After a period of seeming social acceptance, trans individuals are currently facing unprecedented challenges in the U.S.

EMILY GILL

A few examples will suffice. In March, Idaho criminalized the use of bathrooms and locker rooms, even in public accommodations and private businesses, by individuals whose sex at birth does not match the signs on the doors. Twenty other states have also passed various types of bathroom restrictions. Kansas permits private individuals to sue for damages of $1,000 if they encounter transgender people in bathrooms that do not match their genders assigned at birth. The Idaho lawmakers also voted to fine Boise, the state capital, $2,000 daily if it did not remove the gay pride flag in front of city hall. One Idaho Republican state representative said that during debate, he had expected to hear “horror stories” about male predators in women’s bathrooms. Instead, he heard testimony from individuals worrying about which restrooms they could safely use. A Republican state senator noted that these people are “human, just like us. What are they supposed to do?” Another Republican senator declared however, that “This bill protects Idaho’s cultural decency. We don’t want to become like California or New York.” In all these cases, legislators seek to ignore or erase any recognition of the existence and humanity of those who are unlike them.

For many state legislatures, the Trump administration’s stance against the transgender community has emboldened them to vent their exclusive impulses by means of their law-making powers. In April, the administration terminated multiple civil rights agreements ensuring trans students’ rights to equal educational opportunity in line with their gender identities, often leading to conflicts with state statutes. In July, the Supreme Court upheld two state laws forbidding trans female athletes from participating on girls and women’s sports teams. Many trans female athletes have taken hormone blockers and have not gone through male puberty and therefore are unlikely to exhibit the competitive strength that sports officials fear.

Individuals with fluid gender identities have always existed and always will. For example, during colonialism in Angola, West Africa, a member of the Ndongo royal family assigned female at birth became the king, not the queen, of the Ndongo kingdom. On the Indonesian island of Sulawesi for over 1,000 years, dancers called bissus have been thought to represent a bridge between the earthly and celestial realms because they are viewed as embodying both male and female traits. The bissus possess male sex characteristics and are reared as boys, but in performance their rituals embody both genders, including daggers for masculinity and bright silks for femininity.

Last November, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to stop issuing passports including gender identity markers chosen by their applicants. This is yet another example of the administration’s attempt to erase transgender status, including barring trans individuals from the military and ending trans medical treatments for federal inmates. New York Times columnist M. Gessen points out that state identification documents are in essence tools of social control. If a passport lists a person’s gender assigned at birth but its holder does not look like that gender, its status as an identification document does not work. Many individuals must de-transition temporarily to match their documents. Listing gender assigned at birth does not just state an innocent historical fact. Instead, it enforces a social hierarchy to the detriment of those who deviate from it.

And this is the point. “Real” Americans are supposed to conform to a Procrustean bed that erases the identities and the inclusion of people who are the “wrong” nationalities (Haiti or Syria at the moment), races (Black), genders (nonconforming to that assigned at birth), and religions (Islam). In favor are those whom some call heritage Americans, those descending from the early years of white settlement in North America — maybe with a few white South Africans added for variety.

Current policies are redolent of the “Redemption” that white southerners instituted after Reconstruction following the Civil War. The White House Domestic Policy Council in July issued its lengthy report on “saving” our history from the “erasures” purportedly committed by the Smithsonian Institution. These supposedly involved anti-white activism and the embrace of trans folks, among other sins. According to historian David Blight, “This report is not a document about history; it is the product of a racial and political ideology in search of a history that no longer bears scrutiny.”