Trans rights are human rights

Marcus Falcão / THE GATEPOST

By Jesse Burchill Staff Writer Recently, there’s been a concerning rise in transphobic sentiments on a federal level. As described by NPR in an article written by Juliana Kim, the National Park Service has erased the word “transgender” entirely from its Stonewall website, referring to the LGBTQ+ community as simply “LGB.” The site still recaps the events of the Stonewall riots and their importance, but completely ignores the presence of transgender individuals. For context, the Stonewall riots started at the gay bar of the same name in 1969 in New York City, took place over several days, and paved the way for gay pride events and parades across the country in the present day. The riots were the result of a police raid on the building, and were the culmination of, as Kim’s article states, “years of raids, beatings and arrests endured by LGBTQ individuals.” While the gay rights movement in the U.S. had been going on for years beforehand, the events associated with Stonewall brought it into the public eye like never before, and in 2016 the inn was designated a national monument by President Barack Obama. Two of the most important figures in the riots were transgender women: Martha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera. The pair were close friends who were frequent attendees at the Stonewall Inn, and were heavily involved in Manhattan’s gay rights movements throughout the 1960s and ’70s. They were both involved with the Stonewall riots as well, with Johnson having become one of the riots’ most commonly-associated figures. By cutting out any mention of trans people’s involvement in the Stonewall riots, the National Park Service is ignoring important information about how the riots got started. Furthermore, passports have become a headache for transgender and intersex individuals as of late. For context, U.S. passports have a field for the sex of the person it’s issued for - M for male, F for female, and X for those whose gender identities fall outside the first two categories. As described by an NPR article written by Jaclyn Diaz, President Donald Trump issued an executive order that federally recognizes only two biological sexes. She specifies that “the federal government now views ‘female’ as meaning ‘a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell’ and male as ‘a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.’” According to Diaz’s article, Trump’s executive order led the State Department “to eliminate the X gender as an option and to suspend its policy allowing transgender, intersex and nonbinary people to update the sex field of their passports” about a week after the election. Diaz interviewed Erika Lorshbough, who stated that “intersex people, by definition, cannot fall into these categories,” that “some intersex people are assigned a sex at birth that doesn't match their development later in life,” and that the X gender marker allows for intersex people to be better represented. Diaz’s article also chronicles the experiences of a transgender man named Louie, who applied for a new passport and tried to update the gender marker to match his gender identity shortly after Trump was sworn into office. Louie’s new passport had the correct name, but still marked his gender as female. He said that he wasn’t surprised, but is still frustrated and is “rethinking his international travel destinations and is concerned about how even interactions in the U.S. with law enforcement, for example, could become a problem when his passport lists one gender and his other legal documents another.” It’s very hard to see these recent events as anything besides explicit transphobia on a federal level, and it’s similarly hard to ignore that changes like these have been happening in swift succession since Trump was elected president earlier this year. Furthermore, Trump’s declaration that restricts the definition of biological sex to only two types explicitly ignores the fact that such a perspective has been scientifically proven false, as evidenced by the existence of intersex individuals, people with Klinefelter syndrome, and people with pentasomy X. His passport policy has already sparked a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union, which according to Diaz’s article “argues that the executive order and passport policy are unlawful, unconstitutional and ‘unmoored from scientific and medical reality.’” These events also cast a frightening precedent. For starters, as described in Diaz’s NPR article, the restriction of the X marker option effectively prevents trans people from reflecting their true gender identity on official documents, “forcing them to ‘out’ themselves every time they present their passports - heightening their distress and fear and adding unpredictable logistical and safety challenges for travel and even everyday life.” Furthermore, erasing the influence of trans people in the Stonewall riots can easily lead to the erasure of trans people elsewhere and the erasure of other queer individuals from history, denying them the recognition they deserve. Such people include not only Marsha P. Johnson and Silvia Rivera, but lesser-known individuals like American Civil War veteran Albert Cashier and American physician Alan L. Hart. Cashier was born female in 1843, but assumed a male identity so he could enlist in the Union Army at age 19. He would live under his male identity for over 50 years after the war, doing so until his death in 1915. While the word “transgender” was first coined several decades after his death, the length of Cashier’s commitment to living under a male identity provides a strong implication that Cashier was indeed a transgender man. Hart (1890 - 1962) was an American physician, radiologist, tuberculosis researcher, and writer who was a major figure in the testing process for tuberculosis. According to a Science American article written by Leo DeLuca, Hart revolutionized the use of chest X-rays for tuberculosis before major symptoms appeared, thus limiting the disease’s spread. This process is still being used today for the same purpose. Hart was born female and is widely considered to have been a transgender man - he was one of the first trans men to undergo a hysterectomy in 1917, and lived as a man until his death. Describing these people from history is meant to show how being transgender, genderqueer, or not cisgender in general is far from new. It is not a 21st-century “trend” or an inherent sign of being a social deviant or a “bad” person. The odds of individual trans people being “good” or “bad” people are the same as cisgender people. If we do not learn from history, if we refuse to, then we’ll be doomed to repeat it to the detriment of many, including those within both the trans community and the larger LGBTQ+ community and others. Those who fall under the transgender umbrella have existed long before the word “transgender” ever had, and are completely normal people just like anyone else. Trans people have always existed, and will continue to exist no matter what. It’s important - now more than ever - to understand and accept them as who they share themselves as.