Posted by By Maggie Heenan, Staff Editor
Genocide; a word that the majority of people would associate with a deliberate, mass killing of a specific minority group. When we hear this word we think of the Holocaust or the Rwandan genocide- we think of this as a tragedy of the past or as the horrifying reality of other countries, but certainly not of our own. This is where we are mistaken. As of May 6th, 2023, there have been 537 anti-transgender bills introduced nationwide, 64 of which have passed, 97 of which have failed, and the rest are actively being considered. This overwhelming influx of legislation targeting transgender individuals throughout the country is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the ways in which the government is targeting them. In the year 2023, we are in the midst of a genocide against transgender people in America.
All genocides can be recognized as such by Gregory Stanton’s Ten Stages of Genocide, which consists of classification, symbolization, discrimination, dehumanization, organization, polarization, preparation, persecution, extermination, and denial. However these ten stages do not have to occur in consecutive order, and most often, multiple stages will occur at once. It is also important to recognize that genocide comes in multiple different forms- five, to be exact. The UN Convention of the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide outlines the five types of genocide as the following: the first is what is most commonly thought of when employing the word “genocide”, which is the killing of members of a particular group. However deliberate, first-hand killings such as what happened in Nazi Concentration Camps during the Holocaust are not the only type of crime or harm that constitutes a genocide.
A genocide can also be categorized as the inflicting of serious mental or physical harm to members of a specific group, the deliberate implementations of life conditions on a group that is designed to result in the groups’ “physical destruction in whole or in part”, taking purposeful measures to prevent births within the group, or the forceful transfer of children from a group.
As it is now, the genocide of transgender Americans falls into the category of the second and third types of genocide: the serious mental harm of people in a specific group and the placing of purposeful life conditions on a group of people meant to cause the destruction of the group. This is being accomplished with the myriad of laws being passed and proposed at the moment which threaten the wellbeing of transgender individuals, especially transgender youth. Currently, at least half of the ten stages of genocide apply to the actions being taken against trans individuals in the US.
The stage of classification can be explained by the language used to differentiate between people who identify with a gender other than the one assigned to them at birth and those who identify with the gender assigned to them at birth. For example, the socially-conscious terms for this are “transgender” and “cisgender”, however other words such as “fake” men/women versus “real” men/women are also commonly used to create a separation and a feeling of ‘them’ versus ‘us.’ The stage of discrimination is simply explained by the wave of legislation banning gender affirming care for minors and barring transgender athletes from women’s sports this year.
Just a few months ago, in late April, Fox News published an article titled “2024 hopeful raises concerns on trans ideology negatively impacting kids” in which 2024 Republican Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy asserts that “‘I think that when a kid says that I’m born into the wrong body, that my gender doesn’t match my biological sex, more often than not that is a case of a mental health disorder.’” To have future Presidential candidates and mainstream News sources publishing material that essentially equates being transgender to having a mental health disorder is incredibly harmful not only to young trans kids who hear these assertions, and as a result suffer even more severe negative self image than most trans kids already do, but also to the general public’s view of transgender individuals.
Ramaswamy’s is just one of dozens of inaccurate and baseless claims made by political figures in an attempt to dehumanize transgender people, and as a result make it easier to get destructive legislation passed to limit trans rights every day. Almost exactly before the Fox News article was published, Marjorie Taylor Greene was suspended from twitter after exploiting the horrifying school shooting in Nashville back in March, by using the fact that the shooter identified as trans to push the agenda that Antifa had been organizing a “call for violence called ‘Trans Day of Vengeance.’” Greene had tweeted this just one day after the horrific shooting, which was not only disrespectful to the victims and their families, as she used their pain and loss to her advantage, but also spreads an incredibly dangerous and untrue message that all transgender individuals are violent and seeking “vengeance.” This fear-mongering from yet another politician, this time a mainstream one who is frequently highlighted in the media, falls perfectly into the category of polarization, and just like Ramaswamy, Greene’s claim and others like it will inevitably have people pushing for more restrictions on trans freedoms.
Recently, both the Governor of Montana and the Florida Legislature furthered these restrictions on trans freedoms by passing a law which banned gender-affirming care for minors. These bills endanger not only the mental health of transgender teens in these states but consequently their physical health as well, as Montana State Representative Zooey Zephyr, a transgender woman, pointed out to her colleagues as she urged them to reject the bill. Zephyr pleaded with the Montana Legislature, asserting that to deny gender affirming care to transgender minors would be, for them, “tantamount to torture,” and that in passing this bill the, Legislature would have “blood on [their] hands.”
Representative Zephyr’s heavy claims, which resulted in the Legislature blocking her from the house floor for the rest of the legislative session, are unfortunately not unfounded, and in fact are backed up by numerous statistics. Recent data demonstrates that 82% of trans people have had suicidal thoughts and 40% have attempted suicide, and across the board data shows that suicide rates for transgender individuals are substantially higher than those for both cisgendered men and women. On top of the statistical evidence that supports Representative Zephyr’s claims, many medical organizations, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, are in opposition of any kind of legislation that denies gender-affirming care for transgender youth, and assert that bans seriously threaten the mental health and safety of young trans people.
These statistics alone are enough to show that there is already a serious disparity in the mental wellbeing between transgender individuals and cisgender individuals, but with the drastic uptick in anti-transgender legislation and major steps backwards in trans rights and freedoms, these statistics are bound to worsen if we continue on the path we’re on now. These laws are not being passed to protect trans kids from regretting their decision as many political figures claim; these laws are implemented to restrict the freedoms and severely exacerbate the already poor life conditions of transgender people in America.
The Maroon 