‘Identity politics’ creates benign cloak of cover for transgender genocide
Transgender people have never enjoyed total safety and comfort in America. Whether it be the risk of violence from one’s neighbors, the possibility of losing one’s job or housing from discrimination, or the fear of coming under attack from politicians, gender-nonconforming Americans have rarely enjoyed any sense of security. In the present day, transgender people often come under attack through something typically referred to as “identity politics,” an us vs. them style of political strategy that involves rallying up one’s supporters under a collective identity that supposedly shares a common purpose.
Perpetrators of identity politics seek to make their base feel victimized by others, villainizing other groups in order to justify advancing the goals of their own. This sort of factionalism discourages politicians from creating meaningful, effective policy, instead seeking meaningless “wins” in culture-war battles. In recent years, Evangelicals and Conservatives—those that’d call themselves “supporters of the traditional family”—have increasingly villainized and attacked transgender Americans. Despite making up less than 1% of America’s population, transgender people have been portrayed by American politicians as some sort of predatory menace that seeks to corrupt our society. One key example of this is the FBI’s recent warnings against “radical gender ideology” and its classification “extremism based on gender” as a newly defined type of “domestic terrorsism” (NSPM-7, September 25, 2025). This merely piles on to the Trump administration’s attacks on transgender athletes, which, despite targeting such a small section of an already marginal community, are portrayed as the last line of defense for “protecting women's sports.”
The administration has dismissed modern, scientifically proven understandings of gender as a social construct, favoring more outdated, biology-focused perspectives that equate sex and gender. This, combined with the aforementioned fearmongering and targeting of trans people, has allowed the administration to justify a legal assault on transgender people’s livelihoods and liberties. They have weaponized federal agencies (the HHS, DOJ, FBI, etc.) against this marginalized community, seeking to eradicate it while portraying themselves as heroes for doing so. Under the present administration, the use of transgender people as a political scapegoat has warped and evolved into something much more dangerous: an attempt to systemically erase them from American society, solely for the sake of appeasing those that they have managed to delude.
On the very first day of his second term, President Trump issued Executive Order No. 14168, entitled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” The title of the legislation alone continued to utilize that previously-explained habit of demonizing trans people and characterizing them as threats. It tries to depict the administration’s actions as well intentioned and heroic, suggesting that they seek to “protect” America from trans people, who they portray as vulgar predators. In reality, not a single policy in the order actually protects women, and nobody should expect that from the administration that’s covering up the largest sex-trafficking operation in human history. What this bill does do is put trans people at risk, bar them from most gender-based public accommodations, and legally de-recognizes them in the eyes of the federal government, deliberately denying the difference between biological sex and gender identity and acting against scientifically-backed understandings that date back millennia.
This administration is actively proceeding with an agenda of systemically harassing trans people, and the purpose of this executive order is to establish the justification for that harassment. One key provision of said presidential order mandates that incarcerated transgender women be imprisoned in men-only prisons, inflaming and supporting an already extremely common human trafficking issue. The National Center for Transgender Equality has found that trans prisoners, regardless of their gender identity and where they’re placed, are already nine times more likely to be sexually assaulted than cisgender prisoners. Many personal accounts report instances of sex trafficking, which were almost always organized or permitted by guards and prison staff. Imprisoned trans individuals are endangered and constantly at risk of sexual violence from both guards and their fellow prisoners, and this administration’s order seeks to ensure that. This, along with other provisions in the order that establish guidelines for excluding transgender men and women from many aspects of public life, is a model example of one of two major goals to this administration’s attack on gender-nonconforming individuals: harming and instilling enough fear within the existing generation of trans people to encourage them to suppress their gender identity and stay hidden from public life.
As for the second of these two goals, the Trump administration’s policies in recent months has made it clear that one of their foremost intentions is to discourage and restrict current and future young people from identifying as transgender whatsoever. While the powers of the Department of Justice were the administration’s main method of targeting transgender people in the earlier months of this presidential term, this particular phase of the Trump administration’s assault on trans livelihoods has seen the Department of Health and Human Services weaponized against trans people—especially young trans people—and their right to bodily autonomy, spearheaded by always controversial Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The secretary recently addressed the nation, citing a study and report made by his own department, denounced gender-affirming care (a historically widely accepted treatment for gender dysphoria) as “junk-science,” making outlandishly false claims that gender affirming care creates lasting harm on children, and almost completely barring hospitals from providing this type of medical care to minors. In terms of attacks on trans people’s liberty, this is one of the administration’s biggest so far. This policy establishes a terrible precedent for trans people’s bodily autonomy throughout the next three years of this term, and arguably puts the bodily autonomy of all Americans at risk. It’s been made clear that policies like these are less about protecting Americans and more about controlling them, for HHS’ attacks have spanned beyond just pharmacological (or in very, very rare cases, surgical) gender-affirming care. Manufacturers of chest binders—appearance-altering garments comparable to sports bras or compression clothing—have received letters from the FDA imposing restrictions on the sale of their products, mandating that they register the item as “medical care,” while compression shirts and socks are still able to be sold in any old department store.
Despite the unfair, restrictive regulations the administration has pushed out, all one has to do is look at the language they use to describe trans people to understand just how malicious their motives are. The administration, in official federal policy, addresses to the nation, or speeches at their own rallies, has used words like “mutilation” and “maiming” to describe gender-affirming care, even though surgical procedures are rarely used to treat gender dysphoria. They paint what has been known for years as credible life-saving care as something of lunacy and delusion. This is a very clear pattern of deliberately hurting a minority group, targeting multiple aspects of their livelihood and making their way of life almost entirely inaccessible. It deliberately aims to discourage the youth from feeling safe enough to explore their gender identity and potential transition, while alienating those who are.
The peculiar, deliberate cruelty of this administration’s approach to transgender people has not gone unnoticed. The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Protection and Human Security, as well as the International Association of Genocide Scholars, both multinational organizations with understood credibility in the topic of genocide (the intentional, systemic destruction of a whole or a part of a particular group), have expressed worry for transgender Americans, even making statements that “[America] may already be in the early stages of committing genocide [against gender minorities]”. They go on to explain how “The Trump administration and its bases…have identified a set of ‘enemies’ or ‘objectionable people’ [organizing public prejudice against them] in a way that is escalating toward violence.” Understanding all this, it becomes very clear what the Trump administration intends to do with transgender people, an easy scapegoat that makes up less than one percent of the population. With each new anti-trans bill or policy passed, those who have gleefully consumed and internalized the government’s propaganda aimed toward trans people will rejoice. This is because they have been deluded to the point of believing over 2.8 million of their neighbors to be monsters, just as their politicians told them.
This, intentionally so, is the outcome of identity politics: destruction of a group to benefit another’s desire for power. If the administration’s violations of trans liberties go unchecked, trans people risk disappearing from public life altogether. Now, more than ever, it’s important to question what the government tells you, especially when they’re telling you that an entire group of people are evil. In truth, transgender people are in fact more likely to be victims of predators than predators themselves, and gender-affirming care is not “junk science” or “medical malpractice,” rather, lifesaving care that can change the life of those who receive it. Ultimately, the only people that are the “enemy” are those who seek to divide us by the microscopic things that make us different.
by Veronica Holladay
Published February 9, 2026
Oshkosh West Index Volume 122 Issue IV