Recently, mentions of transgender individuals have been removed from most legal documents distributed by the U.S. government. These changes include changing the word ‘gender’ to ‘sex’ in government documents, ordering the removal of pronouns from email signatures, and removing the option to put a gender-neutral marker on documents like passports and IDs. These changes have been kickstarted via a series of executive orders.
One of these orders addresses schools, writing that “radical, anti-American ideologies” can cause young people to “question if whether they were born in the wrong body,” Executive Order 14190, Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling said. These recent actions have created rising fears among transgender individuals in the United States.
Damien, who declined giving his last name for anonymity, is a transgender man. He started transitioning when he was 38 years old.
The Trump administration has not only affected education on trans people, but the opportunity for trans women to play in women’s sports.
“Ignoring fundamental biological truths between the two sexes deprives women and girls of meaningful access to educational facilities,” Executive order 14201 states. “This is demeaning, unfair, and dangerous to women and girls, and denies women and girls the equal opportunity to participate and excel in competitive sports.”
Excluding transgender athletes does more harm than good, as it affects their mental health poorly.
“[We] know that there’s a tremendous disparity in the rates of anxiety and depression and suicide among TGNC youth versus their cisgender peers.” Dr. Vinny Chulani, Director of the Phoenix Children’s Hospital Adolescent Medicine Program said, “If anything, we should work to eliminate these disparities by encouraging and engaging all young people in sports.”
Transgender individuals have also been banned from participating in the military.
“A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member,” Executive order 14183, titled Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness said.
Moreover, on the National Parks service website all mention of trans people has been removed from the Stonewall Uprising page, despite them being an integral part of the riot. This riot took place to fight back against queer marginalization. Queer bars were often raided by police in this time, and at the Stonewall Inn, they decided to fight back. Marsha P. Johnson, a trans woman of color, is thought by many to have thrown the first brick of the riot, cementing trans people in the history of Stonewall.
The page used to read “Before the 1960s, almost everything about living openly as a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer (LGBTQ+) person was illegal,” however, the page now reads, “Before the 1960s, almost everything about living openly as a lesbian, gay, bisexual (LGB) person was illegal, but the events at the Stonewall Inn sparked fresh momentum for the LGB civil rights movement!”
“It’s an outright erasure of history and it is shameful. Even if today people are denying the existence and validity of trans identities, it must be acknowledged that those were the identities that earned us our rights,” an anonymous transgender student at Hamilton Southeastern said.
The changes made have resulted in limited healthcare, removing trans women from women’s sports, and many more. The individuals impacted by these laws are scared for the future of themselves and their children. The erasure in the trans community has moved the United States backward by removing trans rights that were moving us forward. Removing these will only continue to move the United States further back in the future.
“Let’s not be ignorant, right? This is part of a larger anti-transgender agenda. Let’s not deceive ourselves that it’s anything other than that,” Chulani said.
