On February 14th, 2025, the National Park Service removed the all mentions of transgender individuals and supplanted “LGBTQ+” with “LGB” on the Stonewall National Monument Website, Their decision sparked outrage. The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation resoundingly stated “You can try to erase our history, but we will never forget those who came before us, and we will continue to fight for all those who will come after us,” and over 1,000 people protested the removal at the Stonewall National Monument on February 14th. The website change is among several actions by the Trump administration that prove that it is irrefutably and overtly anti-queer. This is not just a name change, it is one of many decisions that seek to undermine Transgender people’s fundamental civil liberties. We need to pay attention.
The Stonewall Monument commemorates the Stonewall Uprising, a 1969 rebellion in which members of the LGBTQ community fought back in response to a raid on a Stonewall Inn, a gay bar that was routinely raided by police because its owners had connections to the mafia. The response was not the first uprising at a gay bar, but it was the most impactful in putting Gay rights in the discourse of mainstream media because it galvanized the formation of new activist groups like the Gay Liberation Front and Gay Activists Alliance; Stonewall was instrumental in advancing the Gay Rights movement. Marsha P. Johnson was a Black Transgender woman who threw a brick that catalyzed the riots, and transgender woman Slyvia Rivera also participated in the uprising. Excluding them from the website is an attempt to erase not just their legacy in securing Gay Rights, but part of widespread effort to isolate and disassociate transgender people from the rest of the LGBTQ+ community in the American collective consciousness to more easily justify marginalization.
Trump’s strategy is continuing a longstanding tradition of finding issues that enrage the evangelical base that has been steadily aggregating in the Republican party since the 1960s. After Sodomy laws making gay sex illegal were overturned in 2003 and the Supreme Court ensured nationwide marriage equality in 2015, some evangelicals found their next culture issue in trans rights, kindling a culture war we are living in right now. A 2025 Pew Research Study found that Americans have overall become more supportive of legislation restricting transgender people’s protections since 2022. Republicans support anti-trans legislation by margins of 43-50, and Democrats support legal protections of transgender people by 30 points more than Republicans. The effect of this trend is clearly evident in trans-related legislation proposed. According to the Trans Legislation Tracker, 143 anti-trans bills were considered in 2021, which jumped to 174 in 2022, 615 in 2023, to 701 in 2024.
It is in this context that Trump used 41% of his $95 million worth of his campaign ads to promulgate stigmatizing rhetoric like “Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you.” Trump’s campaign specifically targeted transgender rights in classrooms by espousing misinformation meant to monger fear and hatred towards transgender youth medical care. At a Wisconsin rally, he made comments compelling parents to imagine that their “son comes back [from school] with a brutal operation.” Transgender medical care is not given in schools, and parental consent is generally required for such medical care if it is not already banned by the state. His comments are not just hateful–they deliberately ignore reality. By erasing transgender people from important historical events–by weaving a network of prejudicial disinformation, Trump cultivates a permission structure for bigotry in which he capitalizes on people’s hesitation towards ideas that lie outside of traditional norms and channels it to perpetuate both systemic and overt oppression. Scapegoating a minority can boost popularity, but a political strategy should not come at the cost of people’s livelihoods.
On January 20th, 2025 President Trump signed an executive order entitled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” It reasons that “gender ideology extremism” deprives women of their dignity, safety, and well-being because it allows “men to self identify as women and gain access to intimate single-sex spaces and activities designed for women, from women’s domestic abuse shelters to workplace showers.” This Executive Order serves well to represent the general proposed rationale and ethos behind Trump’s anti-trans policies.
The portrayal of Transgender people as sexual predators invading women’s spaces is unsubstantiated. A 2018 study from the William’s Insitute at the UCLA School of Law found a lack of a correlation between transgender people having access to the bathroom, changing room, or locker room that aligns with their gender and the number of criminal incidents in these spaces. Protecting women is an excuse to systemically isolate transgender people and relegate them to second class citizenship.
In the section describing the application of his order, he states that women and girls are females–“the sex producing the large reproductive cell”–and men are males producing “the small reproductive cell.” He mandates that all federal agencies comply with his laundry list of criteria: a wide terminology change, banning trans-women from accessing women-only spaces, prohibiting federal funds being used to “promote gender ideology,” changing all federal forms and announcements to say “sex” instead of gender, and rescinding several pro-LGBTQ executive orders. He has threatened to withhold federal funding from agencies that do not comply. That Executive Order is what precipitated the name change on the Stonewall Monument National Website.
Portraying people’s existence as a radical ideology is an extremely limiting way of viewing human existence. Biological classifications of sex exist, but human society has imposed certain traits upon them. A female is not genetically predisposed to liking pink or acting in traditionally feminine ways– its social factors that socialize people to identify with certain classifications and base their behavior on them. Reducing people to their sex assigned at birth ignores the social complexities of life that differentiate us from other animals. Trump’s orders do not target transgender people exclusively, either. The order attempts to erase Non-binary people, people who do not identify as a man or woman. Over 1.2 million Americans identify as non-binary in the United States according to a 2021 Williams Institute Brief. They do not simply cease to exist as a result of his order.
Even disregarding those social complexities, Trump’s strict sex dichotomy is not the “biological reality” he claims it is. He is actively ignoring Intersex people–the I in LGBTQIA+–who have either a reproductive or sexual anatomy that does not classify them as either male or female because of their internal reproductive organs, chromosome patterns, genitalia, or hormones. About 1.7% of Americans are intersex, but doctors are pressured to record babies as either male or female at birth. Because of the chronic, systemic erasure of Intersex people, many people do not even know that they exist. According to Planned Parenthood, doctors perform medically unnecessary surgeries on intersex babies and intersex children are given hormones during puberty to make them align with female/male categories, rather than allowing intersex citizens to make informed decisions about their bodies as adults. The Human Rights Watch offers a more in depth explanation of the history surrounding this phenomenon.
On January 28th, 2025, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) announced how it would adapt to his order. This agency was established by President Lyndon B. Johnson as a result of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to “eliminate unlawful employment discrimination” as per the words on their own website. Acting Chair of EEOC Andrea Lucas condemns “gender ideology” in her release statement laced with rhetoric mirroring that of Trump’s. The statement details how they removed the gender neutral term Mx. from prefix options, removed the “X” gender marker for those filing discrimination charges, reviewed and removed “materials promoting gender ideology,” and “commenced review” of a widely circulated “Know Your Rights Poster.” In other words, a core agency created to protect people from discrimination denied a marginalized group’s existence, limited access to information, made accessing helpful resources more difficult, and essentially framed any complaints about discrimination because of gender identity as invalid. Their actions are nothing short of a hateful and hypocritical abandonment of their original mission hidden under the guise of “protecting women.”
This abandonment is coupled by overt discrimination. In a January 27th, 2o25, Presidential Actions document release by the White House entitled “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness,” Trump attempted to ban transgender people from serving in the military by telling Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to carry out the ban within 60 days, justifying it by saying the “requisite warrior ethos” for service has “been afflicted with radical gender ideology” and that those with a “gender identify divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service” because being transgender conflicts with an “honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle.” Transgender woman and service member Miriam Perelson alleged she was required to leave the sleeping area for female troops, not allowed to use female restrooms, and was given a cot in an empty classroom to sleep because of the order, a degrading and disgraceful action. The U.S. Department of Defense released a statement on how it would be adapted, disqualifying applicants with a history of gender dysphoria and stating that current members with gender dysphoria will be “processed for separation.”
Since the Executive Order’s announcement, active duty transgender service members, a civil rights advocacy group, and a transgender man who wanted to enlist sued over the ban and a Seattle-Based U.S. District judge ruled to block the ban because it violates the 5th amendment right to equal protection under law. However, Trump asked the Supreme Court to overturn the decision on April 24th, 2025, so the supposed legality of the ban remains contentious.
Trump also signed an executive order banning transgender women from sports. Trans people’s involvement in sports requires a nuanced discussion that includes a variety of perspectives. Trump is clearly unwilling to engage in that discussion given his track record dehumanizing Trans people and reducing their existence to a “radical ideology.” The group that these laws are targeting is an extremely small minority that the GOP has inflated to monger rage towards the transgender community. For all the discourse laws aimed at transgender athletes, the National Collegiate Athletic Association President Charlie Baker contends that “out of more than 500,000 total college student athletes, he believed fewer than 10 were transgender.”
An example that most clearly illustrates the falsity of the argument that anti-trans bills protect women is The Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2025 aimed to prevent transgender girls from participating in youth sports. How exactly would that be enforced? The bill does not provide a clear method. Democrats have warned that this vague language could allow sexual predators to exploit young girls through genital inspections under the guise of checking if they are transgender. As put by Democrat New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the house floor, “There’s no enforcement mechanism in this bill that says it opens up for genital examinations. Well, here’s the thing. There’s no enforcement mechanism in this bill, and when there is no enforcement mechanism, you open the door to every enforcement mechanism.” The bill passed in the House of Representatives and failed in the Senate, but only narrowly with a 54-41 vote failing the 60 person majority.
Trump’s administration is also restricting access to transgender healthcare for youth. He signed an executive order to “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” on January 28th, 2025 which bans anyone under 19 from using puberty blockers, hormone therapy, or undergoing surgical treatments. The order describes a young person receiving transgender healthcare a “horrifying tragedy” involving the “maiming” and “sterilization” of “impressionable youth.” This language is demeaning towards transgender youth and their personal identities. The Executive Order was temporarily blocked by a federal judge on February 14th, 2025. A wealth of research suggests that medical care for transgender youth can be literally lifesaving for the improvements caused to mental health. The transphobic culture and legislation that Trump perpetuates has real consequences on Queer youth. According to The Trevor Project’s 2024 National Survey, 46% of transgender and non-binary youth seriously considered suicide in the past year, and 90% of LGBTQ+ young people feel their well being is negatively impacted by recent politics.
Trump frequently refers to anti-trans legislation as being “a return to common sense.” Common sense should dictate that a medical professional would have a better understanding of a patient’s condition than a politician. We have seen what happens when people are denied access to care. When Roe v. Wade was overturned, self-managed abortions doubled. Some youth who are denied care may pursue hormone therapy without guidance from a doctor, which can significantly increase the risk of serious cardiac events.
Trump’s anti-trans rhetoric lives and dies upon misinformation and deliberate disinformation. Despite many GOP officials and Trump conjuring up a dystopian image of “chemically mutilating” gender affirming care for transgender youth, medical care for transgender youth is actually rare. A 2024 Harvard study reviewed analyzing private insurance claims for young gender diverse youth from 8-17 from 2018 to 2022 and found that only 0.1% of gender diverse minors with private insurance received puberty blockers or gender affirming hormone treatment, with no medical treatment being given to minors 12 and under. Those with private insurance generally have better access to care than those uninsured or on medicaid, so this small rate is likely an overestimation.
Not everyone will change their opinion on Trump’s legislation with access to more information about genderqueer individuals. But people are not inherently cruel or hateful. A lot of stigma they face comes from disinformation campaigns and fear mongered by the media and Trump’s rhetoric. I urge you to advise people who often consume these content streams to consume media with authentic representation of genderqueer individuals and have meaningful interactions with these individuals themselves.
A question was proposed to the r/trans subreddit asking “What’s something you wish more people understood about being trans that doesn’t get talked about enough?” These are just some of their responses:
“Most people say ‘as long as it makes you happy,’ I explain to them that happiness is a temporary emotion, you can be happy sometimes and sad other times. The point is to be at peace with yourself. You can have money, health, love. But if you are not at peace with yourself, it is worthless.”
“HRT isn’t just about physical changes. It also makes you feel like yourself in a way I can even imagine describing to cis people. I seriously wish this was talked about more because I didn’t even know it would happen until I started HRT.”
“In addition, the idea we just need to ‘accept our bodies’ being just wrong. It presents the idea that we just need to ‘heal’ and ‘accept ourselves’ when transitioning is itself an act of self-love and acceptance and realization.”
Trump’s policy and rhetoric perpetuates systemic oppression of trans individuals. His role as president is to unite and protect Americans, but he has done the opposite for the sake of giving his supporters a common enemy to rally against. A study measured the impact on transgender youth for the year of 2024. over 133,900 trans youth live in states banning gender affirming care, and that number doubles when considering states with a pending ban. And it’s not just medical care, 93% of transgender youth from 13-17, which is over 280,000 people, cannot legally access gender-affirming care, cannot easily participate in sports in their school, use the bathroom of their gender, or be called the pronouns that they identify with. These are not just trans issues, or LGBTQ+ issues, or even issues of the Democratic party; they are human rights that the government is infringing upon, and all Americans–whether Democrat or Republican–should fight to protect their wellbeing.
By erasing transgender people from important historical events–by weaving a network of prejudicial disinformation, Trump cultivates a permission structure for bigotry in which he capitalizes on people’s hesitation towards ideas that lie outside of traditional norms and channels it to perpetuate both systemic and overt oppression.