Suddenly the [police]wagon arrived and the mood of the crowd changed. Three of the more blatant queens—in full drag—were loaded inside, along with the bartender and doorman, to a chorus of catcalls and boos from the crowd. A cry went up to push the [police]wagon over, but it drove away before anything could happen…
The next person to come out was a dyke, and she put up a struggle—from car to door to car again. It was at that moment that the scene became explosive. Limp wrists were forgotten. Beer cans and bottles were heaved at the window, and a rain of coins descended on the cops. At the height of the action, a bearded figure was plucked from the crowd and dragged inside… Three cops were necessary to get [them] away from the crowd and into the Stonewall. This exit left no cops on the street, and almost by signal the crowd erupted into cobblestone and bottle heaving. The reaction was solid: They were pissed. -Lucian Truscott, “Gay Power Comes to Sheridan Square,” The Village Voice, July 3, 1969
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The 1960s was a time of tumultuous social change as more people began to challenge basic underlying assumptions concerning authority and power. People, many of whom were young, challenged the serious inequities in the distribution of resources, the oppressive systemic structures plaguing our nation, the potentially irreversible attacks on the global environment, and the U.S. incursion into Southeast Asia, specifically Vietnam.
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There are moments in history when conditions come together to create an impetus for great social change. Many historians and activists place the beginning of the modern movement for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual equality at the Stonewall Inn, a small bar frequented by LGBTQ+ people located at 53 Christopher Street in New York City’s Greenwich Village in late June 1969.
At Gene Compton’s Cafeteria, however, in what is known as the Tenderloin District in San Francisco, trans people and sex workers joined three years earlier, in August 1966, in fighting police harassment and oppression.
Out of the ashes of Compton’s Cafeteria and the Stonewall Inn came several militant groups organized primarily by people in their teens and early twenties. The development of LGBTQ+ Studies programs was inextricably connected with these political and social movements.
Transgender people have been there since the beginning of the movement but have increasingly come out in larger numbers. Many include young people emerging from a new generation of activists who are on the cutting edge in the movement for equality and pride. They are making the links between transgender oppression and other forms of oppression.
The increased visibility and activism of transgender people (including within popular media and academic discourse) has shaken up the traditional notions of male/female and gay/straight. They are creating a vision of social transformation (as opposed to mere reform) by exploding conventional gender constructions, most notably the limiting and destructive binaries of “masculinity” and “femininity.”
All-out erasure
Donald Trump, amid his self-proclaimed retribution campaign, followed through on his efforts to completely erase transgender people.
His administration recently attempted to rewrite history by expunging references to trans people from New York’s Stonewall Inn National Monument website developed by the National Park Service. The acronym on the website that once read LGBTQ+ has been reduced to LGB, standing for lesbian, gay, and bisexual.
Did the people who voted for Trump this time around really want him to spend his hours behind the Resolute Desk scrubbing trans people from U.S. history?
During his short second regime, one of Trump’s executive orders has banned trans athletes from school and professional sports, from using the public facilities of their choice, and from choosing to have gender-affirming procedures to maintain their bodily autonomy. Trump has decreed, “There are only two genders: male and female.” All else, he claims, goes contrary to the natural world.
He even signed an executive order to this effect, declaring that there are only two genders. With this came a series of specific policy changes. Titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” the order describes biological sex as being determined by the size of one’s reproductive cells: small for men and large for women.
Government documents, including passports, visas, and employee records, can now only show “male” or “female,” and the government will no longer pay for trans-related health care.
In addition, Trump ordered all transgender women incarcerated in federal prisons to be thrown into male facilities.
Trump’s order states the federal government will no longer even recognize the existence of trans people and will prevent federal funds from being spent on any programs that do so.
The order says, “Federal funds shall not be used to promote gender ideology,” and it directs the Bureau of Prisons to revise its policies to ensure that federal inmates do not receive “any medical procedure, treatment, or drug for the purpose of conforming an inmate’s appearance to that of the opposite sex.”
Trump has also threatened to kick out trans service members from the military, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio has banned rainbow flags from flying in U.S. embassies.
When Trump laid the groundwork
While running for the presidency in 2016, Trump said at campaign rallies that he would be a different kind of Republican because he would defend and strengthen LGBTQ+ protections. At the 2016 Republican convention, he posed with a rainbow flag with the words “LGBTs for Trump” scrawled across the yellow stripe.
This should have been a clue in foretelling his cowardice and deception once he took over the reins of power. During his first regime in the White House, the Trump administration declared total nuclear war on the transgender community.
When the Trump administration promoted its 2017 “American Heroes Week,” the Commander-in-Chief let it be known in a torrential three-tweet series that he did not include trans people in the category of “American Heroes,” especially those in the U.S. military.
“After consideration with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow… Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. military,” he announced. “Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming… victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you.”
On April 12, 2019, this clearly discriminatory and unnecessary policy took effect.
Trump’s official policy-by-tweet contradicted Department of Defense regulations released June 30, 2016, under Obama-era Defense Secretary Ash Carter, permitting trans people to join and openly serve their country. At that time, the United States added its name to an ever-increasing list of 20 other nations (by 2022, that had increased to 30 nations) welcoming trans people into their military ranks, with the Netherlands as the first as far back as 1973. A sampling of others includes Australia, Bolivia, Canada, Germany, Israel, New Zealand, and Spain.
A Rand study fully debunks the Lier-in-Chief’s assertion of burdensome medical costs expended on trans servicemembers. Of the Pentagon’s annual military healthcare budget of nearly a trillion dollars, an estimated $2.4–$8.4 million accounts for transition-related healthcare costs.
In addition, Rand found in 2016 that merely 25–130 active trans military personnel have deployment restrictions due to transition-related medical treatments. In comparison, it was reported in 2018 that there were 2.1 million non-deployable active-duty troops overall.
Trump’s ban on transgender military service personnel during his first term was placed on hold since three separate federal courts of appeal found the policy unconstitutional. The Supreme Court, however, lifted the injunction on January 22, 2019, in a 5-4 vote, which allowed the policy to take effect.
In another salvo during his first regime, the Trump administration sent a memo to major government agencies declaring that the definition of “gender” must be based “on a biological basis that is clear, grounded in science, objective and administrable.”
This meant that the sex of everyone must accord with the binary of “male” or “female” determined by the genitals a person is born with, unless genetic tests determine otherwise.
Though federal civil rights laws protected transgender people through such statutes as Title VII, Title IX, and the Affordable Care Act, the Trump administration’s obvious intent was and remains to nullify and further excite its base by going after trans people in advance of the next midterm elections.
In an earlier memo sent from his Department of “Justice” to U.S. attorneys, department heads, and federal agencies, Trump’s then-Attorney General, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, reversed an Obama-era policy that protected trans employees from discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Sessions made it clear that his department would no longer interpret gender protections in Title VII to include gender identity and expression.
In Trump’s first regime, he abolished an Obama-era executive order permitting transgender students to use school facilities aligning with their gender identities, and the White House website removed reference to LGBTQ+ issues and policies from the previous administration.
In yet another rollback of protections initiated by his immediate predecessor, Trump dismantled a policy directive enumerating the rights and responsibilities of transgender people in prison related to several areas including housing, strip searches, and medical care. The directive advised respect and protection of transgender inmates and, on a case-by-case basis, the possibility of residence in prisons matching their gender identities.
Trump’s erasure of protections had wide-ranging negative effects, considering the large percentage of trans people who are incarcerated.
The National Center for Transgender Equality found that 16% of transgender people (including 21% of trans women) have been incarcerated at some point in their lives. Nearly half (47%) of Black transgender people have been incarcerated.
These high rates are associated with disproportionate poverty, homelessness, societal and workplace discrimination, involvement in street economies, and often, bias from law enforcement officials. They are also associated with higher risk for harassment, abuse, and violence in juvenile detention facilities, jails, and prisons.
“Corrections” officials routinely deny transgender people transition-related medical care, and they often suffer prolonged sentences of isolation.
Standing up
It should be crystal clear to everyone that Trump’s motive in declaring war on an entire category of people has nothing to do with concerns over improving military readiness, ending discrimination, or improving prison conditions.
It has nothing to do with healthcare costs. It has nothing to do with some alleged and unspecific “disruption,” and it certainly has nothing to do with “religious freedom.”
Trump’s actions are intended to harden his appeal to his base of support by scapegoating trans people for his failed policies and failing presidency.
Trump’s not-so-surprising assaults on trans people during his first regime had the heavy thumbprint of then-Vice President Mike Pence, who, in his first congressional campaign in 2000, argued for public funding of so-called “conversion therapy” for LGBTQ+ people.
On his website at the time, his disdain for homosexuality stands out: “Congress should support the reauthorization of the Ryan White Care Act only after completion of an audit to ensure that federal dollars were no longer being given to organizations that celebrate and encourage the types of behaviors that facilitate the spreading of the HIV virus. Resources should be directed toward those institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior.”
Pence opposed marriage equality and LGBTQ+ non-discrimination protections, and as Indiana Governor, helped to pass the so-called Religious Freedom Restoration Act allowing businesses to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people. The state was forced to amend the law after experiencing serious political and financial pushback.
We must all stand up against the scurrilous anti-trans attacks perpetrated by the Trump administration.
We must not permit thepolicymakers (the majority of whom are heterosexual and largely cisgender male) to dictate policy over whether transgender employees and students are protected against discrimination, and whether trans service members are granted permission to openly serve their country.
And we must not allow anyone, policymaker or otherwise, to demean, intimidate, harass, violate, or murder anyone, including our dear transgender warriors.
It is obvious that Trump ripped out the yellow stripe from the Rainbow flag and attached it to his spine.
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