“I’ll give you a choice.  Either you can jump now, or we will deport you to Zimbabwe and we will report in your deportation documents that you are a homosexual.”

My Zimbabwean friend told me this was one of many incidents in the Soviet Union where students had jumped from high buildings during the time he had taught through an exchange program at the University of Moscow.  My friend had come to America seeking political asylum.  This “moral dilemma” had been imposed upon a Zimbabwean exchange student who complimented the beauty of a Russian woman he admired.  My friend didn’t regard this scenario of gross racism as an isolated incident.  He said that 80% of such victims jump to their deaths because the stigma of homosexuality in Zimbabwe would be too terrible to accept—and the victim wasn’t homosexual.¹

So what does this have to do with the rights of trans and intersex peoples?  Plenty.

If one demographic is so stigmatized, any false report could threaten the well being of people who don’t identify with that demographic.  This danger becomes greatly accelerated during the ascendancy of dehumanizing, divisive, and destructive speech, violence, and extreme partisanism.  This week began a new chapter of America’s descent into its abyss of hatred.

 

THE REPORT AT THE HEART OF IT ALL

On Sunday, October 21, the New York Times shocked transpeople and their allies across the United States and the world.  It reported it had received a leaked memo stating that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is “spearheading an effort to establish a legal definition of sex under Title IX” of the Civil Rights Act, and that this memo had been circulating since last spring.  The memo purportedly proposed this definition:

“Sex means a person’s status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth…The sex listed on a person’s birth certificate, as originally issued, shall constitute definitive proof of a person’s sex unless rebutted by reliable genetic evidence.”²

Sex legally matters.  So does gender identity and no matter how much the current administration may deny it, the 2 are not the same and don’t always match one another.  Such a redefinition would serve to disenfranchise trans and intersex people across the United States, something of which opponents of transpeople have long purposed to do.

 

AN INTERNATIONAL CAMPAIGN

But the administration’s efforts didn’t stop with HHS.  The Guardian also reported that several United Nations diplomats have stated that U.S. officials on the Third Committee have been urging removal of the word “gender” from human rights documents that speak of “gender-based violence,” replacing it with “violence against women.”  The Guardian also quoted a diplomat to say that this was an effort uniting the United States with the Russian Federation and Middle Eastern delegations against Western Europe.³

This comes at a time in which the Far Right has ascended on an international scale, marked by its rise in Russia⁴ and Germany,⁵ the election of Duterte in the Philippines,⁶ anti-LGBTI discrimination and state sponsored attacks in Indonesia⁷ and Malaysia,⁸ and the pending election in Brazil where Bolsonaro leads the Right Wing to a probable electoral victory with a promise of dictatorship.⁹

Donald Trump, when confronted with the New York Times report confirmed that “we are looking at it” and claimed when asked about his promise to “protect” the LGBTI community he said, “I’m protecting everybody.”¹⁰

Protecting everybody from what?  He may have lied to the degree of “pants on fire” or he may not consider transpeople to be “people” in the first place.  But this writer senses a more recondite intention that may define his administration as the most cruel and rapacious since that of Andrew Jackson who instigated the Trail of Tears upon the 5 Civilized Tribes.

 

WHAT REDEFINITION MEANS

The proposed redefinition of sex and its proposed imposition upon transpeople is more than scientifically unsound, it delegitimizes both trans and intersex people.  If gender identity is not to be considered as anything different than the sex as pronounced by a physician at birth or a genetic test which may or may not confirm what Evangelicals demand, the very idea of “transgender” is treated as “impossible”, often without any thought of the intersex demographic at all.  This was reflected in this inflammatory statement by a California candidate for the Senate in last spring’s primary election, a diatribe of which characterized him as a “one issue” conspiracy theorist:

“There is no such thing as ‘transgender.’  It does not exist.  What does exist are broken people who pretend to be the opposite sex and even mutilate themselves in the attempt.  In our constitutional Republic [sic] we are free to be psychotic as long as we do not hurt ourselves or others but we have no right to lie to children and teach them that this mental, emotional, and spiritual pathology/sickness is normal, natural, or healthy in the slightest possible way.  To do so is a very sick attack upon children and a form of child molestation.  There is a massive Social Engineering [sic] campaign to normalize the soul pathology and social sickness of “transgenderism.”  So-called ‘transgender’ children are being used as weapons to attack and destroy normal/healthy children.  The objective of these attacks is to warp and then break the moral foundations of increasing numbers of children so that both current, and especially, future generations will be manufactured into psychotics and destroyed.  This must be stopped.  The children of our state and nation must be protected from this monstrous attack.”¹¹

This candidate didn’t win a chance in the next electoral round by a longshot.  But he said what many people on the Right really believe: that trans and intersex people of all ages must be re-pathologized, isolated, and destroyed.  It’s how bullies often “justify” their bullying.  It’s how the bigoted often “justify” their discrimination.  It’s how murderers often “justify” their murder.

 

CONVERSION THERAPY AS A TOOL OF ENFORCEMENT

It’s also how those supporting conversion therapy justify torture even if they don’t admit to torturing.  Many believe the Vice President to support conversion therapy, though he has never been so bold as to come out and say it.¹²  But Mike Pence has spoken in alliance with those who ostensibly do.¹³

Such organizations include parachurch organizations who aim at changing public policy such as Liberty Counsel, Family Research Council, and others who use the term “family” to exclude all families who don’t fit the stereotypical American church version.  Liberty Counsel demonstrated its militancy for conversion therapy in  a lawsuit against Palm Beach County and the City of Boca Raton after they banned the use of conversion therapy upon minors.¹⁴

These parachurch organizations hold immense sway in the Trump White House.¹⁵

Seth Anderson of Boston University, writing for the Washington Post, made an important observation concerning why the United States has not eliminated conversion therapy. It came down to who gets money. He cited explicit regulatory measures in the mid-20^th century that linked heterosexuality to “good citizenship,” and consequently, civil rights and receipt of government benefits in social programs.  Conversion therapy offered credibility to this link; based upon the claim going back to the Progressive Era of the late 1800’s that homosexuality was “curable”.¹⁶

Conceivably, conversion therapy could be expanded against transpeople involuntarily if redefinition delegates the entire demographic to psychopathology.  Parachurch organizations are very adept at the art of redefinition, for it follows similar practices in those churches from which they spring.  By redefinition, denominations claim to be “non-denominational” and also exclude rival denominations as “not Christian”, whether such rhetoric is offered publicly, or restricted to use behind closed doors.¹⁷

 

RETURN OF THE NO-MATCH LETTER

How might such “therapy” be expanded?  There are multiple possibilities.  One consists of what has been enjoined in the Patriot Act: the use of “no-match letters” to facilitate Homeland Security sweeps.

Here’s how it works.  If the gender marker reported by employers to the Social Security Administration doesn’t match that which exists on Social Security records, the agency sends the employer a “no-match letter” to which the employer must respond within 90 days or face fines and possible imprisonment.  Response includes termination of the employee cited as a “no-match.”

So far, “no-match letters” have been primarily directed against immigrants and terrorists of sleeper cells who feign U.S. citizenship so they could work while hiding in plain sight.

This author recalls one Homeland Security sweep that almost occurred in August 2007 while in late transition.  The sweep had been called off because of the efforts of immigration advocates.  I figuratively dodged a bullet and immediately arranged for my gender confirmation surgery.

This use of no-match letters threatened the jobs and welfare of transpeople for many years.  But in 2011, the Social Security Administration announced the end of their practice of sending “no-match letters” on the basis of gender markers.¹⁸

But the “no-match letter” is making a comeback.  The Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) stated the following:

“In April of 2018, IRLI filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit to obtain records the number of “no-match” instances after the Obama Administration stopped sending letters informing employers and employees that there was an inconsistency between the name or SSN reported by the employer and Social Security Administration (SSA) records.

“The data SSA produced showed that there were over 39 million instances over a four-year period, and that $409 billion was added to the Earnings Suspense File, which holds SS taxes that can’t be correctly credited to employees.”¹⁹

While, the stated issue pertains to name and social security numbers, and that gender markers fall outside the scope of the IRLI mission, another agency, The Heritage Foundation, has cited the issue of “no-match letters” in a similar way as early as 2008.²⁰

 

Such calls have led to action.  The Daily Caller announced that the current administration will resume “no-match letters” in 2019.²¹

Immigration has long been a festering issue with the Right.  Given the pattern of the current administration setting its course to reverse the entire Obama legacy and repeated legal attacks upon the trans demographic, it’s not unreasonable to expect a revival of “no-match letters” aimed at gender markers sooner or later.

But there’s another aspect to this.  The Real ID Act has imposed upon the states to issue “real identification” cards consistent with federal rules.  If federal rules demand a reversal of existing changes in gender markers with Social Security, a disparity with state practices can naturally result.  It may ultimately reject reissued Birth Certificates that state courts had ordered for post-operative individuals and which have been presented for new driver’s licenses.

To date the popular belief persists that redefinition won’t affect state ID’s.  But that can always change.  It may ultimately force motor vehicle departments who have issued “real ID’s” to persons already transitioned to rescind them and possibly criminalize those who defy the change.

 

CONSEQUENCES

For trans and intersex people, especially those not publicly known to be trans or intersex, the redefinition proposed and pushed by the current administration threatens to out those not ready to face the public.  It does something else.  It can identify transpeople to those entities, especially White Supremacists on the Far Right, who have been linked to crimes against transpeople.²²

More importantly, such actions also work to stigmatize and dehumanize all people in the trans and intersex demographics who are suddenly presented to world society as “pathogenic frauds” and “sick freaks.”  That doesn’t just endanger transpeople.  It can endanger anyone the malicious desire to target.

Consider the case this week of a parent considering a civil lawsuit against his son’s school after a teacher told his student’s classmates that his son was “gay” and that his girlfriend was just a “cover”.  That opened his son to stigmatization and bullying.²³

Such rumor-mongering is far more common than people think.  If someone wants to harm another, all he has to do is start a rumor that the victim is a member of a stigmatized minority.  Sooner or later, another will attack the victim, using the rumor as justification.  While we see this most often in schools, adults do much the same in ways that are often more sophisticated— and may even work to fatality like what was used against the Zimbabwean exchange student compelled to jump from a roof to his death.

We may infer a rule here: once we oppress and stigmatize one minority, others will suffer as well.  This is what many religionists want while declaring the opposite publicly.  This approach has prevailed in religious schools far more than any of those institutions have been willing to admit.²⁴

Definitions matter, especially in the area of law.  When a demographic is being delegitimized, disenfranchisement follows.  Worse yet, those who want to inflict harm understand that an open season has been declared.  Such will be too happy to harass, ostracize, rob, rape, assault, or otherwise harm a trans or intersex person because their crimes exaggerate their feelings of empowerment and inflated self-importance.  They will also do the same toward others whom they think is trans whether true or not.  They may even do so against those they can get away with stigmatizing as trans, taking delight in others doing their dirty work for them. 

The leap of that Zimbabwean student echoes in our leap into an abyss of ruin into which many of us may be forced, whether trans or not, intersex or not.  All the while religionist leaders on the Right smile in self-satisfied smugness at the fulfillment of their political ambitions, because it’s their nature to do so, and this is what they think “religious liberty” entails.

____________________________

REFERENCES:

Featured image: A blood spattered transgender flag (from author’s files, original unknown) superimposed over the New York Times headline that began the current wave of protest (New York Times).

1. The identity of the Zimbabwean émigré shall remain confidential.
2. Erica L. Green, Katie Benner and Robert Pear. “‘Transgender’ Could Be Defined Out of Existence Under Trump Administration” New York Times (October 21, 2018, accessed October 21, 2018) https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/21/us/politics/transgender-trump-administration-sex-definition.html.
3. Julian Borger. “Trump administration wants to remove ‘gender’ from UN human rights documents” The Guardian (October 25, 2018) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/24/trump-administration-gender-transgender-united-nations.
4. J. Dionne, Jr..Russia and the far rright’s cozy affair” Washington Post (July29, 2018) https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/russia-and-the-far-rights-cozy-affair/2018/07/29/95390a3e-91b3-11e8-8322-b5482bf5e0f5_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.b5a81838c0bd.
5. Jordan Stancil. “Rioting in Germany Exposes the Growing Power of the Far Right” The Nation (September 7, 2018, accessed October 25, 2018) https://www.thenation.com/article/rioting-in-germany-exposes-the-growing-power-of-the-far-right/.
6. Richard Javad Heydarian. “Understanding Duterte’s mind-boggling rise to power” Washington Post (March 20, 2018, accessed October 25, 2018) https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/theworldpost/wp/2018/03/20/duterte/?utm_term=.dfd7345b6709.
7. Febriana Firdaus. “Indonesia’s LGBT crackdown” Lowy Institute (June 8, 2018, accessed October 25, 2018) https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/indonesia-lgbt-crackdown.
8. Hannah Ellis-Petersen. “Malaysia accused of ‘state-sponsored homophobia’ after LGBT crackdown” The Guardian (August 21, 2018, accessed October 25, 2018) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/22/malaysia-accused-of-state-sponsored-homophobia-after-lgbt-crackdown.
9. Lynnea Urania Stuart. “Rising Terror in the Tropics: the prospects of a new Brazilian LGBTI holocaust” Trans Muse Planet (October 14, 2018, accessed October 25, 2018) https://thetmplanet.com/prospective-terror-in-the-tropics-a-new-brazilian-lgbti-holocaust/.
10. David Crary and Richardo Alonso-Zaldivar/AP “’I’m Protecting Everybody,’ President Trump Says After Reports His Administration Wants to Strip Transgender Protections” Time (October 22, 2018) http://time.com/5431443/donald-trump-transgender-protections/.
11. Don J. Grundmann. Candidate Statement, United States Senate (Official Voter Information Guide for the California Statewide Primary Election, June 5, 2018), p. 39.
12. (n.a.) “Did Mike Pence Support ‘Gay Conversion’ Therapy” com (Determined the idea to be a “mixture” because he never said so explicitly in public comment, Accessed October 22, 2018) https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mike-pence-supported-gay-conversion-therapy/.
13. Charlotte Clymer. “Mike Pence to Join Conversion Therapy Advocates & Anti-LGBTQ Extremists at Values Voter Summit” Human Rights Campaign (September 21, 2018) https://www.hrc.org/blog/mike-pence-to-join-conversion-therapy-advocates-anti-lgbtq-extremists-value.
14. John Riley. “Christian group sues to overturn conversion therapy bans in South Florida” Metro Weekly (June 28, 2018, accessed October 23, 2018) https://www.metroweekly.com/2018/06/christian-group-sues-overturn-bans-conversion-therapy-south-florida-localities/.
15. Lynnea Urania Stuart. “The Summer of Seventeen” Transpire (August 1, 2016, accessed October 25, 2018) https://lynneauraniastuart.wordpress.com/2017/08/01/the-summer-of-seventeen/.
16. Seth Anderson. “Why we still haven’t banished conversion therapy in 2018” Washington Post (August 5, 2018, accessed October 23, 2018) https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2018/08/05/why-we-still-havent-banished-conversion-therapy-in-2018/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.06f67d63019b.
17. This had been personally witnessed by the author who attended Ozark Bible College in Joplin MO, which was operated by members of the North American Christian Convention who both considered their “Restoration Movement” to not be denominational and denied that Baptists could be saved. She left that institution disgusted and demoralized in 1978.
18. (n.a.) “Social Security Administration No Longer Notifying Employers About Gender” OutWord Magazine (n.d. accessed October 23, 2018) http://www.outwordmagazine.com/inside-outword/glbt-news/649-ssa-no-longer-notifying-employers-about-gender.
19. (n.a.) Announcement, Immigration Reform Law Institute (September 11, 2018, updated September 25, 2018, accessed October 23, 2018) https://www.numbersusa.com/news/study-over-39-million-ssn-no-matches-over-four-year-period.
20. Andrew Grossman and Charles Stimson. “Study: Over 39 Million SSN ‘No-Matches’ Over Four-Year Period” The Heritage Foundation (May 16, 2008, accessed October 23, 2018) https://www.heritage.org/immigration/report/no-match-immigration-enforcement-time-action.
21. Will Racke. Trump Is Resuming an Anti-Fraud Policy Obama Halted—and It Could Have a Big Impact On Identifying Illegal Workers” The Daily Caller (September 29, 2018, accessed October 23, 2018) https://dailycaller.com/2018/09/19/trump-anti-fraud-policy-obama/.
22. Brenda Gazzar. “White supremacist hate crimes, violence against transgendeer people surge in LA County, report finds” Los Angeles Daily News (November 16, 2017, accessed October 25, 2018) https://www.dailynews.com/2017/11/16/white-supremacist-hate-crimes-violence-against-transgender-people-surge-in-la-county-report-finds/.
23. Alex Bollinger. “A teacher told the school that a boy is gay & that his girlfriend is ‘cover’” LGBTQ Nation (October 25, 2018) https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2018/10/teacher-told-school-boy-gay-girlfriend-cover/?utm_source=LGBTQ+Nation+Subscribers&utm_campaign=7a3fd12199-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_10_26_04_10&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c4eab596bd-7a3fd12199-430021789.
24. Lynnea Urania Stuart. “The Broken Perfume Bottle” Transpire (November 4, 2016, accessed October 25, 2018) https://lynneauraniastuart.wordpress.com/2016/11/04/the-broken-perfume-bottle/.