As this is being written, we sit just under a month away from President Trump’s second inauguration. As you might expect, his every utterance is being studied for clues as to the direction his notoriously unpredictable administration might take, though with some pronouncements there’s little room for doubt. Currently in the news is a speech he gave to the faithful which contained a short section on his intentions for the transgender community, and as you might expect it’s not good news. It’s mostly well-trodden talking points such as transgender children, schools, sports, and the military, but one section in particular caught our attention.
“Under the Trump administration it will be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders: male, and female.”
On the face of it this sentence is nothing new, but it has us concerned because of the knock-on effect it could have on transgender Americans. In particular, since gender appears on identity documents including passports, our worry is that this could immediately be used to invalidate those of transgender people on the grounds that they show the wrong gender.
They’ve done it before
If it sounds far-fetched, we would like to take you back a few years into the first Trump administration when they did exactly this to several transgender Americans. The highest profile case was that of the activist Danni Askini, who became stranded in Sweden after the State Department refused to renew her passport. In her case this came her way because her organisation, the Gender Justice League, had sued the administration over its policy on transgender people in the military. Its relevance to 2025 lies in it showing that they are prepared to invalidate the identity of trans people, and this in conjunction with the sentence in Trump’s recent speech has us worried.
Here at Trans Rescue we have always tried to take the approach of giving you all the relevant information to make up your own mind rather than telling you what to do. Your path is yours alone, and we think your chances of success lie in having the best information. We are worried about the likely direction the new administration will take, but it remains for you to decide how bad for you their decisions will be, and how quickly that might happen.
That said, we think that transgender Americans should take this threat seriously, and continue to plan for a speedy exit. It’s unlikely that passports will be invalidated on day one when Trump signs his executive order, but we expect how that order is interpreted will evolve over the succeeding weeks. It’s not inconceivable to think of a time when US border agents interpret it as meaning that passports should be in birth gender only.
Please think of your own safety over this difficult period.
Header: Ali Shaker/VOA, Public domain.
