From WNYC in New York, this is on the media.

This week, the stories behind a sweeping wave of anti-trans legislation.

There's been many a movement in U.S. history that has been about, quote-unquote, protecting the children.

For most of the 20th century, scientists and doctors believe that everyone was just a mix of male and female. Just three people in the children. For most of the 20th century, scientists and doctors believe that everyone

was just a mix of male and female. The street people and the drag queens were the vanguard

movement. Didn't mind getting our heads bashed in. You're going to think, like, maybe they're

right. Maybe I am a threat. Maybe I'm confused. Maybe I'm mentally ill. I want complicated stories.

You know, the full picture of a trans person's life.

The only positive representation I saw of anything trans feminine was Bugs Bunny.

Transvisibility and its discontents.

It's all coming up after this.

From WNYC in New York, this is on the media.

Bob Garfield is out this week. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

Transgender people are under siege, even though it may seem to some news consumers like they're taking over. In fact, their very lives are increasingly at risk, and the argument

over whether they even exist at all, if they're really not the gender they were declared to be

at birth, still blazes. In some political quarters, it's

getting hotter. An hour's too short to present all the evidence showing that transgenderism

is old news. You can find it in many an ancient tomb. But here in the U.S., where acceptance

has ebbed and flowed, transgender people have rarely been so seen and stigmatized and so politically profitable.

A record number of restrictive bills targeting transgender kids makes their way through state legislatures.

At least 117 bills in some 33 states have been introduced in the current legislative

session alone. The most since the human rights campaign, one of the nation's largest LGBTQ advocacy groups,

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