Trans women are not men.

2/6/2025

Surviving the trump administration, A Daily Thread. Episode 15: Trans women are not men.

Yesterday, trump surrounded himself with a room full of little girls while he signed an executive order to keep trans women out of women’s sports. While MAGA sympathizers will tell you that this is about “fairness in sports” or “keeping men out of women’s sports” or even “protecting our children,” this move is one of hate and fear mongering. Period.

Preventing trans female athletes from competing in women’s sports will not make sports fair. Sports are inherently unfair! Especially at the school-age level, you have kids of wildly different size, strength, and speed competing against each other. When my stepson was 8 years old, he was TINY. He played on a peewee football team against kids his own age who were literally TWICE his size. This issue has nothing to do with trans athletes.

Yet, at the school-age level, there has already been an ongoing war against trans athletes. In 2022 in Utah, for example, a bill was passed banning trans athletes from competing in school sports. Guess how many school-aged trans athletes there were in the entire state of Utah at the time? One. ONE. Lawmakers were SO CONCERNED about “fairness” in school sports that they felt the need to protect the state from ONE LITTLE TRANS GIRL.

This is an issue of fear and hate, not fairness.

MAGA folks repeatedly refer to this issue as “keeping men out of women’s sports,” which is purposely denying that trans people even exist. Trans women are not men. They are trans women. Referring to them as men is an attempt to erase them, to undermine their very existence. Our words matter, and these words are filled with (at best) lack of awareness, or (at worst / most likely) fear and hate.

Trans people have existed since the beginning of time. African peoples including the Nuba, Igbo, Nuer, Lango, and Banto have assigned specific roles to trans people in their societies, from places in their high court to roles in their creation/mythology stories.  In the Americas, Indigenous peoples have recognized and honored Two-Spirit transgender people in their society for centuries. Some more modern Western examples of trans people include Christine Jorgensen who was an American actress, singer, and recording artist (1926 – 1989), Roberta Cowell who was a British race car driver and fighter pilot (1918-2011), and Sarah McBride, who is the first openly transgender member of the US Congress. Trans people have always existed, they currently exist, and they will exist forever. Trans women are not men.

Although they have existed since the beginning of time, Western society has repeatedly tried to erase and oppress transgender people.  In Nazi Germany, Jewish people were not the only ones under attack. Transgender people were forcibly de-transitioned, imprisoned and killed in concentration camps. In the United States, transgender people have faced and continue to face discrimination in the realms of housing, employment, healthcare, and education, as well as physical violence against them. Although transgender people make up less than 1% of the United States population, in 2024 there were 672 anti-trans bills considered in 43 states, and 50 of those bills passed. They limited trans rights in the areas of bathroom usage, healthcare, education, civil rights, participation in sports, and more. If that’s not a focused attack against a vulnerable population, I don’t know what is.

Not surprisingly, a 2024 study by the Trevor Project, published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Human Behaviour, found that these focused attacks on the transgender population has caused an increase of up to 72% in suicidality among this population, which already has higher than average suicide rates. We need to support and protect this vulnerable population, not wage war against them.

Lastly, to bring it back around to where I started: trump surrounded himself with a room full of little girls yesterday as he signed the executive order blocking trans people from participating in sports. How many of those little girls even know any transgender people? Or more specifically, how many of them have any transgender people on their sports teams? Very, very few, if any. This is not a real issue for them; and yet, trump and these actions are sending a message to these little girls, in their still-forming brains and limited life experience, that they need to hate and fear transgender people. This is fundamentally wrong, and we need to do better.

https://translegislation.com/bills/2024/passed

https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/anti-trans-laws-suicide-attempts-teens-increase-rcna172906

#survivingthetrumpadministration #fightfascism#notmypresident #standupspeakout#strongertogether