Every progressive social movement in history has been met with resistance. This comes in many forms; social ostracization, institutional repression, and varying degrees of organized violence. Transgender people are no exception to this pattern, something I have witnessed firsthand as a trans person in the United States. Following a wave of increased visibility and social acceptability that has spanned several years – one which was instrumental in my own self-discovery by giving words to feelings previously unspoken – the inevitable backlash came from a variety of sources and in a variety of forms

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From casual intolerance bemoaning the inconvenience of trans inclusivity, to fervent, genocidal hatred portraying us as an existential threat to be eradicated. From religious justifications about how our existence is a rejection of god’s plan, to naturalistic fallacies about how our existence is a corruption of nature. From Republicans vocally and enthusiastically attacking us in their campaign ads, to Democrats cowardly retreating from the issue, adopting conservative talking points, and blaming their electoral failures on trans people.

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The sharp uptick in open hostility towards trans people can’t simply be hand waved away as the product of ignorance, though it undoubtedly played a role in allowing transphobic propaganda to flourish. The current surge of transphobic backlash is the culmination of a concerted effort from far-right activists and politicians to roll back the progress made in the last few decades. This is of course nothing new, merely the most recent and contemporized form of longstanding prejudice. As such, it is prudent to study similar historical instances of repression. There is, tragically, no shortage of reference material, as we have been here many times before.

Historical Precedent

Targeting queer people isn’t a new tactic for far-right political movements. Homophobia and strict enforcement of traditional gender roles are foundational components of fascist ideology. In order to protect the apparent legitimacy of their worldview, they seek to eliminate anything (or anyone) incompatible with this worldview. Among the first major book burnings the Nazis held targeted contents from the library of the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, a research institute pertaining to gender and sexuality. This was no mere coincidence, but a deliberate effort to destroy research that might help others transition in the future (Holocaust Memorial Day Trust 2025). It is in part due to the loss of so much research that fascists today are more easily able to frame transgender people as a radical new concept and gender-affirming care as experimental and untested.

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Thanks to the ease of storing, copying, and sharing information digitally, it is practically impossible to completely destroy all copies and archives pertaining to transgender research. However, the importance of removing all mention of trans people from federal websites is still clear. Some websites which the Trump administration initially took down were eventually restored upon a court order, including pages from The Center for Disease Control (CDC),  the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) and Office of the Assistant Secretary of Health (OASH), all of which feature the same disclaimer: “Per a court order, HHS is required to restore this website as of 11:59PM ET, February 14, 2025. Any information on this page promoting gender ideology is extremely inaccurate and disconnected from the immutable biological reality that there are two sexes, male and female. The Trump Administration rejects gender ideology and condemns the harms it causes to children, by promoting their chemical and surgical mutilation, and to women, by depriving them of their dignity, safety, well-being, and opportunities. This page does not reflect biological reality and therefore the Administration and this Department rejects it.”

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Those committed to bigotry, whether sincere or calculated for political gain, will simply refuse to recognize the existence of trans people, no matter how abundant and evident the proof of it may be. With this in mind, it would be naïve to assume we can appeal to the humanity of hateful ideologues who see our existence as incompatible with their vision of America. No amount of representation or visibility can humanize us to those who deny our humanity.

In fact, it is precisely representation and visibility which bigots oppose. While speaking at the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Daily Wire contributor Michael Knowles stated, “For the good of society ... transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely — the whole preposterous ideology, at every level.” (Rodriguez 2023). When bigots feel confident stating their goals this explicitly in a public forum, we can’t afford to entertain any illusions about appealing to their sense of humanity.

Trump’s Executive Orders

Trump is no stranger to transphobic rhetoric, but it was a noticeably more prominent theme in his 2024 campaign. One of the most popular and memorable ads from the campaign stated, “Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you,” in an effort to drive home the idea that any support for trans rights come at the expense of other voters. Unfortunately, scapegoating trans people wasn’t just an idle talking point, but a policy he planned to follow through with, and his administration hit the ground running with a slew of executive orders ready to be signed on day one.

EO 14168 - Protecting Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government – Signed January 20, 2025

While transgender people are the explicit and primary target of the order, it also has dire consequences for intersex people, despite them being notably absent from the text. This omission isn’t an oversight, but a refusal to acknowledge the existence of anyone who doesn’t fit into their reductive categorization of humanity. In spite of their claims to uphold “biological truth,” Trump and other policymakers ignore the material reality of intersex and transgender people’s existence.

As a result of this order, passports and driver’s licenses on which the gender marker has been changed are now invalid, and those in possession of them are now at risk of being charged with identity fraud. Many transgender people attempting to update their passports in compliance with the new rule have had their passport confiscated but not returned (Swaminathan 2025). Those who have been able to update their documentation run into yet another problem; the fact that their documentation does not accurately reflect their physical appearance, forcibly outing them as trans every time they are required to provide identification.

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The effect on data collection is also significant. By refusing to collect and maintain data on the subject, the full extent of the violence is more easily concealed. The US Census Bureau is removing questions on surveys pertaining to gender identity. The Williams Institute released a report, Impact of Executive Orders on Access to Federal Data, that explains how the omission of gender and sexuality affects the accuracy of data sets. Among the data sets affected are the National HIV Behavioral Surveillance (NHBS), the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), Household Pulse Survey (HPS), The National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), and the National Inmate Survey (NIS) (Meyer and Bouton 2025). It also affects the Survey of Sexual Victimization (SSV) which, along with the NIS, was established as provisions of the Prison Rape Elimination Act (Wang 2025).

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The Bureau of Prisons also stopped maintaining records of transgender inmates, concealing the disproportionate risk of violence they face as they are transferred to prisons corresponding with their sex assigned at birth (Johnson 2025). Trans women in men’s prisons not only face a disproportionately high risk of sexual violence from fellow inmates, but this is sometimes deliberately facilitated by prison staff through a process known as “V-Coding,” which places trans women with aggressive cellmates as a form of social control (Kulak 2018). Without comprehensive data collection, this violence will continue unseen and unheard.

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The policy of refusal to collect data is also reflected in a decision of the State Department to scale back the purview of its annual Human Rights Report. The section pertaining to violence and harassment against LGBTQ+ individuals has been removed from the report altogether. This report is relied upon by lawyers, advocacy groups, and asylum officers in determining whether someone is at risk of persecution should they be forced to return to their country of origin (Toosi 2025). Omitting this information puts queer travelers and asylum seekers at risk of persecution, imprisonment, and death.

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Masha Gessen, a transgender journalist frequently writing on queer issues, likened this process to the denationalization of Jews and other ethnic minorities in Nazi Germany (Gessen 2025). When people exist in a vaguely defined legal state of limbo, violating their rights can easily be made lawful.

EO 14183 - Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness – Signed January 27, 2025

This may seem to be a simple reinstatement of Trump’s previous ban on transgender service members, but the wording of this most recent order is distinctly more hostile. While the previous ban took the form of a memorandum which issued a policy directive without much explicit rationale, this order refers to transgender soldiers as having a “false gender identity” and says that they do not meet the military standards for an “honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle.” Not only are transgender service members deemed unfit for service, but they are also deemed altogether incapable of honor, truth, or discipline. This doesn’t merely add insult to injury for transgender service members being dismissed, it demonizes all transgender people as inherently untrustworthy.

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EO 14187 - Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation – Signed January 28, 2025

​The first thing that stands out is the description of gender-affirming care as “chemical and surgical mutilation.” This phrase is meant to evoke disgust and revulsion in an effort to delegitimize gender-affirming care altogether, regardless of the patient’s age. The order instructs federal agencies to rescind policies relying on the standards of care set by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), referring to gender-affirming care as “junk science” which “lacks scientific integrity.”

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Another notable aspect is that it defines the word “Child” as “Individuals under 19 years of age,” despite the fact that 18 is the legal age of adulthood. While a difference of only one year may seem insignificant, it is an encroachment on the right of adults to make decisions about their own healthcare. By restricting the autonomy of transgender patients who are legally adults, the administration establishes the legal precedent to extend this restriction to transgender patients of all ages.

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The order has already impacted care for adults well into their twenties, as was the case for several patients whose scheduled surgeries at Memorial Health hospital in Georgia were cancelled following the order. The hospital released a statement addressing the cancellations: “Memorial Health has never had a gender-affirming surgical program, which would require certain standards of care across multiple clinical disciplines. Like other hospitals, we have a responsibility to follow state and federal laws and regulations. For gender-affirming surgeries, there are laws and regulations around age. We follow those. Licensed physicians use their training and experience to exercise independent medical judgment to assess patients’ needs and determine the course of treatment within those laws and regulations.”

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Noticeably absent from the statement is any explanation of why surgeries were cancelled for patients who were not subject to the age restriction. Savannah Pride Center Executive Director, Michael Bell described the statement as “misleading,” saying it “talks about a non-issue.” (Ambus 2025).

EO 14190 - Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling

This order deprives transgender students of the simple dignity of being referred to by their preferred name and pronouns. Teachers who choose to respect their students’ preference may find themselves subject to criminal penalties for what the order refers to as “unlawfully facilitating the social transition of a minor student.” Several states already have similar laws in place, such as Florida, where a school chose not to renew the contract of a teacher who used a student’s preferred name, in spite of the fact that their parents had not signed a form granting her explicit permission to do so (Walker 2025).

EO 14201 - Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports

The drive to ban trans women from competing in women’s sports is another instance in which those who purport to be upholding “biological truth” ignore the complexity of our material reality in favor of idealized simplicity. The argument about trans women having a physical advantage begins with a grain of truth; that hormone levels affect physical characteristics, such as bone density and muscle mass, which contribute to athletic ability. Omitted from this reductive narrative, however, is the far more nuanced reality that effects of hormones released during puberty are not completely immutable, and that the effects of hormone replacement therapy also have a profound impact on these same physical characteristics.

This is an issue on which Democrats seem particularly hesitant to push back. Some Democrats, like House Representatives Seth Moulton (MA) and Tom Suozzi (NY), indicated that the party’s stance on these issues were at odds with voters, with Suozzi saying the party must “stop pandering to the far left” on trans rights. Although their comments were met with some backlash from colleagues, they exemplify a pervasive reluctance to confront Republicans on trans policy (Riedel 2024). California Governor Gavin Newsom went a step further and invited conservative influencer Charlie Kirk, to discuss trans policy on his podcast. As one might expect, Newsom also tried to position himself as a sensible moderate for embracing Republican talking points on    

Legislative Efforts

While the reactionary backlash against transgender people coming from the White House is the most noticeable, legislators across the country have spent the last several years introducing bills aimed at trans people. Trans Legislation Tracker features an up-to-date list of anti-trans bills introduced across the country, categorizing them by policy issue.