Poster #115 - Emboldening Hate: Anti-Transgender Legislation, Media, and Anti-LGBTQ Hostility

• In Event: Poster Session II (posters 80 – 155)

Abstract

Since 2015, there has been a significant rise in anti-trans legislation, with 2025 marking the sixth consecutive record-breaking year for the total number of bills considered. Even with the majority of introduced legislation failing, the introduction of these bills establishes a political environment that legitimizes hostility toward transgender and broader LGBTQ communities. The trifecta of violence posits that there is a direct relationship between violent ideology, violent policies (described as any policy intended to marginalize a specific group of people), and violent actions against othered groups (Lenning et al. 2021). In this study, I use this framework to argue that the frequency of anti-LGBTQ incidents is affected by harmful political discourse that legitimates anti-transgender narratives and media discourse, which directly affects incidents by fueling moral panic as well as by amplifying political discourse. Using data from four national data sources, I conduct a series of models to estimate monthly associations between 2022 and 2025. While preliminary results were mixed, with national models only finding significant legislative volume effects and within-state models only finding significant media effects (and neither finding significant interaction effects), they offer a promising start to understanding the complex relationship between these variables.

Author

• Meggan Green, Ohio State University