It hurts knowing that after all the work that we have done, the Trump administration continues to make policies that try to cease our existence. The Trump administration is considering defining gender as biologically determined by genitalia at birth, as an effort to roll back legal protections of transgender/genderqueer individuals under the federal law. This means that all people whose gender does not correlate with the sex that they were assigned at birth, can legally be held to discrimination in any setting; whether that be the workplace, in education, or health care.
The new administration is working hard to undo all the progress that the LGBTQ community, specifically transgender people, have made under the Obama administration, such as the loosening of gender legally. But under this new legislation, many people won’t be able to express their true identity.
So this hurts. It hurts that all this work that we’ve been doing, that all we have suffered for is being erased. It hurts to try to fit into a society where you will never be seen for who you are. I still feel that as a gender nonconforming individual that I have to act like a woman.
Still don’t understand? Let’s remove this from gender for a bit: Why must we conform to something that isn’t us? Why must we be subject to discrimination just because we were not born like everyone else? I don’t think I’ll ever understand. Allies, this is where we need you. This is where we need you to speak out when something doesn’t sit right. This is where we need you to join us in fighting back the administration. This is where you need to vote… while the administration may not affect you, it affects us.
We will continue to fight, and we won’t back down until the administration does.