Trump cloaks trans bigotry as protecting women, guts domestic violence programs | Opinion
Just glance at the myriad things Trump and Co. have done to defund programs nationwide that may actually protect women and you'll see how transgender youth and adults are being used as a cudgel.
President Donald Trump’s and his administration love to dehumanize transgender people under the guise of “protecting women.”
It’s an ignorant and bigoted lie. One need only glance at the myriad things Trump and Co. have done to defund programs across the country that might actually protect women to see how transgender youth and adults are being used as a culture-war cudgel. Their very existence is tossed like red meat to a right-wing base hungry for cruelty against people they won’t bother to understand.
The anti-trans fury often involves the issue of transgender athletes, an almost-impossibly small sliver of people in America.
Trump's focus on transgender people is cruel and opportunistic
When he signed a February executive order banning transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports, Trump amped up the drama: “Under the Trump administration, we will defend the proud tradition of female athletes, and we will not allow men to beat up, injure and cheat our women and our girls.”
I’ll quickly point out that under this same disingenuous president, the Department of Justice Office on Violence Against Women has stripped its website of funding opportunities, instructing people to “not finalize any applications.”
When Attorney General Pam Bondi recently announced a Justice Department lawsuit against Maine's Department of Education for not following the government’s ban on transgender athletes, she said: “We believe they are failing to protect women, and it's not only an issue in sports. It is a public safety issue."
Bondi added: “We are going to continue to fight for women.”
To which I say: bull.
Trump targets trans people while gutting domestic violence programs
Maine Gov. Janet Mills has said there are a total of two transgender athletes in the entire state. NCAA President Charlie Baker has said that out of more than a half-million college athletes in America, there are fewer than 10 who are transgender. The Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law estimates that 0.6% of Americans 13 and older identify as transgender.
As Gov. Mills said recently: “To target one small group of people in America in order to divert attention from these other, real issues ‒ to target people, a minority group, who are already targeted ... in cruel and unfair ways ‒ is a sad and cruel distraction.”
Yes. A sad and cruel distraction. Or as I like to call it, “The Republican Party’s primary objective."
Groups actually helping women forced to cut services and staff
Because while this hurtful rhetoric against transgender people, who we know have an already-disproportionate rate of suicide, is cynically cloaked as an effort to protect women, the Trump administration's slash-and-burn work at cutting government spending is actively harming women.
From a recent National Public Radio report: “April 1 was the first day of Sexual Assault Awareness Month. It's also the day the Department of Health and Human Services fired the teams that work on sexual violence prevention.”
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that the federal funding squeeze from cuts either made or attempted by the Trump administration – some of the cuts are in legal limbo – “has meant longer waits on hotlines, fewer hours at shelters and lost positions at nonprofits that help domestic violence and sexual assault victims.”
The newspaper quoted Monique Minkens, executive director of End Domestic Abuse Wisconsin, a coalition of advocacy organizations: “People are going to die.”
And Ian Henderson, policy and systems director of the Wisconsin Coalition Against Sexual Assault, told the Journal Sentinel that the cuts to federal employees who work with nonprofits have also been devastating: “You had people with decades of experience in sexual violence prevention who are now gone."
Defunding a study on reducing maternal mortality
In San Bernardino, California, a nonprofit shelter that helps women facing domestic violence recently received an email saying the federal grant that provides most of its funding had been terminated.
“A lot of the women we talk to, we were their last option," Dan Flores, the executive director of Mary's Mercy Center, told a local ABC News affiliate. “Without us, many of (these women) say they wouldn't have a place to go. They would be homeless, either on the street, living in their car, or in some cases, feel like they have to go to a bad situation.”
The administration has pulled funding from a research project at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill that was studying ways to reduce “preventable causes of maternal morbidity and mortality” among domestic abuse victims.
Funding 'a matter of life for survivors' – but Trump doesn't care
Teresa Stafford-Wright, chief executive officer of Ohio’s Hope and Healing Survivor Resource Center, told Politico that 75% of her organization’s budget comes from federal grants, and if the Trump cuts in funding go through, she may have to lay people off.
“This is a matter of life for survivors,” Stafford-Wright said.
These stories are everywhere.
Trump uses cruelty against trans people as a distraction
So don’t buy the cruel canard that the Trump administration is going after transgender people for the sake of women at large. Republicans have clearly demonstrated they don’t give a damn about women, starting with electing a man found liable of sexual abuse.
Transgender people are being treated in the same despicable way gay and lesbian people were treated in years past. The right always needs an “other” to justify its backward policies and frighten a base unwilling to recognize anyone who doesn’t look, live or love exactly as they do.
It’s the same cruel story, and the same cruel pack of lies. None of it is doing anything to actually help all women in America.
Follow Paste BN columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @rexhuppke.bsky.social and on Facebook at facebook.com/RexIsAJerk