The Department of Health and Human Services started working on a planned policy that would strictly define an individual’s gender as the one they were assigned at birth, eliminating transgender as a recognized identity, according to The New York Times. This policy would sincerely dehumanize and endanger transgender, intersex or gender non-conforming people at Geneseo and beyond.
“Sex means a person’s status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth,” the Department of Health and Human Services stated in a memo, according to The New York Times. “The sex listed on a person’s birth certificate, as originally issued, shall constitute definitive proof of a person’s sex unless rebutted by reliable genetic evidence.”
In addition, the government would use specious genetic testing to decide whether someone is male or female, The New York Times reported. Not only would this policy be an appalling invasion of privacy, it could easily create a witch-hunt that puts people’s lives in even greater danger.
There are as many as 1.4 million Americans who identify as transgender according to the Williams Institute, which would make the national transgender population is larger than 10 states. This policy would essentially disregard those hundreds of thousands of people, making it a moral disgrace.
Before the proposed change in direction, trans and gender non-conforming Americans were already under duress from the federal government and some members of the public.
The Trump administration advanced a ban that would prohibit transgender soldiers from serving their country and people are disproportionately killed for straying from narrow perceptions of gender.
As many as one in five transgender people face discrimination when trying to receive medical coverage and around 41 percent have attempted suicide, compared to less than 2 percent of the population as a whole, according to the National LGBTQ Task Force.
Moving forward with the Trump administration’s plan would not only stop that progress, but it would set us back immensely. This shouldn't be partisan or political; it's a matter of people's basic humanity.