Trans Rights are Human Rights

Human rights must never be up for debate

IMPORTANT NOTE: The current administration has only been in for a week and I’m already exhausted. The barrage of executive orders which run from objectively insane to downright evil drains the soul. Before we dive in, take a second and breathe. Overcoming tyranny is not a sprint, it’s a marathon. Take care of you.

Quick definitions

Transgender (trans) - Someone who identifies as as a gender other than the one they were assigned at birth

Cisgender (cis) - Someone who identifies as the gender they were assigned at birth

Non-binary - Someone whose gender identity is neither male nor female but falls somewhere on a spectrum

Gender fluid - Someone whose gender identity is fluid, meaning sometimes they may feel more masculine, some more feminine, and some somewhere in the middle

There are a lot more terms in this space which I highly encourage you to become familiar with, but they aren’t pertinent to this article.

The Order

On January 27, 2025, convicted felon and adjudicated rapist Donald Trump signed an executive order titled Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government. The title of the order is almost as long as the order itself. Like most things the Felon-in-Chief does, it was short, stupid, and no one it was forced on consented.

It starts off claiming to want to restore the “biological reality of sex” and called trans women “men who self-identify as women,” accusing them of invading women’s spaces with implied ill intent. No mention of trans men, but that isn’t surprising. Christian Nationalists aren’t known for thinking about things too hard.

The dumbest part of the order is in section 2 where they set up definitions that reflect no knowledge of basic biology and also accidentally define all people as female for the purposes of this order. In Section 2d, they state “‘Female’ means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell.” For those who don’t know, at conception everyone ONLY has the large reproductive cells. Male expression happens later in fetal development. We all start as females and only diverge due to chemical and gene expression throughout gestation.

All of this was in the Christian Nationalist (aka Nazi) blueprint for America that is Project 2025.

History

Before we get too deep down the rabbit hole, let’s start by dispelling a common myth that trans and non-binary identities are somehow new. You will see plenty of commentators on the right claiming that being trans is some new ideology. They claim that trans people only exist because of a dark indoctrination program. This is objectively stupid.

Trans and non-binary identities have been part of the human race for as long as societies have existed. Likely longer than writing and maybe even language. Indigenous cultures around the world celebrated multiple gender identities, often considering non-binary and trans identities to be sacred. We see trans and non-binary identities among the pantheons of gods across many cultures. Around 5000 BCE priests of the Sumerian goddess Inanna were said to have taken on feminine identities. From 300 to 200 BCE in Greece priests often took on trans or gender fluid identities. In Hebrew there were eight separate gender designations recorded in the Talmud. In Japan there are very clear records of trans people from as far back as the Edo Period. There are accounts of transgender people in Colonial America in the 17th-19th centuries. Across continents and cultures throughout history trans and non-binary people show up in historical and archeological records.

Trans People in the Modern Age

As we enter the 20th century, we see a sharp spike in trans hatred and vile false propaganda. Lies calling being trans is an ideology that is used to groom children. The German Institute for Forensic Science in a report in 1938, recommended “transvestism,” a term society would today replace with transgenderism, “be eliminated from public life.” It started in the early 1930s with propaganda accusing trans people of grooming children and being deviant. In 1938, after years of spreading hate came the call for eradication of trans people. Soon after, they rounded up trans people for the camps.

Nazi anti-trans rhetoric has been copied by Christian Nationalists in the US word for word. There is no hiding their direct ties to the Nazis they emulate. GOP leaders, pundits, and hate groups call trans people and their allies groomers, call trans and non-binary identities an ideology, and threaten violence regularly. We see it from hate groups like the ironically named Moms 4 Liberty, a group that seeks to take away liberties, ban books, and forward the Nazi cause of Christian Nationalism.

We see it in the breaking news today, as GOP Representative from Colorado’s CD4, Lauren Boebert, saw a woman she thought was a trans woman, Delaware Democrat Sarah McBride, entering a women’s restroom on Capitol Hill. Republican hate mongers, led by GOP Rep Nancy Mace, have made a rule disallowing Rep McBride specifically from using shared women’s restrooms on Capitol Hill.

Rep Boebert went and found Rep Mace and went back to the bathroom to confront this poor woman. They stormed in, no doubt ready to start violence against a fellow elected representative. Shortly after both GOP representatives slinked quietly back to the House floor. Turned out they had entered to attack Rep McBride and ended up attacking a cis woman who was just there to use the restroom.

Because of hatred spread by Nazi propagandists like Boebert, Mace, Moms 4 Liberty, and countless other hate mongers, violence against trans people, their allies, and cis people misidentified as trans is on the rise. The rhetoric becomes more heated by the day, fueled by lies out of the White House, GOP politicians, and conservative media.

Science!

One of the arguments brought up by Christian Nationalists is “There are only 2 sexes, it’s science. If your gender identity doesn’t align with your sex assigned at birth, you have a disorder.” They simplify the sex and gender arguments to the XX and XY charts we all learned in middle school. Clearly, their education stopped there.

Gender is a social construct and flexible because of that, but sex is also not a binary as it turns out. There is a significant portion of the population who do not align with XX=female, XY=male. We can’t be sure how many because most people never get their chromosomes tested so they could live their entire lives as a gender that doesn’t align with what we learned in middle school without knowing.

For example, women with Swyer syndrome have an XY genotype but a female phenotype, meaning they appear female and have fully functional female reporductive organs. They can get pregnant and deliver babies. They experience all of the biological processes experienced by women with XX chromosomes. Most of them go their whole lives never knowing, only finding out if their chromosomes are tested for some medical reason.

There are also those born with androgen insensitivity, meaning they have high levels of testosterone but don’t develop male sex organs. They appear female externally but also tend to lack internal female sexual organs.

Then there is SRY gene expression. People with XX chromosomes and SRY gene expression may develop as phenotypically male. People with XY chromosomes and lacking SRY gene expression may develop as phenotypically female.

There are countless natural variations in sex expression, all of which make the binary a false premise even when we are talking exclusively about biological sex expression. Studies from scientific institutions around the world reflect this fact.

Why does it matter?

It seems no one thinks about the genitals of trans people more than Christian Nationalists and conservatives. They are obsessed with what people have in their underwear to the point of fetish.

Why? Trans people existing doesn’t affect anyone else in any way. A trans person having the right to exist and identify how they want doesn’t diminish your rights. A trans person seeking gender affirming care doesn’t change your life. A trans or non-binary person going by a different pronoun than the one you assume has no more affect on you than someone asking to be called by a nickname. It costs you nothing. Spreading trans hate costs people their lives.

Trans people are over four times more likely to be sexually assaulted than cisgender people. These rates increase when they are forced to use facilities that don’t align with their gender identity. Trans people are significantly less likely to commit acts of sexual violence. You are at statistically at lower risk sharing a space with a trans person than a cis person.

The biggest stink being raised, no pun intended, is over public restrooms. Conservatives, what do you think goes on in public restrooms? Or, worse, what are you doing in public restrooms? Men are not dressing up as women to enter women’s bathrooms and locker rooms to assault women. Men entering women’s spaces for sexual assault statistically don’t dress up to do so. It’s also already illegal to engage in sexual activity and indecent exposure in public restrooms no matter what gender identity you express. Anyone using public restrooms correctly will not be exposing anything or touching anyone. Let them pee in peace.

Then there is the sports argument. Trans athletes make up less than one percent of athletes competing at any level. Trans athletes don’t have any advantage in their sports. We can see that by how few dominate the sport in which they compete. If trans women were truly stronger/faster/better than the cis women they compete against, we would see them at the top of every sport in which they compete. Instead we see cis women accused of being trans because they compete at such a high level. It’s just not an issue. Plus, it’s just a game. Calm down. No one’s life is going to end because of a game.

Think about the children!

The most insidious lies spread by hate groups are that trans people are after your children. It is the lie that spurs the most violence against trans people. No one is trying to make anyone’s children trans. The fact is about one percent of the population identify as transgender. Transgender people often realize this early in life. They are significantly more likely to attempt suicide or self-harm in other ways than cisgender people. Rates of depression and anxiety are also significantly higher. When trans youth are supported at home things do improve, but when support is shown in both home and community they return to near normal levels on all fronts, especially when pursuing gender-affirming care. For minors gender-affirming care does not mean surgery. It means allowing them to live as the gender they’ve chosen. It means calling them by the name they’ve chosen. It may involve the same treatment given to children experiencing early puberty, puberty blockers. None of this is permanent. If they decide to change their minds, they simply stop the treatment. It does not cause infertility, contrary to what a certain Nazi billionaire spews on the platform formerly known as Twitter. No one is taking your kid in for gender reassignment surgery at school.

Representation also matters. Seeing someone with whom you identify out in the world is key to developing positive self-image.

Call to Action

What can we do about it? With the barrage of hate out there it can feel hopeless. It isn’t. The key is to be an upstander, not a bystander.

What does it mean to be an upstander? When you see something, stand up.

• When you see legislation that harms trans people, call your representatives

• When you see anti-trans propaganda, call it out

• When someone in your circle comes out, support them

• When you see discrimination and hate, call it out

• Donate to organizations which help trans people like The Trevor Project, GLAAD, and Trans Lifeline

I leave you with the poem by Pastor Martin Niemöller referenced in the meme above, First They Came.

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me