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I’d been working on Capitol Hill for two months when our IP address was blocked from Wikipedia. It was the third time that summer that the House of Representatives was temporarily banned for making “disruptive edits” to Wikipedia pages. Since the changes were made anonymously, it was impossible to say where they came from.

The most egregious attack, however, wasn’t a specific edit, but something the anonymous author posted to Wikipedia’s comments page regarding their activity. To justify their abuse of Wikipedia’s open-editing policy, the user claimed that the changes were “to promote official business that has been explicitly authorized by the Representative.” The very thought that this activity could be “official business” was nauseating. How infuriating to think that my taxes could be, this very minute, paying someone to insult my community and our identities via numerous Wikipedia sites.

Because the entire House shares just a few IP addresses, it would be impossible to     determine the office, much less the specific computer, from which the edits originated. As a result, the situation ended without resolution. But it left a mark on me, a weight I carried whenever I walked through the halls of the Capitol complex.

I couldn’t shake the fear that the incident propelled. If someone was so unabashed in expressing their transphobia on Wikipedia — apparently encouraged to do so by a Member of Congress — who knew what they might be obliged to do when they encountered me in, say, the bathroom?

Until this incident, I hadn’t spent much energy considering the discomfort I might feel working in such an ideologically diverse environment. I, of course, knew there would be people who didn’t accept LGBT identities, but I didn’t concern myself too much with it, because I didn’t work with any of those people. As a fellow with the Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus, I worked almost exclusively with offices committed to making the country, and the Hill itself, a place where trans folks are welcomed and treated equally. apply” to their districts. Alone, I can’t deny these statements any better than my allies.

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To pass LGBT-related legislation — namely the nondiscrimination protections we so desperately need — we must first convince our opponents that trans people live in every district, in every state, in every country. We’re even on the Hill. That’s the truth. But as long as only one or two Congressional offices have only one or two trans staffers, those who don’t want to believe it never will.

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