Iowa Rep. Aime Wichtendahl testifies against repeal of trans people’s civil rights (Senate File 418, 2025-02-27)

Background:

Transcript:

REP. AIME WICHTENDAHL: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen of the House. Good afternoon, my friends.

I must confess it pains me to be here today. It pains me to see how the rights of an entire group of people can be so quickly and easily discarded. It pains me to hear the slander, the stereotypes, and the fear leveled at the trans community. My community, my friends and my family. My people. People who just want to live their lives, to be themselves and to live free of fear. This is a fear that I have known. 

In the summer of 2006, I took my career into my own hands. That spring, I had joined Aegon as a retirement plan specialist, my first job after college – a job that took six months to find. At that time, it was still very much legal for employers to say no, we would not support you in your transition. Or say no words at all, and find cause to dismiss me from my job. For over a year while I worked with HR, there was not a moment that I was not hypervigilant: worried either that I would be forcibly outed or worried that my career would suffer death by a thousand cuts, or that some other contrivance could be used to get rid of me.

But something unexpected and something amazing happened along the way. Governor Chet Culver had enshrined protections for gender identity in the Iowa Civil Rights Act. It was a moment that not only inspired hope, but pride and love for this great state that we all call home. And when the time came, my employer stood with me and told me in no uncertain terms that I was a cherished member of their team, that my contributions were valued, and that discrimination, harassment and intimidation for me being a trans woman would not be tolerated.

That is why these protections are so important: because it affirms and respects our dignity and our humanity. Because I have to tell you personally that sitting in that subcommittee Monday, how much it breaks my heart to hear the most heinous stereotypes and slander leveled at transgender people. That we are all just vile people, or predators who exist to harass and intimidate women, or that our entire lives are just a kink or a fetish, or that our lives are a giant conspiracy of the pharmaceutical industry, or that we’re all just brainwashed, or a byproduct of failure of upbringing.

None of that is true. We are human beings. We are American citizens. We are Iowans. And I will tell you personally: I transitioned to save my life. 

Because truth be told, if culture or upbringing determined a person’s orientation or gender identity, I should be the straightest person in any room. I grew up in rural Iowa. I was raised, baptized, and confirmed in the Missouri Synod Lutheran faith. My father was my role model, a sixth degree black belt who taught me how to play basketball and soccer, for whom even my friends were like, “you have the coolest dad ever, like he hangs out with you and plays video games with you and stuff.” My mother, whose boundless love was the rock for which our family weathered every storm, who taught me how to read, to swim, and how to play the pipe organ. I spent my summers with my grandparents in Kossuth County, fishing and helping out around the farm. It was the kind of upbringing that Pure Flix movies are made of.

I went to a private Lutheran school until eighth grade, the kind that taught that men were men and women were women and America is God’s chosen country. And yet I knew inside that I was a girl from the age of nine. And I remember one Sunday school lesson was a lesson on gift giving and what would be an inappropriate gift. And the photo insert was a picture of a boy holding up a dress. And I remember that expression of embarrassment and confusion on that boy’s face. And I remember thinking, that’s what it’s like for me – only in reverse. Having to wear these awful boy clothes, and having to suffer of having a body that did not match who I knew myself to be. 

Not that I didn’t try to ignore it. Not that I didn’t try to hide it. Not that I didn’t try to play the hand that life had dealt me. But every year that passed, the more I could not ignore it. I spiraled into depression and alcoholism. One of the few pre-transition photos that I still have is a picture of me and my son on his first swim. And the outside of the photo, it seems very much a happy moment and a great first milestone. But behind my smile was masking a great deal of pain. And every day I woke up, I thought about ending it all by stepping in front of a train.

I transitioned to save my life.

I transitioned because I wanted to keep having those deep, meaningful conversations with my mother. I transitioned because I wanted to keep playing video games with my father. I transitioned because I wanted to keep going to concerts with my sister, and I transitioned because I wanted to be a parent to my son and to see him grow up.

And I want to ask the authors of this bill: Have you ever had to look into your three-year-old’s eyes and explain to him why you don’t have a house anymore? To have to explain to him why you’re now living with strangers, and what happened to his room and all his toys? Have you ever had to do that?

Because I have. The same week I transitioned on the job, I received a letter from my property management company telling me I had 30 days to move. I had always paid my rent on time. The unit next to me sat empty for six months. And they would not tell me the real reason they wanted me gone. No attempt to secure, no lease, just 30 days – get out. Do you know the humiliation of having to lose your home? I pray that you never do. I never want that for anyone.

This bill revokes protections to our jobs, our homes, and our ability to access credit. In other words, it deprives us of our life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. I bring this up because the purpose of this bill, and the purpose of every anti-trans bill, is to further erase us from public life and to stigmatize our existence. The sum total of every anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ bill is to make our existence illegal, to force us back into the closet. If we want jobs or a place to live, we have to go back, is what they are telling us. 

Because the authors of these bills wish us every harm. If we take our own lives because of our lives being made impossible, they do not care. If we end up homeless and die on the street, they will happily step over our bodies. If we are the victims of violence as Sam Nordquist was in New York, they are happy to look the other way.

As it says in the rotunda: Where law ends, tyranny begins.

It is far past time these anti-trans bills be placed into the dustbin of history. And before I close my remarks today, I want to address my fellow Americans who are watching from across this country and to my fellow Iowans: I know that you are angry. I know that you are hurting. I know that since the financial crisis of 2008, your government, both federal and state, has repeatedly failed you. You have to work harder for less, and social media is programmed to feed off your anger. But the same people that write this legislation, people that staff the think tanks or ride the D.C. cocktail circuit – these are the same people buying up the newspapers and controlling the algorithm, and they are the same people who pump dark money into our politics. Because they know that when people are angry, divided, they can profit off of your anger, misery and division.

Do not let injustice be done in your name. Refuse to play this game and refuse to be divided. The leadership of this body could have spent this week focusing on you and to improve your lives. They did not. 

To my friends across the aisle, I know in the short time that we have worked together, we haven’t really gotten the chance to know each other. But know this about me. I am an eternal optimist. I do not believe the majority of you wanted to run this bill. I believe that you ran for your offices, as most elected officials do, because you take pride in your community and want to see us succeed. 

So do not let this bill be done in your names. Vote this bill down today, because this is not the end. Those think tanks will ask you, again and again and again, to remove rights and freedoms from your fellow Iowans until none remain. Draw the line in the sand and say that civil rights in Iowa are enshrined and protected, and let us get back to the people’s business. Let us work to make Iowa the place where people move to instead of flee from, and a place in Iowa where all of our dreams come true. A place where we live our highest values, our liberties we prize, and our rights we will maintain.

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