Hunter Schafer proves how hard things are for trans people

Donald Trump’s administration has wasted no time in stripping back transgender rights.

Through a series of executive orders, he declared there are only two sexes, restricted gender-affirming care for trans youth, and laid the groundwork for yet another trans military ban.

Now, officials have removed mentions of trans people from the New York’s Stonewall National Museum – including dropping trans and queer people from the LGBTQ+ acronym. To me, it honestly looks like a lazy ‘find and replace’ job on all the text on the website. 

This is clearly an attempt to erase trans people’s contribution from LGBTQ+ history, despite eyewitness and first-hand accounts that trans people were absolutely part of Stonewall.

But trans people aren’t the only groups that have been targeted by this extreme censorship and erasure. Anything flagged as relating to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is now on the chopping block.

Words like ‘women’, ‘gender’, ‘minority’, and ‘biases’ are being flagged as problematic by institutions like the National Science Foundation, while NASA has removed mentions of women in leadership or female pioneers.

Even the National Institutes of Health and various university departments have been targeted, with academics saying that their work is under scrutiny for containing words like ‘women’.

It’s plain and simple: This is censorship. And it clearly makes it much harder for women to talk about issues related to equality and human rights – as researchers could struggle to publish research on violence against women, reproductive rights, and many other challenges women face in society.

The irony here is that Trump and his administration have consistently claimed that they are ‘protecting women’ with their attacks on trans rights and equality – but then turn around and restrict their rights and try to erase their contribution from history, science, and research. 

Meanwhile, words such as ‘men’ and ‘white’ were reportedly nowhere to be found on lists of censored or problematic words.

It’s clear it’s never been about ‘protecting women’, but about pushing their extremism further. 

If people accept that trans people aren’t worthy of the same rights and dignity as others, it is easier to get people to believe the same about other groups of people.

In my mind, it’s propaganda 101. 

This is why it is deeply chilling and ironic to see Elon Musk – who has been hired as a special government employee by President Trump – tweet last week: ‘One of the things Hitler did upon gaining power was to apply aggressive censorship.’

Never mind the fact that Musk deemed the innocuous descriptor ‘cisgender’ as a slur and now X (formerly Twitter) limits the visibility of posts with the word in it.

But if we want to talk about Nazis, trans people were also targets during World War II, according to the Museum of Jewish Heritage. In 1933, the Institute of Sexology in Germany was invaded by Nazis, and all books and research on LGBTQ+ issues was destroyed.

This is well recorded in history, regardless of what certain famous authors appear to suggest.

What is perhaps most curious about all of this is that the biggest advocates for freedom of speech appear to be entirely silent on this issue. To me, it looks like they’re doing nothing as one of the biggest cases of censorship in US modern history is carried out.

At the end of the day, it is chilling to see the US Government target minorities and apply such aggressive censorship to anything related to equality, human rights, and inclusion. It is a clear attack on human rights, liberty, and freedom as we know it – and yet Trump’s supporters are celebrating this.

It is no wonder that people are rightly feeling worried about where these developments might lead.

Because I believe it won’t end there, as the Trump administration is already attacking things such as environmental justice, cutting funding for health research, and much more.

And the consequences are already being felt — American actress Hunter Schafer described recently how she had to renew her passport, and it was issued under ‘male’ instead of ‘female’. 

This is happening to trans people across the US, and can quite obviously make traveling for them more difficult, and potentially dangerous. 

It means they could be targeted, they could have passports considered inaccurate and makes it harder for trans people to simply live their lives.  

But regardless of what executive orders are put in place, regardless of how much they try to restrict the rights of trans people and other minorities; we will remain.

We have always been here, and we will continue to exist. No amount of legislation, misinformation, or attacks will change that fact. 

We will continue to form our communities, fight for what’s right, and find support and solidarity with each other. Because even if they can erase us legally, they can never really erase us.

They can never erase our spirit, our community and our lives. We’re not going anywhere.

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