You Ask Me How I'm Doing, Part III
Another week.
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On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced they will no longer process data on transgender people in compliance with Trump’s executive order declaring there are only two sexes.
There will be no specific health care data on the transgender community at the federal level.
On Wednesday, the State Department ordered immigration officials worldwide to deny visas to any transgender athletes seeking entry to the United States and permanently ban any athletes who “misrepresent” their birth sex on identity documents.
This, of course, goes far beyond sports. It is likely that this will affect all trans people seeking entry to the United States, not just athletes.
On Thursday, the Defense Department issued a memo ordering the removal of all transgender military personnel in thirty days — thousands of service members who are serving honorably without any reported issues of military readiness and unit cohesion.
The memo also ordered the identification and removal of all military personnel who have been either diagnosed with gender dysphoria or exhibited symptoms consistent with it, even if they’re not serving openly.
Supposed waivers can be granted to service members for which there is “a compelling Government interest in accessing the applicant that directly supports warfighting capabilities.”
To obtain such waivers, service members must demonstrate they’ve lived at least the past 36 months presenting in a manner that’s consistent with their sex assigned at birth, have no apparent distress over doing so, have never sought gender-affirming care, and are committed to the standards for their sex assigned at birth moving forward.
There aren’t really waivers. I hope that’s clear.
Yesterday, the Center for American Progress pointed out that transgender people could lose our right to vote under the pending Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would require voters to present either a passport or birth certificate to an election official in order to cast their ballots.
The State Department has already begun issuing and renewing passports to transgender citizens with the gender marker reverted to their sex assigned at birth, and there are a number of states which prohibit such changes to birth certificates.
And so, if a trans citizen has successfully changed their other legal documents—driver’s license, Social Security ID, etc—that presents a pretty clear barrier to voting under this proposed legislation.
Also yesterday: Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds signed a bill removing gender identity as a protected class from the state’s civil rights code. It was introduced into the legislature last week, quickly passed by the Republican supermajority in both chambers, and sent to her desk.
Transgender citizens in Iowa no longer have any protections against discrimination based on gender identity.
Iowa is now the first state in our country’s history to remove a protected class from their civil rights code. They will not be the last.
The acceleration of anti-trans attacks isn't what scares me most at the moment.
What scares me most are non-trans people who believe the GOP will stop at the military ban and passports and gender-affirming care for youth. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Anti-trans attacks are not about safety or fairness or genuine concern for anyone trans. They're about pandering to the discomfort non-trans people have with trans people. The GOP is all too happy to keep pushing the envelope and having a steady scapegoat.
The GOP can do this because they know Democratic leadership aren't going to push back out of fear of being labeled as "woke." So, Democratic leadership think they can just focus on broad economics, voters will be able to tell what's important, and the GOP will look terrible by comparison.
This is a fatal error.
Right now, the GOP see an open goal and basically no goalie in sight to defend it. Why would they stop kicking at it because they've already scored a few times?
When Democrats are too fearful to fight back, the GOP just keeps upping the ante.
Things that weren't in the convo are suddenly immediate.
Soon, we will see more state-by-state restrictions on gender-affirming care for adults. We will see legislative efforts to permit employers to fire employees for being trans, directly challenging the Supreme Court's Bostock ruling. We will see federal legislation to permit housing discrimination in all 50 states.
But why stop there? This is a moment for creative cruelty and keeping trans people front-and-center as a scaremongering target keeps the contributions rolling.
If no one with significant power and influence push back against those, why ignore the open goal?
We could see federal legislation on banning gender-affirming care for adults. We could see deportations of transgender Americans. We could see trans people incarcerated without rights or due process.
There's no end to this.
Meanwhile, the GOP will use all of these newer issues to keep hammering Democratic electeds, asking why they're so silent, what are they hiding, why don't they care about all this?
"See, voters? Trans people are a scourge. We'll do something about it. Democrats won’t.”
When you’re the only force in what’s otherwise a vacuum of leadership—utter silence from political opponents—there's no incentive to stop the propaganda.
I say again: there is no end to this. There is no stopping point.
Trump and the GOP are not going to just move on if they see unlimited advantages in continuously offering up the trans community as a scapegoat and hammering away because Democratic leadership are too fearful to engage publicly.
The attacks on the rights and livelihoods of trans people should be more than enough to act and fight back publicly, but listen: even aside from that, we will all suffer if Democrats don't fight back and continue allowing the GOP to fully occupy the national discourse on trans rights.
Political media made a lot of noise about Democratic candidates losing last year, in part, because of trans equality. That is entirely wrong. As much as trans issues affected the election, Democratic candidates lost because they were too scared to fight back and simply allowed the GOP to score at will.
There wasn’t a debate or a struggle. There was one side constantly attacking trans people and the other side trying their best to ignore it all.
Again: there is no end to these attacks, there is no end to the political benefits the GOP will reap from them because Dems are too scared to fight back, and we will all suffer because of it.
If Democrats care about winning, the smart move is to punch back and show some goddamn spine.
That’s how I’m doing.
Charlotte, thank you for continuing to speak out. I’m a cis, straight woman but have been the family physician for a number of trans people and have trans friends and colleagues. I find all of this horrifying and sure I can’t really imagine how this must feel to trans people.
You are quite right. I am going to increase my emphasis on this issue in my communications with my Democratic Senators and Congresswoman.