October 21: On This Day In 2018
Fun Programming Note!
As promised on Friday, today’s OTDI is the first of three collaborations we’re doing with Schlep Labs and NowThis Impact. Below you can read today’s OTDI, and then you can head over to their award-winning sites to see their custom-crafted video take on this same issue.
We’re putting the “multi” in “multimedia.”
Please click here to see more about our partners and their sites. They post their new material each day at 3:00 pm Eastern. So, please set your reminder to check back on their sites this afternoon to watch their presentation of this same key topic. Thanks! And, as always, please let us know what you think. And now, today's OTDI...
The Trump Administration seemed to take particular delight in picking on the most vulnerable groups of people in American society. This time, it was the trans community’s turn -- again -- to have their civil rights ripped away by the hate-filled Donald Trump.
OTDI 2018, it emerged that Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services was aiming to redefine "sex as either male or female, unchangeable, and determined by the genitals that a person is born with, according to a draft reviewed by The (New York) Times.”
And while that may have been the general definition 40 years ago, society’s understanding of this issue has evolved considerably since then. It takes a special kind of “conservative” to roll back the clock to an earlier ignorant era.
As artist Evan Greer noted, this new Trumpian plan "would attempt to tell millions of transgender people like me not what we can do, but who we can be. It would attempt to tell us that, legally, we don’t exist — that in the eyes of the state, we are not ourselves. It’s the ultimate form of government intrusion."
Today, approximately 1.6 million Americans—less than ½ of 1% of our population—identify as trans. 300,000 are ages 13-17, reflecting the growing comfort that younger people have expressing their true selves and living their lives unburdened by a rigid system society used to force upon them.
Yet, the Trump team thought it was worth their time to specifically trample on the rights of these citizens. As the NYT noted, this was “the most drastic move yet in a (Trump-led) governmentwide effort to roll back recognition and protections of transgender people under federal civil rights law.”
Other arrows in Trump's onslaught of attacks on the trans community included:
Banning trans people from our military--by tweet--while lying that he had consulted ahead of time with "his generals." (OTDI of 7/26)
Arguing before the Supreme Court that employers should be re-allowed to discriminate again against trans people. (OTDI of 8/16)
Trying to remove protections for LGBTQ+ students; that was one reason Amnesty International lumped Trump in with some of the world's dictators like Xi and Putin. (OTDI of 2/22)
Ben Carson's HUD's seeking to permit homeless shelters to turn away trans people. (Coming up in 12/5's OTDI)
Incarcerating trans inmates based on their assigned gender at birth, putting them at higher risk of assault
Encouraging healthcare providers to deny care to trans people based on their "moral" beliefs.
Traditionally in the United States, the wheels of progress roll forward. But that often wasn’t the case with the Trump Administration. Settled law and these basic protections -- as we also saw with reproductive rights -- wound up facing threats decades after their passage and integration into our everyday lives.
It would only get worse: Trump has promised if he’s reelected to push Congress to ban gender-affirming care for minors. And to punish doctors and hospitals who provide it. And to meddle in bathroom regulations. And... who knows what else they'll dream up if given this second chance.
Meanwhile, if, as Trump just said, Harris has been a “shit vice president” ... are there words to describe how awful all this made his presidency?
Dive Deeper
The New York Times has the full details on the HHS memo
Evan Greer had the powerful op-ed here on NBC News
UCLA has some stats on the community
Pic: Sourced from @david_a_evans; photo by @jamiebruesehoff
On This Day In The Trump Administration: Trump’s war on the LGBTQ+ , trans transgender community