According to Pew Research Center, “roughly eight-in-ten Americans say transgender people face at least some discrimination, and relatively few believe our society is extremely or very accepting of people who are trans.”
Your chromosomes do not define gender identity; your gender identity is how you perceive and express yourself in correspondence with your brain chemistry, which is separate from your biological sex. This is not a choice someone makes for themself; everyone is born with a gender identity, and this identity doesn’t always match someone’s sex. There are no real boundaries keeping gender inside binary boxes; people express themselves in many unique ways and have done so across history. According to the National Institutes of Health National Library of Medicine, “There is a general agreement in the scientific community about sex and gender being two different concepts; sex refers primarily to biological factors, while gender closely aligns to social norms and roles.”
Donald Trump’s January 20th Executive Order Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government states, “‘Gender ideology’ replaces the biological category of sex with an ever-shifting concept of self-assessed gender identity” This is incorrect in that gender and sex must exist at the same time, everyone has both a biological sex and a gender identity. In this executive order, President Trump contradicts himself when he says that all female people are women and that all male people are men because ‘woman’ and ‘man’ are gender identities. Thus he is recognizing that those gender identities exist.
Transgender people deal with so much on a daily basis. Pushing aside the fact that they can’t serve in the military or even use the bathroom, they are bullied and belittled by people in society and the federal government. Between microaggressions and blatant transphobia, it is safe to say that transgender people experience an unreasonably difficult life. Transgender individuals are human just the same as you and me; they are not threatening or dangerous, and they just want to live their lives. An anonymous transgender student at Belleville High School explains, “Being a transgender person in society is difficult. You have to be fearful and wary in your everyday life because of the discrimination you face because of your gender identity.”
The current federal government is promoting the idea that transgender people are threats and should not exist. The Trump administration is focusing very heavily on minimizing their existence by passing executive orders that dismantle their rights. Not only is the Trump administration refusing to accept the fact that these people deserve equality, they have made it impossible for them to have their identity displayed on their passports or other forms of legal identification. Transgender students are not to be acknowledged in the classroom, as that is seen as “indoctrination,” brainwashing the other students into believing they might have been born in the wrong body. Additionally, the Trump administration has put forth significant effort in censoring scientific, factual, research documents published by the CDC because they are believed to be forcing the concept of ‘gender ideology’ on the American people.
Society bends gender norms over time; no one will ever be happy one way. Gender is a social construct that will never be at peace, because society must push everyone into a box to feel organized and successful. It was once a crime for women to wear pants because men thought it meant they would lose their power, but now we’re here. When you limit trans people from gender expression you are limiting everyone from gender expression, including cisgender people. You never know when the dial will turn and we will be forced to switch boxes. It is time for everyone to come to the understanding that we are allowed to break societal barriers to uplift our livelihoods; we thrive better outside of boxes. Demonizing transgender individuals is not going to “defend women;” it is only going to hurt everyone more.
