otherkinnews | Proposed amendment to Montana net censorship bill would ban transgender and transspecies people (Reply)

Content warnings: About opposition to transgender rights in US politics. A portion of this article is about how a specific politician is being targeted because she is transgender. This article is also about censorship, so it names some types of adult content. Rated PG-13.

Disclaimer: For historical purposes, this article collects some recent events that have been in the news about bills and court cases. All of this is publicly available information. The writers of this article are not lawyers, and this is not legal advice. For legal advice, you must consult with your lawyer.

Summary: Introduced in March, Montana Senate Bill 544 would change local Internet laws to prohibit commercial entities from distributing what it calls “material harmful to minors.” That’s mostly a euphemism for porn. The bill would require people to prove that they’re over 18 to access such materials by sharing their credit card info or sending a picture of their driver’s license. Artists, fans, and security professionals can see how this bill is a bad plan already, but that’s not the worst part. An amendment that was proposed this April would change it into an anti-transgender bill. The amendment would broaden the definition of “materials harmful to minors” to include “acts of transgenderism,” which it defines as “a person being in the mental state of believing the person is transgender or transspecies.” If Montana accepts this amendment, then this would become the fourth anti-transgender bill in the US which also opposes furries, transspecies people, or people who identify as animals. In Montana, it would also ban content about transgender people from being publicly on the Internet where they could be seen by people of all ages. This amendment is one of hundreds that seek to outlaw the visibility and freedom of transgender existence and gender nonconformity. Our article all about this is about eight pages long, half of which are sources referenced.

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As of April, more than four hundred seventy-two bills in the United States oppose the rights of transgender people and anyone else who is gender nonconforming. These bills take various tactics. Some bills would attack our access to gender-affirming health care, or force us to detransition. Some bills would limit how old a teenager needs to be before they’re allowed to transition, while other bills would ban transition for everyone. Bathroom bills would make it a crime to use a restroom that doesn’t match your gender assigned at birth. Some bathroom bills would require school faculty to inspect the genitals of children to make sure. Drag bans would prohibit public performers from wearing clothes that don’t match their gender assigned at birth, but the vague wording would also control what sorts of clothes anyone is allowed to wear in everyday public settings. Some “Don’t Say Gay” bills limit what students and teachers are allowed to talk about, have books about, or wear in schools (Reed, April 15). Many of these tactics are reinventions of old ones that conservatives had used in previous decades to oppose gay rights.

This year, some of the anti-transgender bills have also begun to oppose furries, transspecies people, or people who identify as animals, in those words. Otherkin News has previously written about three such bills: North Dakota House Bill 1522, Oklahoma Senate Bill 943, and Indiana Statehouse Bill 380. To summarize them again: ND HB 1522 would prohibit school boards and teachers from a variety of actions supporting transgender students, and formerly contained a passage that would also prohibit school boards and teachers from, in the bill’s own words, “Adopt[ing] a policy establishing or providing a place, facility, school program, or accommodation that caters to a student's perception of being any animal species other than human.” OK SB 943 would prohibit, in its own words, “instruction in gender identity and sexual orientation including instruction designed to promote gender confusion [...or] the presence of any school employee or volunteer engaged in anthropomorphic behavior commonly referred to as furries.” IN SH 380 has vague language requiring school dress codes to prevent “disruptive” (since amended to “distractive”) behavior. Its writer, Senator Raatz, claims its purpose is to prevent students from wearing fursuits to school (Herron). However, in practice it’s really meant to force students to wear clothes that conform to their gender assigned at birth, and limit their freedom of expression in a lot of other ways. All of the school systems deny that they have had any students who identify as animals or wear fursuits in class (Herron and Sopelsa).

Why this tactic, and why now? What do they know or intend about real people who identify as animals, if anything? Throughout the past decade, sexists have attempted to ridicule and delegitimize transgender individuals by asking, “What if someone identified as an animal? Wouldn’t that be just as absurd?” Even sexists who didn’t know that otherkin or furries existed have invented these straw-man representations to ridicule and target actual transgender people. Several years ago, conservatives began to spread an urban legend that furries were demanding to use litter boxes at school. The purpose of the story was to satirize transgender students asking to use the restroom of their choice. For more information about the development of that legend, see the panel about it from last summer's OtherCon, by an alterhuman community historian (House of Chimeras, 2022). Fact-checking site Snopes has also been covering this legend (Palma), as has Reuters Fact Check. The schools say they haven’t had students identifying as animals or using litterboxes. These bills and legends were not created because of anything that otherkin or furries are actually doing, but were likely inspired by the urban legend.

There has since been a proposed amendment to Montana Senate Bill 544 that, if it’s accepted, would make it the fourth bill to use the tactic of banning transgender people along with people who identify as animals.

As introduced on March 24, the main purpose of MT SB 544 is to revise Internet laws to protect minors from being exposed to materials that are “harmful to minors.” You can read its full text here. Apparently the writers meant “harmful to minors” as a euphemism for pornography and erotica. Their definition of “harmful to minors” lists some types of sex acts, kink, and nudity, some of which are themselves too broad of terms, but it doesn’t list any other sorts of content that would cause a movie to be rated R or NC-17. The bill says that “A commercial entity that knowingly and intentionally publishes or distributes material harmful to minors on the internet from website that contains a substantial portion of the material must be held liable if the entity fails to perform reasonable age verification methods to verify the age of individuals attempting to access the material,” on page 1 at §1(1). That means even if the material is given out for free, as explained on page 2 at §1(7)(b). News, search engines, internet service providers, and cloud service providers won’t be held liable, as explained on page 2 at §1(4) and §1(5). The bill would require commercial entities that distribute such materials to verify that people receiving it are at least age eighteen by using their credit card or government identification documents, pages 3 to 4 at §1(7)(h). The bill itself, as it was introduced, doesn’t specifically mention or oppose transgender people at all, but it’s still a bad bill. It’s a poorly outlined and impractical plan for online censorship. It's easy to see how it can have collateral damage against people who make G-rated content, artists, and fans, and how age verification by these means can make a security problem.

The bill was requested by Daniel Zolnikov, a Republican (Ballotpedia). The bill’s primary sponsor is Willis Curdy, a Democrat (Ballotpedia). Both of them are Montana Senators. Then the bill was drafted by Erin Sullivan, a research analyst in Montana Legislative Services Division’s Office of Research and Policy Analysis (ORPA) (Staff Directory).

A proposed amendment to the bill, MT SB 544.001.001, would change the bill’s definition of materials that are “harmful to minors” so that it is even more broad. You can read its full text here. It would also include “drag” and “acts of transgenderism,” on page 3 at §1(7)(d)(ii)(C). (Section 7 contains a long list of definitions in the subsections a through l. Subsection d defines materials that are harmful to minors. Subsection ii says that it will give a list of examples. Then subsection C itself contains a long list of acts.) It doesn’t define what drag means. That means that commercial entities could be held liable for showing even G-rated representations of people who are transgender or gender nonconforming, or perhaps even women wearing trousers. Alejandra Caraballo, clinical instructor at the Harvard Law School Cyberlaw Clinic, points out that this amendment “would effectively censor information, images, and content about trans people from being accessible to minors online by requiring age verification … they're defining anything related to being transgender as ‘harmful to minors.’” (Caraballo). This would be very harmful for visibility, representation, education, and people simply existing in public.

The proposed amendment doesn’t have a date printed on it, but the file’s metadata says it was created on April 17. The amendment was requested by Caleb Hinkle, a Republican member of the Montana House of Representatives (Ballotpedia). Then the amendment was drafted by Rachel Weiss, a research analyst in ORPA (Staff Directory). Hinkle has sponsored two other anti-transgender bills that have not yet been drafted: LC 2033 to codify definitions of male and female, and LC 2034, a constitutional amendment defining gender (Girten, January 24). He also was one of the people who introduced HB 361, which would prohibit teachers from disciplining students who sexually harass transgender students (Girten, February 8). Caleb Hinkle has actively misgendered fellow Montana Representative Zooey Zephyr, and has been public on his Facebook page in his commitment towards legislation against transgender youth (Caleb Hinkle - Montana Legislature).

Conservatives have also recently started using the tactic of banning drag as a way to outlaw everyday transgender existence in public. Conservatives create bills which they claim are to protect children from being exposed to adult entertainment, but use broad or vague language that would prohibit many other forms of non-normative gender expression and general content. For example, Tennessee’s recently passed Senate Bill 3 which includes “male or female impersonators” within its definitions of an “adult cabaret performance,” this allows for the criminalization of publicly transgender individuals and many other people’s everyday gender expression. Conservatives want a return to the 1950s, when US law required everyone to wear at least three pieces of clothing that conformed to their gender assigned at birth, and police often arrested women for wearing fly-front trousers or T-shirts (Feinberg, p. 8).

The proposed amendment to MT SB 544 defines transgenderism as meaning “a person being in the mental state of believing the person is transgender or transspecies,” on page 4 at §1(7)(l). This is a weird passage in many ways, and begs many questions that it doesn't answer, which is bad law writing. It doesn’t define what it means by transspecies. “A person being in the mental state of believing the person” is a convoluted phrase. Whatever the writers might mean by “transspecies,” it shouldn’t be a subcategory of “transgenderism.” It’s weird that the writers put “transgender” as a subcategory of “transgenderism.” These all carry implications about how badly conservatives misapprehend gender, but the writers do not explain themselves. Caraballo commented that this is “part of the furries in school and litter boxes urban legend” (Caraballo), which we agree is the most likely reason why “transspecies” is in the document. Because it doesn’t define the word, it’s anyone’s guess how it might be interpreted if it’s enforced. Perhaps it might ban G-rated furry art, fursuits, and cartoons (McNally).

Are there really any people who call themselves transspecies, or is that also a conservative fabrication? It happens that some people do call themselves transspecies, which others object to, saying they shouldn’t make that comparison. House of Chimeras explored that issue in another project: they surveyed the alterhuman communities to see what views are about the word, and looked at the word’s history (House of Chimeras, 2021).

The latest version of the bill itself, 544.1, is still unchanged from how it was introduced. This amendment hasn’t been added to it. The actual bill still doesn’t mention transspecies or transgender people in its text. SB 544.1 was last discussed on April 21 in a Montana House Legislative session. While it was being discussed in this session, the Montana House legislature voted 63-34 to refuse to allow Rep. Zephyr, the only trans woman representative in the state, to speak on the house floor regarding the bill. This is the second legislative session in a row where Zephyr was silenced from speaking on any bills which were put forward. Republicans within the Montana House of Representatives have publicly stated that due to Zephyr’s opposition towards anti-transgender bills, they will not be allowing her to speak on the House floor at any point going forward and will continue to actively censor her during House sessions (Reed, April 21). The body then voted 88-12 to concur SB 544.1, where it will go forward for a third reading within the House on the 24th of April. If it passes for a third time, it will go to Montana state governor and Republican Greg Gianforte to be either vetoed or signed into law. You can follow the progress of the bill here.

You have some ways you can support Rep. Zephyr. You can send her a supportive message by using her official contact page. You can add your name to a petition telling Speaker Matt Regier this hostile behavior toward Rep. Zephyr is unacceptable. You can also leave a message at the Capitol switchboard at 406-444-4800, or write an email through the Legislator web form, telling Regier to Let Zooey Speak. If you discover more ways to take action about this bill and the issues around it, please share in our comments.

Can any of you find out if there are more anti-furry and anti-transspecies bills or legal documents like these four? If you find one, please add it as a comment, or submit a post about it to this Otherkin News blog. ■

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About the writers: This article was written by Orion Scribner, Page Shepard, and N. Noel Sol. We give our thanks to people who helped us find information about this subject: House of Chimeras, Mord, and SaytansGhost. We heard about the suggested actions to support Rep. Zephyr thanks to some recent posts by