Defining Genocide: The Systematic Attack on Transgender Rights

By Jenna Taylor

Genocide is a word that rightfully illicit images of humanity’s worst atrocities.
Currently, there are officially five ongoing genocides. The genocide in Gaza, the Masalit
genocide, the Rohingya genocide, the Uyghur genocide, and the Ukrainian genocide.
These genocides did not just happen out of thin air, so to speak; there were steps taken
to create the situation that ultimately led to these genocides. In this article, I will
examine the official legal definition of what constitutes genocide, the current public
opinion of transgender people in the United States, as well as the steps taken by the
Trump Administration against the transgender community. And whether we are currently
experiencing a transgender genocide.

Defining Genocide

The current definition that is widely used to define genocide is the Convention
on The Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which the United Nations
General Assembly adopted on December 9, 1948. It is colloquially referred to as the
“Genocide Convention.” Article II of the Genocide Convention lists only five conditions
that would strictly define genocide. These are the killing of members of a group, causing
serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life,
imposing measures intended to prevent births, and forcibly transferring children
(General Assembly resolution 260 A (III), 1948).

Some scholars have criticized the Genocide Convention for creating a
language that protects the sovereignty of the Permanent Members of The United
Nations Security Council or P-5 (China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, United
States). “The two most controversial omissions from the adopted text of the Genocide
Convention are protection for political groups and the prohibitions of acts constituting
cultural genocide” (Bachman, 2022). With this in mind, let us look at the Trump
Administration’s policies that are affecting the transgender community.

Trump Administration Policies and Rhetoric

The Republican National Committee (RNC) in the 2024 Election cycle sought
to use the transgender community to scapegoat society’s problems. The RNC and the
Trump Campaign spent nearly $215 million on anti-trans ads (Schneid, 2024). These
ads most notably played on every advertisement break during every major sports event.
Specifically, there was a very effective ad that used Kamala Harris’ own words against
her in which she supported taxpayer-funded surgeries for transgender prisoners while
falsely claiming that she supported it for undocumented people while hitting home that
“Kamala is for They/Them” and that Trump is a man of the people.

Throughout the 2024 Election cycle, there was intense rhetoric being used
against transgender people. Oppressors frequently weaponized children in the political
debate, where they would accuse transgender adults of being “groomers” or
“pedophiles.” They often used terms like “castration” and “genital mutilation” to describe
the medically necessary treatments that some transgender people go through.
Moreover, as Trump has recently taken office, he has doubled down on this rhetoric,
and he uses it almost daily to describe the transgender community, whether verbally or written. This has given his many passionate supporters the green light to start using the
same language wherever they see fit. I cannot say anything on social media without
people harassing me and not uncommonly sending me threats of violence.

The Trump Administration has made a handful of sweeping Executive Orders
that affect how transgender people will be treated under the administration. Among
some of the changes are the revocation of legal recognition of transgender people,
discrediting the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH),
discharging transgender troops from the military, stripping coverage for gender-affirming
care from Medicare and Medicaid, threatening to take transgender children away from
parents who support them, banning the acknowledgment of the existence of
transgender people in education settings while also revoking funding for any institution
that attempts to do so, banning the use of pronouns for federal employees, and defining
what bathrooms transgender people can use the Capitol and potentially elsewhere as
things continue to develop. While making many of these sweeping changes, the Trump
Administration and fellow Republican lawmakers have continued to use terms like
“gender ideology,” “woke,” “genital mutilation,” “groomers,” “pedophiles,” “trans-identified
male,” etc.

The language being used by the Trump Administration, plus the legal efforts they have taken to affect the transgender community, would fall under the categories of
‘dehumanization’ and the ‘organization’ of a genocide. “Dehumanization, as the word
suggests, is a process by which a particular group is marked as subhuman. This
includes describing them as animals or disease. The process of dehumanization often
involves negative propaganda campaigns…. The process of dehumanization allows the government to violate the human rights of the targeted group without the widespread
criticism of the country’s people, just as long as the propaganda efforts are successful
(Wilson, 2014).

These policies were all enacted within the first two weeks of the Trump Administration, indicating that it was a top priority item for them to strip transgender people of their rights. These policies and their emboldened supporters will no doubt help to continue the trend that in the past decade, 51% of fatal hate crimes committed against transgender and gender non-conforming people has occurred within the last 4 years (Human Rights Campaign Foundation, 2023). It is worth noting that these statistics are incomplete due to underreporting and misreporting of crimes against transgender people.

Aside from direct violence, there will be institutional violence that will begin to
take place. The Trump Administration has already signed an Executive Order ordering
transgender women housed in federal women’s prisons to be transferred to men’s
prisons, where they will inevitably become victims of what is known as ‘V-Coding’. This
is where the transgender woman is presented as a ‘prize’ to a violent male offender to
help pacify them. This leads to the trans woman experiencing state-sanctioned daily
rape, which many legal advocates claim violates the 8th Amendment’s ‘cruel and
unusual punishment’ clause. Lastly, the revocation of our access to gender-affirming
care will lead to the suicides of many transgender people. It will cause significant bodily
harm to people whose bodies can no longer produce any sex hormones. “A dominant
group uses law, custom, and political power to deny the rights of other groups.  The
powerless group may not be accorded full civil rights, voting rights, or even citizenship.

The dominant group is driven by an exclusionary ideology that would deprive less
powerful groups of their rights. The ideology advocates monopolization or expansion of
power by the dominant group. It legitimizes the victimization of weaker groups.
Advocates of exclusionary ideologies are often charismatic, expressing the resentments
of their followers” (Stanton, 1996).

Furthermore, Stanton gives examples of how taking such legal actions have
been employed in the genocide against the Jews by Nazi Germany, by the United
States in its genocide against the Native Americans, and the genocide of the Rohingya.

Conclusion            

While the Genocide Convention is stringent in its interpretation of what
constitutes genocide, many scholars have called out that there is no mention of
genocides against political or cultural genocide. Moreover, this was designed to protect
Permanent Member states from internal genocide. The Trump Administration’s rapid
legal regression of transgender recognition and civil liberties, including the dehumanizing rhetoric being used, absolutely constitutes a genocide according to many scholar’s criteria, most notably Dr. Gregory Stanton’s The Ten Stages of Genocide, which is widely accepted as a framework by human rights organizations to assess the early warning signs of a genocide. Logically, suppose we use history as an example. In that case, it is only a matter of time before these steps lead to a full-blown transgender genocide, extermination, and, ultimately, the denial of the event.

Call to Action

We need to rely on our allies in the cisgender community to help amplify
transgender voices and experiences, help us get into the media, and use inclusive
language wherever possible. Call out hateful and dehumanizing language wherever you
see it happening. Help transgender people with filing lawsuits to help contest the laws,
statutes, and Executive Orders that are taking away our civil liberties. Write to your
legislators, hold them accountable for using dehumanizing rhetoric, pressure them to
advocate for transgender-inclusive legislation, pressure media outlets to challenge the
dehumanizing language that their guests and pundits use, and demand that they
platform transgender voices if they intend to speak about transgender issues. Join
grassroots efforts through nonprofit organizations that work to advocate for our civil
liberties and help them organize and coordinate their efforts. Help raise money for legal
funds to support the significant legal battle ahead. Collect as much evidence as you can
of discrimination, hate crimes, suicides tied to denial of healthcare, and the forced
transfers of transgender children from their families to provide evidence for domestic
courts and future international tribunals.

With the help of our cisgender allies and our fiercely strong transgender rights
advocates, we may be able to stave off the worst of this genocide. We may be able to
spare the complete eradication of transgender people with intense advocacy efforts and
vigilance. I call on all cisgender people everywhere to take notice and to do whatever is
within their power to prevent the next crime against humanity.

References