If you’re among the million+ transgender Americans, civil rights protections you’ve grown used to in recent years are all about to go POOF!
Current Events
Yes, according to Donald Trump, the term ‘transgender’ is non-existent. In fact, Trump is ready to instruct the US government to exclusively define gender by genitalia at birth only.
In his continuing rule over America as if he were King Trump, “The Donald” is taking advances enacted by former President Obama — including bathroom assignments, single-sex programs, and more — and rolling them back. Previously, transgender Americans were protected under Title IX, an existing civil rights law which bans gender discrimination in education programs receiving government financial assistance. However, Trump aspires to erase all that from the history books as if it never existed.
Donald Trump (who oddly referred to himself as a “nationalist” on Tuesday) wants the world to be defined as males and females. According to him, the definition will be biologically determined based on genitalia at birth and will not be fluid or selective by individuals. No one will be in between and no one will be allowed to wake up one morning and suddenly decide to redefine their sexual identity. To him, you’re either a boy or a girl, a man or a woman. Case closed!
At Trump’s insistence, the US Department of Health and Human Services is initiating an effort to establish a legally binding definition of sex. The reasoning is masked behind a need for government agencies to adopt an explicit and uniform definition of gender as determined “on a biological basis that is clear, grounded in science, objective and administrable.” However, we all know that the real reasons here are simple and good old-fashioned discrimination.
“Sex means a person’s status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth,” the health department proposed. “The sex listed on a person’s birth certificate, as originally issued, shall constitute definitive proof of a person’s sex unless rebutted by reliable genetic evidence.”
The agency added that Trump’s proposal is for all Americans to be defined as either male or female, unchangeable, and determined by the genitals that person was born with. No one will be able to redefine their gender by removing or adding genitalia and any dispute about one’s sex could only be disputed and/or clarified by genetic testing.
If Donald Trump is able to have his way, this new definition will essentially eradicate federal recognition of an estimated 1.4 million Americans who acknowledge themselves (either surgically or otherwise) as a gender other than the one they were born into.
“This takes a position that what the medical community understands about their patients — what people understand about themselves — is irrelevant because the government disagrees,” said Catherine E. Lhamon, who led the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights during the Obama administration.
However, the Department of Health and Human Services argues that the term “sex” was never meant to include gender identity or even homosexuality. To them, that lack of clarity erroneously allowed the Obama administration to extend civil rights protections to people who should not have them — so now, they intend to right a wrong.
Should Trump succeed in rolling back protections and accepted definitions for gender, transgender Americans would virtually become invisible and unrecognized as the gender they may have lived under for decades.
In response, transgender Americans have taken to social media and are posting photographs of themselves with the hashtag #WontBeErased.
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Okay so this is a really tough one for me because I honestly don’t *get* the transgender psyche – feeling one is a man trapped in a woman’s body or visa versa. I’ve done a lot of reading over the past 7 or 8 yrs on the topic of psychosocial wellness of Transgenders (in general) but frankly the more I’ve read the more my discomfort with it has increased. So in an attempt to be as fair-mined as I possibly can on this story I’ll start with this. Based on a lot of credible research conducted mostly between 2005 – 2015 by multiple universities and health organizations, the results seem pretty clear. Anxiety, major depression, suicidal tendencies and suicidal rates among persons within the “transgender” population are significantly higher than the general population. And as one writer out it: “It has nearly everything to do with the way they are… Read more »