Video clips provided by Women’s Voices of South West Florida (WVSWFL)

On the 9th of February, transgender activists and their allies descended on Florida Department of Motor Vehicles offices throughout the state. One of these protests was at the Tampa office. Protesters were there to oppose the administrative ban on driver’s licenses with gender markers disagreeing with gender assigned at birth.

Protesters staged a die-in inside the DMV office in front of all the customers, plus a second die-in outside

This administrative ban deems to be the DeathSantis administration’s answer to a FL House bill to do the same thing being stopped by the clock after no companion Senate bill was filed in time.

Under this policy, licenses with PREVIOUSLY revised gender are now considered invalid and will be suspended, and it has been declared a criminal offense as well as grounds for revocation to attempt to change gender markers now.

For a trans person to present a license listing a gender disagreeing with their physical appearance is just as dangerous as defying this: any bigoted, Southern Baptist cop could use this as an excuse to arrest them for “confirmation of identity” or worse. Given the sprawl in FL that makes not driving at all impossible for too many people, this is a life threatening decision by the government and is probably intended as one.

DeSantis has all but promised his Christian nationalist base that he will carry out a genocide against transgender Floridians. This is starting the same way the Nazi Holocaust started: with administrative restrictions. Whether this proceeds to a wipeout is up to you and me. If trans folks are rounded up, murdered, or driven from the state, don’t think for one minute that Desantis will stop there. He will simply pick another part of the LGBTQ community to assault, probably “cruising” Gay/Queer/Bi men such as myself.