SUPERMEGAGIGATHREAD: Rainbow Rage Over Orange Man - Otherwise A&N is just going to be a wall of DMG posts from here until 2028

Diana Moon Glampers · Jan 30, 2025

Next up, Autostraddle!

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Trump’s Executive Order Has No F*cking Idea What “Gender Affirming Care” Actually Is

Trump’s latest Executive Order — and boy has he been busy with Executive Orders! — takes aim at gender-affirming care for transgender youth. He claims this life-enriching and medically sound practice is, in fact, a collective effort by Radical Doctors to ravage confused children with aggressive and unnecessary surgeries, thus permanently preventing them from ever being able to birth a child into the planet he actively seeks to destroy.

Protecting Children From Chemical and Surgical Mutilation directs the Office of Health and Human Services to establish new guidelines for “promoting the health of children who assert gender dysphoria” or other “identity-based confusion” and to re-evaluate the DSM-V. It directs the Secretary of Defense to ensure trans children of military service members cannot get medical care. It asks the Attorney General to “prioritize enforcement of protections against female genital mutilation,” even though a phalloplasty is not female genital mutilation.

This order will face substantial legal pushback, but the implications of any realized element of the EO are scary, as is its potential impact on the broader cultural landscape.

It’s Not Just Conservatives Who Support Trump’s Views on Gender Affirming Care

Unfortunately, many of our own political allies share some of the views that enabled zealotry against trans people to reach this fever pitch. They are regularly fed anti-trans ideology and propaganda from the very same media outlets that are presumed to support liberal, left-wing causes. Some of the worst anti-trans journalism in recent memory comes from The New York Times and The Atlantic. Newsweek just declared that JK Rowling “won the culture war.” Liberal pundits blamed trans allyship for the Dems’ 2024 losses, despite Harris never taking an explicit pro-trans rights stance during her campaign. When Sarah McBride’s ability to pee at work was under attack, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez seemed to be the only Democrat interested in defending her.

Democrats are backing down on trans rights, and they need to stand up. In this post, I’ll attempt to go over some of the major talking points that might come up when speaking with potential allies about gender-affirming care.

What is Gender-Affirming Care?

It’s not “Junk Science,” like Trump says. Gender-affirming care is evidence-based care that affirms the patient’s sense of their own gender. It can include talk therapy, speech therapy, or medications like puberty blockers or hormone therapy, depending on each patient’s individual needs. This care reduces depression and suicidality amongst transgender youth, and every major medical organization has condemned efforts to criminalize and curtail it.

With minors, doctors have very specific guidelines, advised by WPATH (World Professional Association of Transgender Health) to be intentional and careful while providing treatment to ensure the child’s gender incongruence has been longstanding, they’re mature enough to provide informed consent, mental health concerns have been addressed, and the youth is aware of potential reproductive health effects. The WPATH Guidelines, which Trump wishes to reject or characterize as radical or rash, is such a cautious, comprehensive, curious and humble document, full of science and acknowledgments of where research lacks conclusive determinations.

It’s often claimed that gender nonconforming and neurodivergent kids are being swiftly misdiagnosed as transgender and rushed into surgery when they are simply tomboys, or gay, or autistic. WPATH standards of care acknowledge that diverse gender expressions in children do not always indicate a transgender identity and directs providers to rule out other potential causes of incongruence. They recommend healthcare professionals working with gender diverse children receive training in autism and neurodiversity. While professionals are advised to support children who desire to be acknowledged as their identified gender, there’s no recommendation for immediate medical interventions.

Good parents and doctors can work together to understand the child’s feelings and choose the right course of action.

People Under 18 Rarely Undergo Gender Affirming Surgery, and Actual Children Almost Never Do

Sec.1 of the executive order claims growing numbers of impressionable children are being “maimed” and “steralized” under “radical and false claims” that “adults can change a child’s sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions.”

This is not true.

A study from Harvard analyzing 2019 data found “little to no utilization of gender-affirming surgeries by transgender and gender-diverse (TGD) minors in the U.S.” In fact, cisgender males comprise the vast majority of minors’ gender-affirming surgeries, accounting for for 80% of gender-affirming breast reduction or removal procedures. It’s much easier and more common for teens to get irreversible cosmetic surgeries (which are often gender-affirming in their own ways).

Generally accepted guidelines are to wait until a patient becomes a legal adult to perform surgeries, but exceptions have been made. For teenagers (16-17), generally only “top surgery” is offered, and only after the patient has been “consistent and persistent” in their gender identity for multiple years. It’s not a choice made lightly, quickly, or in isolation. Phalloplastys, which Trump defines as “female genital mutilation,” are only performed on adults. Phalloplasty actually isn’t very popular amongst trans adults, either — only 4%-13% of trans men will receive it.

The process of obtaining gender-affirming surgery is cumbersome, consisting of numerous appointments, approvals and tests. Waiting lists for surgical appointments can be up to two years long. There are truly so many steps! For example, patients seeking vaginoplasties are required to do a full year of hair removal treatment on the surgical site before their surgery.

Ultimately, regardless of age, these are decisions that should be made by a patient, their parents and their doctors — not by the government.

Puberty Blockers Are Not “Chemical Mutilation”

Puberty blockers have been used to treat cis kids with precocious puberty since the 1980s and their application to trans youth is supported by all major medical organizations. They don’t actually “block” puberty, they “pause” it, giving kids a chance to hold off on physical changes that could harm their mental health and be expensive or invasive to repair later in life. Discontinuing blockers returns them to a pre-destined pubertal development, which can be assisted by gender-affirming hormone therapy.

They’re also not widely prescribed. In England, where the National Health Service began issuing new guidelines prohibiting doctors from prescribing puberty blockers to minors? Less than 100 minors in England were already receiving them.

What is the Impact of Hormone Blockers on Fertility?

The Executive Order also argues that “mutilated children” will eventually “grasp the horrifying tragedy that they will never be able to conceive children of their own or nurture their children through breastfeeding.”

Firstly, this assumes an ascription to a value system that prizes reproduction as an empirical and universal desire. Getting breast implants or reductions can also potentially harm a woman’s ability to breastfeed, but that remains legal, even for teenagers. Ultimately, many lifesaving medical interventions offered to children can hinder future reproductive options.

That said! Puberty blockers do not impact one’s ability to conceive in the future. The science on hormone replacement therapy’s long term impact on fertility is still evolving — but those concerned about it can hedge their bets by freezing sperm or eggs prior to starting treatment. Trans men generally seem to be able to get pregnant a few months after stopping testosterone. For trans women, it’s still unclear, some find testicles fail to bounce back to their initial robust levels, other researchers have found the opposite. Honestly it’s hard enough to get answers about what drugs impact the fertility of cis women, let alone trans women, because there’s so little funding for women’s health research.

The reference to breastfeeding is honestly unclear to me — I’m confident that recipients of chest surgery are not horrified or shocked later in life to learn it may impact their ability to breastfeed. Hormones don’t permanently impact milk supply in humans who would otherwise be able to breastfeed, and apparently, some trans men and trans women can breastfeed.

Doctors disclose these possibilities to their patients and they can make decisions from there based on what they feel is best for their health and family. It’s not a surprise.

Do People Regret Gender-Affirming Care?

Trans youth who transitioned at a young age report “high levels of satisfaction with their care,” and only 3% discontinued hormone therapy. Regret is also rare for gender-affirming surgeries. There’s no singular conclusive study, but rates of regret seem to generally hover around 1% but could be even less.

This is an extraordinarily positive outcome. Nearly half of gastric-bypass surgery patients experience some regret about their surgeries, one in five patients regret knee replacement surgery and breast implants. Rates of satisfaction with antidepressants are far lower, but we accept that as par for the course.

But What About All Those Stories I’ve Seen and Read About People Who Regret Their Transition?

Nobody can speak for every de-transitioned person, and we don’t have to deny the possibility that people undergo surgeries they later regret in order to promote more access to trans health care for everyone. But; we also live in a transphobic world, and many eventual detransitioners face discrimination, bullying, vulnerability to violence and ostracisation post-transition.

Some de-transitioners, undergoing a vulnerable and traumatic experience and feeling estranged from LGBTQ+ community, have been recruited by right-wing, anti-trans communities to become spokespeople for anti-trans causes. “I had no limits on how far I would go to please people and help them win,” says Elisa Shupe, a trans woman who briefly detransitioned and became a right-wing hero by doing so. “At every turn, I had people heaping praise on me, which motivated me to do more and more.”

Stories about de-transtitioners are often shared as evidence that the gender-affirming care model is broken, like this recent New York Times piece, which describes behavior from a doctor that, if true, isn’t consistent with any model of care, let alone gender-affirming care. Criminalizing gender-affirming care due to malpractice from doctors like that would make as much sense as criminalizing back surgery because of Christopher Dunstch. If doctors are failing to meet standards of care, it’s likely to due to, I don’t know, the perpetual shitshow of healthcare in this country that incentivizes expedience and makes mental health care nearly impossible to access? The system Trump also wants to destroy?

The world and gender and sexuality and our bodies — it’s so fucking complicated. Literally everyone, even the people who hate us, would benefit from a more expansive idea of what it means to “look like” any specific gender and to open our minds to the possibility of gender journeys that take unexpected turns, or outright change mid-life, rather than curtailing and limiting options of gender expression and medical treatment.

“A transition can be beneficial to some people and ‘hellish’ for others,” write trans academics Daniela Valdes and Kinnon MacKinnon in The Atlantic.”These are not opposing viewpoints. They simply reflect a wide range of real outcomes of medical interventions that can fundamentally transform a person’s body and their life.”

In Conclusion….

Let’s be clear: these efforts are not really about concern for the bodies of children, nor do they reflect an actual problem that requires political intervention. The right-wing is seizing trans issues not because they’re relevant to many Americans but because: trans issues are ripe for sensationalization, it’s popular amongst many Democrats too, it makes big money for anti-gay groups running out of LGB issues to oppose, it fits in with an overall push towards conservative and traditional gender roles and because it somehow remains culturally accepted to be vile and cruel to trans people, particularly to trans women. Also, trans people are a small and vulnerable group with little political capital. These efforts are a distraction and a waste of time and resources. Ensuring cis kids and trans kids get the healthcare they need requires more research, not less, certainly not defunding any hospital or medical school that performs gender-affirming surgeries.

The directives in this order are at worst illegal and violent. At best — they save nobody, help nobody, and harm everybody.

Diana Moon Glampers · Jan 30, 2025

The school newspaper of Bates College in Maine weighs in.

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Trump Wants to Restrict Gender Affirming Care. Don’t Look Away.

If you thought he wouldn’t go there, you weren’t paying attention. If you thought it was necessary for him to do so, you’re willfully ignorant.

On Jan. 28, Trump announced plans via an executive order, “Protect Children From Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” to restrict and defund care for and research of transgender youth.

But don’t be fooled by the smoke and mirrors of science and “protection of children.” This new executive order is certainly frightening for those it affects directly. But it should be frightening for all of us.

We have science to support trans people’s existence. We don’t need to be protected from them. In fact, protecting trans people (including and especially kids, the most vulnerable) is vital to holding the line against further detrimental regulation of queer – and general – freedom.

Currently, many medical professionals and organizations take gender affirming care advice from the World Professional Association of Transgender Health, or WPATH, a global coalition of doctors, researchers, and activists. In 2022, WPATH updated its standards for the care of transgender individuals, releasing Standards of Care Version 8, or SOC8. The SOC8 includes guidelines for medical procedures and support of trans people of all ages, with specific chapters for children and adolescents.

When it comes to adolescents, SOC8 sets out criteria for the timeline of care for trans teens and provides guidelines for what kinds of medical professionals can perform this care. It recommends extensive vetting and honesty about risks with teens seeking gender affirming care. Don’t believe me? You can check for yourself – page 48 of the full SOC8.

As justification for these guidelines, the SOC8 even states that, though rare, “some adolescents may regret the steps they have taken…Therefore, it is important to present the full range of possible outcomes when assisting transgender adolescents.”

Trump’s executive order calls the WPATH and SOC8 “junk science.” Trump proposes instead that the Department of Health and Human Services publish its own studies.

But there’s a problem here: other major medical institutions, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Medical Association, and American Psychological Association, all have conducted their own research and even rely upon WPATH guidelines to say the same thing: trans people, including children, exist and require gender affirming care to be healthy.

The point for today’s conservatives is not science. The point is oppressing transgender people. And why?

It’s really unclear, because trans people are such a small portion of the American populus. Trans adults are somewhere around 0.5% of the U.S. population and trans kids are about 1.6%, according to the UCLA Williams Institute.

And yet, one of the first executive orders Trump issued on his first day in office was the so-called “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.”

“It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female,” Trump’s order reads. “These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.”

Under the new guidelines, Americans’ ability to change their gender marker on certain legal documents, such as passports, has already been paused.

Placing transphobic discrimination behind a facade of “protecting women” mirrors the same practice of “protecting kids.” Trump and his lackeys are doing their best to hide their true moves, but don’t be fooled.

As the Trump Administration claims to be fighting for women and children, they are at the same time allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents into schools, threatening kids who have no role in arbitrary immigration laws, per a policy released on Jan. 20. On Jan. 24, Trump reinforced the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal funding of abortion.

Other orders restricting immigration and education funding disproportionately affect women and children, too. Women are often more likely to migrate for their safety, opportunity, and equality. Children who rely upon public schools and are likely to require federal grants for college will suffer from cuts to education.

Meanwhile, moves like seceding from the World Health Organization and Paris Climate Agreement, encouraging fossil fuel production, and removing diversity, equity, and inclusion practices will hurt all Americans.

Trans people are therefore a scapegoat for a world of hurt the Trump Administration is currently implementing and plans on continuing to implement. Ignoring the plight of trans people means allowing us all to fall farther.

The ACLU has stated its intent to continue monitoring Trump’s transphobic regulation regime and to fight back. We should all be with them.

And rest assured: don’t roll over, because this is just the beginning.

Diana Moon Glampers · Jan 30, 2025

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Queer Americans from N.M. to Philly on coping with Trump 2.0

Activists, immigration rights attorneys on the tough road ahead

I tried not to look at the clock this morning as I prepared to write. However, curiosity got me: Trump had been president for exactly nine minutes. Although his presence loomed so large in the vacuum of the four years between terms 45 and 47 that it doesn’t seem as if he ever really left.

The question now is how we, as members of the LGBTQ community, will cope with the next four years. I live in the Four Corners area of New Mexico. The county of San Juan is rural and very red. My extended in-laws are mostly Trump supporters but, mercifully, the mutual gag order against discussing politics over Christmas was kept in place.

At one such family party a woman asked if my partner and I knew her son Eric Domiguez. Had we still been in my native Philadelphia we probably would not have known this particular Eric based on sheer population. So at first it was a case of, “You’re the only gay men in the room. Do you know my gay son?”

However, I did know him via Facebook and learned he’s related to my fiancé by marriage. Dominguez runs Alphabet Mafia Presents, a social group creating safe spaces for the queer community. He is also responsible for a queer-centric recovery group, Recovery Queers. Soon after the election the group addressed concerns.

“Alphabet Mafia Presents, Recovery Queers and Sasha’s Rainbow of Hope collaborated to set up a queer town hall in November to address community concerns about local impacts of a second Trump presidency,” Dominguez shared. “It was open to the entire community and had the police LGBT liaison from Farmington police department on hand to answer questions. The event was put together in response to an incident that happened at a local barbershop where a queer individual overheard a conversation between two Trump supporters making comments about how they can’t wait for Trump to get rid of all the queer people in his second term. That conversation brought up a lot of fear for what could happen in our small conservative community.”

Dominguez encountered people on social media in fear of what could happen, talking about leaving the country to find a safe space to exist, struggling with mental health issues, parents afraid for their trans children, and other topics. Interestingly, despite the small population of Farmington, N.M., they have had an LGBTQ police liaison since the aftermath of the Pulse nightclub massacre.

“And coming soon,” Dominguez shared, “we’ll have The Gay Agenda Four Corners. A website, social media pages and weekly newsletter to promote all queer events and resources happening throughout the Four Corners.”

As we have seen in our earlier history, from Stonewall to Anita Bryant, from ACT UP to marriage equality, LGBTQ people rally to take care of each other. Dominguez is concerned, as we all are, about Project 2025. But he takes solace in the people, groups, and events he works with locally.

“I’m an openly gay man that hosts queer events in rural communities. And conservative friends praise me and have told me they think God sent me here to bring our community together through the work I do. So yeah I am scared of what could happen. But my experience here in our small conservative town has shown me that we can come together in spite of our differences. I know this isn’t the same for all small towns,” he cautions. “But we have groups like Equality New Mexico that have been working to make New Mexico a sanctuary state for queer and trans people. Laws passed over the last few years have made New Mexico one of the safest states for queer people to exist. I have seen first hand how existing as a queer person in small rural communities has influenced change. I can focus on fear. Or step outside my comfort zone, interact with people with different beliefs and grow together as a community. Either way the only way I’ll make it through the next four years is finding support in the community.”

Tim Rudy, a stay-at-home dad, and Brian Rudy, an events planner, are a married couple with two recently adopted sons living in Brian’s native Texas. Being in a very red state, do they fear for the future as a same-sex couple with two young children?

“I can’t say we have experienced any challenges as a same-sex couple or a same-sex parent unit, at least not outwardly. People in this state are typically friendly and offer hospitality, even if they do talk about you behind your back in that charming southern way. Because of the areas we have chosen to live and work and the friends we choose to surround ourselves with, I feel like we are pretty well insulated from some of the ugliness one can experience in a deep red state,” Tim shared. “That being said – though it hasn’t touched me I know friends who have experienced assaults and various targeted attacks even on the streets of vehemently liberal Austin.”

As for being gay parents, the Rudys say the boys have not experienced negativity at school.

“They have fantastic support systems at school and Brian was a teacher for years so we are able to maneuver them into the most ideal learning environments. However, when our youngest was in daycare, Tim went to pick him up one day and a little girl ran up to him and started loudly asking why he had two dads. The easiest response to that is always that every family is going to look different. But this four-year-old was quite opinionated about the situation. Probably as a result of belief systems at home.”

Brian is the son of an Iranian refugee. He does not, however, feel threatened by Trump’s immigration crackdown.

“We are close with a number of people who this may directly affect in the local Persian community. Many Persians who fled Iran during the Iranian Revolution were forced to leave without their birth certificates and other identifying documentation (regardless of status or wealth) and that can present a major problem for them for obvious reasons,” Brian stated.

“Xenophobia isn’t a problem for us,” Tim added. “Brian’s maternal family has been in Texas for generations.”

While my fiancé’s family kept the gag order in place at holiday parties, the Rudys were not so lucky at a recent gathering.

“One issue that is unavoidable in this area is conservative friends and family,” Brian shared. “We were recently at a family party where an intoxicated family friend was shouting angrily about the democratic presidential candidate’s campaign, and when Tim engaged in order to discuss facts versus right-wing propaganda, the guest began berating Tim in front of the entire family and our children, which was unacceptable. Sadly, the host of the party, a close family member, chose not to apologize and instead explain that she ‘loves this country because we can all have our own beliefs.’”

Speaking of immigration issues, a talking point of both Trump and the shadowy figures behind Project 2025, I spoke to Joseph Best of Best & Associates, an immigration law group based in Philadelphia. Best has been practicing law since 2008. He says he became enamored with immigration law during an immigration clinic at Villanova University. As an immigration attorney he is eligible to practice in any state as immigration is a federal matter. He need only hold a license in one state to practice in any jurisdiction. And he does: His social media shows him in New York one day, or Maine, or Pennsylvania the next fighting for immigrants. Best has fought for several LGBTQ people to gain citizenship.

“LGBT people generally have very viable asylum cases and often we get good results because so many countries are openly persecuting their LGBTQ+ citizens, often proudly so,” he said. “Asylum law in the U.S. has positively evolved over the past several decades to broadly support protections for LGBT people. Although, because our system is so broken and arbitrary, there are still some very bad immigration judges who refuse to follow the law and struggle to find a legal or factual basis as an excuse to not grant protection to our clients.”

As for Project 2025, Best says it is “nothing new … save for its own explicit announcement of their intentions to destroy America as a pluralistic representative, secular democracy. Of course, the biggest impact that their anti-LGBT agenda would have on immigration would be to restrict the application of asylum law for people fleeing anti-LGBT violence and harm and the efforts to undo legal progress in the states and federally around marriage equality and privacy rights more broadly. But thankfully all of that is complicated to actually implement and cannot happen overnight allowing for political opposition to get organized in response. Transgender people are today the easiest targets in our community to pick on. But it is an old playbook that anyone old enough who survived AIDS and our struggle for LGBT rights in the 80s and 90s will recognize immediately.”

Tyrell Brown is executive director at Galaei QTBIPOC Social Justice and Founder and Program Director at Philly Pride 365. According to their website, “Serving the Latinx community while widening our embrace, GALAEI now provides services, support and advocacy for all Queer, Trans, Indigenous and People of Color (QTBIPOC) communities.” The community they serve is historically more vulnerable due to socio-economic issues and other divides in Philadelphia.

Brown has been active in Philly’s queer community for a long time. The Galaei organization is more than an office. It’s a vibrant community center nestled on a small street in the Fishtown section of the city. An area largely economically destroyed by the closing of manufacturing and fisheries – hence Fishtown – and one now increasingly vulnerable to recent gentrification displacing long-time residents.

“As the executive director here,” Brown explained, “I have forecasted the potential of this for a year, while also driving home to the staff and those I encounter in the community that times will be difficult, and that we may not be able to anticipate every action, challenge, by the coming administration…but ensuring them that we are a resilient people and that we will navigate these challenging times.”

They look forward to working with the community they serve and their organization’s programs will be focused on “legacy.” Galaei is ready to meet the needs of the community. Much like the queer town hall in Farmington, Brown has already fielded calls from the community, and had staff express their concerns about coping.

“We are working with a collective that offers group healing explicitly for our staff as part of our regular care routine bi-weekly, this will include meditation and group discussion related to our self-care.” Brown closed his discussion with me beautifully.

“Understand that you are more powerful than you know and that the person that you are, who you know today, is not necessarily the person that you can be. Butterflies can’t see their own wings but they still know how to fly. The challenges that are sure to come tomorrow may not be what we anticipate, they may startle you, but know that we are prepared.”

I am very fortunate to know all of these charismatic people on a personal level. I dreaded writing this piece. Putting this article into words meant that we are no longer awaiting Trump’s return. We are now living in the second administration of a leader most LGBTQ people fear. However, we are overwhelmingly hopeful that we can and will overcome.

Diana Moon Glampers · Jan 30, 2025

Oh no, not the Drag Race stars! Who would ever have guessed they'd be impacted by this disease that is totally not a gay disease?

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Drag Race star shares HIV status after Trump administration move: ‘My health is at risk’

RuPaul’s Drag Race star Lexi Love has opened up about her HIV status, saying “my heath is at risk”, in response to Donald Trump scrubbing resources from government websites.

Trump’s return to the White House saw several federal websites remove resources on LGBTQ+ rights and HIV, which GLAAD president and chief executive Sarah Kate Ellis condemned, stating that Trump is“clearly committed to censorship” of queer topics.

Taking to Instagram to share her concerns, the 35-year-old shared an image showing a White House website “page not found” message alongside the caption: “My health and wellbeing as an entertainer is at risk now.”

The Louisiana drag queen, who was referred to as a “grandma” during her time filming the seventeenth season of Drag Race, added: “I am personally affected by this stance and will work to use this new platform to not only find resources for myself but those who I am connected to socially and here! I’m so sorry everyone! This is hard and it’s frustrating and it’s insulting.”

She went on: “I still will continue to love myself and you should continue to do so as well. No matter the road we are headed down…….. feels like the g*d d*m* Oregon Trail!?!?!? WTAF.”

The post has been flooded with supportive messages, with organisation the Human Rights Campaign writing, “We’re in this together. We love you!!!”

“Everything will be alright, queen. Gotta stand together tho,” another wrote, while someone else commented: “We will get through this together!”

HIV (the infection that causes AIDS) is manageable with effective prevention, treatment, and care, much more so than it was in the 80s, and reduced stigma has led to those who have the disease feeling much more comfortable seeking medical care and disclosing their status.

Lexi Love isn’t the first RuPaul’s Drag Race queen to share her HIV diagnosis as Ongina, Trinity K. Bonet and Charity Case have all spoken out about their diagnoses.

RuPaul’s Drag Race season 17 continues on Fridays on MTV in the US and WOW Presents Plus internationally.

Share your thoughts! Let us know in the comments below, and remember to keep the conversation respectful.

Diana Moon Glampers · Jan 30, 2025

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Donald Trump's executive order on gender is 'cruel', US queer community says

President Donald Trump's decision to recognise only two sexes — male and female — has sparked growing concern and confusion among the LGBTQIA+ community in the United States.

Mr Trump signed an executive order recognising only male and female sexes and declaring they cannot be changed, shortly after being sworn in as president.

He also revoked orders from the Biden administration aimed at preventing discrimination based on gender identity or sexual discrimination.

And just this week, he signed an executive order to end federal funding for gender-affirming care for children under 19 across the US.

While much is still unknown about the impact of these changes and how they will be implemented, several people who live and work in the US spoken to by the ABC say they are worried their day-to-day lives will be affected.

What is the executive order on gender?

The order declares there are only two sexes, male and female.

It defines the sexes in an unconventional way, based on the reproductive cells — large cells in females or small ones in males.

The order also suggests that humans have those cells at conception, rejecting that people can transition from one gender to another or be considered anything other than male or female.

This essentially means people who identify as non-binary aren't considered anymore.

The position conflicts with what the American Medical Association and other mainstream medical groups say: that extensive scientific research suggests sex and gender are better understood as a spectrum.

Mr Trump's order also stated it aimed to protect women's spaces from those who "self-identify" as women.

Will it actually be implemented?

Although the order has been signed, it will require much more federal action to be implemented.
The executive order tells one White House staff member to draft a bill for Congress within 30 days that would codify the definitions into law.

Federal agencies are required to tell the president within 120 days what they've done to comply with the order.

Some parts might require going through the regulatory process or passing new laws.

Lambda Legal lawyer Omar Gonzalez-Pagan said the order doesn't change the current law but rather creates "a clear signal and road map of where this administration's policies lie when it comes to transgender people".

State laws on participation in sports, bathroom use, gender-affirming care and other issues are not directly affected.

How could this impact documentation?

Those living in the US have had the option of choosing 'X' as their gender on passports since 2021.

But the order calls for passports, visas and Global Entry cards to reflect the administration's definition of sexes to be: male or female.

It suggested getting rid of the X option altogether.

The State Department, which is responsible for passports, declined to answer questions about the current state of policy.

However, a department webpage that provided information on how people could change their gender marker was taken offline.

ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio said it was unlikely that any new application to change the gender marker on a passport would be approved.

A White House spokesperson told the US media outlet NOTUS that passports that have not expired will remain valid.

But they added that people will have to comply with the new order when they apply for a new passport or renew an old one.

How are people in the US feeling?

Alexander Tries identifies as a non-binary transgender (trans) person and said there were millions of trans people in the US who would be impacted by this order.

"We're human beings … but to feel like our own environment isn't safe, it's so cruel and inhuman," they said.

"I feel that a lot of our community is confused right now, I think that's the biggest sentiment.

"We're all confused as to what actually is happening, what will happen [and] what won't happen."

Alexander said there had been a shift in how emboldened the far right had become.

And with this order now signed, they felt there wasn't any legal protection for queer people anymore.

"I am very visibly trans. I'm very visibly non-binary. Usually, I'm wearing my makeup, I go out there in to public the way I am," they said.

"But I can see how people have been emboldened, and they're not afraid to tell me that they want to kill me.

"I had a person comment the other day that they had a gun in the closet with a shell in it. This is the kind of environment that has been created, and so I am scared".

These concerns are echoed by Sarah Kate Smigiel, who identifies as non-binary and queer.

While they weren't surprised by the order, Sarah Kate said they didn't expect gender to be a "day-one focus".

"It's really set a precedent for just the forward scapegoating of queer people as kind of a platform for him to start his presidency," they said.

The unknown on what this order really means has made Sarah Kate more wary.

"I need to be careful not to get pulled over … I still have F on my licence, so if they saw that, and a government official doesn't believe I fit into that category, my licence can be taken as well," they said.

"So it's just fear, my day-to-day life is so much more careful, and I hate that.

"I don't want to live that way, but I'm just trying to protect myself in the meantime, until I get more information."

Sarah Kate said some people have had their documentation "confiscated" because of the X marker.

It has contributed to a lot of talk around documentation in the LGBTQIA+ community, with many scrambling to find resources about what to do.

Sarah Kate said they had spoken to some people who wanted all their documents to have X, while others are considering reverting back to their assigned sex at birth.

"People even within the community aren't in alignment with what they feel is the safest move because we don't know what's next," they said.

"We're feeling isolated. We're just kind of waiting for the shoe to drop."

What could this mean for people travelling to the US?

There are questions around how gender-diverse foreigners will be impacted by this order.

Canadian author and advocate Gemma Hickey flew to Seattle, Washington, a few days after the executive order on gender was signed.

Gemma said they were asked more questions than normal at the airport, including questions around their name in comparison to how they looked, by the American airline.

They described this process as "a mini interrogation" and said "these microaggressions were real".

Gemma said their delayed plane meant they were put up in a Vancouver hotel overnight.

But when they arrived at the airport the next day there were also issues.

"It seemed like the same sort of thing, another mini interrogation, more photographs, and then I was asked to say my name out loud, he did a double take [of] me [and] my ID because I look masculine.

"Then he asked me to scan my passport. And this the first time this ever happened, but my passport did not read, did not scan. I never had that problem before".

Gemma said they were eventually let on the flight and the agent said "well, you can go on sir, or whatever".

They said there were so many uncertainties around the order, prompting them to call for a travel advisory, to be communicated with government officials and embassies.

That would ensure Canadians travelling to the US who identify as gender-neutral have the proper support in place, they said.

“What was surprising was how quickly it was rolled out and how fast it affected people on the ground, within a matter of days. I mean, things changed overnight," they said.

"Essentially, even my experience as a Canadian traveller was affected by by this executive order."

'Visibility is incredibly important'

Alexander Tries said "visibility" was one of the most "incredibly important" things for the LGBTQIA+ community.

"I've found that there's resistance in existence if you are politicised as a human and so I find that just being visible is so important right now," they said.

Sarah Kate agreed, saying it was important for people to remain online and stay present on there too.

"Not backing down, or taking our pronouns off our profiles or trying to kind of fly under the radar, because I don't feel that we have the privilege to do that," they said.

"I think that we're in unique positions of needing to kind of be leaders. I'm just as confused as the everyday person who doesn't have a queer platform. I'm in the position of leadership for my community at this point."

Diana Moon Glampers · Jan 30, 2025

Article / Archive

'I feel like I’m stuck here': Trans, nonbinary Americans' passports remain in limbo

It's been almost eight weeks since Texas-based Patrick sent in his passport application. There has been no word on whether it'll be approved or not. Meanwhile, some of his most vital documents are being held by the government.

He and his wife married in 2022, and both applied for new passports so they could finally take the honeymoon they postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. While his wife's passport was approved in about a week, Patrick received a letter that his application was put on hold.

Sent in with his application – which he double-checked and had proofread by friends – was his birth certificate and gender change court order that stated his identity as male. "It's exhausting. I'm disappointed. I'm frustrated," he told USA TODAY. Some sources are identified by first name only out of safety and privacy concerns.

Among President Donald Trump's wave of executive orders when he assumed office was for the federal government to "recognize only two sexes, male and female," and that "these sexes are not changeable." Government agencies, including the U.S. State Department, are currently enforcing the policy for all government-issued identification documents like visas, passports, and Global Entry cards.

Not only does this put Patrick's honeymoon on indefinite hold, but it also generates doubts and fear. "In the event I need to seek asylum somewhere, I can’t leave the country," he said. "I feel like I’m stuck here."

Patrick is one of many transgender, nonbinary and intersex Americans facing uncertainty not only about the status of their passports under the new policy but also about the broader implications this administration may have on their rights and futures.

"If our gender markers don’t match who we are, then it’s going to cause us problems, from housing from renting cars to renting hotel rooms to buying cars to buying houses, everything, you name it," said Mikaela, a transgender woman in Texas whose passport also has yet to be approved after several weeks. "There's so much more to it in every element that people just don't think about."

When does the new policy mean for passports?

"In line with that Order, the Department’s issuance of U.S. passports will reflect the individual’s biological sex as defined in the Executive Order," a State Department spokesperson told USA TODAY in an email. It has suspended the processing and issuing of all applications "seeking a different sex marker than that defined by the terms in the Executive Order," including those requesting a binary gender change or the "X" gender marker.

Since Transgender Day of Visibility in 2022, this third gender option – which has a long worldwide history across cultures – has been available for those who neither identify as male or female. Previously, applicants were able to self-select male, female or the "X" gender marker during the application process without having to provide medical documentation – which also removed the barrier for those whose birth certificates don't align with their gender identity.

"I can almost say with a certainty that this will not go unchallenged by LGBTQ+ advocates," said Carl Charles, senior attorney at LGBTQ-focused civil rights organization Lambda Legal.

What happens to those who already applied for a passport?

"I think folks should think very carefully about sending in an application at this point if they are in the category of requesting an 'X' gender marker or binary gender change," Charles added.

With applications suspended, many people have said their important documents, including old passports, are still in the hands of the passport offices. It's unknown whether their documents will be returned, and for now, they can't travel internationally. The State Department said updates will be posted on its website "as soon as we are able."

Charles recommends people continue to check the status of their applications online and stay connected to legal advocacy groups for any updates. "Folks are just, unfortunately, in a waiting game and in a limbo," he said. "There’s not much to do."

"I think for everybody else who’s not trans or not nonbinary or not having to struggle with this, to remember that if it’s not affecting you, there’s a word for that and it’s privileged," said Patrick. "They’re blessed to not have to stress about such basic rights to wonder whether or not my passport or an ID document is going to go through and for the people just to maybe give us a little more grace right now as we navigate these tricky waters."

"There’s all kinds of related consequences to this one big action," said Charles. "And that’s to say nothing of the emotional and sort of mental health impact on something like this to trans people who comprise less than 1% of the U.S. population and, still, even though that is the case, experience really incredibly outsized numbers of discrimination of employment access to healthcare and education. This new development compounds what trans people have experienced."

The executive order marks another step in the efforts to dismantle LGBTQ+ rights. The new policy impacts the more than 2 million Americans who identify as transgender or nonbinary, according to the Human Rights Campaign, and the approximately 5.6 million residents who are born intersex.

For many transgender individuals, a passport serves as their primary form of identification, especially when other documents (in the often lengthy and challenging gender change process) are held up. The lack of a passport that reflects their new identity becomes another safety concern and barrier to essential services and travel in a country where they already frequently feel endangered.

"I know how proud quite a number of people are of the names and identities, and how dehumanizing and robbing of agency it is," said Violet, a transgender woman who had mailed in their passport application on Jan. 16, paying extra for two-day shipping, as part of changing all of her documents from male to female. As of Monday, the status of her application remains processing.

"In my mind, this isn’t about just simply holding people’s stuff up in transit," she said. "It’s not a simple transfer of administration. It's targeting specific groups and doing specific things with deliberate intentions."

Diana Moon Glampers · Jan 30, 2025

Article / Archive

Dear Trans Kids, You Don't Need the Government's Permission to Exist

In this op-ed, Raquel Willis offers advice to trans kids on resisting discriminatory times and calls on the strength and resolve of trans trailblazers throughout history.

Dear trans and nonbinary youth,

With the 2025 inauguration of Donald Trump, our community has witnessed the culmination of a yearslong attack on our truths and our lives. We are forced to reckon with the fact that millions of Americans elected a xenophobic leader with seemingly autocratic ambitions, one who seems hell-bent on making people on the margins disappear. There are many lessons to glean from this political moment, but one stands out: When hate is allowed to stand with inadequate resistance, it festers and grows.

I want to apologize to you for all the ways that this country has failed you. Beyond Trump, there are bigoted politicians, billionaires, and public figures who have decided to sell your future away to accrue more capital and power.

I also want to validate how you must be feeling. You may be mourning the life you thought you’d be living at this point. You may be fearful about the uncertainty of your future. You aren’t alone. Many of us adults have felt those things too.

On election night, after it became clear that the far right would have control of nearly every level of our government, a few friends and I collapsed into the arms of each other. Our shirts were soaked in tears as we tried to brace for the American nightmare heading our way.

The next morning, I wondered whether I should relinquish so many dreams I had for myself — I still haven’t grasped them back. I worried about my aging mother and the toll of another potential pandemic like COVID-19 under Trump, and what that might mean for the years I have with her. What about my niblings, ranging from age 7 to 14? How much smaller would this restrictive era threaten to make them?

Then I started to think about the changes I’d need to make for the sake of safety. After nearly 20 years of being some kind of openly queer, would I have to run back to the closet? What kind of new targets would be placed on my back as an activist and writer? Would I lose access to the hormones I’ve been on for nearly 15 years?

Then a familiar sense of resolve took over me. I remembered that I am just a bridge between our transcestors and you. Regardless of how impossible the obstacles feel right now, I am committed to building the freer, brighter future that you deserve.

Long before social media, AI, and reality TV stars-turned-presidents, our transcestors demanded dignity and respect — and they did so with far fewer resources. Despite erasure, many of the original Indigenous peoples of this land never allowed two-spirit and third-gender folks to be discarded. When right-wing politicians ousted government officials who were queer or suspected of being queer during the McCarthy era, our people didn’t disappear. When our people faced police brutality during the Stonewall riots, we came together in solidarity. Meanwhile, figures like Crystal Labeija built the foundation for Ballroom houses and culture, and now its fruits can be witnessed in music, entertainment, movement, and even in the slang that many use. Sir Lady Java picketed anti-crossdressing laws so that she could continue her thriving career as a showgirl. Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera created Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, or S.T.A.R., and a safe haven to house street kids who’d been discarded.
In every era of US history, queer folks have carved out their spaces despite criminalization, discrimination, and violence. We must have faith that we can do it again now.
Our legends of today show us it’s possible. Stonewall veteran Miss Major, in her 80s, released a book in 2023 and is touring the country to encourage us to continue the fight. Attorneys like Chase Strangio — who dared to argue in favor of gender-affirming care in front of the Supreme Court just a few short weeks ago — are fighting back within the systems that have continuously failed us. And so many others, including Ceyenne Doroshow, Janetta Johnson, Toni-Michelle Williams, Bamby Salcedo, Qween Jean, and Laverne Cox remind us of our power every day.
Here’s some practical advice:

Remind yourself constantly that no one gave you your identity, truth, or power, and no one can take them away without your permission.
Learn about your history and devour it. It gives you a sense of meaning, and roots you in this earth.
Curate your media diet. You have the power to find the books, videos, films, and art that will bring life to your soul. And you don’t have to feed into the alarmist nature of following every action of the Trump administration, nor do you have to consume media that feeds his disastrous agenda.
Find people that affirm you and share the same values. Meet with them in person regularly. Online spaces are increasingly becoming less secure.
Write down your dreams. What is the world you wish you lived in? What are the people like? What do you know? What can you create? Commit to building that vision. It may feel impossible today, but tomorrow could be different.
Find a political home, such as a local organization or group that is fighting for your values and your vision.

You deserve the world that's in your vision, but you’ll have to fight for it every day. Truthfully, you have already been fighting. It probably took a lot for you to understand your identity, and even more if you’ve been able to share it with others. Lean into the fire, fight, and resilience that already lives inside you. I want you to be defiant. If there was ever a time to disobey, this is it. We are a creative, disruptive people who have never accepted silence.

Diana Moon Glampers · Jan 30, 2025

Article / Archive

Demi Lovato sends message of solidarity to trans community: “We will get thru this”

The nonbinary star wants trans people to know they're not alone as Donald Trump dismantles their rights.

Nonbinary actor and pop star Demi Lovato has issued a message of love and support for trans people in the wake of Donald Trump’s immediate attacks against the community upon taking office.

“If you are trans or nonbinary like me, please know that I see you, I feel you, I am with you,” Lovato wrote in their Instagram story. “You are validated, you are loved and you are not alone. No one can take away our identities and no one can tell us who we are or aren’t. We will get thru this. I love you.”

Trump’s slew of day one executive orders included one declaring that there are only two sexes (male and female) and repealing numerous pro-transgender memoranda and orders made by former President Joe Biden.

The order directs federal agencies to start using the term “sex” and stop using the term “gender,” to stop interpreting anti-discrimination laws as being inclusive of transgender people, and to only issue government documents that reflect a person’s sex assigned at birth.

Trump has made it clear he plans to follow through on the many anti-trans threats he made throughout his campaign. Lovato’s message speaks to many in the trans community who are terrified for their futures.

Lovato came out as nonbinary in 2021 in a video posted to social media after previously identifying as queer.

“The past year and a half, I’ve been doing some healing and self-reflective work. And through this work, I’ve had this revelation that I identify as nonbinary,” they said in the video. “With that said, I’ll officially be changing my pronouns to they/them.”

“I feel this best represents the fluidity I feel in my gender expression and allows me to feel most authentic and true to the person I both know I am and am still discovering.”

They have used their platform to advocate for LGBTQ+ equality and progressive politics in the past. In 2017, Lovato took the first transgender state lawmaker in the U.S. – then-Virginia state Delegate and now state Senator Danica Roem (D) – to the American Music Awards, saying that Roem “put up with a lot of hate and bulls**t by people who said she couldn’t win but she did.”

After coming out as nonbinary, they spoke out about being misgendered.

“It feels weird to me when I get called a ‘she’ or a ‘her,’” they explained. “I understand that people might have a hard time adjusting to it, because it is something new, but I want to encourage people to keep trying. I understand that it’s a process to get used to. Sometimes I still mess up myself, but it’s OK.”

Lovato decided they were okay with she/her or they/them pronouns after finding it “exhausting” to continue to educate people.

Diana Moon Glampers · Jan 30, 2025

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Donald Trump stripped my son of his rights and dignity. America shrugged. | Opinion

When we are silent, we are all complicit.

According to the new president of the United States, my 18-year-old son does not exist.

A freshman at The Ohio State University, he’s transgender. Some of his close friends at school know this; other classmates just see him as another guy — if not a particularly tall one.

He doesn’t bother anyone about it, and nobody around him seems to care.

Donald Trump cares.

He took time in his inaugural address to say that he acknowledges the existence of only biological males and biological females. When he got to the White House later that day, he backed up those words, issuing a series of executive orders to strip trans people of rights and their dignity.

My son's rights were stolen and the nation shrugs

As a mom, more shocking to me than the presidentially announced oppression of a vulnerable minority group has been the collective shrug with which they have been met by the public.

People seemed to be more upset about the first lady’s hat.

More:Donald Trump to declare federal government recognizes two sexes — male and female

I understand the transgender issue is a confusing and difficult issue for many people. It is most difficult for the trans people themselves.

Growing up transgender is not cool, and it’s not fun. Their options for playing school sports are restricted or limited. Even in the most welcoming of communities, so are their options for friends. It’s well known that trans kids have horrifically high rates of suicide.

Trans people exist

There is no debate in the scientific community about the existence of gender dysphoria, which is defined as distress caused by a mismatch between a person's gender identity and biological sex.

A 2018 study by the Hudson Institute of Medical Research found gender dysphoria is caused, in part, by interactions between many different genes, much like height, weight or blood pressure. It impacts less than 1 percent of Americans, but for those people it is quite real.

Decades ago, doctors tried to cure gender dysphoria through some form of conversion therapy, but by the 1970s it became clear that didn’t work.

The overwhelming medical consensus now is that gender dysphoria should be treated with supportive counseling and medical treatment to allow patients to live fulfilling lives, as so many transgender adults do.

Trump has changed his tune on trans people

Until recently, this was not a national concern.

The president himself, in his first campaign, famously declared that transgender people can use the restroom of their choice at Trump Tower.

In his 2016 acceptance speech, he promised to “protect our LGBT citizens” from violence. The vice president maintained a strong friendship with a transgender classmate from Yale Law School until launching his own political career a few years ago.

So what changed? Did the president and the vice president learn something new? Did they become smarter? No, just meaner.

When politicians started targeting trans people a few years ago, they said it was because they cared about them. They wanted to protect kids from “experimentation” before they were old enough to make their own decisions.

They don’t say that anymore.

They don’t pretend to have alternative ideas for treating kids with gender dysphoria, and they have no intention of letting them live their lives as adults. They want to punish them, they want to ostracize them, and they want you and me to join them in it.

Confusion has morphed into hate

The word “fascism” gets thrown around too casually, but I honestly don’t know what else to call this.

Back to my son.

Mere hours after being deprived of his federal rights and recognitions, he was inside Ohio Stadium celebrating the Buckeye championship, cheering and laughing alongside hundreds of other students who didn’t know or care about the nature of his biological chromosomes.

He’s doing okay.

Me, not so much. In the past few years, I’ve seen confusion about my kid and people like him morph into hate. Last week, I watched hate become law with the stroke of the pen.

I know we’re all exhausted by the politics of the last decade, and we all want a break from the division and the conflict. But when we don’t speak out, it sends the signal that this is normal, giving license to whatever comes next.

When we are silent, we are all complicit.

Diana Moon Glampers · Jan 30, 2025

Article / Archive

Trans community fears Trump's actions will upend legal precedent on prison protections

Dee Farmer knows all too well what could happen when a trans woman is placed in a prison for men: abuse and assault from prisoners and frequent indifference from prison officials to stop it.

While incarcerated in the 1990s, Farmer filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging that federal prison officials deliberately and indifferently failed to protect her as a prisoner from rape and assault. In 1994, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with her complaints and agreed that the government has a duty to protect a prisoner from violence and acknowledged the particular vulnerability of trans inmates.

It was the first time a trans petitioner had a case accepted by the Supreme Court. The case has been cited repeatedly in lawsuits filed in recent years by other trans inmates incarcerated in state and federal prisons who alleged similar abuse.

But last week President Trump, in one of his first executive orders, upended long-standing federal policies that would have protected inmates, like Farmer once was, and allowed incarcerated trans women to be housed in a facility that aligns with their gender identity. The order mandates that the federal Bureau of Prisons no longer allow transgender women to be housed in a women's prison, immigration detention centers or other detention centers that align with their gender identity.

It also recognizes just two sexes, male and female, halts gender affirming medical treatments, which can include hormone therapy and gender affirming surgery. Access to this care is considered medically necessary to treat gender dysphoria, a medical term used to describe the deep discomfort caused by a mismatch between a person's assigned sex at birth and their gender identity. Without it, individuals can struggle severely with mental health issues such as heightened anxiety and depression, with some turning to self-harm and suicide.

This order is just one in a series of actions signed by Trump that target the transgender community. In just over a week in office, Trump signed an executive order to ban transgender troops from serving openly in the military and another restricting gender-affirming care for minors.

"President Trump received an overwhelming mandate from the American people to restore commonsense principles and safeguard women's spaces from biological men. He will deliver and restore safety and security for American women," White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said of the order.

Farmer said that when she read the order, she felt it "undermined, if not directly contradicts, what the Supreme Court found in my case."

Farmer, who now runs the prison advocacy organization Fight4Justice, said she viewed the order "as an infringement upon the right to be safe from sexual assault." She, and other formerly incarcerated trans women, as well as advocates fighting on behalf of transgender people, say this order poses a serious risk to the health and safety of the thousands of transgender people behind bars.

For supporters of the order, including the Alliance Defending Freedom, a self-described conservative Christian legal advocacy group, it's a much-needed change to standards that put cisgender women in female facilities in danger.

"We're very pleased to see President Trump restore sanity to this issue and to make sure that we have a proper understanding of sex, and that that understanding flows down to schools, prisons, other places where the privacy and safety of women are paramount," said Matt Sharp, senior counsel with the Alliance Defending Freedom.

But questions have emerged over whether the order can withstand legal challenges. A sealed complaint filed Sunday by a transgender inmate incarcerated in a federal facility has already claimed the order is unconstitutional.

"This executive order flies in the face of a lot of really well-established law around sex discrimination and around cruel and unusual punishment," said Bobby Hodgson, the assistant legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, who works on civil rights and civil liberties cases.

The Trump administration is already moving trans prisoners and immigrants

D Dangaran, director of Gender Justice at Rights Behind Bars, told NPR that several trans people in federal facilities are already being separated from the general population as they prepare to be moved to a prison that doesn't align with their gender identity — at great risk to their physical and mental well-being.

The Bureau of Prisons says there are 1,529 transgender females in BOP custody and 744 transgender males.

Though Trump's order only explicitly mentions the rehousing of transgender women, not transgender men, Dangaran said their organization "has already received reports from our clients that trans people — trans men and trans women — have been told they will no longer receive hormone therapy or other gender-affirming care. They are being rounded up and moved to unknown facilities."

The Bureau of Prisons didn't immediately respond to questions on this allegation.

Dangaran added, "Trans men usually are housed with women, and trans women have fought to be housed with women, too, where it is safest. We can expect trans women to be moved to men's facilities if they aren't already there."

Iván Espinoza-Madrigal, the executive director of Lawyers for Civil Rights, said trans immigrants are also being affected by this new order. Trump launched a broad crackdown on immigration as soon as he took office.

"We see a particularly dark period ahead of us where immigration detention facilities won't meaningfully step up to support detainees including the most vulnerable," Espinoza-Madrigal said. In the past, trans detainees would find difficulty accessing gender-affirming clothing and health care, he said.

"But the concern is now that these inconsistencies will lead to a cascade of harm as more and more protections, policies and practices are either rescinded or replaced with harsher measures" that particularly harm those who don't conform to traditional gender norms.

When forced to stay in prisons based on their assigned sex at birth or genitalia at the time they were arrested, transgender inmates often face greater risk of assault. A 2015 study found that 1 in 5 trans inmates was sexually assaulted by staff or other inmates in the prior year, a rate vastly exceeding that of the general U.S. prison population.

The White House, in defense of the executive order, sent NPR links to two New York Post articles citing allegations of cisgender women being assaulted by two prisoners who were trans. The White House didn't respond to questions about what the plan is for moving prisoners.

Can this order withstand legal challenges?

Farmer's 1994 case has been cited in lawsuits filed by transgender individuals incarcerated in state and federal prisons alleging abuse, failures by prison staff to provide gender-affirming care and to demand a move to a prison that aligns with their gender identity. And those cases have been the driving force in slowly changing state and county-level policies to allow prisoners to be housed in facilities that align with their gender identity and to access gender-affirming health care. Many courts have sided with the trans prisoners in forcing those changes.

In 2022, a federal judge in Illinois ordered the Bureau of Prisons to provide gender-affirming surgery for a transgender inmate after finding that denying the procedure was likely a violation of the Eighth Amendment's protections against cruel and unusual punishment.

David Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University, said with the existing case law and the U.S. Constitution on trans inmates' side, the executive order is unlikely to withstand legal challenges.

"The Constitution requires prison officials to house prisoners in a safe and secure environment, and to provide necessary medical treatment to them," Cole said. "The Executive Order is not the exercise of professional judgment by prison officials with respect to any individual prisoner as to what he or she needs, but an ideological mandate imposed for political reasons, not security reasons."

Advocates including Dangaran and Hodgson say Trump's order also appears to violate the Americans with Disabilities Act (because gender dysphoria is recognized as a disability under the ADA) and the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), a 2003 law that requires federal, state and local correctional facilities to enforce a zero-tolerance policy regarding sexual assault against inmates and requires housing assignments for trans inmates to be made on a case-by-case basis.

But Sharp, with the Alliance Defending Freedom, said there's also legal precedent about the authority of the government to "maintain sex-specific spaces" especially when privacy and safety are a concern.

"That's not to say we can't accommodate individuals who identify as transgender, providing them single user spaces that they can have their privacy respected as well, but it should never come at the cost of the privacy and safety of women in these facilities," he said.

Farmer says she is confident that Trump's order will not stand and that "justice for humanity will always prevail."

JohnnyG · Jan 30, 2025

Diana Moon Glampers said:
RuPaul’s Drag Race star Lexi Love has opened up about "her" HIV status

There is nothing more telling than troons having identical rates of GRIDS as promiscuous gay men, while claiming that's not what they are.

Diana Moon Glampers said:
HIV (the infection that causes AIDS) is manageable with effective prevention, treatment, and care
reduced stigma has led to those who have the disease feeling much more comfortable seeking medical care and disclosing their status.

Gorillions spent on this disease, at the cost of other unavoidable ones, means that instead of eliminating it, we've just enabled its most degenerate carriers to brag about how stealthy they can be, avoiding any inconvenience to their lifestyle as they spread it.

And by elevating unprotected anonymous bathhouse sex to a Civil Right, exempt from common sense advice up to the most draconian Covid restrictions, we've decided to burn through decades of antibiotics and immunity, likely ushering in man-made superbugs beyond our comprehension.

Diana Moon Glampers · Jan 30, 2025

Article / Archive

The thin evidence behind Trump’s new ban on trans service members

An executive order barring trans people from openly serving in the military isn’t really about their fitness to do so.

President Donald Trump issued an executive order on Monday barring transgender people from openly serving in the military. He claims that the ban, which discriminates against potential service members based on their gender identity, will support military preparedness and reduce taxpayer costs — but the evidence behind it remains as thin as it was when Trump instituted the same policy during his first administration.

The executive order bans trans service members from using sleeping, changing, or bathing facilities that align with their gender identity. It claims that trans people “cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service” because of the “medical, surgical, and mental health constraints” they face and asserts that their use of pronouns other than those assigned at birth “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle.”

A White House fact sheet on the executive order further claims that paying for gender-affirming surgeries for service members and their dependent children came at the “cost of millions to the American taxpayer.”

The Department of Defense is coming up with a plan to implement the order, which will involve determining whether the ban will apply to existing service members or just those seeking to join the military going forward, according to a White House spokesperson. For now, current service members can still access gender-affirming care, but that could change imminently.

Despite these claims, it’s not clear that trans service members are any less capable than others. While it’s true that the federal government has subsidized gender-affirming surgeries, the costs associated with those surgeries are not unusual compared to other health care costs typically incurred on behalf of service members and their dependents.

Two organizations that promote LGBTQ rights — Lambda Legal, which sued over a previous iteration of the ban in 2017, and the Human Rights Campaign — announced Monday that they will challenge the executive order in court. The 2017 ban was blocked in court until the Supreme Court allowed a revised version of it, narrowed to cover only new recruits, to briefly go into effect. The justices, however, never reached a final determination on its legality before former President Joe Biden rescinded it in 2021.

“The justifications that are being provided here are the same ones they provided in 2017,” said Sasha Buchert, legal counsel for Lambda Legal. “None of the courts bought them, and I don’t believe they’ll buy it moving forward.”

What we know about transgender service members, their readiness, and cost of care

Trans people have long served in the military, but it wasn’t until June 2016, under former President Barack Obama, that they were first allowed to do so openly without being discharged or denied reenlistment as a result. This mirrored policies in other countries, including Australia, Canada, Israel, and the United Kingdom.

Today, thousands of trans people serve in the military, though exact estimates vary based on how service members are surveyed and whether nonbinary individuals, people who transition before service, or people who haven’t yet started transitioning are included. Trans personnel are represented across roles, from cooks to musicians to fighter pilots to intelligence officers, Buchert said. Billions have already been invested in their training, she added.

There is little evidence that trans service members have any significant impact on military readiness, cohesion, and costs. A 2016 report by the RAND Corporation, a nonpartisan policy think tank, found “minimal impact on readiness and health care costs” to allowing transgender personnel to serve openly, in part because only a small fraction of service members would likely even seek medical treatments related to transitioning that would impact their deployability or health care costs.

A more recent report from the Congressional Research Service found that, from 2016 to 2021, $15 million went to expenditures for surgical and nonsurgical gender-affirming care. Those costs are in line with other routine medical costs for cisgender service members, according to Buchert, and represent just a small share of the overall military health system budget, which was $60.2 billion in fiscal year 2024.

“The amount spent over five years for gender-affirming care is negligible compared to overall costs,” said Jody Herman, a senior scholar of public policy at the Williams Institute, a think tank at UCLA School of Law focused on sexual orientation and gender identity law.

When service members do undergo gender-affirming surgeries (a category that can include surgeries ranging from bottom surgery to facial feminization surgery), the procedure is scheduled in advance. It doesn’t impact deployments or mission readiness and patients are typically back on full duty in four to eight weeks, said Sue Fulton, an army veteran and senior adviser to Sparta, an advocacy group for trans service members. That contradicts a claim in the White House factsheet that it can take a “minimum of 12 months for an individual to complete treatments” before they can meet readiness requirements.

“They give the impression that procedures that transgender folks might have are exotic and burdensome and expensive, which is simply not true,” Fulton said. “It’s not much different than, say, nonemergency minor knee surgery. … The readiness and physical capabilities of transgender service members are not different from that of other service members.”

As for the White House’s concerns about “mental health constraints” on trans service members, it is true that trans people experience higher rates of anxiety, depression, and attempted suicide, though those rates are significantly lower among those who undergo the gender-affirming surgery that trans service members can access.

Guidance from the American Psychological Association suggests that Trump’s executive order may actually contribute to mental health challenges faced by trans people in the military by discriminating against them and preventing them from accessing treatment. In a statement Friday, the APA warned that “research consistently shows that stigma and lack of treatment for transgender and gender nonconforming individuals have significant negative effects on mental and physical health.”

The “flimsiness,” as Buchert put it, of the justifications for the ban reveals what she identified as the real motivation behind it: “For all the lip service about meritocracy, this is clearly not about merit. It’s about identity and clearly targeting transgender people in particular.”

Diana Moon Glampers · Jan 30, 2025

Article / Archive

‘People are afraid’: Trump’s actions targeting trans rights lead to confusion, fear

The Trump administration’s early moves are the culmination of a nearly decade-old campaign to roll back transgender rights.

May Anderson had expected that President Donald Trump would target transgender people upon taking office. Anderson, a 29-year-old trans woman who lives in California, had followed Trump’s campaign closely. She watched his speeches and read Project 2025, a conservative policy blueprint for the Trump administration. They promised a war on what Trump and his allies described as “transgender insanity.”

When Trump won, Anderson ordered an expedited passport that listed her as female, and she applied to have her birth certificate changed. Still, nothing prepared her, she said, for the breadth of anti-trans policies that Trump’s administration either proposed or enacted during his first days in office.

Just hours into his presidency, Trump signed an executive order that seeks to roll back trans rights in nearly every facet of life. The order describes trans women as men and directs federal agencies to keep them out of “intimate spaces” designed for women. It targets trans people’s identity documents and health care, and it narrowly defines sex in a way that aims to erase the very concept of trans and nonbinary people.

In the week since, the administration has halted transgender people’s passport applications, transferred incarcerated trans women to solitary confinement and moved to bar transgender troops from serving in the military — an effort that was met with an immediate legal challenge. On Tuesday, Trump directed federal agencies to begin crafting policies that could cut off young people’s access to transition care nationwide. And he has done so in orders that describe trans people as dishonorable and “mutilated,” lacking “humility and selflessness.”

“I’ve made it official, an official policy of the United States, that there are only two genders: male and female,” Trump said last week in video remarks to the World Economic Forum. “And we will have no men participating in women’s sports, and transgender operations, which became the rage, will occur very rarely.”

As conservative groups praised the order as a “much-needed miracle” and the administration began taking the first steps to make the policies a reality, trans and nonbinary people across the country say they are scared and confused. Can trans people still travel with passports that designate their sex as X? Will they be able to play sports? Pay for medications? Serve in the military? And what happens if Trump targets blue states that have said they will protect trans people?

Anderson read the first order, cried for an entire day, then felt frozen. She intends to have transition-related surgery this summer using Medicaid, the health-care program jointly funded by the federal government and her state. Since states decide what services Medicaid will cover and California provides transgender-related care, the order didn’t immediately affect her surgery. Still, its vague and sweeping language left her worried that the procedure she considered her “final step” might be in jeopardy.

Every day seemed to bring a new proposal, and she remained unsure what would happen to her. The first eight days of Trump’s tenure felt like a month, Anderson said, and her surgery remains five actual months away.

“I know they’ll try to take my rights away,” she said. “I just hope they go slow.”

‘Young people are afraid’

The administration’s early moves are the culmination of a nearly decade-old campaign to roll back trans rights. Soon after the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, conservative groups such as the American Principles Project and the Heritage Foundation began working to curtail what they considered a dangerous movement to allow trans people more freedom in schools and other public places.

Though Trump enacted a handful of anti-LGBTQ+ policies in his first administration, the movement picked up steam in 2020, when a handful of states passed laws restricting young trans people’s access to sports and gender transition health care. In the years since, more than half of U.S. states have passed similar laws targeting trans youths, and some legislatures have attempted to curtail the rights of trans adults.

Though voters have repeatedly said trans issues are not especially important to them, some of the policies have proved popular with Americans, and conservative strategists went all in on anti-trans messaging during last year’s election. According to a Washington Post analysis of data compiled by AdImpact, Republicans nationwide spent more than $215 million on network TV ads during the 2024 campaign promising to roll back what they often described as a “radical trans agenda.” Trump’s campaign spent roughly $50 million on similar ads and made “Kamala is for they/them” a signature phrase in his run against then-Vice President Kamala Harris.

After Trump won, LGBTQ advocates said they began preparing. Lawyers at big advocacy groups reviewed old cases and precedents, and they began laying the ground for what they expect may be dozens of legal battles. Officials in some blue states began preparing, too.

New York Attorney General Letitia James (D), who previously sued a Long Island county to ensure trans women could play sports there, vowed on X to protect trans rights. And in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) called a special session to safeguard LGBTQ rights and other “California values” during the Trump administration by providing extra resources to the state’s department of justice “to pursue robust affirmative litigation.”

The orders have hit trans young people especially hard, said Janson Wu, a senior director at the Trevor Project, a nonprofit that provides support to LGBTQ+ youths. Though Trump’s initial order was not immediately enforceable, calls to the nonprofit’s crisis line increased by 46 percent the day after the inauguration.
“Young people are afraid,” Wu said. “They’re worried about whether they’ll still have access to health care, whether the places they live will remain safe for them.”

Trans adults say they have the same fears. In Oregon, one nonbinary parent said they worry not just for themself but for their children. Ashley, who asked that The Post not use their last name for fear that the government could target their family, said that when they first became a parent, they listed X on their children’s birth certificates because they wanted to give them the freedom to self-identify.

When the children were born a few years ago, that didn’t feel like a controversial act, Ashley said. Oregon has allowed residents to list themselves as nonbinary on their driver’s licenses since 2017, and the local day care was supportive.

But when Ashley read the first executive order, they “spiraled.” They’ve read about the ways conservative officials in Texas and elsewhere have gone after parents with trans and nonbinary kids. What if the federal government did the same with kids whose identity documents don’t list a specific sex? Already, one of Trump’s orders has directed the attorney general to “prioritize investigations and take appropriate action to end child-abusive practices” in custody cases involving transgender children.

“My job as a parent is to protect my kids,” Ashley said. “I’m scared. For the government to know this is how I chose to identify my kid, I worry they will interpret it as I am putting my kid at harm. I’m not abusing my child by doing this.”

Ashley’s family plans to travel to Mexico in a few weeks, and one of the children has an X on their passport. All week, Ashley tried to find out whether the document was still valid, but as their trip drew closer, Ashley still couldn’t tell whether they’d be let back into Oregon once they return.

The United States has allowed “X” on passports since 2021, when Lambda Legal sued on behalf of Dana Zzyym, an intersex person and Navy veteran. But three days after Trump’s inauguration, Secretary of State Marco Rubio directed his department to immediately stop issuing new passports with X markers.

“The policy of the United States is that an individual’s sex is not changeable,” Rubio wrote in an internal email obtained by The Post.

Rubio’s email promised that guidance on existing passports “will come via other channels,” but both the White House and the State Department declined to say what the order means for people who already have passports with X on them.

‘Problematic and destabilizing’

Lawyers at advocacy organizations say they have spent the months since the election preparing for every possible scenario. Already, groups such as the National Center for Lesbian Rights and GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders have sued over Trump’s policies on transgender troops and incarcerated trans women. Neither directive, they argued in court documents, is constitutional.

Jennifer L. Levi, the senior director of transgender and queer rights at GLAD Law and a lawyer who has successfully sued in the past on behalf of transgender prisoners and service members, said she hopes the court will “bring some order to the chaos that has been launched.”

“This administration has been so clear that this is politically motivated,” Levi said of the Trump order’s federal prison directives. “It’s not based on any identified concerns about safety or security. That’s just problematic and destabilizing for a whole range of institutions.”

The Federal Bureau of Prisons declined to comment. The U.S. Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly, in a statement to The Post, said Trump “received an overwhelming mandate from the American people to restore commonsense principles and safeguard women’s spaces from biological men,” referencing the president’s 1.5 percentage-point victory margin — the smallest of any president who secured a popular-vote win since 1968. “He will deliver and restore safety and security for American women.”

Anderson, the trans woman in California, said she’s grateful to the lawyers at the advocacy organizations but worries that the Supreme Court will maintain Trump’s policies, and she remains unclear what will happen in her own life. in the fall, she worked the polls at her local precinct in a conservative part of California, and she often wondered whether her neighbors understood they could be voting to take her rights away. Did they agree with Trump’s assessment of trans people? Would they feel any different if they knew her story?

Anderson said that when she was younger, she’d look into the mirror — and feel empty. She never recognized the reflection as her. She moved to California during the early days of the pandemic to take care of her grandmother, who is 99. While she was there, Anderson realized she was a woman, and she decided to transition. Those days felt easy, blissful. Her grandma accepted her “immediately,” and Anderson soon learned that Medi-Cal, California’s version of Medicaid, covered gender transition. She started hormone therapy and pursued other gender-affirming treatments.

“I don’t think a lot of people know what kind of gift that is to just look at yourself in the mirror and feel content,” she said. “You don’t have to love how you look. You don’t have to feel like, ‘I’m the sexiest woman alive.’ You just have to look at yourself in the mirror and feel content. And I was never able to do that before. Transition fixed that.”

She was in her mid-20s when she began transitioning, and she felt that by the time she turned 30, she would be whole, “ready to start living.” Then Trump won reelection. Her mental health has “been in the trash” ever since, she said.
Anderson studied political science in college, so she has experience reading policy documents. On Inauguration Day, she sat at her computer and read Trump’s executive order straight through. Though the details remain vague, it seemed to target “everything.”

“Agencies shall take all necessary steps, as permitted by law, to end the Federal funding of gender ideology,” the order said. “Federal funds shall not be used to promote gender ideology.”

Did that include Medicaid? Anderson feared it might. Republican Reps. Dan Crenshaw (Texas) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (Georgia) have introduced a House bill to ban Medicaid from covering gender transition care for minors nationwide, and Trump’s most recent order directed the Department of Health and Human Services to end Medicaid and Medicare coverage of such care for minors. Given that 10 states have passed bans on Medicaid coverage for trans adults, Anderson worries a nationwide ban could be next. Already, the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget has said in a memo that using federal resources on “transgenderism” is a waste of taxpayer dollars and that all federal agencies must pause all activities and spending on “woke gender ideology.” The White House rescinded the memo one day after a federal judge temporarily blocked the administration’s spending freeze.

Making changes to established programs like Medicaid generally requires new rulemaking or congressional action, either of which could take months. Anderson’s surgery is five months away, and the administration has plenty of time to disrupt her coverage.

“They’re taking away my hope,” she said. “They’re taking away my light, my dream and my chance at a normal life.”

Diana Moon Glampers · Jan 30, 2025

Article / Archive

“Dystopian”: Trump Issues New Order to Stamp Out Trans Youth Healthcare

The directive targets gender-affirming treatment for anyone under 19.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump issued an executive order attempting to sharply curtail access to gender-affirming care for transgender youth, up to and including 18-year-olds.

The executive order does not impose an immediate ban on gender-affirming care. Instead, it directs federal agencies to begin taking steps to end gender-affirming treatments for children. By defining “children” as individuals under the age of 19—including 18-year-olds, who exceed the age of majority—the order goes further than recent laws banning gender-affirming care for minors in about half of the states.

Since taking office, Trump has carried out his anti-trans campaign promises with breathtaking speed and cruelty. On his first day, he declared that the federal government will no longer acknowledge trans people’s existence or protect them under anti-discrimination laws. He has also ordered them out of the military, claiming that being transgender “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.” And he ordered trans federal prisoners—who are at a heightened risk of violence—to be medically detransitioned and transferred to facilities that match their sex rather than their gender identity.

Tuesday’s order represents another crowning achievement for the coordinated anti-trans campaign carried out by influential religious-right organizations over the last several years. Some of those groups have long made clear that their ultimate goal is to end transgender medical care for everyone, not just children. Trump’s new order is a step in that direction.

The directive, if allowed to take effect, would devastate much of the remaining access to gender-affirming care for youth in the United States. Many families seeking treatment for their children receive it at specialized clinics, often housed at major hospitals and medical schools that rely on federal funding. Trump’s order takes aim at these clinics, directing agencies to ensure that “medical institutions, including medical schools and hospitals” that receive federal research and education money do not provide gender-affirming care to anyone under 19.

It also directs the secretary of Health and Human Services to cut off federal funding for such treatments. The move is expected to affect Medicaid and Medicare coverage as well as health insurance plans for federal employees. (Twenty-seven states cover gender-affirming care via Medicaid programs.) Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Trump’s HHS nominee, stated publicly last May that he believed gender-affirming care should be “deferred to adulthood.”

Trump’s order also instructs the Department of Justice to enforce laws that ban “female genital mutilation, ”consumer fraud, and “parental kidnapping,” which, given the context, suggests those laws will be applied against providers of gender-affirming care and states with sanctuary policies for trans youth. “This order is horrifying,” a mother of three children, one of whom is trans, told us. The mother, who requested that her name not be used, describes it as “a heavy handed attempt by the government to take crucial health care decisions away from individuals, parents, and doctors” and predicts it “will cause an almost indescribable amount of pain and suffering to innocent children and families.”

Shortly after the order was released, LGBTQ rights organizations vowed to defend trans young people’s access to care. Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, Senior Counsel and Health Care Strategist for Lambda Legal called the order “morally reprehensible and patently unlawful” in a statement.

“The federal government—particularly, this administration—has no right to insert itself into conversations and decision-making that rightly belongs only to parents, their adolescent children, and their medical providers,” Gonzalez-Pagan said. “We stand ready to fight back.”

Trump’s order, which follows on more than $200 million in Republican anti-trans political ad spending during the 2024 election cycle, targets an extremely small minority. Gender-affirming care is rare even among trans youth, as researchers at Harvard University and Folx Health recently made clear. According to an analysis of five years of insurance claims for more than 5 million US youth (ages 8 through 17), only about 0.05 percent received gender-affirming care and were coded as transgender. Among the trans youth, 5 percent were on puberty blockers and 11 percent on hormone therapy.

Leading US medical associations and LGBTQ rights organizations say gender-affirming medical treatments have potentially life-saving mental health benefits for trans youth, who were vulnerable to widespread bullying and discrimination even before Republican politicians made them a political scapegoat. As we’ve previously reported:

Both puberty blockers and hormone therapy have been associated with improved mental health, including fewer thoughts of suicide, for trans teens—which is why they’re supported by the American Academy of Pediatrics and other leading US and international medical associations. Puberty blockers, for instance, temporarily inhibit the development of secondary sex characteristics, like breasts and periods in those assigned female at birth, or facial hair and Adam’s apples in those assigned male at birth—physical changes that can cause clinical levels of distress for youth with gender dysphoria. As trans teens get older, hormone therapy is used to spur the development of secondary sex characteristics associated with the opposite biological sex.

Trump’s order, misleadingly titled “Protecting Children from Surgical and Genital Mutilation” characterizes medical treatments for young people with gender dysphoria as a “stain on the nation’s history” and “junk science.”

“This is some alternate reality that they’re trying to impose on the world that’s counter to the lived experience of not only transgender people, but other people who know and love us,” says Alaina Kupec, president and founder of the transgender advocacy organization GRACE. “It’s just dystopian how they’re distorting these issues to fit their own political narrative.”

Speaking directly to transgender youth, Kupec adds: “Don’t fall into despair and think that you’re not seen or heard and that you’re not valuable. You are and you’re living your authentic self, and you’re living your life with integrity, which is more than these politicians can say, who are knowingly spreading these falsehoods and propagating these false narratives.”

Diana Moon Glampers · Jan 30, 2025

Article / Archive

‘I’m just trying to be good at my job’: Transgender troops brace for decision on military ban

West Point graduate Alivia Stehlik is one of thousands whose military careers are in jeopardy.

Twelve years ago, Army 1st Lt. Alivia Stehlik walked the parade route for President Barack Obama’s second inauguration, making sure everything would go smoothly. Stehlik spent weeks planning for the Army’s role in the inaugural parade, training troops, and instructing a group of high-ranking generals and admirals on marching in step.

Six-foot-two, with a West Point pedigree, a Ranger tab, ramrod straight posture, and an infectious smile, Stehlik was an ideal instructor. As a ceremonies officer stationed at the Army’s Old Guard in Washington, D.C.—which guards the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, conducts military funerals at Arlington, and serves as the president’s ceremonial escort—Stehlik was an expert in marching. The generals and the admirals, on the other hand, needed some refreshers.

Once, Stehlik was training a female admiral who asked why there were no women in the Army’s honor guard. Back then, Stehlik presented as a man. She would transition years later, after the military allowed transgender troops to start serving openly.

Stehlik had wondered about the admiral’s question too — other services’ honor guards were mixed gender. But the Old Guard’s ceremonial company pulled exclusively from Army infantry, and women weren’t allowed in the infantry until 2016.

“Ma’am,” Stehlik told the admiral, “that’s way above my paygrade.”

Today, Stehlik, now a major, is waiting for another decision from far above her paygrade about who has the right to serve.

President Donald Trump made transgender issues a centerpiece of his campaign, promising to “stop the transgender lunacy” and “get transgender out of the military.” During his first term, Trump banned transgender people from serving in the military, though ultimately troops who had already transitioned—like Stehlik—were grandfathered in.

That may not be the case this time.

On Monday, in his inaugural address, Trump proclaimed that the government recognizes “only two genders: male and female.” Later that day, he repealed an executive order by President Joe Biden allowing transgender people to serve. Now, Stehlik and thousands of other troops, stationed from Connecticut to Kentucky to California, are bracing to see if Trump orders a new trans ban.

While the wait — and weight of the decision — may be agonizing, there is little transgender service members can do to make their case. Like any good soldier, Stehlik, now an Army physical therapist, went to work at Fort Campbell in Kentucky on the frigid morning after Trump’s inauguration.

“I actually don’t spend time speculating about it,” she said. “I’m just trying to be good at my job.”

The lessons carried over from the Old Guard, where everything was drilled to perfection: every footstep in lockstep, every uniform exactly tailored. Nothing could be out of place.

“There was no allowance for, ‘We messed up this time.’ There was no lexicon for that in the Old Guard,” Stehlik said. “Being perfect means not standing out.”

‘Chick with a Ranger tab’

When Stehlik first transitioned in 2017, she worried about standing out.

“I was the only six-foot-two chick with a Ranger tab,” she said.

But these days, there are other female Rangers who wear the revered badge, other transgender soldiers in uniform. She has deployed to Afghanistan and traveled with the Army to Jordan, the UAE, Lebanon. She has treated thousands of soldiers.

Today, she is the director of holistic health and fitness for the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell. She lives about an hour south of base in Nashville with her partner and a wildly affectionate dog named Mozzie. She rides her motorcycle, plays keyboard and piano, guitar and bass, browses bookstores on the weekend. Despite the growing political tension over trans issues, life is normal most of the time. She does not feel much like she stands out anymore; she does not want to talk about standing out.

Instead, she wants to talk about her job. On Tuesday, the day after the inauguration, there was a quarterly brigade training briefing and a suicide prevention planning meeting. A peer-reviewed paper on optimizing women’s performance in sports demanded attention on her desk at home, where an Army Ranger flag hangs above the squat rack in her garage.

In 2022, an opportunity came up for Stehlik to travel to the Middle East as a physical therapist. As a trans soldier, she needed a medical waiver to go. Nobody in her unit knew the correct protocol for that, so Stehlik cold-emailed the U.S. Central Command surgeon asking for permission.

“She’s top notch,” said Becky Wagner, a former active duty Army physician’s assistant who served with Stehlik during her deployment to Afghanistan. “She’s just a good soldier.”

When you’re a good soldier, Stehlik says, you stay out of politics.

“That’s kind of a fundamental part of being a soldier,” she said.

About 15,000 impacted

Thousands of transgender service members serve in the military, though the exact number is unclear. Estimates from two research centers, the Williams Institute at UCLA and the now-defunct Palm Center have put the figure around 15,000, but the Pentagon does not publicly track the number.

Data from UCLA also shows that transgender Americans sign up to serve their country at a rate twice that of cisgender people. Most transgender servicemembers have more than 12 years of service, said Rachel Branaman, the executive director of the Modern Military Association of America, which advocates for LGBTQ+ service members.

Any talk of a ban “harms readiness,” Branaman said.

Removing thousands of long-serving troops, she said, represents “a lot of specialized training that essentially costs billions of dollars and creates an operational gap.”

Transgender soldiers and sailors were first explicitly banned from military service in the 1960s. But things started changing after the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the policy that had prohibited gay and lesbian troops from serving openly. In 2013, the Army permitted Cpt. Sage Fox, a transgender woman, to return briefly to active duty, and by 2015, the military branches had made it difficult to dismiss service members for their gender identity. In 2016, the Obama White House officially ended the ban on transgender service members.

But in July 2017, amid a growing backlash among conservatives, Trump tweeted that he was reinstating the ban.

“After consultation 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 wrote. “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.”

West Point roots

Stehlik grew up the eldest child of an Army officer, a West Point graduate, and from her earliest memories, she wanted the same life for herself. She remembered the tanks from her father’s early career — the “real” Army, she says — before he settled into a more sedate second act in operations research at the Pentagon.

She spent much of her childhood and teenage years in northern Virginia, where her mother homeschooled her and her four younger siblings. In what would have been her senior year of high school, she took classes at local community college, and then got an appointment to West Point, arriving in the summer of 2004. It was years before Stehlik realized she was transgender, but she felt at home in the Army.

From the beginning, she knew she had been right: The life of a soldier was the life for her. Even during West Point’s notoriously difficult first year, she loved it — fellow cadets called Stehlik the “happy plebe.”

“I think I felt seen, I felt valued for the things that I could do,” Stehlik said. “I like doing hard things. I just find intrinsic value in soldiering and being around soldiers.”

So when Stehlik graduated from West Point, she chose to be a soldier’s soldier, commissioning as an infantry officer. It was 2008, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were in full swing, and it would be nearly eight years before women would be permitted to serve in combat roles, like the infantry. But Stehlik had not yet come out as transgender. Like any good soldier, she wanted to be where the action was.

Stehlik graduated from the Army’s grueling Ranger school course, and then was stationed at Camp Casey in South Korea, where she served as an infantry platoon leader. Her plan had been to apply from there to the 75th Ranger Regiment. But she was newly married and worried the intensive training and deployments would take a toll on her relationship.

So instead, she accepted orders to the Army’s storied Old Guard. She still tears up when she thinks about greeting the caskets of fallen troops coming back from Iraq or Afghanistan.

“There’s not a lot that you can compare to having to give a flag to somebody’s surviving family,” she said. “How do you do right by the people that are willing to give their life for this idea of what we’re doing here in America, this idea of our country and of freedom and opportunity?”

Rise in anti-LGBTQ+ bills

Stehlik began her transition at Fort Carson in 2017, not long after she graduated from physical therapy school at the Army’s medical training program at Baylor University.

Even then, anti-trans sentiment and legislation was growing across the country. By 2017, legislators in Texas, where Baylor is located, had started introducing bills seeking to regulate which bathrooms trans people could use. Anti-LGBTQ+ bills under consideration across the country have swelled in recent years, from 81 in 2020 to more than 530 in 2024, according to the ACLU.

In Kentucky, where Stehlik is currently stationed, lawmakers in 2023 overrode a veto to pass a law restricting discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation in schools and requiring most transgender minors to detransition, among other things. That same year, at a conservative conference, the political commentator Michael Knowles called for “transgenderism” to be “eradicated from public life … for the good of society.”

When Trump tweeted that he was going to ban trans soldiers, Stehlik was stationed at Fort Carson, Colorado.

At first, she missed the news. Her first patient of the day came in and told Stehlik with conviction, “I don’t care what anybody says, I want you to be my therapist.”

“I was like, ‘OK … cool. Yep, I’m your therapist,’” Stehlik said.

But then her sister texted, asking if she was all right, and explained what had happened.

Trump’s tweet reportedly took the Pentagon by surprise, and it took two months for Defense officials and the White House to hash out what exactly it meant. Ultimately, military policy prohibited new transgender troops from enlisting and active-duty service members from transitioning, but it did not remove transgender servicemembers from duty, nor did it prohibit them from re-enlisting.

Stehlik said she just kept doing her job. Shortly after taking office in 2021, Biden signed an executive order rescinding the ban.

‘Unapologetically who I am’

Stehlik had moved into physical therapy because she loved helping people stay fit and saw the field as a way to directly help soldiers on the front line, keeping them deployable and supporting the mission.

But she worried how troops would react to being treated by a transgender therapist, especially as she prepared to go to Afghanistan. She was concerned her fellow soldiers might feel uncomfortable, closed off to her, which could make providing care more difficult.

But that wasn’t the case, she said.

“People were way more vulnerable with me than I expected them to be. Even these young hotshot infantry and Special Forces guys that are out there, the last thing I expected was higher levels of vulnerability from them about how they were actually doing. But I got that way more often than I expected.

“And I think it was because I just exist as myself. I’m really unapologetically who I am. And I think that gives other people the freedom to be that too.”

Other soldiers who have served with Stehlik said they saw the same thing.

“I’ve brought in some of the oldest, crustiest Green Berets that I know,” said Lt. Col. Dan Brillhart, an Army physician who has run medical training exercises with Stehlik. Initially, he said, some of them were uncomfortable about working alongside Stehlik.

“They inevitably, universally fall under her spell,” Brillhart said. “They’re like, ‘She’s amazing. … When I come back next year, I want to work with Alivia.’”

He wasn’t the only one who spoke about a sort of magic she brought to her work.

“I used to call her the brigade healer,” said Col. Jon Post, who worked with Stehlik at the security forces assistance command, providing support to partner countries in the Middle East. “She is incredibly emotionally intelligent.”

“Her thing was always: Be a better human,” said Staff Sgt. Logan Haller, who served as her physical therapy tech during her deployment to Afghanistan. “She sat me down and said, ‘OK, Logan, where do you want to go with your life, with your career? … As a soldier, she was awesome.”

Haller remembered one soldier who kept calling Stehlik “sir” instead of “ma’am,” kept saying “he” instead of “she.” Stehlik, he said, corrected him from time to time. But Haller finally pulled the soldier aside.

“I told him, ‘Hey, either get it right or get out. Find somebody else to take care of you,’” he said.

He reminded the soldier of a core Army value: “You treat everyone with dignity and respect.”

“He figured it out after that,” Haller said.

Overrun by ‘woke’ policies

A Quinnipiac poll from the time of Trump’s first military trans ban found that nearly 70 percent of Americans supported transgender troops being permitted to serve openly. A 2020 study found a similar level of support among active-duty service members.

But throughout his second run for the White House, Trump talked about reinstating the ban. In December, he promised to “sign executive orders to end child sexual mutilation, get transgender out of the military, and out of our elementary schools and middle schools and high schools.”

His nominee to lead the Defense Department, former Fox News host Pete Hegseth, has railed against the military being overrun by “woke” policies that he claims have demoralized service members and weakened our fighting force. Other Republican lawmakers have claimed that caring for trans troops is costing the military too much money.

Between 2016 and 2021, the Pentagon spent about $15 million on health care for transgender troops, the vast majority of that on therapy visits, many of which are mandated by military policy on transgender service members and not necessarily requested by troops themselves. By comparison, in 2014, as the military began to consider allowing trans people to serve openly, it spent more than $80 million on erectile dysfunction drugs.

Experts who spoke with The War Horse were hesitant to speculate on what a new ban might look like. But they said it could span a range of possibilities, from merely not allowing new transgender enlistees to discharging thousands of active-duty troops.

“I think everybody is just waiting to see what’s coming,” Branaman said.

She and other experts said that the more extreme possibility — removing active-duty transgender troops — could be logistically very difficult for the military branches.

“There’s going to be administrative chaos,” Branaman said.

Sue Fulton, a senior advisor to SPARTA Pride, an association of active-duty transgender military members, said that “trying to implement some sort of new ban would be a mess and a problem for commanders.”

Typically, service members who are removed from active duty for nonpunitive reasons are discharged either administratively or through a medical route. Both processes can be time-consuming and burdensome, with various policies spelling out procedures for required hearings, boards and potential appeals. It can be more complicated to separate people in certain critical specialties or service members who are close to retirement.

When the military discharges a service member for medical reasons, it can take anywhere from six months to more than a year. Speeding things up would likely require changes to other military policies.

Luke Schleusener, the head of Out in National Security, a nonpartisan nonprofit for queer national security professionals, said that those sorts of changes would be “kind of capricious.”

“It’s going to say to a population that has been serving pretty much continuously that you are suddenly not eligible, not because you no longer meet requirements, but because we’ve changed requirements to specifically expel you.”

He and other experts also highlighted concerns about recruiting goals, which the military branches have struggled to meet in recent years. A 2024 study from the Public Religion Research Institute found that 30 percent of Gen Z identifies as LGBTQ+.

“Who’s going to join the military from Gen Z or Gen Alpha if you can’t bring your gay friend or your trans friend?” Schleusener said.

A quiet Inauguration Day

Twelve years ago, after weeks of training and preparation, Stehlik watched the inaugural parade from CNN’s press box, on hand to provide expert commentary on parade protocols. This Inauguration Day, she was at home in Nashville.

It was Martin Luther King Jr. Day, so she had the day off, although her boss had already emailed her with a work question. She kept half an eye on her phone, waiting to see if any more messages from her boss came in, while playing around on a keyboard in an upstairs spare bedroom.

Stehlik has played the piano since she was 7. She says it’s the thing she’s done the longest in her life. The thing she’s done the second longest is serve in the Army.

At West Point, in Eisenhower Hall, a nine-foot Steinway grand piano sits in a ballroom. Stehlik remembers when she first played it, framed by floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Hudson River.

“I assumed that it wouldn’t be there when I came back,” she said. It seemed out of place; she thought it must usually be stored somewhere else. But when she next went back to the ballroom, months later, the Steinway was still there.

She got in the habit of playing it, walking down the hill from the barracks to the ballroom whenever she needed a break from the grind of cadet life.

On Inauguration Day in Nashville, Stehlik did not want to talk about politics; the inauguration seemed political. But she talked about West Point, where she began her life in the Army.

“I am as optimistic and idealistic as West Point is,” she said. “Sometimes it feels naive to be idealistic, but I just am. I am a hopeful, optimistic human.”

Whenever Stehlik goes back to West Point, she makes it a point to walk down to Eisenhower Hall to play the piano.

“Sometimes it’s hiding in a back corner behind curtains, and sometimes it’s out in the middle of the ballroom.”

But, she said, “That piano is always there.”

Diana Moon Glampers · Jan 30, 2025

Article / Archive

Trans Women in Federal Custody Face the Terror of Being Transferred to Men’s Prisons

Following Trump’s executive order, a trans woman held at a federal prison was told she would be moved to a men’s prison.

Last Friday afternoon, Kara Sternquist, a trans woman in custody at a federal women’s prison in Fort Worth, Texas, was taken from her unit. A guard told Sternquist that she had an unexpected psychiatric appointment in the chapel.

“She was lied to,” said Deviant Ollam, a friend who speaks with her regularly by phone. “Once she was away from everyone else, they took her.”

According to Ollam, Sternquist told him that she is one of almost a dozen trans women who have been taken from the general population at FMC Carswell and moved into an administrative segregation unit that is typically used for inmates on suicide watch. (The Intercept has been unable to reach Sternquist directly, and an official at FMC Carswell declined to answer questions when reached by phone on Monday.)

The women were told they would be moved to a men’s prison, Ollam said, under President Donald Trump’s anti-trans executive order, which directs the Bureau of Prisons to ensure “that males are not detained in women’s prisons” and that inmates don’t receive gender-affirming health care using federal funds. On Monday, Trump issued another bigoted order barring trans people from military service, which was quickly challenged in federal court.

Trans women who are forced to live in men’s prison facilities face disproportionate risk of sexual assault and violence, as the Bureau of Prisons’ manual on trans inmates, issued in 2022, acknowledges.

On Tuesday afternoon, a warden unexpectedly told Sternquist she could return to her unit for now, Ollam told The Intercept. “She’s still very worried but optimistic,” Ollam said after he got off the phone with her.

Sternquist’s four-day ordeal and ongoing uncertainty about where she will serve the rest of her sentence reflects the precarious position of hundreds of trans people in federal prisons, who are being targeted by Trump and his hard-right allies.

“The worst part for her is not knowing what will happen next,” said Allegra Glashausser, Sternquist’s attorney. “She doesn’t know whether she will be held with men. She doesn’t know if she will receive her hormones as scheduled. Everything is uncertain. I am exceptionally worried for Kara’s physical safety and her mental health.”

“Trans people in custody, and trans women, in particular, are bearing the brunt of the immediate harms of this executive order,” said Shayna Medley, a litigation attorney at Advocates for Trans Equality.

This is not Sternquist’s first experience facing a dangerous housing assignment in federal prison.

In 2022, after she was arrested on firearms charges and for possession of fraudulent government badges, Sternquist was initially put into the men’s unit at the notorious MDC Brooklyn facility, even though her passport and driver’s license reflect that she is female.

It took two court orders and the threat of sanctions from a federal judge for the Bureau of Prisons to transfer Sternquist to women’s housing at MDC Brooklyn. “The DOJ and BOP proceed under the misapprehension that court orders are advisory,” wrote Magistrate Judge Sanket Bulsara in a September 2022 order. “Such contumacious conduct risks a contempt sanction.”

In another order, in November 2022, a judge directed the Bureau of Prisons to change Sternquist’s gender marker in prison databases to female. “To fail to do so would only continue to cause the mis-gendering problems that Defendant has faced while in custody,” U.S. District Court Judge Dora Irizarry wrote.

In August 2024, after Sternquist pleaded guilty to the firearms count, Irizarry sentenced her to a prison term of 60 months. The judge’s sentencing order specifically recommended that Sternquist be assigned to FMC Carswell “or another women’s medical facility” and that the Bureau of Prisons “provide gender-affirming and other medical care.”

“It’s moving heaven and earth to get them on the right unit,” Ollam said of the process, even under the Biden administration’s rules, for getting trans inmates placed into the appropriate facility. “If they are moved, they will very likely be lost forever.”

Ollam, who posts video updates about Sternquist’s case and condition, told The Intercept that Sternquist does not know when she will be transferred, but she fears it could happen at any moment. In the meantime, prison officials have started addressing Sternquist and the other trans women by male pronouns, according to Ollam. “When the staff come in, they address them as ‘gentlemen,’” Ollam said.

The Bureau of Prisons did not respond to inquiries about the trans women held at FMC Carswell or plans to transfer them. But another inmate at the facility, Ángel Espinosa-Villegas, who is transmasculine, closely mirrored Ollam’s account in messages sent to friends.

On Friday, guards “took the trans women out of every unit,” Espinosa-Villegas wrote in one message that day, which was shared with The Intercept. “You should have seen the evil looks of triumph as they escorted the trans women crying out of here.”

Espinosa-Villegas also wrote about fears among transmasculine inmates that “we’re next on Trump’s list.”

“Now there’s talk about us transmascs getting sent to [administrative segregation] until ‘Trump finds a place for us,’” Espinosa-Villegas wrote. “There’s officers saying that shit. They’ve refused to give me my [testosterone] shots every time I go and ask for them.”

“God watching the trans women get hauled away was evil,” Espinosa-Villegas wrote in another message. “I don’t know what else to do except sound the alarms.”

On Sunday, another trans woman in federal custody — identified in court records by a pseudonym, Maria Moe — filed the first lawsuit challenging the executive order.

“Maria Moe has lived as a woman and has taken hormones continuously since she was a teenager,” reads a complaint filed in federal court in Massachusetts. “During her term of incarceration, she has always been treated as a woman by federal correctional officials and her peers. She has never been housed in a men’s facility and has never stopped taking hormones.”

But last week, like Sternquist and others at FMC Carswell, Moe was removed from the general population of a women’s facility, according to legal filings, which redacted the name of the specific prison. The day after Trump signed the executive order, Moe was confined to the “Special Housing Unit” and “has not been permitted to have contact with others for at least four days.”

Moe’s lawyers argue that the executive order’s provisions about inmate housing violates the Eight Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, among other provisions of the Constitution and federal law, as does the prohibition on providing hormone therapy and other care.

“Transferring Maria Moe to a men’s prison will pose a substantial risk of serious harm, including an extremely high risk of violence and sexual assault from other incarcerated people and BOP staff,” reads her complaint.

Although Moe’s case was quickly sealed, Ollam said he, Sternquist, and the other trans women at FMC Carswell are watching closely, in hopes that the judge overseeing Moe’s challenge might block the executive order nationwide. Last week, a federal judge temporarily blocked another of Trump’s orders regarding birthright citizenship.

“The girls just want their message to be: silence equals death,” Ollam said.

Otterly · Jan 30, 2025

Ahhh…. The glorious salt. The only sodium that relaxes!

Diana Moon Glampers said:
Bans the use of research and guidance produced or endorsed by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, the most experienced and knowledgeable experts in the field.

WPATH? The WPATH who are child castration fetishists?
Post in thread 'Cal State”Gender” Academic Inspired Pedophilic Fantasy On Castrating, Enslaving Young Boys'
https://kiwifarms.net/threads/cal-s...ing-enslaving-young-boys.195537/post-18784497
These guys?

Pruto · Jan 30, 2025

I'm sorry I ever doubted Trump
Hopefully we can rise the 41% to new heights

SUPERMEGAGIGATHREAD: Rainbow Rage Over Orange Man - Otherwise A&N is just going to be a wall of DMG posts from here until 2028

DEATH BEFORE DETRANSITION​

The trans care apocalypse is here. What now?​

What does the order do?​

What does it all mean?​

But it’s just trans people, right? Right?​

So what is this going to do?​

Your Handicapabillty Facilitator-General

Trump’s Executive Order Has No F*cking Idea What “Gender Affirming Care” Actually Is​

It’s Not Just Conservatives Who Support Trump’s Views on Gender Affirming Care​

What is Gender-Affirming Care?​

People Under 18 Rarely Undergo Gender Affirming Surgery, and Actual Children Almost Never Do​

Puberty Blockers Are Not “Chemical Mutilation”​

What is the Impact of Hormone Blockers on Fertility?​

Do People Regret Gender-Affirming Care?​

But What About All Those Stories I’ve Seen and Read About People Who Regret Their Transition?​

In Conclusion….​

Your Handicapabillty Facilitator-General

Trump Wants to Restrict Gender Affirming Care. Don’t Look Away.​

Your Handicapabillty Facilitator-General

Queer Americans from N.M. to Philly on coping with Trump 2.0​

Your Handicapabillty Facilitator-General

Drag Race star shares HIV status after Trump administration move: ‘My health is at risk’​

Your Handicapabillty Facilitator-General

Article / Archive​

​

Donald Trump's executive order on gender is 'cruel', US queer community says​

What is the executive order on gender?​

Will it actually be implemented?​

How could this impact documentation?​

How are people in the US feeling?​

What could this mean for people travelling to the US?​

'Visibility is incredibly important'​

Your Handicapabillty Facilitator-General

'I feel like I’m stuck here': Trans, nonbinary Americans' passports remain in limbo​

When does the new policy mean for passports?​

What happens to those who already applied for a passport?​

Your Handicapabillty Facilitator-General

Dear Trans Kids, You Don't Need the Government's Permission to Exist​

Your Handicapabillty Facilitator-General

Article / Archive​

Demi Lovato sends message of solidarity to trans community: “We will get thru this”​

Your Handicapabillty Facilitator-General

Donald Trump stripped my son of his rights and dignity. America shrugged. | Opinion​

When we are silent, we are all complicit.​

My son's rights were stolen and the nation shrugs​

Trans people exist​

Trump has changed his tune on trans people​

Confusion has morphed into hate​

Your Handicapabillty Facilitator-General

Trans community fears Trump's actions will upend legal precedent on prison protections​

The Trump administration is already moving trans prisoners and immigrants​

Can this order withstand legal challenges?​

Nuclear proliferationist

Your Handicapabillty Facilitator-General

The thin evidence behind Trump’s new ban on trans service members​

What we know about transgender service members, their readiness, and cost of care​

Your Handicapabillty Facilitator-General

‘People are afraid’: Trump’s actions targeting trans rights lead to confusion, fear​

Your Handicapabillty Facilitator-General

“Dystopian”: Trump Issues New Order to Stamp Out Trans Youth Healthcare​

The directive targets gender-affirming treatment for anyone under 19.​

Your Handicapabillty Facilitator-General

‘I’m just trying to be good at my job’: Transgender troops brace for decision on military ban​

‘Chick with a Ranger tab’​

About 15,000 impacted​

West Point roots​

Rise in anti-LGBTQ+ bills​

‘Unapologetically who I am’​

Overrun by ‘woke’ policies​

A quiet Inauguration Day​

Your Handicapabillty Facilitator-General

Trans Women in Federal Custody Face the Terror of Being Transferred to Men’s Prisons​

Immerse your soul in love

snowflake

DEATH BEFORE DETRANSITION

The trans care apocalypse is here. What now?

What does the order do?

What does it all mean?

But it’s just trans people, right? Right?

So what is this going to do?

Trump’s Executive Order Has No F*cking Idea What “Gender Affirming Care” Actually Is

It’s Not Just Conservatives Who Support Trump’s Views on Gender Affirming Care

What is Gender-Affirming Care?

People Under 18 Rarely Undergo Gender Affirming Surgery, and Actual Children Almost Never Do

Puberty Blockers Are Not “Chemical Mutilation”

What is the Impact of Hormone Blockers on Fertility?

Do People Regret Gender-Affirming Care?

But What About All Those Stories I’ve Seen and Read About People Who Regret Their Transition?

In Conclusion….

Trump Wants to Restrict Gender Affirming Care. Don’t Look Away.

Queer Americans from N.M. to Philly on coping with Trump 2.0

Drag Race star shares HIV status after Trump administration move: ‘My health is at risk’

Article / Archive

Donald Trump's executive order on gender is 'cruel', US queer community says

What is the executive order on gender?

Will it actually be implemented?

How could this impact documentation?

How are people in the US feeling?

What could this mean for people travelling to the US?

'Visibility is incredibly important'

'I feel like I’m stuck here': Trans, nonbinary Americans' passports remain in limbo

When does the new policy mean for passports?

What happens to those who already applied for a passport?

Dear Trans Kids, You Don't Need the Government's Permission to Exist

Article / Archive

Demi Lovato sends message of solidarity to trans community: “We will get thru this”

Donald Trump stripped my son of his rights and dignity. America shrugged. | Opinion

When we are silent, we are all complicit.

My son's rights were stolen and the nation shrugs

Trans people exist

Trump has changed his tune on trans people

Confusion has morphed into hate

Trans community fears Trump's actions will upend legal precedent on prison protections

The Trump administration is already moving trans prisoners and immigrants

Can this order withstand legal challenges?

The thin evidence behind Trump’s new ban on trans service members

What we know about transgender service members, their readiness, and cost of care

‘People are afraid’: Trump’s actions targeting trans rights lead to confusion, fear

“Dystopian”: Trump Issues New Order to Stamp Out Trans Youth Healthcare

The directive targets gender-affirming treatment for anyone under 19.

‘I’m just trying to be good at my job’: Transgender troops brace for decision on military ban

‘Chick with a Ranger tab’

About 15,000 impacted

West Point roots

Rise in anti-LGBTQ+ bills

‘Unapologetically who I am’

Overrun by ‘woke’ policies

A quiet Inauguration Day

Trans Women in Federal Custody Face the Terror of Being Transferred to Men’s Prisons