TRANS REVISIONISM: HOW AMERICA IS ERASING TRANS PEOPLE FROM PUBLIC LIFE By Barbara O’Sullivan, Trans+ Pride Cork
or natural. What this means in practice, as one opponent of the bill described; if he as a trans man, who has had a double mastectomy to achieve a more typical male chest were to be seen without a shirt, even when mowing his backyard and a neighbour happened to see him, he could be arrested in his own home. Proponents of the bill, such as Idaho Freedom Foundation Director of Legislative Affairs Fred Birnbaum, claim the bill would protect children. “What this bill is about, is restoring decency and community standards of behaviour.” The fact is the reason this bill even came to be was because Nampa City Council member Sebastian Griffin brought it forward after seeing a shirtless woman minding her own business at a local Pride event. When he complained to a police officer he was told that what she was doing wasn’t illegal as in their eyes she was born male and simply had “enhancements” AKA a trans woman with a breast augmentation. A first violation of this indecent exposure law is a misdemeanour crime. A second offence within five years is a felony. Among all these changes perhaps one of the most outrageous is the erasure of trans and queer people from government websites. The attempted scrubbing of their own history. Some examples include, the State Department’s web page providing adoption information to LGBTQI+ prospective parents now addresses only ‘LGB’ people. Informational pages for visitors are now for ‘LGB Travellers’ and mentions of the words transgender and queer were removed from a website dedicated to Stonewall National Monument. The very people who stood up in spite of not only anti- homosexuality laws at the time but also ‘anti-crossdressing’ laws known as the three article rule or the masquerade laws; who fought alongside other queer people to change how they were treated by society. Meanwhile, in a historic first, a Democratic candidate from Delaware, Sarah McBride became the first trans woman to be elected to congress. However, it wasn’t long before speaker of the house Mike Johnson released a statement that he will be treating the congresswoman as a male. Already, McBride and any trans staffers in the Capitol building have faced an
onslaught of discriminatory actions from republican officials, including Republican congresswoman Nancy Mace who has not only hung up handmade signs outside of women’s restrooms to indicate they were only for use by “biological women”, she has also repeatedly used a derogatory slur aimed at trans people during official proceedings. In the Quay Co-op, overlooking the weekly Palestinian rally, I sat down with Cedar Monroe to get his perspective. Raised in the rural county of Grays Harbour in the state of Washington, Cedar is a trans man who came to Ireland in September of last year to study for a PhD programme in UCC, focusing on pagan and nature based religions in relation to environmental activism. “When it was time to look for programmes”, he told me, “it was very clear the climate in the United States was changing really rapidly, particularly towards trans people.” This, he says, is not how it’s always been. “There seemed to be a moment in time where there was greater acceptance in the US around 2010 to 2015/16. States were passing more protections including Washington state which led a lot of efforts, particularly for trans people.” As was the case for a lot of people, Cedar transitioned during the height of the Covid pandemic. We discussed how the lockdown was a time of reflection and change for so many, but not always for the better. “Covid opened up an opportunity for the far right in the US to expand their platform. Because of neo-liberal policy over the last 50 years imposed by the UK and the US on the rest of the world, it created this crisis where people know things aren’t okay because they can’t afford groceries and they’re unable to find housing. When people are struggling, it’s really easy to feed them conspiracy theories, enemies, to deflect away from those who hold all the money and power.” The concerning link between the extremist groups in Ireland and those in the UK and US has been closely monitored for a few years now as we have seen an increase in far right players both on our streets and in our elections. In 2022, The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism voiced concern for this “disturbing trend.” In 2024, publications such as the Irish Times and Wired reported about calls
between American extremists such as Los Angeles based Klan member, Frank Silva, QAnon promotor Jeffrey Pedersen, as well as Jon Minadeo II, the leader of the virulently antisemitic Goyim Defense League all having calls with and giving advice to groups in Ireland. Cedar described life in the US for trans people right now as unpredictable. “People are terrified and many hope to leave the country as soon as possible.” This doesn’t come without its barriers, as passports are now being changed to reflect the persons assigned sex at birth, regardless of a legal gender marker change. This can lead to dangerous situations if a trans person were faced with hostile police officers, TSA agents, or border control. Right now there are no countries that are accepting American transgender people as asylum seekers as the situation has not been deemed bad enough. Meanwhile, medical practitioners, children’s hospitals, and planned parenthood have all begun preemptively rolling back providing trans healthcare as a way to preserve funding amidst the onslaught of cuts from the current administration. Federally funded care such as Medicaid or Medicare also no longer provide any support. To live not knowing which of your rights will be taken away tomorrow has left thousands of Americans unsure of what the future holds. As America grows closer to erasing trans people from public life and the UK follows suit, it is imperative that allies stand up and are vocal in their support for trans people. Not just those they know personally, or because a law could be interpreted to discriminate against a cis person, but because transgender people deserve to live happy, fulfilling, normal lives, free of fear, free of violence, free of hatred.
world watched as it became clear who had won the race. Mere months into his second term, there have been dire consequences for not only transgender citizens in the US but also for millions of other minorities. The Trevor Project, an organisation for LGBTQ+ youth in America, saw an increase of between 200 and 700% in the week leading up to and just after the election. A study conducted in the peer-reviewed journal, Nature Human Behaviour, found that the rise in anti-trans legislation between 2018 and 2022 increased the rate of suicide attempts among trans and non binary youth by up to 72%. In the time between November and January there was much speculation about what Trump would actually do, and how much of his campaign was just talk; but for those who read the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, the plan ahead was clear. According to translegislation.com, in 2025, 859 bills are under consideration across the country that would negatively impact trans and gender non-conforming people. 83 of which have passed so far this year. This number is anticipated to grow in what is the fifth consecutive
record-breaking year for anti-trans legislation. To give you an idea of the types of restrictions being implemented, within the first week of taking office Trump signed several executive orders, among those were orders declaring the official policy of the United States is that there are ‘only two sexes’. He also restricted gender- affirming healthcare for transgender people under the age of 19, and scrapped all DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) programmes in both government and in the armed services. Another is set to ban trans people from serving in the military: “A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honour this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member.” This mischaracterisation will affect over 15,000 service members as well as any family members, on their healthcare plan, as well as trans veterans. In more recent weeks, Idaho Governor Brad Little signed into law a bill that criminalises the public exposure of breasts. House Bill 270 updates Idaho’s indecent exposure law to include stricter bans on breasts of all kinds, whether cis or trans, surgically altered
In the last ten years, the spotlight on transgender people has increased exponentially. Now, more so than ever, the community is being targeted politically. Not just with discriminatory policy changes hidden in larger bills, but as one of the foremost parts of an election campaign. According to ad tracking firm AdImpact, during the 2024 US election while campaigning for Donald Trump, the Republican Party spent approximately $215 million dollars on running anti-trans campaign ads across America. With the Democratic Party avoiding this divisive issue altogether, these attack ads were able to speak for them. In swing states, television ads such as ‘Kamala is for They/Them, President Trump is for you’ were seen over 30,000 times. As the numbers began to come in on the 5th of November, with bated breath the
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