Red Flag Alert for the Anti-Trans Agenda of the Trump Administration in the United States

The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention and Human Security condemns the anti-trans agenda of the second Trump Administration and warns Americans that the recent spate of executive orders, which are in line with a genocidal process against the transgender community that has been emerging in the United States for over a decade, are meant to pave the way for greater state repression against all individuals and other groups in the future. It is important to consistently and loudly reject this administration’s efforts to isolate any people or groups due to their identities, to reaffirm the USA’s commitment to individual rights and diversity, and to push back against efforts to normalize state repression and violence.

The Lemkin Institute believes that current anti-trans hysteria within the government is meant to serve three purposes within a wider genocidal process. First, the Executive Orders constitute the paper marginalization and ‘paper persecution’ of an identity group that has recently gained rights and greater acceptance in order to lock in evangelical support for the Trump administration. Second, the executive orders create a fictitious ‘cosmic enemy’ that will justify radicalization of government in general, leading to ever-more power for the executive branch. And third, the executive orders, over time, aim to normalize the destruction of identity groups by desensitizing the public to state-sponsored persecution of people based solely on their identities.

Taken together, the Trump Administration’s executive orders related to trans people would effectively destroy, if fully implemented, trans people as a group, in whole, to summarize the text of the Genocide Convention. Trump’s language denying the reality of trans identity and criminalizing its expression is similar to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s language regarding Ukrainian identity and Israel’s language regarding Palestinian identity. These three states each deny the identity of clearly visible groups. Identity denial is a genocidal tactic aimed at vanquishing what is believed to be an evil, existential, and inherently criminal foe and it always results in mass atrocity if it is not nipped in the bud. While the latter two cases (Russia and Israel) involve imperialist land claims, in the case of the Trump Administration’s anti-trans policies, the goal is rather to achieve victory over the perceived virus of “woke” ideology, of which US conservatives believe trans people are the primary carriers. Many conservatives are convinced that there is an ideology called “transgenderism” that is supporting a global totalitarian project that aims to destroy family bonds and render humanity enslaved to global government and economic exploitation. That thinking is now in power in the White House.

We remind Americans that trans people constitute at most 1.4 percent of the US population. According to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) there are “less than ten” trans college student athletes out of over 510,000 athletes total. Research does not support the idea that trans athletes have unfair advantages over other athletes of the same gender, nor does it support the allegation that trans people pose a threat when using gender-appropriate bathrooms. There is absolutely nothing supporting the claims of the anti-trans voices in and around the US government. Trans people have always existed and are completely ordinary Americans, no different in any fundamental way from those Americans who wish to see them erased. If we are to have a discussion about proper policies in athletics, for example, the legitimacy, rights, and existence of trans people must be the starting off point.

Along these lines, we wish to point out as well that transgender people are completely natural in a world defined by diversity. Scientific studies have shown time and again that there is great diversity within the biological sex of humans that our binary concepts of male and female cannot account for. Male and female can be seen as a shorthand for the biology of human reproduction, but those categories do not capture all the many different manifestations of sexual differentiation among us. Here we speak not only of visibly intersex people but also the stages of sexual differentiation in utero, which involve gonadal differentiation but also chromosomal and hormonal differentiation. This leads to a wide variety of gender expression and identification that has existed for all of human history.

The Trump administration is simply wrong when it states that there are only “two sexes.” Biological diversity defines this planet. Biological diversity is what has enabled humanity to live and thrive on this planet. And we know that human beings are defined by biological diversity just like all other living things. If God made this world, in its beautiful diversity, God made trans people as well. It is important for religious conservatives to think hard about that. No political leader, even one with little regard for the natural world, has the power to challenge the diversity of our creation. It is also suicidal for our species to do so.

Although Trump’s Executive Orders related to trans and non-binary people are written in a language that strongly suggests they were drafted by academics, lawyers, and other well-educated people, the scientific basis for the allegations within them is completely lacking and their reasoning is poor. This ‘pseudoscientific’ reaction to transgender people (what the journal Scientific American has called “junk science”), to the emerging science around sexual differentiation, and to the diversity of sex and gender expression, has been cultured by years of unending attacks on the transgender community from the religious right and from a conservative sector of self-appointed feminists who have embraced the gender binary as a type of security against threats from men. These ‘gender critical feminists’ have found common cause with people who do not believe in the fundamental rights of women as they seek to criminalize transgender people.

Regarding women, the fact is that anti-trans initiatives put not only trans people in danger, but also all women, both transgender and cisgender (women who feel comfortable with the sex they were assigned at birth), by challenging women’s right to privacy, their existential autonomy, their control over their bodies, and the very idea of similarities and shared spaces between men and women. Additionally, in their specific obsession with transgender women, these initiatives also exhibit a clear misandry, or hatred of men, according to which any person assigned the male sex at birth poses a permanent existential threat to women. While the problem of violence against women by men is clear, and should be a primary concern for all states and societies around the world, deflecting the real problem, which requires structural changes and real investments to solve, onto a tiny minority of marginalized people – transgender women – does not benefit or protect cisgender women, as the Trump administration is trying to claim.

Clearly the Trump Administration’s attacks on trans people is about something much, much larger than the lives of the 300,000 trans Americans who will be directly and negatively affected by his Executive Orders.

To the American people, we ask you to reaffirm your commitment to individual rights and to the project of equality under the law that is written into the US Constitution and that has animated the best nature of the USA since its founding. Reject efforts to desensitize you to violence against other Americans, whether that violence is legal, social, or physical. To protect trans people and the Constitution, and to prevent the hardening of a genocidal process that will eventually impact every single American, it is critical that you loudly resist the normalization of anti-trans talking points and make your voice heard against efforts to marginalize and erase the trans community. This can mean many things – writing a letter to your representatives, organizing your community to flood your representatives with phone calls, or supporting and engaging with organizations that protect LGBTQ+ rights. Talking to family and friends is also important. Autocratic states need to control language or they will fall. Keep talking.

To Republican politicians and supporters, we ask that you think hard about what is known regarding the genocidal processes of the past. We know, for example, that targeting one tiny group for persecution always expands to the targeting of other groups. It is an easy way for the state to claim powers outside of the constitutional order. Jews were less than 1 percent of the population of Germany in 1933. Do you want to be responsible for a similar process in the United States? Is that what you want for your country? We at the Lemkin Institute believe that many of you do not.

To religious conservatives, we ask that you think about the core tenets of your faith and how they are being abused in an effort to garner political power serving ends that have nothing to do with God’s creation and instead directly threaten it. You may believe that there is no room for trans or gender nonbinary people in doctrine, but does doctrine really mandate a state exercising authoritarian powers over trans people, both child and adult, as well as their families, communities, schools and doctors, with all the misery and harm that will cause? We hope you will search your hearts to answer these questions and ask yourselves, is this moral?

To trans Americans, we send our solidarity and support. Do not panic, but be smart and try to plan ahead, turning to existing LGBTQ+ groups, mutual aid initiatives, and human rights organizations for guidance. You are loved by many, many people and we can all work together to ensure your safety.

In the Trump Administration’s full-frontal assault on trans existence, we are seeing the consequences of hate ideology play out in real time. The rubber is hitting the road. Not only are trans lives at stake, but also the very freedoms upon which the United States was founded. Just as people have fought in the past to have these freedoms recognized, Americans must continue to fight now for their recognition and protection. If Americans refuse to abandon marginalized and vulnerable communities, we have no doubt that the American people and their values of individual rights, freedom of expression, and equality can prevail. There is power in unity. Embrace it.