In October of 2018, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services revealed efforts to revert to outdated or retrograde definitions of gender, specifically aiming to re-define trans people out of existence. WGSS publicly protested the move first through posting a statement on its website. WGSS faculty also read the statement at the 2018 InQueery Symposium, Queer (Trans)formations: Envisioning the Future of Queer Theory and Politics, on Monday, October 29, in the Elson S. Floyd Cultural Center. This was followed by keynote speaker C. Riley Snorton’s presentation, “Thinking Race, Rethinking Sex: Towards a New Trans History.”
29 October 2018
Statement on Recent Efforts to Re-define Trans Existence
As feminist scholars of gender and sexuality in the Program in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, we strongly object to current efforts by the US Department of Health and Human Services to turn back progress in recent federal policy to recognize trans and gender non-conforming people as full citizens and human beings with rights to equal health care, education, employment, and housing. Specifically, we understand gender foremost as a social construction and condemn efforts to revert to a definition of gender as a biological and immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth. We further object to the removal of “gender” and its replacement with “women” in United Nations documents/International treaties as an effort to limit protections and claims across the spectrum of gender injustices and recognize this federal initiative to shift prevailing understanding of gender as yet another assault on vulnerable and marginalized populations. Finally, we stand in solidarity with students, colleagues, activists, and the public for the right to determine and self-identify gender. We here re-affirm our commitment to and will continue to work toward destabilizing the gender binary as a fundamental structural foundation of social inequalities and oppressions, including heteropatriarchy and racial capitalism.
While the Administration’s efforts to derecognize trans people might never become law, we can use this moment to recognize the work of organizations such as The Sylvia Rivera Project (https://srlp.org/), the Marsha P. Johnson Institute (https://marshap.org/), the Trans Justice Funding Project (https://www.transjusticefundingproject.org/), and the Transgender Law Center (https://transgenderlawcenter.org/). We can join in their attempts to support trans, racial, economic, and gender justice by contributing donations and getting involved in their community efforts. Finally, it is important to remember that even while these policies are motivated by transphobia, they cannot erase the existence of trans people.