When House Speaker Mike Johnson announced a ban against transgender people using the bathrooms that correspond with their gender identities inside U.S. Capitol buildings, Montana state Rep. Zooey Zephyr was “literally in the bathroom at the Capitol."
The out transgender lawmaker tells The Advocate that she felt a sense of déjà vu when she saw the news on her phone as she was – literally – minding her own business. While ironic, it was a moment not unlike the day she was censured by the Montana House of Representatives for defending trans youth.
Keep up with the latest in LGBTQ+ news and politics. Sign up for The Advocate's email newsletter.
The Republican supermajority voted to bar Zephyr from speaking on the floor of the state legislature in 2023 after she said that conservatives' ban ongender-affirming care for youth would result in “blood on [their] hands.” Almost two years later, the Republican supermajority has been voted out, and Zephyr has won her reelection campaign.
She says that “getting to return to the [state] Capitol and represent Missoula is an honor” – and it’s especially exciting now that she’ll have her full legislative privileges reinstated.
“One of the things that you don't have control over is the extent of the cruelty, the lengths to which someone will go – particularly those in positions of power – to try to hurt and exclude,” Zephyr says. “For me, the work was to reveal that cruelty for what it was, and not allow it to take away the things that I did have control over: love for myself, love for my partner, and care for the well-being of my community.”
As Zephyr conducted her work from a bench outside the legislative chamber, her resilience inspired people around the world and in her community – one of whom was director Kimberly Reed. The filmmaker began documenting Zephyr’s life; both her professional struggles as she dealt with discrimination from colleagues and constituents, and her personal triumphs as she planned her proposal to her partner.
“As a trans woman from Montana, it was very important to tell the story of a trans woman from Montana,” Reed says. “It may take a while, but the more stories like Zooey's that we put out there, the more trans folks that a large audience can meet, the more we can get through this.”
Seat 31: Zooey Zephyr showcases several emotional scenes from the past two years of the lawmaker’s journey, from the crowds who filled the Capitol halls to support her, to the group of women who tried to further demean her by blocking her bench. One particularly moving moment shows Zephyr comforting a trans teen, Sid, who was in tears before they were set to speak against an anti-trans law in front of the state legislature.
Zephyr says the advice she had for trans youth then is the same she has now.
“The joy that you are holding onto is worth fighting for, and if you are a trans youth right now, hold on to your joy and hold on to the folks that you are trying to make the world a better place for,” Zephyr says.
As a second Trump Administration draws near, Zephyr says that she is focused on the bright spots in her life. Because “his administration is often fueled by and enjoys the hell out of chaotic news cycles and vitriolic rage politics,” she believes “our job as a community is to make sure to know when individually we need to unplug and care for ourselves.”
Zephyr also believes that the trans community and their allies have the responsibility to fight “unequivocally for our inclusion and to hold people accountable who fall short of that barometer,” referring to the few Democratic lawmakers who have bent the knee to conservatives and pushed to abandon trans rights. These efforts are short-sighted, Zephyr says, as “we've seen only a handful of Dems who have stood up and allied themselves with anti-trans legislation, and almost without fail, those Dems are gone.”
“You cannot throw a community under the bus and at the same time say that you stand for them,” Zephyr says. “[Conservatives] hate our community, and our job is to make sure that we do not somehow cede ground and say, ‘Well, we will accept discrimination in certain areas. We will accept that we are lesser in these spaces.’ There is no asterisk on trans people that you can put on us that we will deem an acceptable form of discrimination.”
Zephyr says that she recognizes the “unfairness” of the situation for U.S. Rep.-elect Sarah McBride, the first out trans member of the U.S. Congress, as she navigates Republicans’ targeted attacks even before her first term as a national lawmaker begins. While Zephyr has “no doubt that [McBride] will find spaces where she can bipartisanly bring powerful bills that will help people in Delaware and Americans more broadly,” she hopes that the Delaware representative will embrace her role as a symbol for the trans community to rally behind as their civil rights are taken away, even if it is a “burden” she should not have to carry.
“With the slew of anti-trans legislation coming, trans people are going to look to Congresswoman McBride in that building and say, ‘Where is she drawing the lines of accepted discrimination? What is she willing to fight for?’ And I recognize the unfairness of that having faced an echo of that in Montana” Zephyr says. “I think she will have to contend with, as many firsts have to, not just the burden of trying to be an effective legislator, but of trying to be a beacon for a community who feels alone, scared, and on the precipice of being abandoned.”
Support The Advocate's journalism. Find out how you can contribute here.
To Zephyr, McBride’s response to Republicans’ trans bathroom ban isn’t as noteworthy as the GOP’s willingness to implement it. U.S. voters did not cast their ballots based on trans issues, and Zephyr believes the attacks McBride faces will be “clarifying to many folks on both the left and the right who have only seen trans people debated theoretically.”
“It is very clarifying when they see cruelty aimed at a person – at one single person – and they watch the fever pitch that the right gets into over trans people,” she says.
That effect can be seen in Seat 31: Zooey Zephyr, and is part of the reason the short documentary has already resonated with viewers. Amid all the ugliness, Zephyr’s triumphs shine through as she and her partner get engaged at a queer prom celebration, and a local LGBTQ+ community comes out stronger.
Because trans people were “the closing argument for the Trump administration in this election cycle,” Reed says it was “important to let the joy win, to let the love win out, and for the film to take the advice that Zooey was giving Sid – to not let them get you down.”
“If we let them frame the argument every time, it's a no-win situation,” Reed explains. “We need to frame it in our own way, and we need to frame it in terms of love and support and joy and positivity. That's what gets you through. … That's our final argument.”
“It is resoundingly important that we plant the flag of joy, of our own personal joy, and that we do not let these efforts to erase and exclude stop us from making decisions that give our lives meaning,” Zephyr adds. “As trans people, we are no stranger to the way in which we come alive when we get to be ourselves. And in the same vein, we must chase the things that are full of love and that bring our hearts joy. And that's the work. And it feels weird to say that that is the work, but that is as radical as any piece of legislation we could bring.”
