State of the Trans Union 2019
As we learn more about the damaging impact of Trump’s administration on transgender patients, students, and troops, the President’s message and policy is undercut by our lived reality.
By Gillian Branstetter
Tonight, President Donald Trump will give his second State of the Union speech, in which he is expected to celebrate many of the devastating civil rights attacks waged by his administration. Much like his Oval Office address amid a government shutdown last month, he will likely use this venerated moment in American political life to spread lies, misinformation, and false justifications for his reckless and lawless efforts to hurt immigrants, people of color, and others.
The actual state of the Union — the reality lived by tens of millions across the country — will not be represented by this President tonight. In fact, the fear and prejudice endured by many will be actively ignored by a President who often enables and encourages such animus, both with his words and with his policies. This contradictory dynamic is particularly true for transgender people, who are forced to watch our own government become hostile to our rights, our bodies, and our very existence.
While transgender people are often spared having to hear invective come directly from him — with one notable exception — each news cycle brings with it a variety of policies and proposals designed to limit our rights and erase us from public life. Too many of us endure hatred throughout our lives, and much of it is endorsed by the administration through their actions, if not the President’s own words.
Indeed, the President is expected to announce a bold new plan to end HIV transmission in the US by 2030. But there are many reasons to doubt the President’s sincerity in this promise, not least of which is his administration’s hostility to the very populations most impacted by HIV.
While slashing funding for HIV prevention programs and firing every member of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS that didn’t resign in protest, his Department of Health and Human Services is getting ready to encourage doctors and insurers to discriminate against transgender patients.
Transgender people are five times as likely to receive an HIV diagnosis as the general population, according to our US Transgender Survey. This is particularly true of Black transgender women, with estimates ranging from one five receiving a diagnosis to more than half. Trump’s own Centers for Disease Control director has called out the administration for making these matters worse by reinforcing prejudice instead of combatting it. Reacting to HHS’ plan to erase transgender people from civil rights protections, he noted encouraging stigma against transgender people “is not in the interest of public health.”
Of course, this would be far from the first time Trump’s hostility towards transgender people worked against the scientific consensus of the CDC. Last month, the Center released a disturbing new report detailing the horrific rates of abuse and mistreatment endured by transgender youth. According to the report, one in four transgender middle and high schoolers feel unsafe at school, and one in three face bullying. They are five times as likely to be sexually assaulted as their peers, and one in three have survived a suicide attempt.
Since Trump’s last State of the Union, these numbers have come to life through disturbing incidents across the country. A transgender middle schooler in West Virginia was harassed by his vice principal while using the bathroom, even being told to use the urinal in front of the administrator to “prove” he’s a boy. During an active shooter drill, a 14-year-old transgender girl in Virginia was isolated from her peers because the adults could not decide which locker room she should hide in for safety. The family of transgender girl in Oklahoma was forced from their home by violent threats made by adults in their community who learned she was allowed to use the girl’s locker room. Just last week, a Black transgender teenager was followed home by a group of 15 boys who hurled homophobic and transphobic slurs at her before spitting in her face.
In order to address this crisis, the CDC report recommends “taking steps to create safe learning environments” and increasing “access to culturally competent physical and mental health care” for transgender youth. In direct conflict to those recommendations — which align with the stances of the entire childcare and medical leadership of the country — Trump’s Department of Education has repealed guidance created to help these kids, ignoring their stories of harassment and discrimination.
Similar to his promises about HIV, Trump cannot claim ignorance of the consequences of his administration’s own actions. His administration is readily aware of the consequences of their actions — and yet they continue to treat us as second-class citizens.
A similar paradox is at the center of the President’s justification for his ban on transgender military service. In the collection of pseudoscience used to defend the policy, the administration shows an awareness of the risks faced by transgender people — including our outsized risk for suicide. They never confront these as the results of discrimination; a well-studied phenomenon known as “minority stress” to scientists. Instead, they take steps to worsen that stigma and fight for its enforcement all the way to the Supreme Court.
The argument is twisted in its irony and shows the merciless depths the President will go to in justifying his administration’s rewriting of American society. They give no value to the longstanding civil rights tradition of building a better future and seek to destabilize and dismantle the progress we have made. They are not merely ignoring transgender students and adults, but actively fueling the fires that burn us alive.
But don’t take my word for it: You can read their intentions in The New York Times, which revealed last October the details of an internal memo arguing transgender people should not be protected from discrimination under civil laws at all. The report was met with widespread outrage from transgender people and our allies alike at one of the clearest signs yet of a coordinated strategy to exclude transgender people from civil rights protections. Finally, here was the black-and-white reasoning the administration was using to erase us.
What we learned from the memo should shred any vestige of good intentions on the administration’s part. They cannot feign ignorance or deny the consequences of their own actions. Whether it's on HIV or the rights of students or the military, the administration is ready to implement policies that worsen our lives because they, despite all evidence to the contrary, doubt our lives are real to begin with. It’s not ignorance about our suffering; it’s ignorance period.
Hatred and ignorance are not new factors for the transgender community, nor is transphobia a distinct invention of this administration. The fight for trans equality did not start when Trump came into office and it certainly won’t end when he leaves. But the administration’s continued efforts to repeal our rights and debilitate the hard-won progress of advocates and allies in the administration of Barack Obama means the President is plastering his gilded name onto the hardship of transgender youth — as if the persecution, violence, and suicides of young people were yet another ill-gotten Trump property.
