North Dakota Rep Compares Trans Kids to Secondhand Smoke

North Dakota Representative Scott Dyk delivered a speech in support of a bill banning trans accommodations. He justified his bill by comparing transgender kids to secondhand smoke.

We have seen over 250 bills introduced across the United States this year targeting transgender people, and already, there has been nearly a hundred hours of testimony on those bills. The bills’ sponsors use all sorts of justifications for their gender affirming care bans, sports bans, and anti-trans obscenity laws. While the committee hearings have gotten tense and there have been several examples of outright harmful, transphobic language, perhaps none have gone as far as the hearings in North Dakota. Representative Scott Dyk, when introducing his bill that would ban all accommodations for transgender people in schools including gender neutral bathrooms, used dehumanizing language and compared transgender people to “secondhand smoke” that all other students must be protected from.

Representative Dyk’s speech was incendiary and pointed. He continually quoted Ronald Regan and called on the committee to not have a “bendable backbone.” At one point, in justifying his bill, he seemingly blamed a transgender girl getting beat up by a football team for entering a bathroom on the transgender girl herself. He cited religious reasons for the bill, telling the committee that “they cannot deviate from God’s truth” and that “God’s truth is the basis of this bill.” Perhaps the most harmful portion of his speech was when he compared bans targeting trans kids to banning second hand smoke: "Keep in mind that smokers are required to smoke outside the building. Sometimes it can be 20 degrees below zero. What are we doing here? What are we doing with that? We are trying to protect all people from secondhand smoke.”

See the full video here, timestamped at 13:33 for the secondhand smoke remark:

There are a growing number of transgender activists who consider anti-trans legislation to be a form of genocide. Fighter Alana McLaughlin famously stepped into a professional MMA cage in 2021 wearing a shirt that said “End Trans Genocide.” Those who advocate for such a view of current events would quickly point to this speech and speeches like it in support. One of the central tenets of the buildup to genocide is the use of dehumanizing language that defines whole classes of people as harmful. According to the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, which warns against allowing the initial stages of genocide to occur, this is known as Dehumanization, and is a major step in the pathway to committing genocide:

Dehumanisation – Those perceived as ‘different’ are treated with no form of human rights or personal dignity. During the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, Tutsis were referred to as ‘cockroaches’; the Nazis referred to Jews as ‘vermin’.

This is not the first time we have seen this kind of language used in committee hearings and among prominent anti-trans political figures. Last year, Representative Suzie Pollock compared transgender people to “an infection.” Just a month ago, Libs of TikTok’s Chaya Raichik appeared on Tucker Carlson and compared LGBTQ+ people and their allies to cockroaches. A Kentucky bill introduced this year specifically states that transgender people in bathrooms are inherently unsafe and create potential embarrassment, shame, and psychological injury to students. The “groomer” slur has been targeted towards transgender people, another way of dehumanizing them. The very idea that trans people represent a “social contagion” and that the mere presence of transgender people in public spaces is dangerous feeds into this dehumanization.

If Representative Dyk’s language dehumanizes transgender people in a way that reveals a desire to eliminate trans people from public spaces, his bill would accomplish a large part of that. North Dakota’s HB1522 is an absolute ban on all public accommodations for transgender people in schools. The bill casts aside “parental choice” in how a student is referred to by name and pronouns and instead states that schools and teachers cannot use a transgender person’s name and chosen pronouns. This edict would supersede affirming parents’ desires and force even affirming teachers to misgender their trans students. It also states that transgender people cannot even be given unisex restroom accommodations and must use the restroom associated with their “biological sex.” Schools that violate this would be fined an egregious $500,000.

The bill also utilizes other means of dehumanizing transgender people by embracing harmful conspiracy theories. For example, the bill explicitly references litter boxes being placed in schools and bans “accommodations for students identifying as an animal species other than human” in section 2.c.. This is a reference to a harmful hoax that students were identifying as cats and demanding litter boxes. This hoax was spread by Libs of TikTok, a repeat offender of dehumanizing language, and it is particularly relevant that this language made it into this bill. This hoax has been debunked by many fact checkers. See all of the provisions of the accommodation ban here:

Portions of HB1522 specifying accommodations banned.

Laws like these are designed to eliminate transgender people from public life by instigating suicide, causing them to returning to the closet, or making them otherwise going into hiding. Transgender youth are at an especially high risk of suicide, and schools that are classified as “very unaccepting” make them three times as likely to attempt suicide as schools that are “very accepting” according to research by the Trevor Project. The Cleveland Clinic states that using a transgender person’s birth name when they have a different chosen name is harmful and traumatic. Students whose names and pronouns are used have a 71% lower chance of suicide.

We cannot allow dehumanizing language to go unchecked. Representative Dyk’s inflammatory remarks and attempts to ban all accommodations for transgender people are part of a growing trend among the far right. Transgender people are increasingly the target of legislative attacks and public harassment and violence. Whereas 4 years ago, transgender people in sports were the main debate, now bills target transgender people in all aspects of their public life. The escalation of bills and the way that the sponsors speak about the trans people they target should alarm anyone paying attention.