President Trump has signed executive orders seeking to bar transgender people from the military, halt the practice of transgender medicine for minors, prohibit schools from acknowledging a child’s transgender identity and ban transgender women from women’s sports.
And in his most sweeping statement, Trump declared it is “the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female” and asserted these “sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.”
Now the federal bureaucracy is implementing his vision.
The State Department stopped issuing passports with gender markers consistent with transgender people’s identity. The Census Bureau took down web pages about sexual orientation and gender identity. Information on transgender health from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention disappeared from the internet. Government agencies deleted the T for transgender from webpages that now say LGB.
“It feels like he’s simply trying to erase trans existence,” said Carmen Alvaro Jarrín, a college professor from Milton.
The effect of those orders are also coursing into private institutions. Harvard removed a policy on transgender inclusion in athletics after Trump signed an executive order Wednesday seeking to bar trans women from women’s sports. Boston Children’s Hospital canceled appointments for some transgender youth in response to a different Trump order, according to a lawsuit filed by the ACLU. On Thursday, the NCAA said it would bar transgender women from competing in women’s college sports.
Trump promised on the campaign trail to roll back legal protections for transgender people and restrict access to gender transition treatments, so the orders did not come as a complete surprise. But the speed and tenor of Trump’s early moves on trans issues have left many in the community staggered. He did not just say that trans women must use men’s bathrooms. He said there is no such thing as a trans woman. He did not just cut off funding for youth gender medicine; he raised the prospect of prosecuting parents of trans children.
His executive order on military service starkly stated the case. A transgender identity is “false,” and to “adopt” one “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle.”
“It’s not just bigotry, it’s not just prejudice, it’s not just exclusion. It’s outright denial of your existence,” said Nya Jacobson, a transgender college student from Florida.
Some wonder what comes next. “He could try to criminalize our existence further,” said Jarrín, the college professor, who teaches anthropology at College of the Holy Cross. “There used to be rules against crossdressing.”
“I have friends who are literally saying, ‘Do I need to find escape routes?’ ‘Do I need to find countries outside the US to live?’” Jarrín, who is transgender and nonbinary, said.
Indeed, some transgender people are already rethinking where they live, where they can travel, and how they present themselves to the world.
Soledad Gonzalez, a 23-year-old transgender woman in Florida, is currently taking estrogen as part of her medical transition. Recently, she was accepted into the Peace Corps, a long held dream. But now she has learned the Peace Corps , a federal agency, will stop providing gender transition treatments to its volunteers.
That leaves her with a choice: give up on the Corps or suspend hormone treatment.
She’s now taking a moment “to grieve and mourn” a future she had imagined. Then she may leave Florida, which has passed several anti-trans laws. She’s considering moving to “a safer state,” such as Democrat-controlled Massachusetts.
Brianna Wu, a former Massachusetts congressional candidate, has watched the Trump policies unveiled with dismay.
“I have not been legally male in 20 years,” she said. “My driver’s license says female. My passport says female. I’ve had vaginoplasty.” But none of that seems to matter anymore. When her next passport is issued, according to new federal rules, it will list her gender as male.
“It’s fairly terrifying that my documents would now be announcing that to the world,” she said.
Wu says the Trump executive orders “dehumanize” trans people. But, she also views them as a “rational backlash” against what she regards as overreach by the trans rights movement to replace sex with gender identity in civil rights law and allow transgender women to compete in women’s sports. “This progressive project has pushed these issues so far,” she said.
Scott Jennings, a Republican strategist, said Trump is enacting the will of the people. “These are 80-20 issues,” he said, pointing to a recent national poll showing 79 percent of Americans oppose trans women’s participation in women’s sports.
“Republicans and conservatives simply don’t share the same view of these trans issues,” he said. “They don’t believe men can get pregnant. They don’t believe children should be subjected to sex change operations. … This is a pretty animating and deeply held viewpoint.”
Chris Erchull, an attorney at GLAD Law, a legal advocacy group in Boston, sees something else at play.
“This is isn’t about any of these [single] issues. This is about a broad-based targeted attack on transgender people, a concerted effort by the administration not to just make life difficult, but to make it impossible for trans people to navigate public life,” he said.
Erchull said that some of the Trump orders have not yet affected daily life in Massachusetts. Before the effects are felt here, federal agencies must implement policies, such as withholding funding from schools that acknowledge a student’s transgender identity. Massachusetts has policies that could act as a bulwark, such as a law protecting medical providers who offer gender transition treatments. If funding is withdrawn from schools or hospitals, as the Trump administration has threatened, Erchull said he hopes the state government will step in to cover the shortfall.
His group has already filed three lawsuits, including one over a transgender prisoner who was placed in solitary confinement following a Trump order seeking to ban trans women from women’s prisons.
“We’re doing everything we can to meet the moment and fight back,” Erchull said.
The orders are already facing legal challenges.
“They will fall,” said one Eastern Massachusetts mother of a transgender teen, who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect her family’s privacy. “But they are having the intended effect now, to create fear and panic and to further marginalize people like my kid.”
Mike Damiano can be reached at mike.damiano@globe.com.
