Matt Walsh's Anger Over Opposition to Anti-Trans Dress Code In Mississippi

Matt Walsh claimed that trans people want "exceptions" after a Mississippi school declared a trans girl must dress as a boy. The only exceptions being asked for come from the school and Walsh.

On Friday, we learned that a transgender girl at Harrison Central High School in Mississippi would not be allowed to wear a dress to her high school graduation and would have to “wear pants, socks, and shoes like a boy.” A Trump-appointed federal judge confirmed the school’s ruling in a profound affront to constitutional precedent with no time to appeal. The decision sent shockwaves throughout the LGBTQ+ community and quite frankly, appalled me.

I conveyed my dismay via a tweet, which quickly went viral. I stated, "The speed in which fascism is encroaching is unreal. This is what eradication looks like." The tweet not only gained traction online, but also stirred widespread criticism of the school officials involved, even drawing the ire of traditionally conservative commentators.

However, not everyone was moved by the injustices faced by this student. Conservative commentator and self-described “theocratic fascist” Matt Walsh found it apt to counteract the sympathy and condemnation the incident had gathered. In response to my tweet, he published a video in which he not only endorsed the school's stance but also ridiculed me for advocating what he termed as "exceptions" for transgender people.

You can see my tweet and his video here (click to be brought to the full tweet/video):

My initial tweet reacting to the Mississippi Judge’s opinion

Matt Walsh’s Response Video

In this video, Matt Walsh states that dress codes are actually a good thing and that transgender people should abide by the dress code of their assigned sex at birth… pants for those assigned male at birth and dresses for those assigned female at birth. Interestingly enough, I had warned about how this decision would not be limited to transgender people and sure enough, we learned that a cisgender girl was pulled from the graduation ceremony for wearing pants instead of a dress. You can see a picture of the gender nonconforming cisgender girl here:

WLOX picture of Jai Dallas, barred from wearing pants.

When the focus of Walsh's video turns to my tweet, he ridicules me for suggesting that transgender people are seeking "exceptions to the rules." He dismisses the idea that concerted efforts to deny transgender individuals access to medication, clothing, participation in sports, use of bathrooms, legal recognition, among other basic rights, is tantamount to a calculated bid at their eradication. Interestingly, his colleagues, including Michael Knowles, have been candid about their endgame - eradication.

However, it seems that Walsh lacks the courage to straightforwardly state his intentions. The aim, it appears, is to erase transgender people from public life, but he aims to make his argument sound palatable. As such, he swiftly deflects any criticism or accusations of this nature that come his way. That’s why when he saw conservatives agreeing with my tweet, he had to make a video addressing me directly.

The only exceptions at play here are the exceptions that Walsh and the legislators that have fallen in line behind him desire when it comes to the treatment of transgender people. They believe that parents deserve the right to control their children’s medical decisions, except for trans kids. They believe that teachers should have freedom of speech, except when it comes to gendering their trans students correctly or putting up pride flags. They believe that the first amendment is worth championing, except for trans people who want to wear a dress to their graduation ceremony. They believe that due process and equal protection should apply, except when applying it to transgender people (though this last point is debatable in how Republicans have tried to gut due process and equal protection).

Walsh’s claim that transgender people are the ones seeking exceptions falls flatly on its face when one considers the massive attempt to overturn constitutional precedent solely to carve exceptions to allow for discrimination against transgender people. Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, a Supreme Court decision that is decades old at this point, stated that discriminating against clothing choices is sex discrimination - a ruling that has been repeatedly upheld.

If these departures from constitutional protections are designed to single out transgender individuals, it's only a matter of time before they are also used against cisgender people in the pursuit of the theocratic fascism that Matt Walsh seems to endorse. We've already seen evidence of this; a cisgender girl was excluded from her graduation procession for choosing to wear pants, just one day after the decision against the transgender student was made.

Dismantling this precedent has the potential to compel millions of cisgender women to dress in skirts and dresses solely based on their sex assigned at birth. This is a scenario that facilitates a rising fascism determined to strictly enforce gender-based codes of conduct on all Americans.

Matt Walsh's video aims to convince viewers that transgender individuals are out to disrupt society and compel others to align with their desires. However, the actuality is that Walsh is witnessing society's gradual shift toward acceptance of transgender individuals, much like the acceptance granted to other members of the LGBTQ+ community, and it's clearly frightening him.

When conservatives, in harmony with the prevailing public sentiment expressed in numerous polls, condemn the actions of a Mississippi school that insists on trans girls dressing as boys, Walsh bristles with indignation. He then attempts to wield his influence to bring the party back into line, thereby perpetuating his desired narrative and vision of a world - a world where transgender individuals are eradicated from public life.

But this endeavor is destined to fail. Eradicating transgender people is as impossible as eradicating history itself. Transgender individuals exist. We have always been here, and we always will be.

In the face of continuous and resolute existence of transgender people throughout time, any efforts to erase us are bound to backfire. The only thing that Walsh is likely to eradicate in his quest is his antiquated patriarchal ideology that should have been consigned to history in the 1950s.