Approximately 1.3 million adults and 300,000 youth in the United States identify as transgender, and for them, every day is a time bomb.
“With the stroke of my pen, on day one, we are going to stop transgender madness,” President-elect Donald Trump’s words echoed at the Phoenix Convention Center at AmericaFest, the annual gathering of Turning Point USA (TPUSA).
About 20,000 right-wing politicians, activists and media personalities gathered here as Trump promised to bring about a “common sense revolution” and a “golden age in America”.
“I will sign executive orders to end child sexual assault, get transgender people out of the military, and out of our elementary schools and middle schools and high schools,” he said at the event.
Due to Trump’s ban on transgenders in the army, about 15,000 people will be out of their duty in the army. Apart from this, transgender people will also be banned from joining the army.
TPUSA director Charlie Kirk said that what happened on November 5 was an act of God and that “Almighty God” deserves credit for Donald Trump’s victory.
For transgender people, living in the United States now is equivalent to living in enemy territory and having their agency neutralized for at least the next four years. According to PBS News, mental health crisis calls from LGBTQ+ youth increased by 700 percent after Election Day.
He also promised to ensure that “men” are kept out of women’s sports. He falsely labeled two Olympic female boxers as men and said their participation at the Paris Games was “disrespectful to women”, even though Algeria’s Imane Khalif and Taiwan’s Li Yu-ting were both described as female at birth. And she identified as a woman.
As Trump declared in his 90-minute speech in Phoenix, “Under the Trump Administration, it will be the official policy of the United States Government that there are only two genders, male and female. That doesn’t sound too complicated, does it?”
In addition to talking about economic growth and mass deportation of illegal immigrants, Trump also said that “awakening” is bringing shame to the country.
“And the waking has to stop,” he said. “Because along with everything else, it’s destroying our country. We’re going to stop being woke. Woke up, woke up bulls***.” He argued that local school systems’ openness to transgender issues and critical race theory are part of such destructive policies and vowed to end them.
“We’re going to get Critical Race Theory and transgender madness out of our schools, and we’re going to get it out of our schools very fast,” he said, after which the audience applauded. “I will protect religious freedom, I will restore freedom of speech and I will protect the right to keep and bear arms.
It’s also worth noting that the Trump campaign spent $65 million on anti-transgender campaign ads, stating, “Kamala supports taxpayer-funded gender reassignment for prisoners and illegal aliens. Kamala is for them “President Trump is for you.” He also accused Democrats of “imposing a transgender cult” on children.
Gender-affirming care is a necessity in the United States that has been linked to lower cases of depression, anxiety, and suicide. How Trump’s new laws will affect the millions of people who rely on gender-affirming care is still unclear.
