Something important recently happened in Tennessee — and it demands far more scrutiny than it’s getting.

The Tennessee state House passed a bill — HB 754 — that requires clinics and insurers to report data on patients receiving gender-affirming care to the state. On paper, it is framed as a neutral effort: a way to “study trends,” “understand outcomes,” and bring clarity to a politically charged area of medicine. That is how its supporters describe it.

But laws are not judged solely by their stated intent. They are judged by their structure, their context, and the foreseeable ways they can be used.

And in structure and context alike, this bill edges dangerously close to something far more unsettling: a system of tracking a politically targeted minority.

The mechanics matter. Under the legislation, providers must submit detailed information about transgender patients — data that will ultimately be compiled into state reports and made public in aggregated form.

Supporters emphasize a key safeguard: the data is supposed to be “de-identified.” No names, no Social Security numbers. In theory, no direct link to any one individual.

But that reassurance collapses under even minimal scrutiny.

Because data does not need to contain a name to identify a person. In smaller communities—rural counties, tight-knit towns—granular data points like age, treatment type, and geography can easily narrow a dataset down to a handful of individuals. In some cases, to one.

Privacy experts have been warning about this problem for years. Re-identification is not a hypothetical risk — it is a well-documented reality. And when the dataset concerns a stigmatized population, the stakes are not abstract. They are personal, immediate, and potentially dangerous.

That is why critics of the bill are not calling it “data collection.” They are calling it what it resembles: a registry in all but name.

And history gives that word weight.

Governments have always justified registries as tools of order and knowledge. Lists of dissidents. Lists of immigrants. Lists of the sick, the criminal, the different. They begin as bureaucratic exercises — tidy, rational, even boring. Only later do we confront what those lists enable.

To be clear, HB 754 is not a list of names published online. It is not, at least yet, a direct catalogue of individuals. But the architecture it builds—centralized data collection on a specific, politically contested group—is the same architecture that makes such lists possible.

And that is where context becomes unavoidable.

This bill does not exist in isolation. It comes after years of escalating legislation targeting transgender people in Tennessee—from restrictions on healthcare to limits on public expression. The trajectory is not ambiguous. It is cumulative.

When a government repeatedly singles out a group for legal scrutiny, and then begins building systems to track that group—even indirectly—it crosses a conceptual line. It moves from regulating behavior to mapping people.

Supporters argue that none of this is the point. That the bill is about medical evidence, not identity. That policymakers need data to evaluate treatments.

But this argument collapses under its own selectivity.

If the true goal were neutral scientific inquiry, we would expect similarly aggressive data collection across other areas of medicine—cosmetic surgery, psychiatric medication, fertility treatments. We do not see that. The focus here is narrow, targeted, and politically charged.

That selectivity reveals something important: this is not just about healthcare. It is about governance—about which populations the state chooses to monitor, and why.

And once that monitoring infrastructure exists, its use is not fixed.

Data collected today for “research” can be repurposed tomorrow for enforcement, litigation, or exposure. Laws change. Administrations change. What remains is the dataset—and the precedent that it is acceptable to build it.

That is the real risk embedded in HB 754. Not necessarily what it does on day one, but what it normalizes over time.

It normalizes the idea that transgender people are a category to be tracked. It normalizes the idea that their private medical decisions are of special interest to the state. And perhaps most dangerously, it normalizes the idea that the boundary between public policy and personal identity can be quietly, bureaucratically eroded.

There is a tendency, especially among lawmakers, to view policy as modular—each bill evaluated in isolation, each provision defended on its own terms. But for the people living under those laws, the experience is cumulative. It is the pattern that matters.

And the pattern here is becoming harder to ignore.

A state that restricts your care, debates your existence, and then begins compiling data about you is not neutral. It is not merely studying you. It is defining you as a subject of governance.

That distinction—between citizen and subject—is subtle. But it is where the stakes of this bill ultimately lie.

Because once a government begins building lists—even partial, anonymized, “harmless” ones—it is no longer just making policy.

It is deciding who counts.

Isaac Amend is a writer based in the D.C. area. He is a transgender man and was featured in National Geographic’s ‘Gender Revolution’ documentary. He serves on the board of the LGBT Democrats of Virginia. Contact him on Instagram at @isaacamend. 

“Would we have fashion without gay people? Forgive me, would we have anything?”

Those words, spoken by Miranda Priestley herself (actually by Meryl Streep, the 76-year-old acting icon who played her), may well sum up why “The Devil Wears Prada” has been a touchstone for queer audiences for two decades now.

Streep, who returns to big screens this weekend in the sequel to director David Frankel’s beloved 2006 classic (succinctly titled “The Devil Wears Prada 2”), expressed this nugget of allyship in a recent interview with Out magazine, promoting the new film’s upcoming release. It would be hard, as a member of the queer community, to disagree with her assessment. The world of fashion has always been inextricably linked with queer culture, and the whims of taste that drive it are so frequently shaped by queer men – and women, too – who have adopted it as a means of expressing their sense of identity from the very first time they thumbed through a copy of Vogue.

At the same time, the notion that “Prada” has been claimed by the community as “canon” simply because of the stereotypical idea that “gay people love fashion” feels like a lazy generalization. After all, fashion is about discernment – about knowing, if you will, whether a sweater is simply blue or if it is cerulean, and, importantly, understanding why it matters – and just because something ticks off a few basic boxes, that doesn’t mean it qualifies as “haute couture.”

So yes, the setting of the “Devil Wears Prada” universe in what might be called “ground zero” of the fashion industry plays a part in piquing queer interest, but to assume our obsession with it is explained as simply as that is, frankly, insulting. The fashion angle catches our interest, but it’s the story – and, more to the point, the central characters (all of which return in the sequel) – that reels us in.

First, there’s the ostensible heroine, Anne Hathaway’s Andrea (or rather, Andy) Sachs, who falls into the world of fashion almost by accident. She’s a recent college grad who wants to be a journalist, to write for a publication that operates on a less-superficial level than Runway magazine, but fate (for lack of a better word) places her in the job that “a million girls” would kill to have – assistant to Streep’s Miranda Priestly (based on Vogue editor Anna Wintour), who can determine an entire season’s fashion trends merely by pursing her lips. She’s idealistic, and dismissive of fashion in the overall scheme of human existence; she’s also stuck with a truly terrible boyfriend (Nate, played by Adrian Grenier) and trying to live up to the self-imposed expectations and ideals that have been foisted upon her since birth.

It’s clear from the start that none of this “fits” her particularly well. More significantly, the natural grace with which she blossoms, from “sad girl” fashion-victim to the epitome of effortless style, tells us that she was meant to be exactly where she is, all along.

Then, of course, there is Nigel (Stanley Tucci), the ever-loyal art director and “Gay Best Friend” that’s always there to provide just the right saving touch for both Miranda and Andy, helping to boost the former while gifting the latter with his own insight, “tough love,” and impeccable taste. Never mind that he’s a queer character played by a straight actor – Tucci avoids stereotype and performative flamboyance by simply playing it with pure, universally relatable authenticity – or that he ends up, at the end of the original film, betrayed by his goddess yet deferring his own dream to double down on his commitment to hers. Anyone who has ever been a gay man in the orbit of a remarkable woman knows exactly how he feels. Of course, they also probably know the precarious life of being a queer person in the workplace – something that carries its own set of compromises, disappointments, and determinations to go above-and-beyond just to make oneself invaluable to the powers that be.

Which brings us to Emily (Emily Blunt), the cutthroat “first assistant” who does her level best to keep Andy in her place, who goes to extremes (“I’m just one stomach flu away from my goal weight”) to be the “favorite” no matter how much cruelty she has to unleash on those who threaten her status. Some see her as merely an obstacle in the way of Andy’s rise to success, an antagonist whose efforts to embody the “no mercy” persona of an ascendent girl boss only expose her own mediocrity. But for many, she’s just another victim doomed to fail and fall while watching others rise to the top. Queer, straight, or in-between, who among us hasn’t been there?

Finally, of course, there is Streep’s Miranda Priestley, the presumed “devil” of the title and the epitome of mercilessly autocratic authority, who has earned her status and her power by embracing the toxic modus operandiof a misogynistic hierarchy in order to conquer it. Yes, she’s more than just a little horrible, a strict gatekeeper who hones in on perceived weaknesses with all the vicious premeditation of a hawk with its eyes on a luckless rabbit, and it would be easy to despise her if she weren’t so damn fabulous. But thanks to the incomparable Oscar-nominated performance from Streep – along with the glimpses we are afforded into her “real” life along the way – she is not just aspirational, but iconic. Stoic, imperturbable, always three steps ahead and never affording an inch of slack for any perceived shortcoming, there’s an undeniable excellence about her that inspires us to see beyond the obvious dysfunction of the “work ethic” she represents; and sure, there’s enough emotionally detached enthusiasm in her torment/training of Andy to fuel countless volumes of erotic lesbian fan-fiction (Google “MirAndy,” if you dare), but when we eventually recognize that she might just be the ultimate “fashion victim” of them all, it doesn’t just cut us to the core – it strikes a chord that should be universally recognizable to anyone who has had to make their own “deal with the devil” in order to claim agency in their own lives. In this way, “The Devil Wears Prada” comes closer than probably any mainstream film to tying the feminist and queer rights movements together in common cause.

In any case, each character, in their way, can easily be tied to a facet of queer identity – and indeed, to the identity of anyone who must work twice (or more) as hard as a straight white Christian male to succeed. We can see ourselves reflected in all of them – and whether we aspire to be Miranda (I mean, who wouldn’t?), identify with Andy, recognize our worst traits in Emily, or empathize with Nigel and his deferential suffering, there’s something in “The Devil Wears Prada” that resonates with everyone.

Now let’s see if the sequel can say the same.

Lesbifriends Travel will host “Queer Night Out: DC Power FC Game” on Wednesday May 6 at 7 p.m. at Audi Field. 

This will be a fun night out as DC Power FC takes the field at Audi Field, kicking off with a happy hour meetup in Navy Yard before the group walks to the stadium together. Lesbifriends and Travel group will be seated together in the stands, making it easy to connect, cheer, and enjoy the game with people who just feel like your people.

More details are available on Eventbrite.