Trump Targets Trans Passports

TransLash fam, this is the Mess Imara’s guide to our Political hellscape. And that’s me. I’m Amara. I’m so glad that you’re here, because it’s been a wild two weeks and it’s the perfect time for us to come together two weeks into the Trump administration to try to process everything that’s been going on in politics and in policy, you name it. And to just try to see the absurdity of it all as we process the reality of it all, you know, finding the hope and all of the darkness. But the hope is actually that we’re together as a community, as a podcast, as a listening audience, and that that’s the way we’re going to get through all of this. So it’s been a wild ride and let’s just get into it. Today on the Mess, I’m going to tackle Trump’s executive order, which proclaims that there are only two sexes that would be recognized by the government. Next, we’ll talk about the reports of trans people being denied passports and what that means. And lastly, we’ll talk about the rollback of gender affirming care in hospitals across the country. But actually, the hope that is the fact that so many people are showing up to protest and make their voice heard. Now, as a heads up, this was recorded a few days before it hits your ear. So if things change and we know that they will and they do, you’ll know why. It’s a wild world out there. Okay, let’s get messy. So on day one of the Trump administration, I know that it feels like 20 years ago, but it was just a couple of weeks, actually. You can still say not that many days ago, Trump signed an executive order which said that the government would only recognize two biological sexes, male and female. Now, that doesn’t make sense for so many reasons. I mean, the first is that is just wrong in terms of science. You know, they say they love science but actually hate science at the same time, because the order says that it would define sex as whatever your God given sex was at conception. Now, there are a couple of points about that, and I’ll come back to that in a minute. But that’s dumb, as I said in the beginning, because everyone starts out as female. So did they just declare everyone in the country as female? Like that’s actually how everyone starts and then nature does what it does, you know, flips a coin since like various hormones and things and then decides what range of sexes that you’ll be. And we all know that there are actually a range of sexes because intersex people and different chromosomal combinations, like it’s so much more diverse than they want to say or admit, or that 95% of us were taught. So it just doesn’t make sense on the science part, right? And then they were like, no, quickly, we don’t really mean that everyone is female, Duh. But I think that the thing that we have to hold on to this and why this is actually a really frightening executive order is because when the government is saying that it has a interest in knowing what your biological sex is in the womb, which opens the door to the possibility of a series of interest that the government has in actually controlling what happens in the womb. This is not only about abortion, as we talked about before, in terms of bodily autonomy at transition, we have a whole campaign called trans fat. These trans choices on bodily autonomy and the way that they come together. But this is saying that the government has a proactive interest in what happens in the womb. Right. And has an interest in perhaps governing, controlling how you comport yourself in the world because of the impact that it might have on the womb. Right. So that’s the first thing that’s frightening. That’s scary, that’s authoritarian, that’s well on the road to fascism. But the second piece of this is that if they’re saying that they’re defining whatever your biological sex is to mean in the womb, and since transness is something that is often expressed after conception, it’s actually a way to erase trans identity completely, right. To see that trans people don’t exist. It puts you on the road to that, and that’s why they’ve done, you know, a series of things, such as taking away gender markers on various governmental forms, removing references to gender identity from various health studies and various reports that people have put out, including reports at universities. Universities are wondering if they have to scrub gender identity as well because they receive federal money. I mean, this is just dystopian, right? And there’s no other way to say it. And the reason why I wanted to uplift this is because it’s not getting the attention that it deserves. It’s getting the attention that it deserves in terms of the forms and people being obstructed and disrupted that way, but not conceptually what the government is possibly setting up for trans people, but for everybody. If the government has an active controlling interest on proactively monitoring the room and then your body associated with it and what happens and just the total erasure of trans people, because they’re saying trans people don’t occur in the womb, trans people are after. And so there’s that. And it’s just a furtherance of this obsession with control over people’s bodies because if you control bodies, then you can control the society. And that is a Handmaid’s Tale mess.

[00:05:42] I’m leaving the Los Angeles Passport Agency after trying to acquire a new passport. After mine was expired and misplaced by quite a bit. And I have been impacted by the executive order. And they are effectively banning me from travel, though they will not call it a travel ban. They stated that they would at first give me a passport that had the male identifier on it. Though I have my sex legally change the female and after claiming that they would give me the male one, I said any is fine as long as I’m able to travel. They came back and said that actually this is the first we’re hearing that and we won’t be able to give you that either. We won’t be able to give you any passport. We have no further information. They stated that they would arrest me if I asked any more questions, so I left peacefully.

[00:06:38] Who you heard from there was gentle reality. That’s her tic tac handle. Now, she later said that she received an email from the State Department that they would issue her passport after she blew them up on Tik Tok and hasn’t posted any videos or updates since then. But her experience is captured by so many people that I have heard from, either who have deemed me or have told friends of mine or people that I know have gone and experienced this in a variety of ways. And it relates exactly to what we were talking about before, right? That male and female designation in the womb is one of the things that they are using to remove the X marker from forms across the board, including passport forms and not allowing people to change their gender. Right. It’s the basis for all of that. And what’s interesting about this is that the passport is one of the three major forms of identification in the United States. Often people who are asked for two forms of ID write birth certificate, passport, driver’s license. If you don’t have your birth certificate and you don’t want to use your birth certificate, you have the other two. Those two things are the bedrock of negotiating the society and the fact that the government has decided to take away one of those from trans people puts trans people in a bind from accessing public services to getting an apartment to possibly getting a job. Like the list really, really goes on. And it’s a dramatic impact. It’s not only about being able to, you know, dip your toes in the Caribbean, but the other part of this that I think is really important is that it possibly can render trans people stateless. So if the government takes your papers, takes your passport and then just decides that it’s not going to issue it for whatever reason, that means that you’re stateless, like you don’t have the ability to leave the country if you are abroad. And let’s say you had to renew your passport because you were a student who was abroad, you have been there for more than six months, your password is expiring. Soon, you send it in to the embassy and then confiscate it. Then you’re stuck. You’re stateless. Like this has real and dramatic impacts, and it is a form of visceral harassment and erasure that can cause and is causing so much pain and so much distress for absolutely no reason than to make the point that trans people don’t exist and also to exert control. The first step of control for everybody in terms of the state allowing you to travel or not. Right. And that’s important because if the government declares that it has a controlling interest in knowing your disability, if it has a controlling interest in knowing you race, if it has a controlling interest in knowing some other characteristic, then they can easily expand this to larger groups of people, which is one of the reasons why it’s so dangerous. And it’s why this is not just a fun in the sun mess. Now, I told ya that Trump signed a slew of executive orders over the past couple of weeks and it really is hard to try to track all of them. But one of the ones that is really important and directly impacts trans youth, almost trans adults, is one that is governing the provision of gender affirming care to youth. Now they define youth as anyone 19 and below, which is why I said it’s almost creeping up on adulthood. And quite frankly, choosing that number 19, they are doing that because they can easily at some point go back and make it 20 in 21. That hasn’t been said, but I’m just telling you, that’s the way that this is worked at the state level. Honestly, when they’ve done this sort of thing. So that clearly is the intent. But right now it is saying that hospitals and anyone that is a part of that governmental payment system for health care can’t provide gender affirming care to trans youth that they need it. Again, anyone below the age of 19. And that’s caused a number of hospitals across the country, in Colorado, in Virginia, in Massachusetts and Florida. The list literally goes on to just abruptly end gender affirming care. Again, not giving a transition period. Not saying like from this date on, we won’t do this. And everybody who’s getting it now is fine. Just dropping people right away, sending email notices saying that they’re going to roll this back and the list of hospitals actually is growing daily. And it’s at this point kind of hard to keep up with it. That’s the terrible news. And that’s bad for trans youth in so many ways that we’ve discussed in so many different ways that trans flash on this podcast and others, you name it. But the good news is the way in which trans people and families and allies are responding. They are saying that this is something that is wrong, that they are pointing out that it’s wrong, and that they’re willing to show up and show out in order to call attention to something that is not in the interest of the health and well-being of the kids, that all of these actions say that they’re going to protect. Here’s sound from a protest outside of the UVA hospital in Virginia at the University of Virginia, which is one of the ones that announced a rollback. It’s from WVU Air in Charlottesville.

[00:12:04] Around 100 protesters showed up at UVA Health’s doorstep Friday evening, making it known the decision to suspend gender affirming care for youth would not go uncontested. This is a voluntary decision on UVA’s behalf, and it is basically. Removing lifesaving care.

[00:12:24] I go here all the time for my care. I am very concerned at them complying with this. UVA Health denied 29 news requests for comment, but did release a statement writing in part The University of Virginia and UVA Health are working to analyze and interpret the federal order and related state guidance.

[00:12:42] And I think that there’s going to be more of this. I think that as the impact of all of these things that are being done to us in our community happen, that more people are going to hit the streets and make their voice heard. And that’s exactly what they’re supposed to do in a democracy, because honestly, at this point, that’s the only way that the democracy seems that it will be preserved is if the people kind of speak up. Because you have to remember that in a democracy. Right. The last line of defense are the people themselves. It’s not the institutions, which I think is easy to forget. And you know what people want us to forget. But like, if these things are going to be preserved, if gender affirming care is going to be preserved, then the people have to speak up for it. And that is a good First Amendment mess. Thank you all so much for joining us for this quick hit. Of all the things that are happening in politics in the world that impact our community. We will see you in two weeks. Until then, hang in there. And regardless of what happened, we’ll be here to unpack all the mess with you at that time. And if you like the show, it would be so much to me if you would leave a review on Apple Podcasts. You might just hear me read it on the show. I’m your host, Tamara Jones. This show is produced by Aubrey Callaway. Xander Adams is our senior sound engineer and contributing producer. And this episode was engineered by Lucy Little. Oliver-Ash Klein oversees production as the director of podcast TransLash Media. This show gets your ears with the help of our social media team Oliver Whitney and Courtney Cobb. And of course, this show is made possible by Trans Live spam subscribers, just like you. Thanks for listening and I’ll see you soon.