[This is a work of fiction.]
It started in the somewhat shabby and neglected library of a Methodist church in the Central West End in St. Louis. Alan, who attends that church, asked his pastor if he could invite a group of trans friends and allies to have a support group to discuss what kinds of activism they should do on the last Thursday in February.
The pastor gave us the library for a two-hour meeting. I thought there’d be seven or eight of us, but when 21 people arrived, including the pastor herself, Jeannie Robbins, and Ellen Schachter, the liberal rabbi from the nearby synagogue, I knew something interesting was brewing. I just couldn’t ever have imagined what it would turn out to be.
At one point, Quinn got up and said, “You know what we should do? We should pick a shopping mall, get like 20 of us together, form a line across the food court and take off all our clothes.”
There was a burst of laughter, and Quinn blushed, but they continued. “No, I’m serious. I read about this in an old article about activist tactics from a lot of years ago. You pick something unforgettable to do in a very public place — a stunt, you know — and you notify the media like 15 minutes beforehand. It has to be shocking enough that some media will show up. But it also has to make a point. And it has to get people talking.”
That’s when I spoke up. Being a 55-year-old bald guy with a very hairy back, I don’t generally think of myself as a potentially exciting nude model. “OK, we could do a stunt, but why take our clothes off?”
Quinn shrugged. “I don’t know. It just seems right.”
“I think I understand the message,” Rabbi Schachter said. “These bullies in the White House are ridiculing and condemning trans and non-binary folks. They’re going after your dignity. By getting naked in public, you’re responding by saying, ‘This is what it comes down to, folks. Physical bodies and how people relate to them.’”
The pastor chimed in, “Yes! There’s another piece to it, too. You’re a trans person, and you take off your clothes. It’s kind of a public act of surrender to the bullies. ‘You’ve won. We are unmasked and disgraced. You’ve exposed us.’ Except the ordinary variety and, well, the ordinary oddities of peoples’ naked bodies testify against the idea that you deserve to be mocked or disrespected. Because, in fact, you’re showing that you’re unafraid in a way that the bullies are afraid. The bullies aren’t going to disrobe in public. They’re too chicken. This is brilliant.”
Mark from across the river in Illinois then spoke up. “Are you going to get naked with everyone else, pastor? Rabbi?”
The two clergy exchanged glances.
“I teach kids preparing for bar and bat mitzvah. They’re 12. I don’t think I should be getting naked on the news,” Rabbi Ellen said, loweringher eyes.
Pastor Jeannie spoke up. “Clergy can’t do it. It messes with the boundaries we need to maintain with our congregants, including children. But clergy could still play a supportive role. Let’s not give up on this idea.”
The conversation grew in enthusiasm from there. I couldn’t quite believe it when the evening ended with a plan.
***
Three weeks later, on a Sunday at 2 p.m., 32 people formed a single-file line across the food court of the Galleria shopping center. The group included 20 people who identified as trans or non-binary, and another 12 cis-gender allies. All were wearing winter coats, and, unbeknown to hundreds of diners and shoppers, nothing else at all underneath.
As the demonstrators lined up in their coats, a TV crew from the local NBC affiliate’s news team positioned itself and turned a bright light on, illuminating us. A couple of the organizers had decided to contact one TV news department at a time making an offer of a chance to get exclusive live coverage of the mall disrobing if and only if they would also do a sit-down interview with a couple representatives of the group in their studio the next day. It was a take-it-or-leave-it offer that each station contacted was told would go to the first news team to say yes. They only had to call one news department to get a yes, in exchange for a promise that they’d be given one hour’s advance notice.
Flanking the line of people in their winter coats on either end were two pairs of fully-clothed participants ready to hand out a single half-sheet of paper that simply read, in a large font:
Transgender Americans pay taxes and have the same rights and responsibilities as their fellow Americans. It is shameful that some American leaders are demonizing them. Every citizen deserves respect, not ridicule and harassment. We are getting naked to protest the mistreatment of transgender Americans. America is the home of the free. Let’s keep it that way.
There was a fair amount of debate about what the flyers should say. This particular language was what the five members of the ad hoc group designing the flyer came up with. It wasn’t a detailed and nuanced essay on gender, civil rights and all that. It was a simple message looking to persuade the largest possible range of people.
At 2 on the dot, everyone in the line opened and shrugged off their coats. As the coats fell to the mall floor, two people carrying Sbarro trays full of food collided into each other and spilled everything. Rabbi Ellen, who was one of the people handing out the flyers to passersby, rushed over to them and insisted on buying them replacement lunches. A number of onlookers gathered in front of the phalanx of naked people and held up their phones, livestreaming and photographing the spectacle.
I was about five people in from one end of the line, and at first, I felt terrified of being naked. But when I looked into the eyes of the people on either side of me, I saw several different expressions on their faces. Several people’s cheeks had turned bright red, most of them smiling. A few people had deadpan looks on their faces. But there were a few others with tears on their cheeks. I don’t know what made me do it, but I heard myself call out, “What do we want?” And someone on the other end of the line yelled, “Respect for trans folks!” So I came back with “When do we want it?” And everyone yelled, “Now!”
It wasn’t the most elegant call and response, but it started a chant that we sustained. The news crew shifted from their wide shot to a closer shot that slow-walked the camera across each person’s upper body. I figured they knew they would have to blur out some of the nudity, so they had decided in advance to go mainly for faces and shoulders to intercut with their wide shots.
Within two minutes, two mall security guards appeared and began demanding that we put our coats back on. We had discussed in advance how we were going to handle this. We agreed that we would only say one thing to the mall cops: “We’ll be done in exactly three minutes.” The pamphleteers knew to set their phone timers for three minutes, and the mall cops looked at each other, unsure of what to do. Then the camera crew aimed the lens at them, and they decided that they wanted to look like they were doing something to disrupt our disruption. So they again told us that the police were on their way and that we must put our clothes on immediately.
By this time, a crowd had gathered and was cheering as well as yelling insults at us. Most were just standing there smiling. Some applauded. I could see that most of our audience was holding a copy of our flyer. When the mall cops approached us the second time, that was our cue to do another pre-planned action. One of us called out “one-two-three,” and we all jumped straight up in the air. Both mall cops flinched and backed away. Then two of the younger folks among us dropped to the floor and did 10 push-ups, and then stood back in their places in our naked line.
Pastor Jeannie called out “time,” and we all grabbed our coats, put them on and scattered in all directions. By the time that the real police showed up, we werelong gone. We realized that we could still end up getting charged with misdemeanors since the video evidence would be available to the police to use to identify us. It was another risk we had decided we were willing to take.
Starting the next day, Monday, we each followed through with our plan to have every last one of us call the mall’s operations manager and pose as a mall customer who had seen the demonstration (though not participated in it). Each one of us used our own words to say that we thought the mall should tell the police that they did not want to see charges pressed, and that the mall should issue a public statement assuring the public that people of all kinds, including transgender people, are welcome in the mall.
The mall ended up doing a press release in which they quoted their corporate employment non-discrimination policy, which happened to include transgender people specifically, as the same policy they have for customers. They added a line about how all customers, regardless of their gender, are required to wear clothing and refrain from acts of public nudity at the mall. They stated that they were not pressing charges over our incident, but that they would press charges over acts of public nudity in the future.
The news story got picked up by NBC’s network news and went viral online. Within two weeks, there were four more public disrobings across the United States: one at the Mall of America in Minneapolis; one at a Target in Houston; one at a Whole Foods in the suburbs of Portland, Ore. (some of the employees there got naked themselves and joined the line); and one at the Washington Monument that included 100 participants.
About that time, I got an email from a stranger in Bozeman, Mont., asking if I would be willing to be part of an informal group of five people from across America who would quietly do ongoing work to keep the acts of disrobing going until the executive orders and policy changes that were enacted starting in 2025 were all rescinded and restored to their previous states. That’s what I’m working on now.
It turns out that the head coach of a Division III college football team has a transgender son who was frequently bullied and almost beaten to death. Coach Ferndale told his team the story of how the naked protests gave his son, currently a junior in high school, a sense of hope greater than anything he had experienced in a long time. He wept in front of the team as he talked about how at first, he couldn’t accept his child being trans. In time, he came to understand that his son’s courage was a shining example of what it means to have true grit in this world.
Apparently, the coach’s first string defensive end was so moved by his talk that he stood up and challenged the rest of the team to reach out to the campus LGBTQ organization and offer to join them in a public disrobing if they wanted to do one. The defensive end — one Darius McVey — and I are going to talk it over on the phone in a few minutes.
[This story first appeared on Harris’s blog, The Accidental Rabbi.]
