It’s Time to Call Modern Anti-Trans Laws What They Are: Attempted Genocide

The United States is certainly not a stranger to genocide, though many Americans, especially those who are particularly patriotic, view their country as wholly disconnected from the act of genocide. A crime against humanity worse than any other, historically speaking, the United States of America has perpetrated many.

From the mass enslavement, torture, murder, and displacement of Black people to the mass sterilization, displacement, murder, and cultural destruction of Native Americans, it is unequivocally clear that such a sentiment of the United States’ supposed opposition to and disconnection from genocide is historically false.

Additionally, many Americans, especially those of the aforementioned nature, are comfortable in their view of the United States as a land of freedom and opportunity. This is no surprise as, from a young age, children recite such in the Pledge of Allegiance, sometimes every day.

However, despite what the Pledge of Allegiance and patriots may state, such has never been the case.

For the modern LGBTQ community, especially the transgender community, this is well-known. The United States is in the midst of a modern anti-queer political crusade, with anti-queer, especially anti-trans, governmental action being introduced and enacted near constantly; with the recent Texas Supreme Court ruling which allowed Governor Abbott’s policy in which trans healthcare is investigated as child abuse to continue. Even though the Texas Supreme Court recently overturned the directive, there are myriad other anti-trans policies circulating the country; this should be abundantly clear.

Of course, tragically, the United States’ modern oppression of, and crusade against, the transgender community is directly linked with its aforementioned tendency toward the perpetuation of genocide. The facilitation of genocide, a tragic culmination of oppression, is a territory into which much modern anti-transgender legislation seems to horrifically enter.

The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, also known as the Genocide Convention, defines genocide as “(Acts) committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

While, of course, this convention, passed by the Third United Nations General Assembly in 1948, does not specifically mention sexual orientation, gender identity, romantic orientation, etcetera, the objects of the oppression of the queer community, including the trans community, such communities should obviously be included under such a definition.

The sentiment of the opening clause is that, in short, genocide is the purposeful destruction of an oppressed societal out-group on the basis that they are that group, and such unequivocally includes the entirety of the queer community.

Regarding the transgender community specifically, many enacted policies, or policies attempting to be enacted, in the modern-day meet such a definition. The aforementioned policies of banning transgender healthcare for trans youths are potentially the most egregious instances of violation of this definition of genocide.

Puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy, the topics of these policies, have been shown to drastically reduce the horrifically high suicide rate of transgender youths, saving lives. To block trans youth from such a treatment manufactures a higher suicide rate and thus manufacture more suicides, more deaths within the transgender community, specifically amongst youth.

This flagrantly violates sections a, b, and c of the aforementioned definition; this policy produces conditions for trans youth via lack of access to life-saving healthcare that cause mass mental distress in the form of suicidality and depression, which itself leads to drastically more suicides and suicide attempts.

A prevalently proposed enforcement for such policies, as is the case with the aforementioned policy of Texas Governor Greg Abbott, is to treat the providing of such vital healthcare as child abuse. Had it not been overturned, the directive would have likely resulted in child services departments removing transgender children from affirming homes and families providing gender-affirming healthcare and placing them into non-affirming ones which do not.

This enforcement would additionally meet and violate section e of the aforementioned definition of genocide, albeit in a unique way.

Unlike the oppressed groups listed specifically in the definition, which are things that are largely passed down generationally, transgender identity is a sporadically occurring trait; as such, you effectively cannot remove a transgender child from a transgender household. However, you can remove a transgender child from an affirming household, which has the same effect of removing youths of an oppressed group from a safe community for themselves. That, as previously explored, is what this policy of enforcement would do.

Regarding the queer community at large, policies of their general non-acceptance additionally contribute to a collective genocide of the queer community.

Especially for the transgender community, acceptance of the queer communities’ queerness has been shown to have a direct link with mental health, and just as with youth transgender healthcare, the lack thereof has been shown to subsequently have a direct link with suicidality. For the same reasons analyzed regarding trans youth healthcare bans, policies of non-acceptance of the queer community, including education bans, bathroom bills, transgender sports bills, etcetera, violate sections a, b, and c of the United Nations’ Genocide Convention’s definition of genocide.

The tragic reality of the queer community, and of many other oppressed societal out-groups, is that the horrific act of genocide is a very real current threat. Additionally, as with all American genocides, it will likely be a long time before the United States broadly comes to understand and acknowledge the new queer genocide, and likely longer to face any punishment, if it faces any at all.

Regardless, the queer community, specifically the transgender community as the most significant victims of this new genocide, and LGBTQ allies should fight against this genocide, currently in its early stages. We cannot let this happen again.