Trump declares war on transgender and queer people

On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed several hate filled executive orders that significantly impact transgender individuals:

Defining Gender Based on Birth Sex: The executive order titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” mandates that all government forms and documentation use “sex” instead of “gender,” strictly defining individuals as “male” or “female” based on their sex assigned at birth. This policy affects the issuance of passports and other official documents, requiring them to reflect birth-assigned sex.

Needless to say: You cannot remove the concept and experience of gender identity by banning it.
Restrictions in Federal Facilities: The same order requires that “intimate spaces,” such as bathrooms and prison wards, be designated according to biological sex rather than gender identity. This means transgender individuals must use facilities that align with their birth-assigned sex, and transgender inmates will be housed accordingly, raising concerns about their safety and well-being.

This represents cruel violations of human rights. Trump’s administration is without compassion and a sense of decency.
Elimination of DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) Programs: Another executive order, “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,” bans the implementation of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs within the federal government. This order displaces civil servants and office positions responsible for enforcing and implementing affirmative action policies, signaling a shift away from initiatives aimed at promoting workplace diversity and protecting against discrimination.

Basically this order says that if you are not white, cis, straight and rich, you do not deserve the protection and support of the state.
Reversal of Previous Protections: President Trump also repealed several executive orders from the previous administration that extended protections against discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation. Notably, the revocation of Executive Order 14021 removes safeguards against sexual harassment and discrimination in schools, and the repeal of Executive Order 14075 eliminates protections in the foster care system and efforts to investigate the harms of conversion therapy.

Trump is opening the door to further harassment of LGBTQ people.

These actions have prompted significant backlash from civil rights groups and advocates, as they they undermine the rights and safety of transgender individuals. Legal challenges are anticipated as organizations mobilize to contest these policies.

Trump has declared war on the LGBTQ community. Now is the time to fight back.

Jack Molay

References

Trump Promised 200 Executive Orders Day 1: Here Are Some That Could Target Trans People

A Comprehensive, Easy Guide To Trump’s First-Day Anti-Trans Policies

In Inaugural Address, Trump Takes Direct Aim At Trans Americans, Racial Justice

Trump two-gender edict will upend ‘X’ identity on passports

“The GOP’s war on trans people has declared that every LGBTQ+ person is now an activist. Even if all you do is survive the next four years, your continued existence is resistance against an order to disappear.”

In one of his first executive orders, the new president called for the erasure of federal recognition of trans people

LGBTQ+ mental health crisis center says calls have surged with Donald Trump’s inauguration

White House presentation of the new gender policy. (Warning: transphobic)

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday clearing the way to bar transgender people from military service by revoking a Biden-era policy that allowed trans service members.

Transgender Travel Guide: Bathroom Bans in the US

Pride & Precedents has made an overview over transgender bathroom bans in the US.

Data from January 2025. The main report (link below) will be updated.

Read the whole report here.

400 American Civil Rights Organizations Urge Congress to Reject Trans Athlete Ban

The Hill reports that more than 400 American LGBTQ and civil rights organizations have urged Congress to reject proposed legislation that would bar transgender athletes from participating in women’s sports.

Led by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the coalition argues that such a ban would harm women and girls and undermine civil rights for all students.

The proposed legislation, known as the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, seeks to amend Title IX to define sex based solely on reproductive biology and genetics at birth, effectively excluding transgender female athletes from women’s sports. The bill has garnered support from 97 Republican lawmakers.

Opponents, including the Human Rights Campaign and GLAAD, contend that the bill’s language is discriminatory and could lead to the exclusion of cisgender women and girls with intersex traits. They argue that instead of addressing genuine issues in women’s athletics, such as unequal facilities and resources, the bill targets transgender individuals under the guise of protecting women’s sports.

The coalition emphasizes that inclusive policies are essential for the well-being of all students and warns that marking some students as outcasts fosters an environment where no student feels safe or included. They call on Congress to focus on strategies that genuinely support women’s athletics without discriminating against transgender athletes.

From the letter:

“Targeting and excluding transgender, nonbinary, and intersex students from participation in school programming, including athletics programs, alongside their cisgender peers is harmful to all students and undermines the learning environment for everyone. If schools mark some students effectively as outcasts, they foster an environment where no student is included and safe.”

More here: More than 400 civil rights groups call on Congress to reject transgender athlete ban

Press Release: 400+ Civil Rights Groups Reject Anti-Trans Legislation, Demand Congress Vote NO on H.R. 28

The full text of the letter.

Photo: Getty

Meta’s new moderation policies will harm LGBTQ people,Judd Legum says

In a recent interview with Uncloseted Media, Judd Legum, founder of the accountability journalism newsletter Popular Information, discussed Meta’s recent policy changes under CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

(For more about the new Meta policy, see our article Facebook, Threads and Instagram open the gates to anti-LGBTQ haters.)

Legum highlighted that Meta has eliminated its fact-checking program and introduced guidelines permitting users to label LGBTQ individuals as mentally ill due to their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Legum noted that the fact-checking program, initiated around 2018-2019, was inherently flawed due to minimal investment and the inclusion of publications with questionable records, such as The Daily Caller.

He emphasized that the program served more to shield Meta from criticism over misinformation than to effectively curb it. The decision to terminate the program, accompanied by rhetoric aligning with anti-fact-checking sentiments prevalent in certain political circles, signals a cultural shift within Meta towards right-leaning ideologies.

Legum said:

The other part of this announcement that really stuck out and underscores that, was Zuckerberg saying that they’re going to continue some content moderation about certain topics, but they’re moving their content moderation team to Texas because Zuckerberg says that Texas is a place where people have less concern about bias, which is also something that Musk talks about a lot, that Texas is the greatest place. He’s moved the headquarters of Tesla to Texas. He moved the headquarters of X to Texas. And that somehow is this neutral place and California is just full of biased people. And so all of that is pretty ridiculous on its face. The only way that it’s preferable is if you are trying to pander to the right.

Legum expressed concern over Meta’s new guidelines that allow users to accuse LGBTQ individuals of mental illness based on their identity. He warned that such policies could exacerbate hate speech and discrimination on the platform, especially with the upcoming inauguration of President Trump.

Read the interview here.

Facebook, Threads and Instagram open the gates to anti-LGBTQ haters

Facebook, Instsgram and Threads now give transphobic and homophobic haters close to free reign on their platforms.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Threads and Instagram, has announced a significant shift in its content moderation strategy by ending its third-party fact-checking program and introducing a community-based model similar to X’s Community Notes.

Meta is using anti-trans terms

The company will also allow users to invalidate trans and gay people using mental illness narratives.

A Meta representative said:

“We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality and common non-serious usage of words like ‘weird.’”

In other words: Meta will now allow for hateful content targeting both trans and gay people. Note also the use of the term “transgenderism”. No one, expect, transphobic TERFs and right wingers, use the term “transgenderism”.

Meta will also end its policy of downplaying political content in its algorithms, ensuring that more anti-LGBTQ propaganda will be visible in the feeds of users. And with no fact-checking, we would guess anything can get through.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated that this change aims to “get back to our roots around free expression,” emphasizing a reduction in censorship and errors associated with previous moderation efforts.

A moral collapse

Zuckerberg is now down on his knees worshipping Trump and the MAGA-movement. This represents a complete ethical collapse on his part.

Critics argue that relying on community-driven moderation may lead to the spread of misinformation, as the effectiveness of such systems in accurately assessing content is still under scrutiny.

Sure, but the main takeaway her us that Meta now signals to the world that the company thinks it is OK for transphobes and homophobes to harass and invalidate LGBTQ people, their sexualities, their identities and their safety on these platforms.

This will also, for most LGBTQ people, mean that they will have to use these platforms without any defense against haters. It is not that they were not filled with hate speech already. The point here is that LGBTQ-people could always try to use the codes of conduct to reign in the most active bullies. No more.

It seems to us that the only main social media platforms that tries to protect LGBTQ people are Bluesky and Mastodon.

JK Rowling Falsely Claims “There Are No Trans Kids”

In December 2024, author J.K. Rowling claimed on social media that “there are no trans kids” and that children are not “born in the wrong body.” She accused adults of harming minors by supporting transgender identities.

These statements contradict extensive research documenting the existence of transgender youth, Erin Reed writes.

A study published in Nature Human Behavior identified approximately 60,000 transgender adolescents in the United States alone.

The study also found that restrictive laws against transgender rights correlate with increased suicide attempts among transgender youth.

Erin Reed writes:

This is not the first time J.K. Rowling has spread disinformation about the existence transgender people.

Earlier this year, she claimed that the Nazi book burnings at the Institute of Sexology—where groundbreaking research on transgender and LGBTQ+ identities was destroyed—were “a fever dream.” To bolster her claim, she linked to a fringe researcher’s thread dismissing transgender women targeted by the Nazis as “troubled males,” erasing their identities entirely.

However, history is clear: transgender people existed in the 1920s and 1930s in Germany, were heavily persecuted by the Nazis, and many fled or survived to share their stories.

Rowling’s comments have been criticized for spreading misinformation and potentially endangering transgender individuals by denying their existence and undermining their rights.

It is now clear that the “gender critical” TERFs like Rowling are trying to erase transgender people completely.

See: JK Rowling Falsely Claims “There Are No Trans Kids”

5 of Europe’s Primary LGBT Organizations Condemn the UK Puberty Blocker Ban

The UK government’s indefinite ban on puberty blockers for transgender youth has been met with condemnation from leading European LGBTQ organizations, including ILGA-Europe, IPPF European Network, TGEU, IGLYO, and The Kite Trust.

These groups argue that the decision is politically motivated and disregards established medical guidance, emphasizing that misinformation has significantly influenced public opinion and policy.

The organizations write:

“The framing and justification for this ban have leaned heavily on a polarised and often misleading public narrative about trans identities and related trans healthcare and epistemologically, and methodologically questionable studies about trans identities and trans-specific healthcare.

Despite claims of prioritising child safety, this decision disregards the consensus of medical professionals and organisations such as the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) and the Endocrine Society’s Clinical Practice Guideline, which have long endorsed puberty blockers as a safe and reversible option for managing gender dysphoria in minors.”

TransLucent, an advocacy group for the UK’s transgender and gender-diverse community, participated in providing evidence to the Commission of Human Medicines (CHM) regarding the ban.

They highlight that puberty blockers are reversible treatments used for various conditions, including precocious puberty, and that banning them specifically for trans youth constitutes discriminatory treatment based on ideology rather than evidence.

“Win or Lose”: Disney’s Transgender Bathroom Scene Leaks Online

Disney has gotten a lot of criticism for turning a trans character cis in the upcoming animated series Win or Lose.

Inside the Magic writes:

Shortly after the news broke, social media sources leaked the alleged rough draft of the transgender scene on X (formerly Twitter). @LostMediaBuster had access to the scene for a while but didn’t publicize it until they found out Pixar had removed it from the series.

Now they have shared it on X.

The scene gives a good presentation of both gender dysphoria and gender euphoria. This is a scene that would have humanized trans kids in the eyes of cis people and shown trans kids that they are not alone.

To bad Disney did not have the moral compass needed to stand up to transphobic politicians and parents.

Jack Molay

How an Italian trans girl got access to puberty blockers.

The Washington Post has published an interesting article about Maria, an 11 year old Italian trans girl, whose family had to go to Spain to get puberty blockers.

The article discusses the challenges faced by transgender youth in accessing puberty blockers amid political and medical debates. It follows the story of an 11-year-old transgender girl named Maria from Rome, who struggled to obtain puberty blockers in Italy due to political scrutiny and a de facto freeze on new prescriptions.

Maria and her mother eventually traveled to Spain, where they successfully obtained the medication.

The article highlights the varying access to puberty blockers across different countries, with some nations imposing restrictions or bans, while others provide more supportive environments for transgender youth.

The article has been archived here.

Hate crimes against transgender people are up 125% in LA

Hate crimes against transgender individuals in Los Angeles County surged by 125% in 2023, with 97% of these crimes being violent, according to a report by the LA County Human Relations Commission.

LA Public Press reports that the county recorded 1,350 hate crimes overall, a 45% increase from 2022, marking the highest number since data collection began in 1980. Hate crimes against transgender people represented the largest increase.

The report linked the overall rise in hate crimes to national political rhetoric and improved reporting systems. Experts highlighted the role of divisive political discourse, particularly targeting transgender and LGBTQ+ communities. High-profile incidents, such as threats and attacks on the TransLatin@ Coalition, were cited as emblematic of the violence faced by these groups.

Key findings included:

LGBTQ+ hate crimes rose 48%, making this group the second most targeted.
The majority of gender-based hate crime suspects were male (86%), and many incidents occurred in public spaces (58%).
Anti-Black crimes represented nearly half of racially motivated hate crimes, despite Black residents comprising only 9% of the county population.
Religion-based hate crimes spiked 90%, and anti-Asian crimes increased by 31%.

Community leaders emphasized the need for education, partnerships, and stronger enforcement to address hate crimes. While the increase in reports may reflect greater victim confidence in coming forward, officials stressed that rhetoric fueling polarization and intolerance continues to have dangerous consequences.

2023 LA County Hate Crime Report

Photo: karandaev