Trump Administration Seeks To Erase Transgender Identities

Protesters gather outside of the White House last year in Washington during a rally against Donald Trump’s plan to rescind anti-discrimination protections for transgender students.Photo: New York Times

The Trump administration is considering defining gender as a biological condition determined by genitalia at birth.

The Trump administration is reportedly eyeing the idea to narrow the legal recognition of gender to what is assigned at birth, based on a baby’s genitalia.

The administration has been repeatedly targeting the transgender community in the form of rolling back or attempting to roll back Obama-administration protections against transgender, non-binary, and gender non-conforming individuals.

The New York Times obtained a memo Sunday morning that states the Department of Health and Human services is making an effort to create a legal definition of sex under Title IX, which is the federal civil rights that that prohibits gender discrimination that are financially aided by the government.

Their argument is that “government agencies need to adopt an explicit a uniform definition of gender as determined on a biological basis that is clear, grounded in science, objective and administrable.” This would enforce gender to be an “unchangeable” definition, defined by biological sex. Any dispute about one’s sex would reportedly result in “genetic testing.”

This policy would effect and erase recognition of approximately 1.4 million Americans who identify as transgender or non-binary, regardless if they’ve undergone medical transition of any sort.

Civil rights groups, such as the ACLU, are mobilizing to fight back against any attempt at creating this law. ACLU James Esseks, director of the ACLU LGBT & HIV Project issued the following statement, as published on their website:

“This is an attack on the very lives and existence of transgender people. It is painful, it is hateful, and it will not go unchallenged. Transgender people have the right to not only exist, but to fully participate in public life. Transgender people are real and transgender lives have meaning.

“If the Trump administration moves forward with these hateful and hurtful policies, they will once again be met with opposition in courts and in communities. More and more courts are seeing that policies targeting transgender people have no place in our country. The ACLU will fight back against any efforts to use transgender people as political pawns and continue to seek full equality for transgender and nonbinary people.”

Protests organized by the National Center for Transgender Equality tok place place in New York City on Sunday, and will also take place in Washington, DC today.