ideas we simply have no use for. Let us communicate to our friends, family members, and neighbors that their civil rights are secured and their full humanity is never up for debate in a statehouse committee room. Instead of an Iowa dominated by fears of exclusion and discrimination, let us move to create an inclusive and accommodating future for Iowa that young people can imagine living in freely and raising families of their own.
