Anti-Trans Attacks in Tennessee Are Nothing New. Colleges Need to Step Up for Their Students.

This story is part of our monthly series, Campus Dispatch. Read the rest of the stories in the series here.

As the conservative Supreme Court sets out to hear next term United States v. Skrmetti, which challenges Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors, it is clear that trans rights in the South are not only up for debate, but also under severe threat. Colleges and universities, alongside establishment politicians, are just some of the many institutions of power in the country that are unwilling to hear the demands of young trans people and medical professionals.

But in Tennessee, anti-trans attacks on young people are nothing new.

In 2022, when I was a junior at Vanderbilt University, my campus became the center of an anti-trans media frenzy. Matt Walsh, a conservative podcaster and columnist for the right-wing publication the Daily Wire, targeted Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s gender-affirming care clinic, which is one of the only trans-centered health-care centers available in the South.

What began as tweet thread conspiracy theories that were endorsed by conservative lawmakers like Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee quickly developed into a large media story about Vanderbilt physicians performing “genital mutilation.” It led to massive amounts of online attacks, threats, and trolling, alongside mobilizations against genital mutilations by neo-Nazi, Christian nationalist, and right-wing aggressors at the state capitol.

The threats online also led to the shutdown of the KC Potter Center, a queer-affirming space on campus, and our campus LGBTQ+ leaders reported threats and safety concerns. Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s trans health clinic even had to take down its website for at least a month.

In the midst of these attacks on both undergraduates and medical professionals alike, our university remained completely silent until students began agitating through a public postering campaign. Vanderbilt finally issued a statement days later that said the medical center and the university were distinct entities, but did not address the issue of trans rights on campus and in Tennessee at large. One student’s anonymous op-ed in the Vanderbilt Hustler illuminated how trans Vanderbilt students felt:

“I was afraid of legislators, who seek to eradicate me. I was afraid of Vanderbilt administrators, who, other than a late and vague email from [Chancellor Daniel] Diermeier, remain eerily silent. I was afraid of my peers, and how those to whom I was out would start to see me. I was afraid of myself and started to believe, after hearing it from lawmakers over and over again, that I was something worth eradicating.”

These incidents have continued inside and outside of our campus. The following summer, the Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) turned over transgender patients’ records to Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti’s office, again with minimal public acknowledgment from the university. Recently, the local NPR station reported that the U.S. Senate Finance Committee found that VUMC did not do enough to protect its patients during this event. The article cites a number of cases in which hospitals blocked such requests from Skrmetti, citing patient privacy concerns. VUMC is currently facing a lawsuit and a federal investigation due to its decision to hand over sensitive records.

But none of these incidents stopped the university from promoting anti-trans figures. In December 2023, during my senior year, Vanderbilt invited Michael Knowles—another right-wing figure associated with the conservative group Turning Point USA—to speak. At the event, he made a number of inflammatory statements, including a call to “eradicate transgenders,” and “gave thanks” to settler colonialism. Knowles’ remarks were met with no affirming statement on the part of the university, and, in fact, our chancellor celebrated it as a measure of free speech on the campus.

This approach to dealing with anti-trans figures and right-wing mobilizations is not indicative of a centrist, free-speech position. Instead, it opens the door for right-wing base-building and attacks on all marginalized people across Tennessee. Since Walsh’s campaign began, Tennessee has banned gender-affirming care for minors—and federal appeals courts have upheld them.

At Middle Tennessee State University, a Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) meeting last year was interrupted by the “Patriot Youth and the Tennessee Active Club, the latter a local paramilitary group that outwardly identifies as Nazis,” according to the Nashville Scene. Their intent was to make students uncomfortable for participating in left-wing political action by publishing students’ faces and names to right-wing networks, with clear anti-trans undertones. Near the end of the confrontation, one of the right-wing disruptors hurled a homophobic slur at one of the students.

As one YDSA organizer and former Democratic Party member Elizabeth Cannan-Knight at Middle Tennessee State pointed out to me, trans people are being attacked with bills by the right-wing establishment and targeted by neo-Nazis at events on our campuses. But many of our colleges and universities, as well as Democratic Party leadership, would “show up to events touting big rainbow symbols, but behind closed doors would say that we shouldn’t post about trans issues because they were ‘losing issues.’”

Institutions like colleges and universities, and their “neutral” approach in addressing transphobia and neo-Nazism on their campuses despite their appeals to diversity and inclusion, are a microcosm of a shift toward “centrist” rhetoric in supposedly progressive spaces as a whole.

Just last month, the Biden administration caved into right-wing fearmongering, just as Tennessee universities did, publicly stating it opposed surgeries for transgender minors. This is in stark contrast to the messaging on the campaign trail, where, before he dropped out, President Joe Biden fashioned himself as a champion for LGBTQ+ rights in opposition to Donald Trump. The statement was met with public backlash from LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations like the Human Rights Campaign, which said that it was “wrong on the science and wrong on the substance” and is “inconsistent with other steps the administration has taken to support transgender youth.”

These on-campus incidents and shifts in policy and discourse do not occur in a vacuum. Every time we allow “debate” on trans existence, we normalize right-wing conspiracy theories about genital mutilation and child abuse to permeate national discourse. These theories eventually move the realm of acceptable discourse rightward, materially threatening trans people through policy reversals.

Now, Samantha and Brian Williams of Nashville are suing the state, citing their own experience seeing their daughter struggle with her gender identity before getting access to “life-saving health care.” The Supreme Court’s eventual decision in United States v. Skrmetti could set back trans rights even more, especially for young trans Southerners.

Unless and until institutions can correct course in how they choose to treat dangerous rhetoric that endangers trans people, they can certainly expect prospective students, patients, faculty, and in the case of the Democrats, voters, to take their money and support elsewhere.

CORRECTION: Elizabeth Cannan-Knight’s name was misspelled in an earlier version of this story.

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