LGBTQIA+

A useful explainer for bewildered relatives, etc.:

Clear definitions of categories matter in the law. The use of two sex categories to talk about a species is standard in biology. In many animal species, including people, however, there are individuals who are neither male nor female or who are sometimes both. In other species, there are two sexes, but they aren’t male and female (usually these are intersex and male). And a few species have only one sex (usually female). The biological reality is that “male” and “female” are not universal immutable biological classifications but rather descriptions of typical patterns in reproductive biology. These categories, male and female, are used by biologists who fully understand that they rarely represent all the relevant biological variation in any given species or identical sets of variation across different species.

Sex is not one single, simple, uniform biological reality. Thus, biology cannot be invoked as a basis for such in legal terms. That’s the bottom line.

Of course, men and women are not the same, and reproductive biology does structure important aspects of human bodies and lives. But none of the key biological systems associated with sex in humans (chromosomes, gonads, genetics, hormones, and so on) come exclusively in two “immutable” categories. Yes, most humans have either XX or XY chromosomes, but as Judge Reyes noted, some don’t. People with either testes or ovaries are most common, but some people have both, and a few have ovotestes. Usually those with testes can produce sperm, and those with ovaries produce ova—but not always. The chromosomes one has do not always predict one’s gonads or one’s genitals or even all the elements of one’s reproductive tract. It is true that most people have the “typical” combo of chromosomes, gonad and genitals, yet there are tens of millions of people alive right now who don’t. These people are not errors, aberrations or problems; they are a part of the range of variation in our species. They are all real people. In fact, many who have these variations don’t even know it. You might be one of them.

In making laws, then, we need to recognize what the actual range of variation in sex-related biology is and how it maps across everyone.

The CDC’s move to comply with Trump’s executive order is not just an attack on transgender inclusion—it is a fundamental assault on evidence-based policymaking. Public health data drives funding allocations, legislative protections, and medical advancements. Without accurate data on transgender individuals, lawmakers and health officials will be unable to craft policies that address the unique challenges faced by the trans community.

For transgender individuals, this erasure from federal data is more than an administrative slight—it is a direct threat to their health, safety, and survival. Without demographic representation, there will be fewer initiatives tailored to trans healthcare needs, fewer resources allocated for trans youth mental health programs, and fewer protections against discrimination in medical settings.

“This is an attempt to legislate us out of existence,” said a transgender activist who wished to remain anonymous. “They are trying to make it so that we don’t ‘exist’ in public data, and if we don’t exist in the data, we don’t exist in policy. If we don’t exist in policy, we don’t get protections. And if we don’t get protections, they are making us more vulnerable.”

Every fascist movement needs a group of people to blame all the bad things in the world on. Obviously, this is a highly dangerous situation to said people, and they might need to flee the country. This is a small project trying to help them within the bounds of what we can do.

Seventy years ago, at the height of the McCarthy era—when federal employees with left-wing views were routinely interrogated and fired for being suspected communists—a related purge of queer workers was underway. In 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed an executive order listing “sexual perversion” as a basis for terminating federal civil service employees, on the theory that gay men and lesbians were susceptible to blackmail by the country’s enemies. In what became known as the Lavender Scare, at least 5,000 federal workers were fired for suspected homosexuality over the next two decades.

“More people were targeted during that period for being gay or for engaging in same-sex intimacy than were targeted for being communist,” says San Francisco State University professor Marc Stein. The firings rippled out to state and local governments and the private sector, he adds, “accompanied by notions that the gay people were weak, were divisive in workplaces, were not strong representatives of a moral United States.” It’s taken decades since then for LGBTQ people to gain acceptance in public life, including in the federal workforce. Not until the Obama administration was Eisenhower’s executive order formally rescinded.

[…]

Now, the very programs and support groups that have helped queer folks integrate could create risks for their participants. Employee resource groups like Michael’s have been shutting down operations and wiping their websites, afraid of putting their members at risk in the openly hostile Trump administration.

“We’ve gone dark,” a former LGBTQ resource group leader in the Department of Agriculture tells Mother Jones. “We have pulled our contact lists off of government systems. Personally, as someone who has been very involved in queer spaces, I went through and deleted a bunch of emails and contacts, because I have lists of queer employees, and I am afraid if someone in the Trump administration gets their hands on it.”

“I’m scared for the people I’ve been trying to help,” says a trans worker for the Interior Department who is involved in employee resource groups. “People came to us because they needed community, needed connection. We were trying to keep each other safe. Now, we’re all just this big target.”

The document, titled “Guidance for Visa Adjudicators on Executive Order 14201: ‘Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,’” is ostensibly focused on preventing transgender athletes from traveling to the U.S. However, one section appears to apply far more broadly, targeting all transgender visa applicants—not just athletes. It mandates that “all visas must reflect an applicant’s sex at birth” and grants officials the authority to deny visas based on “reasonable suspicion” of a person’s transgender identity.

“Both immigrant and nonimmigrant visa applications request that an applicant identify their sex as either male or female. Moreover, all visas must reflect an applicant’s sex at birth,” the cable reads. When verifying an applicant’s sex assigned at birth, it states that the adjudicator can “rely on documents provided by the applicant,” but that “if other evidence casts reasonable doubt on the applicant’s sex, you should refuse the case under 221(g) and request additional evidence to demonstrate sex at birth.”

The memo goes on to state that applicants “misrepresenting their purpose of travel or sex” could be targeted for permanent ineligibility. It states that some common scenarios that would trigger this is if the misrepresentation is “material,” which it states would be the case for transgender athletes entering for an athletic competition. However, even this section does not limit it to transgender athletes - many other reasons for entry may be considered “material” for transgender entrants… for instance, transgender activists, immigrants fleeing oppressive regimes, and more could be swept up under this provision.

Wanted to share something very important and personal to raise awareness and hopefully help someone who’s struggling with similar feelings I felt back when I was diagnosed as intersex.

Mr Dutton's incendiary speech — his first major statement of the year — sets up a direct clash and contrast to Anthony Albanese who is campaigning for re-election by celebrating Labor's efforts to expand the nation's "care economy" and boost services to the elderly, families with young children, and people with disabilities.

In addition the opposition leader's promise to dismantle the role of "culture, diversity and inclusion" advisers seeks to mirror Donald Trump's successful political campaign in last year's US presidential race when he took aim at what are known in the US as diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

[…]

Describing the federal bureaucracy's growth under Labor as a "completely unsustainable economic situation", Mr Dutton said he would deploy newly appointed shadow for government efficiency Jacinta Price to help "scale back the Canberra public service in a responsible way".

Senator Price has also vowed to review funding for Welcome to Country ceremonies.

Around the world, gender-restrictive actors are organising to suppress gender-equality in schools. ALIGN’s review of the latest evidence reveals that anti-gender backlash in education is taking place from contexts as diverse as Afghanistan, Chile, Indonesia, Kenya, Pakistan, South Africa, Uganda, the US.

This ALIGN Report focuses on the activities of gender-restrictive actors and organisations who seek to promote a narrow vision of gender relations through the education system. The research shows that their influence is expanding efforts to entrench patriarchal social norms and a binary view of gender, and gaining ground across the globe.

Common aims and tactics include: to remove comprehensive sexuality education from schools, restrict girls access to learning, reinforce patriarchal gender stereotypes in textbooks and reject gender-inclusive policies in school environments. These groups are sustained by deep financial networks which drive effective strategies to amplify misinformation, provoke parental protests, and impose traditional family values.

You'll need a box of tissues or three.

As I’ve written before, it’s hard to imagine a world in which this onslaught of restrictions and censorship remains exclusively focused on the small minority of people who call themselves transgender. Among Musk, Trump, and all their failsons, anti-transgender animus is a patriarchal desire for control and purity paired with misogynistic and racial dreams of a white and masculine re-ascendancy, the dawning of a walled-in golden age free of alien influences, deviant impulses, or human empathy. Those of us who reject our gender assignment are convenient scapegoats, vulnerable to misrepresentation and public shaming. But ultimately the rules we break are broken by all people to one extent or another, and the tighter those rules are enforced—by Trump or those he can successfully deputize as snitches, informants, and recruits—the more people will captured in their dragnet. 

[…]

The essentialist definitions provided by the Trump administration for “sex,” “man,” and “woman” are an effort to suggest they have no concern or regard for the categories of behavior and aesthetics that might come to mind when you hear the word “gender”—as one White House official unconvincingly told a reporter last week, “I don’t think anyone’s trying to do a dress code or anything like that.” But sex is not simply what’s between your legs and gender is not simply what you wear. The physical characteristics we associate with “male” and “female” are themselves broad, malleable, and overlapping. Particularly in the age of transvestigators—when the gender identity of women of color, in particular, is challenged if they fall outside the thin, European, and white ideal—such a judgment is clearly aimed at nothing as abstract as an “ideology” but against people and their deviant, literally non-binary bodies.

They do so not only out of an individualized hatred against a clearly labeled sexual minority but in defense of a faux-naturalized ideal, a vision of perfect manhood and womanhood born of nature yet clearly nonexistent without a police state enforcing it. This is why, as I wrote when a CPAC speaker called for “eradicating transgenderism from public life entirely,” the gender war is a forever war. They likely know this mythical ideal is beyond their reach. But by demonizing those who fall furthest from it—or, as trans people do, challenge the very notion of its inevitability—they can justify a permanent state of fear and persecution.