TRANS RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS
The New York Times reported on Sunday that the US government is weighing a move to define gender as strictly biological, denying the very basis of transgender identity. This is not a political post (though I am expecting many people to take it as such), this is a human's rights post.
To sum things up for you:
Previously, the US goverment had taken an opposite approach, allowing people to identify with a gender not defined at birth.
The Department of Health and Human Services is now spearheading an effort to establish a legal definition of sex under Title IX, the federal law that bans gender discrimination in education programs that receive government funding. The new definition would define sex as either male or female, unchangeable and determined by the genitals a person is born with. Any dispute about one’s sex would have to be clarified using genetic testing.
It follows recent moves to ban transgender people from serving in the US military and also after several agencies have withdrawn policies that recognise transgender identity in schools, prisons and homeless shelters.
The change proposed would affect 1.4 million Americans and has already sparked the hashtag #WontBeErased on social media.
Now let's chat about it.
The definition of 'transgender' is: "a person whose sense of personal identity and gender does not correspond with their birth sex".
Notice the words 'personal identity'?
If you read it again you will see that by definition the term 'transgender' has nothing to do with one's 'sex' and everything to do with their sense of identity, so how do their genitals at birth have anything to do with it? If you think about it, sexual identity is such a personal thing, it is a person's most inner concept of themselves as male, female, a blend of both or neither – it's how a person perceives themselves and what they call themselves.
In short - one's gender identity can be the same or different from their sex assigned at birth.
It really is that simple.
Complicated to understand if you're not transgender, I agree, but so is algebra or physics yet no one is denying either exist.
As for human rights, well they are not privileges to be earned or gifts that governments can give or take away at will, they are part of what is means to be human. And I am pretty sure no one would argue that transgenders are in fact humans and not alians, so why does it seem we are going backwards?
Fear.
It's always about fear and the only way to fight fear is by shedding light, so here is a little torch - ask questions, get to know more about this group of people and then maybe, just maybe, when the fear is gone, we can all find some love and computation instead?