Just when you thought that the Trump Administration couldn't get any messier, guess what? They just made a monstrosity. The Trump Administration is considering rewriting the legal definition of gender, defining it as the biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth. Not only does this take a huge step back in the protection of transgender rights, and recognizing transgender people as human beings just like you and me.
Decisions were made during the Obama Administration to ease up on the concept of gender when it came to education and healthcare, ultimately allowing people to choose their gender and not having to follow the one they were assigned at birth. This eventually led to the fights over bathrooms, or single-sex areas/programs where people were enraged that someone who was born male, but identified as female, was allowed to use the women's bathroom or someone who's born female, but identified as male, and was allowed to use the men's bathroom. The administration has chosen not to pick a side when it comes to Title IX and says it's ultimately up to the schools to decide how they were going to interpret the law.
Under Title IX, the civil rights law that bans discrimination against gender in education programs that receive assistance from the government. Under this law, according to the Times who acquired a memo from the Department of Health and Human Services, "sex means a person's status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth," Others argue that the gender listed on someone's birth certificate is their definite gender, and that identifying as a different gender is simply wrong and frowned upon. The new definition would basically eradicate the recognition of over 1.4 million Americans who have opted to identify themselves, either surgically or non-surgically, as a gender other than the one that was printed on their birth certificate.
This decision would be the biggest movement to exclude members of the population from the protection of civil rights and push back the Obama's administration recognition of gender identity. The Trump administration has also banned transgender people from serving in the military, which already caused an uproar within society, as Trump as limiting rights to those that were identifying with a different gender than the one they were assigned at birth.
In the last year, the Department of Health and Human Services has argued that "sex" was never meant to incorporate gender identity or homosexuality. The ultimate thing to take away from this is that transgender people are terrified. After fighting so hard for these civil rights, they're just going to be taken away from them again and practically erase trans people existing? It's not fair just because they don't identify with the gender they were assigned at birth.
Social media was on fire, trending the hashtag, "#WontBeErased", validating their existence and letting conservatives know that they won't stop, and they will continue to protest their equal rights. The idea of basically erasing 1.4 million people from existence is wrong and so unacceptable. Regardless of this new, stupid, and honestly pointless law that'll try to be written, supporters of the trans community and those who are in the trans community will continue fighting for what's right and their existence will not be erased.
