Resisting Trans and Nonbinary Erasure

Observations about the White House's callous, calculated attack on trans and nonbinary Americans and my developing action list about how to respond

As I tap my credit card, I notice a black and gold flyer beside the register for an upcoming drag show featuring three resplendent queens. A smile tugs at my lips. I look down at the rainbow shoes I plucked from the closet to counteract today’s frigid drizzle and bad news. I wiggle my toes.

I’m here—human, woman, lesbian, and in this moment, happy and warm.

Rainbow shoes that make me smile. This photo is from 2023 when they were new.

While I sip my latte, I stretch the moment out and pull it around me, gazing at the HUMAN banner over the espresso machine. Gratitude kindles and glows, hope rising like smoke from that inner hearth. Then, Etta James’s “At Last,” drifts from the speakers. My eyes glisten as I listen to our song and imagine slow dancing with my wife in our kitchen, resting my head on her shoulder.

I am here. In love. Loved. Loving me and her and this hurting world.

This colorful banner makes me feel affirmed and welcomed each time I walk into my favorite local coffee shop.

The LGBTQI+ pride-flag colors reflected in the letters on the HUMAN banner remind me of the humans in this hurting world most on my mind lately. In the past few weeks, a spate of anti-trans and anti-nonbinary executive orders has spewed from the White House in a callous, calculated barrage, dis-orders that seek to deny a core aspect of identity for transgender and nonbinary people, dis-orders that demean and endanger trans folks, especially transgender women.

When I hear the dehumanizing, damaging narrative such dis-orders fabricate and perpetuate, I flinch, remembering how, around the time I was coming out, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and others who wielded power like a firehose, took to the airwaves. In the wake of disasters, natural or manmade, they’d rail against LGBTQI+ people, claiming the latest tragedy, including 9-11, was God’s vengeance against America for our continued existence or increasing inclusion.

I remember radio stations replaying those hateful remarks. How they’d hit me unexpectedly on my drive to work when music gave way to news. How sometimes, I’d change the station, letting my head bob to the next song, singing along to distract myself. How, other times, I’d turn the radio off and cuss—or pull off the road and cry. And the late nineties and early 2000’s were mild as this history of hate goes.

June 2025 will mark ten years since we’ve had nationwide marriage equality for same-sex couples, and five since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it was illegal to discriminate against employees for being LGBTQ. For those with fifty plus years on the planet, this may still seem new. It does to me.

Yet today’s teens have grown up in an America that’s had marriage equality since they could ride a bike. Some have two Moms or two Dads, and several have classmates who do. Many have laughed at sitcoms with LGBTQI+ characters or read books with a same-sex kiss in which hate doesn’t win. Even if there’s someone in their living room or pulpit who despises or denies this reality, it’s a reality that has existed for as long as most of them can remember. I can only imagine what this backlash must feel like, especially to teens who identify as transgender or nonbinary. How jarring it must be. How scary.

What can I do? I wondered, briefly, if I should retire so that I could invest more time counteracting these attacks, but I love my work and want to increase my donations to pro-LGBTQI+ organizations, so reducing my income isn’t the right move right now. Instead, I’d like to begin by sharing a few observations about these inhumane dis-orders and their inherent hypocrisy.

Before I do, let me acknowledge some limitations. You might think that being a lesbian helps me understand what it means to be transgender or nonbinary. It doesn’t. Being part of the LGBTQI+ community increases my empathy, but I’m cisgender, meaning that my gender identity, woman, corresponds with the sex assigned to me when I was born, female. This has resulted in different life experiences than someone who’s transgender, whose gender identity does not correspond to their assigned sex at birth, or a nonbinary person whose gender identity exists in both places or somewhere in between. Thus, it’s neither possible nor appropriate for me to attempt to speak for transgender or nonbinary people or to generalize their experiences. Just as being a woman is only part of who I am, their gender identities coexist with all the other facets of the persons they are.

With these limitations in mind, here’s what I’ve noticed.

Federal censorship and erasing the existence of transgender and nonbinary Americans

The dis-order espousing the White House’s ideology about sex and gender (#14168) seeks to erase transgender and nonbinary people’s existence, discounting these gender identities as “false claims.” In the current administration’s stated ideology, sex designations are “immutable” and gender identities other than male or female cannot exist—even though biology reflects the mutability of such designations in humans as evidenced, in part, by people born with biological traits of both sexes, a.k.a., intersex (AP). Both the American Medical Association and American Psychiatric Association recognize transgender and nonbinary identities among the many possible normal variations of human experience.

From this stridently declared premise, this dis-order proceeds to censor terms like gender identity, transgender, and nonbinary in federal statements, policies, regulations, forms, policies, and communications, striking these words from existing documents and prohibiting their future use. Resources providing guidance and support for the health, wellbeing, education, housing, employment, and civil rights of transgender Americans disappeared. Likewise, federally funded research, programs, grants, medical treatments, and services related to gender identity ceased.

This erasure also denies the role of transgender people in U.S. history. Last week, the National Park Service expunged references to transgender people from the web site for the Stonewall National Monument, including severing the T and Q from LGBTQ. Such censorship suppresses information about the role trans activists like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera played in the Stonewall Uprising and the larger fight for LGBTQI+ rights.

Ironically, this dis-order was issued on the same day as #14149 entitled “RESTORING FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND ENDING FEDERAL CENSORSHIP” – apparently enacting a strategy that if-we-repeat-a-lie-enough-times, people-will-believe-it’s-true (and that perhaps declaring so in enormous ALL CAPS white letters on whitehouse.gov might help such false claims appear truer).

Building on their characterization of gender identities as “falsehoods,” this and subsequent dis-orders delete the “X” option for gender markers on passports, visas, and other federal identification; require transgender women inmates to be housed in men’s prisons; deny gender-affirming care; and assert that transgender and nonbinary identities “conflict with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle” and instruct that access to military facilities for bathing, changing, and sleeping be restricted based on sex assigned at birth (#14183). It would seem that it is such orders, rather than living as their authentic selves, that could force transgender and nonbinary service members to resort to dishonesty.

Weaponizing the federal government and endangering transgender and nonbinary Americans

Just as unsettling as the erasure, censorship, and denial of personhood enacted by these dis-orders is the calculated rhetoric they deploy to foment fear of transgender and nonbinary people, especially transgender women, rhetoric that demeans, disrespects, and dehumanizes these Americans, rhetoric that could lead to increased violence against them. Previous surges in anti-trans rhetoric and legislation have correlated with increased murders of transgender and nonbinary people in the U.S., with the highest homicide rates for Black transgender women.

The title of the Oval Office edict about sex and gender begins with the words “Defending women…” and foments fear about trans women accessing “private intimate spaces” like “women’s workplace showers.” Similarly, a subsequent order about women’s sports (#14201) calls the presence of trans women in women’s sports “dangerous,” invoking settings like “all-female locker rooms.”

They deploy these words to cause people to picture women naked and to perceive trans women, presumably trans women who may have a penis, as predatory. But the history of sexual abuse in women’s sports suggests that it is the penises, hands, and mouths of certain cisgender male coaches and doctors that have long endangered female athletes. Despite decades of such scandals, men still serve in such roles for women’s sports teams.

Defending women? If the engineers of these orders truly wanted to defend female athletes from predatory males, they would have barred men from serving in coaching and medical roles in women’s sports or implemented significant oversight of such men long before now.

As with the contradictory order claiming to end federal censorship on the same day the administration issued a censorship order, the first order signed on Jan. 20 was #14147 entitled “ENDING WEAPONIZATION OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT”—and it was quickly followed by dis-orders weaponizing the federal government to attack transgender and nonbinary Americans and other groups and institutions in the United States.

Why is the White House targeting transgender and nonbinary Americans?

During the rise of Nazi power in Germany, Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller supported many of the Nazi party’s ideas. But after Hitler took office, Niemöller began to speak out, initially due to Hitler’s meddling with the Protestant Church. Niemöller was imprisoned and spent several years in concentration camps. After the war, he spoke about his early complicity, publishing a statement that included these now famous words:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Depending on which source you consult, somewhere between 0.5% and 1.6% of U.S. adults (Williams Institute; Pew Research Center) identify as transgender or nonbinary. By targeting such a small group, perhaps the administration banked on the fact that most Americans aren’t part of this group and therefore, may be less likely to speak out against these inhumane, anti-American executive orders.

In the fight for LGBTQI+ rights in the U.S., one of the strategies that has contributed to turning the tide of public opinion toward equality is LGBTQI+ visibility. On Gay Freedom Day in 1978, a commemoration of the Stonewall Uprising, Harvey Milk, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and the first openly gay elected official in the United States, gave a speech that urged gay people to come out:

I ask my gay sisters and brothers to make the commitment to fight. For themselves. For their freedom. For their country. […] We will not win our rights by staying quietly in our closets. We are coming out! We are coming out to fight the lies, the myths, the distortions! We are coming out to tell the truth about gays! For I am tired of the conspiracy of silence. […] I’m tired of the silence, so I’m going to talk about it. And I want you to talk about it. […] You must come out. […] Come out only to the people you know, and who know you. Not to anyone else. But once and for all, break down the myths, destroy the lies and distortions.

Decades later, the decision of LGBTQI+ families to be visible helped sway public opinion about marriage equality. It’s an effect known as “contact theory.”

In 2018, Professor Daniel DellaPosta at Penn State studied responses to the General Social Survey (GSS) to see what they suggested about the impact of having a gay or lesbian acquaintance. He concluded that “people who met and became acquainted with at least one gay person were more likely to later change their minds about same-sex marriage and become more accepting of gay and lesbian people in general.”

Nowadays, many Americans have at least one lesbian or gay acquaintance, but a 2022 survey found that nearly half of respondents aged 18-49 and two-thirds age 65 or older did not know anyone who identifies as transgender (Pew Research Center).

These dis-orders from the White House seek to erase transgender and nonbinary people before more Americans have an opportunity to get to know them as neighbors, coworkers, or cousins. It reminds me of lines from Adrienne Rich’s poem What Kind of Times Are These: “this is not somewhere else but here, / our country moving closer to its own truth and dread, / its own ways of making people disappear.”

It’s also possible that someone associated with the Executive Branch knew that even within the LGBTQI+ community, transgender people sometimes experience marginalization or discrimination, something that happened to trans activists on the frontlines at Stonewall. Perhaps they hoped that LGB people would once again turn their backs on siblings and kin who identify as T.

Why the damaging demonization of trans women in particular?

I’m not sure if this is the answer but consider that trans women are assigned male at birth yet find wholeness in being female. For people who prize masculinity, who prefer when males have power over females, who shrug off sexual abuse of female athletes or other women as boys being boys or men being men, or who ascribe to a patriarchal worldview that centers male authority, the reality of trans women, the truth of their lived experience, must elude comprehension. It’s possible that the cognitive dissonance this creates in their brain causes them psychological or even physical pain. Their solution? Declare that transgender and nonbinary people don’t exist and never have. What will the ramifications be—for transgender and nonbinary people? for the LGBTQI+ community? for America?

In this post, I’ve focused on the White House’s venomous assault on transgender and nonbinary adults. I recognize that this administration has chosen to blame, demean, dehumanize, demonize, endanger, or erase other groups too, including transgender and nonbinary youth, as well as many institutions. And executive orders are only one way they’ve weaponized the federal government.

I also recognize that declaring sex as immutable may make the world seem less complicated—but that doesn’t make that claim true. Human identities are complex. Creating an inclusive society is messy. It will take many attempts before we figure out all the fullest and fairest ways for the whole human family to thrive. This inhumane erasure of valuable, valid, and often vulnerable people is not the answer.

I am here. In love. Loved. Loving this hurting world. So, what can I do? What can you do? Here’s the action list I’ve developed so far.

1. Connect with transgender and nonbinary people you already know. Let them know you value and support them. Listen to whatever insights they choose to share about what they need from you. Show up in any ways you can.

2. Donate to or volunteer for organizations that support or advocate for LGBTQI+ people, especially ones doing specific work to serve transgender and nonbinary people. For readers in Richmond, local and state organizations include Diversity Richmond, Equality Virginia, Side by Side, He She Ze and We, and ACLU Virginia. National organizations include GLAAD, Advocates for Trans Equality, Lambda Legal, The National Center for Lesbian Rights, and The Human Rights Campaign. Look for organizations active in your community too.

3. Disrupt damaging narratives about transgender and nonbinary people. Like damaging, discriminatory, or dehumanizing remarks about people based on their race, color, sex, religion, nationality, or immigration status, let those who traffic in such talk know it’s not OK. Expand their understanding of transgender and nonbinary people based on the LGBTQI+ history you know and your own relationships and experiences (while taking care not to “out” any LGBTQI+ person who is not open and public about this aspect of their identity).

4. Speak up about the changes you’d like to see. Write, call, or visit your legislators. Write or call the President, Attorney General, or agencies putting these dis-orders into action. Protest.

5. Buy from businesses that provide LGTBQI+ affirming spaces—your community’s version of my local coffee shop with the HUMAN banner over the espresso machine.

6. Continue to pay attention. This barrage of dis-orders is designed to be disorienting and overwhelming—don’t let it stun you into immobility or silence, at least not for long.

7. Nurture relationships. Resist the urge to isolate.

8. Feel your feelings. Resist numbness.

9. Share your joy. Resist despair. Do things that bring you joy and share that joy with others.

10. Love. Striving to extend love even to those whose words or actions you despise.

What would you add? Please share your suggestions in the comments.

How many Americans will say, months or years from now, First, they came for transgender and nonbinary people, and I did not speak out—because I was not transgender or nonbinary. Then they came for the ____________[insert another targeted group]…?

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Here’s a poem for your pocket until the next post: A Bridge on Account of Sex: A Trans Woman Speaks to Susan B. Anthony on the 100th Anniversary of the 19th Amendment by Joy Ladin.

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Additional Resources

• For reference, you may want to download the post-inauguration Guidance for LGBTQIA+ Communities created by ACLU Virginia and Equality Virginia which reflects changes as of January 27, 2025. Follow the web sites or social media of such organizations to stay up to date.

• To understand more about the transgender community and the challenges transgender people face, read these articles from the HRC or CNN, or check out Virginia’s first-ever trans joy zine featuring trans and nonbinary storytellers.

• To learn more about Americans’ complex views on gender identity and transgender issues, read this 2022 report from the Pew Research Center.

• If you’d like to access official versions of current or previous Executive Orders (rather than viewing the editions with ALL CAPS titles on whitehouse.gov), you can find them at federalregister.gov, a site jointly administered by The Office of the Federal Register (OFR) of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), and the U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO).

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