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Trump’s “Trans Scare” Founded on Cold War’s “Lavender Scare”
Transgender Veteran: “I fought for your right to hate me.”
A popular picture shared on social media showing a transgender man’s T-shirt’s printed inscription captures the cultural moment we are experiencing with Donald Trump and his MAGA movement’s representation of members of the transgender community.
Trump, through his strategy of fear and hatred, sacrificed the bodies of trans people, along with undocumented immigrants, as his stepping stones on his draconian path toward the Oval Office.
In his first week of his second regime, he signed an executive order banning transgender people from the military, referring to them as having a mental disorder. He signed another order ending healthcare for transgender youth, and one ending transgender-inclusive and anti-racist education policies in K-12 schools. He also ordered that all prison inmates must be incarcerated in facilities based on their assigned sex at birth and unrelated to their gender identities.
During his second inaugural address, Trump said, “As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female.”
The same man who vilifies and dehumanizes trans people is the same man who cut off all U.S. foreign aid to help feed the world’s poorest people.
The same man who placed trans people at greater risk of violence and of developing a negative self-concept is the same man who has suggested constructing massive internment camps for predominantly hard working and tax paying undocumented immigrants and of possibly again separating children from their parents.
Why does Trump act with such malice and contempt for certain groups of people?
Robert Reich, professor and political commentator, argues that “[H]e’s a malignant narcissist and sadist with an insatiable lust for power who gets pleasure out of making others squirm.”
In addition, “The bigger his demonstrable power and the more unpredictably he wields it,” Reich continued, “the greater his ability to trade some of that power with people with huge amounts of…
