Due to her refusal to reveal her previous name, or “deadname,” (the title a trans person was given at birth but no longer uses after their gender transition), one transgender girl claimed she was barred from running for office in the Ohio House of Representatives.
Former real estate artist Vanessa Joy, 42, applied to run for Ohio House District 50 as a Democrat but was rejected because she failed to provide her last name. According to Ohio law, candidates for public office who have changed their names in the last five years must list those names on their applications. The law does not discuss exemptions for transgender people who have changed their names, but it does exempt those whose names have been changed as a result of marriage.
Joy claimed she was aware of the rules and submitted a petition on Thursday to challenge her disqualification. “It’s a barrier to entry for some transgender and female nonbinary people,” she said to NBC News. Many trans people don’t want their deadnames printed, unlike me, who would have simply bit the bullet and allowed my name to appear on petitions and possibly on ballots. “I wanted to give youngsters, Gen X and Gen Z, the confidence to go out and vote and run for office themselves because it’s a safety issue for some. They might have more confidence to get out and vote and realize that ‘maybe my vote may make a difference’ if they see a trans girl from pretty red Ohio running for public office, in the presence of people who despise me for my existence.”
Joy was disqualified not long after Ohio garnered national attention for its trans issues, and Republican Gov. Mike DeWine last year vetoed a bill supported by the GOP that would have limited both transgender women’s participation in school sports teams and transition-related treatment for minors. Some Republicans criticized DeWine’s veto, as did former President Donald Trump, who posted on his social media platform, Truth Social, stating that “DeWine has fallen to the Radical Left.” “It’s understandable why every time I introduce him at rallies in Ohio, he receives raucous jeers, but I won’t be doing so any longer. I’m done with this ‘thick.’ What was he thinking? The legislation would have prohibited men from participating in women’s sports and stopped child amputation. Ideally, legislation will reverse. Would it quickly! Ohio politicians are anticipated to challenge the veto in the coming days.”
Credit for the newspaper: Leonid Andronov / Shutterstock.com
