In a further sign that it is moving toward legally erasing transgender people as detailed in a report published over the weekend by the New York Times, the Trump administration is moving to have the word “gender” removed from United Nations documents and replaced with the word “woman”.
The Guardian reports: ‘At recent meetings of the UN’s Third Committee, which is concerned with “social, humanitarian and cultural” rights, US diplomats have been pushing for the rewriting of general assembly policy statements to remove what the administration argues is vague and politically correct language, reflecting what it sees as an ‘ideology’ of treating gender as an individual choice rather than an unchangeable biological fact. For example, in a draft paper on trafficking in women and girls introduced by Germany and Philippines earlier this month, the US wants to remove phrases like “gender-based violence” would be replaced by “violence against women”.’
On Wednesday we reported that the Justice Department filed a brief arguing that businesses can discriminate against workers because they are transgender.
The New York Times published a report on Sunday on a circulating Trump administration memo detailing plans to define transgender people out of existence by defining gender by genitalia at birth.
Trump commented on the report Monday evening: “We’re looking at it. We have a lot of different concepts right now. They have a lot of different things happening with respect to transgender right now. You know that as well as I do, and we’re looking at it very seriously. I’m protecting everybody. You know what I’m doing? I’m protecting everybody. I want to protect our country.”
The NYT reported: “The department argued in its memo that key government agencies needed to adopt an explicit and uniform definition of gender as determined ‘on a biological basis that is clear, grounded in science, objective and administrable.’ The agency’s proposed definition would define sex as either male or female, unchangeable, and determined by the genitals that a person is born with, according to a draft reviewed by The Times. Any dispute about one’s sex would have to be clarified using genetic testing.”
The plans are the latest, and most draconian, of a series of efforts the Trump administration has been making to remove and restrict the rights of transgender individuals, including military service, federal prison rights, health care, schools, the CDC, the judiciary, and more.
According to the memo seen by the NYT, the HHS proposes that “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.”
READ THIS: Trump Plans to Legally Abolish Transgender People, Define Gender by Genitalia at Birth: Memo
Right Wing Watch reports: ‘The effort is being led by Roger Severino, who has taken the anti-LGBT agenda of his former employer, the Heritage Foundation, into the Trump administration as director of the civil rights division at HHS. When he was named to that position, a dozen U.S. senators objected, citing Severino’s “long history of making bigoted statements toward lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people and attacking women’s access to health care services and reproductive rights.” One of Severino’s former colleagues at the Heritage Foundation, Ryan Anderson, is at the forefront of the Religious Right’s anti-trans crusade. Anderson’s latest book is “When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment.” Anderson argues that gender cannot be severed from biological sex, and that “taking our sexual embodiment seriously in public policy is not discriminatory.”’
