Originally posted on December 16, 2017; updated and revised November 19, 2018
“It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.”
Reading these words from George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 was challenging, even when I first encountered them many years ago. I never imagined, however, that the words being destroyed would be about particular human beings. Human beings like …me.
Words are now being officially destroyed. In just the latest manifestation in the continuing deluge of outrage upon offense upon indignity, the Trump administration – in the form of the Department of Health & Human Services – has given clear evidence of its desire to eliminate for once and all the legal category of transgender. This process is not new; last December they decreed that I be made invisible – at least in official documents then being prepared by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as part of the current fiscal year’s budget process. Trump has made it so that in federal budgeting transactions the word transgender is no longer permitted, as are six other presumably highly provocative words: vulnerable, entitlement, diversity, fetus, evidence–based and science-based.
It’s more than a little unsettling to find oneself about to be erased. In some ways I feel that as Chloe, I’ve only just arrived. Was I getting too complacent, having succeeded in the lengthy and often fraught process of getting my name, gender marker, passport, drivers’ license, and even birth certificate all formally changed to become “Chloe” and “female”? None of those documents employ the word transgender, so should I be concerned if President Trump and his DHSS are poised to expand their flagrant attacks against transgender folk? Will the next words to be banned include “Latina” or “African-American”. No matter – we’ll still each have our names and numbers. Right? We’ll only be losing our identity.
There’s no specific human right to be yourself. Part of being myself includes owning the curious history that I was born into a male body and was once classified as a male. Do I need a specific human right to recognize that odd fact of my birth? We exist, and we exist as male or female. Except when we don’t.
Now I (blissfully) inhabit a female body, and am officially accepted by law as a woman – but only fully so in 19 states within these United States. The majority of both U.S. states and the world’s countries either refuse to fully accept people such as me, or they make it nearly impossible bureaucratically to transition to one’s authentic gender. Yet thankfully, here in Maryland I am Chloe, a woman – but a “woman with a past”. A woman who was never a girl.
I am transgender. I don’t walk around holding a placard stating this identity, but I’m not ashamed or embarrassed to be transgender; it is what it is. The journey across the gender binary has been grueling, expensive, painful, and enormously difficult. Fortunately, few people have any reason to attempt it. Yet that journey speaks to us all, as it challenges society to rethink the absurd presumption of a gender binary. It’s a profound and provocative challenge – indeed, the very existence of trans and gender non-binary folk makes some people very uncomfortable. We are the challenge.
Still, challenge or not, here I am. I’ve every reason to expect my own government to acknowledge my identity in this critically descriptive context – and I bristle at the notion that the White House would seek to erase me and act to impose barriers in accessing government-funding for CDC programs affecting transgender persons. Health programs.
Obviously, the Trump base must be appeased.
Such appeasement comes at a high cost to us. Our invisibility becomes the starting point for our dehumanization. It’s hardly uncommon; through many international assignments over many years I have seen so many countries with laws that make it impossible for transgender and non-binary persons to have any visibility – to exist in any legal, economic, social, or political way. When you show up as a potential employee, tenant, voter, patient, bank account applicant, airline passenger, or student and your official documents describe a person who is not you – by name or gender – you have the door slammed in your face. Again and again. You’re left to survive on the street, through informal employment if you can find it, perhaps as a sex worker if you are young. You cannot get official identity documents that describe you, as you know yourself to be. Your choices are few, and your chances of having your human dignity acknowledged – must less respected – are scant. You are consigned to being fringe; just an unimportant and marginalized curiosity. You are dehumanized.
President Trump’s recent targeting of transgender service members is already an integral part of his cruel legacy of discrimination and division, and we know where he stands on accepting our place within the American fabric. He and his base of supporters would like us to be gone, and his administration is at work to make it so. Banning the word transgender was but one step in an unfolding strategy, and much easier and less expensive than making us wear declarative armbands or having us impounded somewhere out of the way. Just make us go away – administratively and legally. But do it where it matters – in the allocation of the budget, and in the wording of the law. In the expenditure of my taxes. On matters of health. On matters of identity.
On matters of existence.
Our existence and our authenticity – where we place ourselves along the gender continuum – may make many cisgender persons uncomfortable, but we cause them no harm. We demand but one thing – that we be accepted as equal human beings. Which of course means that we demand the recognition of the transgender phenomenon as something real, something that happens and that has always been there, even if it is something that makes us just a little different. That difference is not “fake news”. It may even be a blessing, if we come to embrace human diversity and all the gifts and insights that diverse human beings bring to the United States and to the world. But wait; diversity is also a banned word now. My bad.
So resistance has becomes more urgent. It’s now time that I boldly hold the transgender placard. It’s time that I and all of my transgender and cisgender allies stand up and demand that our existence – the 0.6% of Americans who are transgender – be legally and socially recognized, respected, and – yes – budgeted for. When specific groups of Americans can be rendered non-existent by our own government, we have a problem. People who do not exist have no rights. You can do what you want with them.
George Orwell again: “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.” Is this to be my face?
Not if I can help to stop it. Not if you help me.
This post was originally published on Blogs – Chloe Schwenke.
