Unsurprisingly Sullivan bases her review on the immutable binary nature of sex. Just to remind readers, this is a statement of belief rather than evidenced fact. Indeed organisations representing over 3,500 scientists said precisely this in response to President Trump’s executive order stating that sex is both binary and immutable.

But Sullivan then states boldly that all research should ask about “biological sex” – another term which has no clear definition in science or in law – regardless of whether how you were born is relevant to the topic being investigated. She takes issue with what seems like a perfectly reasonable set of questions in an NHS staff survey, matching a trans-inclusive way of capturing relevant data.

Some of her recommendations touch on NHS protocols and use of data. When someone transitions into a different gender, they get given a new NHS number, because the NHS has viewed ‘sex’ as immutable for IT purposes. The individual’s old NHS record is then added as a note to the new record, but that means it cannot be searched other than visually. The ‘sex’ marker is used to automatically call you into various screening programmes. F means you get called for cervical and breast cancer screening, while M leads to prostrate checks. These may or may not be relevant for a whole bunch of people, not just trans people.

This has been an issue for as long as I can remember. As a computing professional with experience in managing data, I was involved in conversations with NHS people 15 years ago about the need for more granular data (for example whether someone has ovaries or not) and why couldn’t the ‘sex’ marker be amended, and it wasn’t a new conversation then. Each time NHS people said that changes were being considered, but the cost of implementing them would be high.

geteilt von: https://lemmy.ml/post/27438770

The left is getting killed on the trans sports issue [^1] [^2]

Do you have any data backing this? And what analysis goes with the data?

Don't let me be misunderstood: Rights are not defined by majorities, otherwise you could have a white majority voting on the humanity of black people, and wolves voting on the right of sheep not to be eaten.

On the other hand, the public's views are heavily conditioned by misanthropic, anti-democratic propaganda, that shifts the window of acceptable discourse, and excludes people from a set of fundamental freedoms that cisgender people take for granted. As a consequence, the ubiquitous genocidal discourse against trans lives, if left unchecked leads (and this is by now not a prediction but a historical fact) to erosion of rights of women, blacks, indigenous, disabled, and every other citizen. Because these freedoms are not "special" to trans people, but are mere extension of legal scholarship and the rule of law. The ongoing American fascism is not an overreach of "legitimate concerns" but it is profoundly, structurally embedded in challenging the legitimacy of trans people. This is why TERFism was initially deemed "unworthy of respect" by British courts: because it goes against TONS of legal precedent.

Long story short, in the times of "Der Stürmer" you could have said that the majority of German did not think Jews should be married to Germans. So what? So much for the argument that we should sacrifice human rights of ANY group because they are unpopular.

ALL protections exist so that UNPOPULAR groups enjoy the rights that the majorities take for granted. Outside that logic there is only fascism.

It is much like segregation (which, surprise, is coming back again) and apartheid: The Feelings of uneasy white people sharing bathrooms and sports with black people, are of no importance whatsoever, because, simply, segregation is dehumanizing and unjust.

By extension, what you suggest is morally corrupt and inhumane, and it is deeply fascist in its very conception.

Now, we are arriving at the data. Bear with me.

You people hand-wave a fucking lot when you suggest that trans rights are so unpopular that they have lost you elections, when there have been multiple arguments that Democrats barely touched on the topic, apart from being loosely against killing trans people in pogroms and LUKEWARM at that. So your argument amounts to little more than "Fascist discourse is more trendy so let's do that instead", which is not JUST the Ratchet effect: it is "being complicit to actual genocide".

So you HAND-WAVE about an IMAGINARY regular person (who is that fucking nazi?) to whom we must bow under all circumstances? Fuck that populist tactics, and fucking educate people.

But does this IMAGINARY nazi-enabling regular Joe even exist?

And what studies you cite for him not being able to revise being a shit person

Views differ even more widely along party lines. For example, eight-in-ten Democrats say they favor laws or policies that would protect trans individuals from discrimination, compared with 48% of Republicans. Conversely, by margins of about 40 percentage points or more, Republicans are more likely than Democrats to express support for laws or policies that would do each of the following: require trans athletes to compete on teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth (85% of Republicans vs. 37% of Democrats favor); make it illegal for health care professionals to provide someone younger than 18 with medical care for a gender transition (72% vs. 26%); make it illegal for public school districts to teach about gender identity in elementary schools (69% vs. 18%); require transgender individuals to use public bathrooms that match the sex they were assigned at birth (67% vs. 20%); and investigate parents for child abuse if they help someone younger than 18 get medical care for a gender transition (59% vs. 17%).

Which is from Pew which others like you like to point to as a general "trans rights unpopular with our voter base", but if you actually read you will see that you can even find a small percentage of Republicans that are not vehemently against trans rights. And let's not forget that the percentage of Democrats against trans rights would be very much different if Democrat's media outlets weren't fucking complicit in amplifying genocidal "gender critical" misanthropy, and there weren't a score of fucking "leftist" intellectuals adopting their talk points, when there was ZERO voice given to the marginalized trans scholarship. So, this consent you talk to is manufactured by complicit Democrats to start with.

You would not make this argument unless you wanted to appeal to the Republican voter base, but doing so only shows that it is voter trends that guide your politics and not principles, and in fact, you are willing to enable crimes against humanity to appeal to a fascist voter base. This is unscrupulous and misanthropic.

Instead of succumbing to extremely well-funded racist and nazi propaganda, a principled political advocate with such means and resources as the Democrats could help alleviate what is a systematic attack to decent society and inclusive democracy. Therefore, your advocacy ultimately paints the Democrats as a manufactured opposition, and essentially a fascist party, once it does not stand for human rights, as it never were.

Centrists should be actively considered agitator agents for fascism at this point. Like, have you clowns even considered that your voter base might want you to grow a fucking spine and stand up for human rights, with trans rights front and center? Because I only see your democratic voter base being alienated by your flirt with fascism.

[^1]: In the original response, this "Trigger Warning" was prepended Trigger Warning: Get a pack of Kleenex and load your favorite Daily Wire playlists to have handy, because this is not going to be a light read for a self-proclaimed intelligent centrist.

[^2]: The discussion in question: https://lemmy.ml/post/27381625 , and the comment in question: https://lemmy.ml/post/27381625/17379633

tw: transphobia

omg, she’s actually so rude. i probably won’t talk to her again and haven’t for a while. she (16f) doesn’t like me for some reason (18ftm) and has actually created alt accounts impersonating my/her friends

::: spoiler tw: slurs, mentions of sa, false accusation

i’m certain these are alts of hers, clare says she doesn’t even have a snapchat acc. i blocked emma but it still makes me mad. and what does she mean im not a real man?? :/

• 🐈‍⬛[system alter], (he/him)

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/26403120

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/26403018

You do not have to be Jewish to apply.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/22882552

I'm 30, transfem, and to be quite honest, I feel my will to live slowly slipping away. I'm trying to find the willpower to finish my PhD thesis and to get into a better living situation after that, but I find myself frozen and wanting to curl up into a tiny ball of nothingness instead. And there are LOTS of reasons for that, mostly centered around trauma, guilt, and shame.

I don't think I can fit everything I need to say in a succinct post, so if it isn't against the rules, would any of you fellow girlies be willing to shoot me a DM and give some advice? I don't think I can really explain without having a back-and-forth conversation... thanks in advance. 🏳️‍⚧️💜

Note, this is just a result of playing around with search engines. This list is not authoritative and I don't vet any of these sources.

A PDF apparently archive of the Shinigami Eyes FAQ and how to label instructions.

Southern Poverty Law Center regularly monitors and lists hate groups, including anti-trans hate groups.

Trans Safety Network is a UK investigative journalist group. The articles host a wealth of anti-trans figures and organizations, mostly (but not limited) to British TERF takeover.

Erin Reed's website has lots of resources on US Legislation against trans people, contains lots of politicians and groups that push similar bills.

This github claims to monitor "gender exploratory" conversion therapy worldwide.

This podcast seems to discuss the anti-trans playbook of far-right militia types such as the Proud Boys.

This arxiv paper seems to have up to date theory and conceptualization. eg it recognizes TERF/far-right "intracommunity" and focuses on "understudied" targets such as transmasculine and non-binary. (This matches what is said in the reviews about the direction the Shinigami Eyes fuckups are taking.)

This is IIRC the original source of the leaked emails Erin Reed has written about

there are extensive discussions between deutsch and notorious anti-gay and anti-trans “experts” associated with known hate groups targeting transgender healthcare in the united states, including dr. quentin l. van meter and dr. michelle cretella of the catholic medical association, dr. andre van mol of the christian medical & dental associations and american college of pediatricians, dr. michael k. laidlaw of the kelsey coalition, dr. william j. malone of the society for evidence-based gender medicine, dr. paul w. hruz of the national catholic bioethics center, laura haynes of narth, and deacon dr. patrick w. lappert of catholic reparative therapy group courage international. participants discuss crafting their language to avoid acknowledging that transgender people exist, constructing new ways to define doctors as criminals for providing gender-affirming care, and targeting a federal agency publication that correctly points out the dangers of anti-gay conversion therapy. their emails frequently digress into personal vendettas and ambitions of destroying established professional groups such as the endocrine society, and they typically celebrate their anti-trans legal and political achievements as a victory of the christian god.

More Anti-Trans

https://gcn.ie/anti-lgbtq-far-right-groups-in-ireland/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Organizations_that_oppose_transgender_rights

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_organizations_designated_by_the_Southern_Poverty_Law_Center_as_anti-LGBTQ_hate_groups

https://pflag.org/antilgbtq/

https://www.advocate.com/news/24-extremists-anti-lgbtq-advocates

https://www.aclu.org/legislative-attacks-on-lgbtq-rights-2024

https://www.aclu.org/legislative-attacks-on-lgbtq-rights-2025

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2024/06/anti-trans-organizations-genspect-segm-are-now-listed-as-hate-groups-by-the-splc/

https://www.transvitae.com/santas-naughty-list-adversaries-to-transgender-equality-in-2024/

https://medium.com/@eliminate.hate/list-of-active-anti-lgbtq-hate-groups-d31f2a325557

https://medium.com/@mimmymum/transphobia-the-development-of-anti-trans-hate-groups-in-the-uk-6854e222dc7e

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-transgender_movement_in_the_United_Kingdom

https://www.advocate.com/politics/120-anti-trans-legislation-2025

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transphobia_in_the_United_States

https://commonslibrary.org/the-anti-trans-disinformation-handbook/

https://www.them.us/story/splc-report-exposes-anti-trans-extremist-network

Some Pro-Trans

https://www.advocate.com/politics/orgs-urge-rejection-transphobic-ndaa

https://www.them.us/story/orgs-fighting-back-anti-trans-legislation

https://www.them.us/story/lgbtq-organizations-activism-advocacy-harris-trump-election

Hello fellow everyone my name is CyaraKaira transgender woman originally from Uganda… I fled my home country due persecution that resulted from the Anti-homosexual bill. I fled to Kenya where I was put in a refugee camp. Here I faced a lot of persecution more than what I faced from my home country. I beaten several times, stripped naked, cut with machetes andremovedd on several occasions. My life was really hell that I had to flee to South Sudan a war country and mostly with hostile people. You may ask I chose this country it’s because I had no choice honestly but it was the nearest to where I was. I’m currently facing lots of challenges including lack of food and medication. I have been sick for week now but have no help. I will be glad for your support to access medication any donations will mean a lot. I’m also will to share my story because I have a lot to share. Thank you

https://gofund.me/bd40a4f9

I've had enough of sitting around at home doing nothing. I want to sit around outside instead.

Basically, I want to go out and set up a table somewhere and talk to passers-by about queer rights. I'm not sure canvassing is exactly the word for this, but I've seen people do this to gather pro-life support in my city so I'm sure it's allowed. I'll figure out the legal routes for this on my own.

What literature should I consult? I want to focus on how to talk to anti-trans moderates especially. Here's some things they touch on when I talk to them at protests:

• parents' rights
• "What is a Woman?"
• your brain isn't fully developed until you're 25 [bad science btw.]
• "why is there a whole pride month?"
• trans regret

Usually I don't hear much hate for non-trans queers in my area, at least not stated out loud. But in my opinion, an attack on trans rights is an attack on all of us.

This has been my experience as well. I have fixed a couple mis-markings myself, after careful examination of the accounts, because sth seemed a bit off.

As many of the 1-star reviews state, accounts that are obviously green are marked as red and vice-versa.

I don't know if it is a moderation issue. The app was dead-accurate for many years, and in the docs they stated they do some manual confirmation as well. It could be sth even more technical with their filter. We can't know.

But the important thing is that it is up to us, the users, to correct mistakes were they are found, or even deliberately introduced by faschists. Shinigami Eyes always was a crowd-sourcing app.

If the crowd stops submitting quality data, then the app will go, indubitably, ashtray.

Just wanna say as a cis ally, y'all trans people are valid (not that you need to hear it from me), and also Ms. Schafer is heckin beautiful. I hope she uses her position to become an icon of protest.

i was transfem as a high schooler, it took a while for my parents to get used to, but i remember my dad was literally like: “ok 👍”

I recently came across several videos of Hans Georg Moeller. Although I got the reference from a leftist source, and there were no early signs to deter me from engaging with his work, I reach the conclusion that his discourse is detrimental to trans activism and unsafe for trans people. Disclaimer: I am no expert in his work, and I watched a couple of his videos. So take what I say here with a grain of salt, if you want. But I think that activists and trans people should be aware that this is probably a problematic philosopher, exerting some influence in leftist transphobe spaces. And in doing so, following the links to his videos provided none of the usual warnings and red flags that are present when entering critter territory. I would rather have people be warned that this philosopher if not "gender-critical" (which I believe) is "gender-critical adjacent", and this should inform whether you want to engage with his ideas or not (which I advise not).

My opinion is formed by the following clues:

• In his video on Contrapoints' Pronouns he mostly refers to texts that are written by gender critical authors. He never cites a transfeminist scholar.
• He frames transness as a symptom of overinvestment to extremely online profiles, and he has written at least one paper about it ("From Identities to Profiles").
• He engages the topic of "wokeism" as an extension of identity politics. This is not in itself damning in this particular case. But there are some deeper problems with it, which relate to broader trivialization of TERF shit in leftist intellectuals.

In discussing "wokeism" he seems to be iffy with established gender terminology, for instance he says "she has all of her identities on, she is cisgender, bisexual and all that". You know what, "cisgender" is not an identity extravaganza, it is an established term to refer to people that are not trans, what MAGAts insist is "normal".

On the other hand he is not quite restrained in inventing novel terminology about gender issues. Gender sincerity, gender authenticity, etc. Again, coming up with terms could be justified if he wants to add other layers of useful abstraction, but in this case I thought this is just obfuscating things that are already known and have simple, intuitive names already: Performativity, gender roles, gender identity, gender expression, gender non-conformity.

There should be no problem to these decades-old terms that are available in numerous sociological dictionaries and reference websites. The only problem is that chuds don't want to hear those terms. And boy were there chuds in the comment section!

An easy objection here could be that Moeller does sth virtuous, by inventing this terminology he makes trans concepts more accessible to people that despise "gender ideology". But is that so? If you translate his argument in the common tongue, he simply says that trans people internalize and perform gender roles, while utterly missing the point that cis people do too. And, at the same time, borderline perpetuating the myth that trans people reproduce stereotypes. All in all, his verbosity tells us nothing new or interesting, rather than providing entry points of legitimacy to more outspoken gender-critical voices, and giving the average chud the vague confidence that Contrapoints and Thorn have somehow been "debunked".

This reactionary ideological function of Moellers' flies under the radar of some trans-positive viewers all the same. Being referred by leftists, and unprimed by the usual walls of red flags that come with other anti-trans commentators, it is easy to tilt your head and listen closely, setting yourself up for an equally alienating, if not traumatic, experience. This friendly guy does not throw the typical dogwhistles people have developed knee-jerk reactions to. He does not purposefully misgender people (although he slips up, but well, true allies tend to not slip up), and he does not seem to make his whole personality about being a dick to trans people. He discusses hijras as a third gender to make his point of "gender sincerity" (ie hijras do not subvert gender roles).

It is easy then to not understand that you are exposed to a re-framing and subverting of trans advocates' assumptions, and introduced to the idea that these assumptions might not be warranted at all. A trans woman in the comments even says "Good analysis, it is a pity he reaches a wrong conclusion." Well perhaps it is not an accident. This has historically been an attack vector of transphobes, with payroll think-tank pseudo-intellectuals, who push the idea that "sex change is absurd and infeasible" in more palatable ways to less supremacists audiences. Well, one of the intended audiences are leftists.

But what is his conclusion? Here goes: People are extremely online and overinvest to their online profiles. Technology has reached a point where people seek body modifications to match their internet selfs. Trans people should invest less to bioengineering solutions (ie transition) and learn to be happy as gender-subversive cis individuals. (An opinion we immediately register as transphobic when it comes from right wing commentators). This is a gender critical position and a usual justification for conversion therapy and persecution of affirming one's identity even by verbally using pronouns. So I don't really care about how you reach your conclusion, if your conclusion is trans genocide, especially with all that is happening right now.

That is not to say that his conclusion is justified. Heck, it is not even "just" a logical leap from his previous arguments. Did he reach that conclusion with propositional calculus, or backwards inference? No, he reached it by renaming things arbitrarily and furnishing the novel terminology with established anti-trans authors and frameworks. Helen Pluckrose, James Lindsey, Kathleen Stock, Mary Harrington, and what have you. Ah, yes, Slavoj Zizek, whom he links in the video description as a good follow up. Well guess what, Zizek holds really bad positions on trans people. And guys like Zizek and Moelller made me think "ah that's the ideological man-womb of way so many leftist transphobes".

To sum up, Moeller: rejects the established terminology, ignores trans scholars and mainstream medical concepts about trans people, bisects Contrapoints and Abigail Thorn videos with self-styled verbal abstractions, responds to these abstractions with TERF references and assumptions, and reaches widely acknowledged as gender-critical conclusions, sprinkling some "trans is the edge case of hegemonic individuation" psychobabble to win over the leftists.

My quick response to the "individuation/identity politics" reactionary buzzwords is that when the system targets you for being homosexual and imprisons you, it is not an individual thing. When the system comes over to your continent to capture and enslave you, it is not an individual thing. And so on and so forth. You are targeted on the exact grounds of not being a white hetero cis male of Germanic origin. Moeller knows that (he says that his red hair do not constitute an "identity") but chooses to ignore it, and portrays these group-based oppressions as irrelevant in modern discourse. This is the archetypal anti-woke position, that there is no institutional violence and oppression lingering on from patriarchy, slavery, segregation, colonialism, homosexual persecution. "Everybody is free and equal now, right? The tables even are turned over now, it is the minorities that oppress us, etc, etc".

Despite Hans Georg Moeller can easily fly under the radar of a trans inclusive person as legitimate discourse, he relies upon transphobic sources and reaches typical transphobic conclusions with way less rigor than his verbiage advertises. On top of that, his other analyses, which I won't discuss now, bear even more sad links to extremist reactionary discourse. For instance, his critique of German guilt-fetishism about the Holocaust, which he considers a driving force (beside identity politics) of "wokeism", apparently resembles comments Musk made at the AfD rally ("Germans should stop feeling guilty about the past etc").

Having looked around I nowhere find Moeller being listed as a problematic scholar, but my analysis of him so far has persuaded me that he is a Jordan Peterson of the left, and I would not like any trans person fall prey to his palatable enabling of harmful and alienating discourses.

Text mirror of the article at the time of posting:

Trump claims there are only '2 genders.' Historians say that's never been true

History is filled with examples of people changing genders or living between genders, historians say

Written by Alexandra Mae Jones · CBC News · Posted: Feb 02, 2025 1:00 AM PST | Last Updated: February 2

Historian Mo Moulton watched with dismay last week as U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring that the U.S. will only recognize two sexes, male and female, and that they cannot be changed.

"There's been so much energy expended trying to police people into fitting into just two boxes," Moulton, a history professor at the University of Birmingham, England, told CBC News.

It "den[ies] the realities that people have bodies and lives and self-understandings that exceed that."

The executive order, which Trump signed after promising in his inauguration speech that it would be U.S. policy "that there are only two genders," also ordered trans women into male prisons and a halt in the issuance of passports with an "X" gender marker, sparking fear in trans people across the country about their legal status.

While the administration claims the move is a return to "biological facts," experts say it ignores both biological and historical reality — that humans have never fit into just two sexes or two genders.

"The terminology could be new, people's awareness could be new, but the idea or the practice of changing gender is hardly new. It is observed in every time period in U.S. history," said Jules Gill-Peterson, an associate professor of history at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

"Gender" refers to how someone identifies and represents themselves in society.

Diversity in sex — which includes biological characteristics, like chromosomes, hormones and reproductive anatomy — is also well-documented. Up to 1.7 per cent of people, researchers estimate, are born with intersex traits, or a combination of male and female traits. The introduction of the "X" gender marker on U.S. passports in 2021 came after an intersex Colorado resident's years-long legal battle to acquire a gender-neutral passport.

##Concerns in Canada

Following the executive order, trans and non-binary Canadians have told CBC they're concerned about travelling in the U.S. and afraid that this unravelling of trans rights could creep north even more than it already has.

At least 100,000 people in Canada reported being trans or non-binary in the 2021 census. In 2017, Bill C-16 added protections for transgender and gender-diverse people to the Canadian Human Rights Act and Criminal Code.

When asked about Trump's executive orders, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said he was "only aware of two" genders, adding that he believes the government should let people "make their own personal decisions."

It's "ignorant" to claim there are only two genders, said Benny Michaud, director of the Centre for Indigenous Initiatives, an adjunct professor at Carleton University in Ottawa and a citizen of the Metis Nation.

"There have always been LGBTQIA+ people, and it's such a disservice to Canadians for that not to be acknowledged by somebody that is vying for the highest position of leadership within the country." A person with cropped dark brown hair and rectangular glasses, wearing a black vest over a grey button-up shirt and blue patterned tye, smiles brightly for the camera.

Gender binary enforced by colonial powers

While Trump's executive order casts gender diversity as a recent phenomenon, experts say that's false.

Different Indigenous groups have had their own terms for various sexualities and genders beyond man and woman for generations. In the 1990s, the term two-spirit was coined in Canada to serve as an umbrella term for those queer Indigenous terms.

Michaud uses the term tasta-ee-inw for themselves, which means a person who is "in-between" in Cree.

It was only when European colonizers arrived that the idea of two genders was imposed on Indigenous people, Michaud said.

"They utilized gender as a way to colonize our communities," Michaud said, first by diminishing the voices of women, and second by "vilifying people whose genders were not man or woman."

"For hundreds of years in our communities, we were not able to express ourselves in the way that we had been able to before."

Strict gender roles have often been wielded this way, Moulton said.

In British-controlled India, Moulton said, an established third gender known as hijras were "targeted for eradication" in the mid-1800s "because they felt … allowing people to occupy this social category of a third gender opened up possibilities that they wanted to close down."

Trans history within the last century

People living outside of the gender or sex expected of them also existed in Europe and North America long before the words transgender or non-binary were used.

On Dec. 1, 1952, the front page of New York Daily News declared 'Ex-GI becomes blonde beauty," accompanied by a picture of Christine Jorgensen, the first widely known person to undergo a medical transition through both surgeries and hormone therapy.

"In 1952, the most famous woman in the world was an American trans woman," Gill-Peterson said.

Although there's evidence of attempts at medical transition dating back hundreds of years, Gill-Peterson said, the development of what we consider modern medical transition began in 20th century Germany.

The Institute for Sex Research provided early gender-affirming treatments in the 1920s and 1930s before the Nazis targeted it for destruction shortly after seizing power.

Many early figures in modern trans history received care in Germany, such as Ewan Forbes, born in 1912 in Scotland. Forbes was recorded as a daughter at birth, but "expressed an understanding that he was a boy, from a very young age," Moulton said. His mother allowed him to grow up in the social role of a boy and later received an early form of testosterone therapy in Germany.

He secured a new birth certificate and changed his name to Ewan in the 1950s, going on to live a quiet, married life as a doctor in the town where he grew up.

History would've never known he was a trans man at all if it were not for records of an inheritance dispute – a cousin argued, unsuccessfully, that Forbes was actually a woman and thus ineligible to inherit a title.

Forbes' acceptance in his community shows that even societies "organized around a gender binary … have made space for decades and centuries for people who don't quite fit in that," Moulton said.

Another lesser-known trans figure was Louise Lawrence, who transitioned to a woman in the 1940s in San Francisco and obtained a new passport under the name Louise, long before passports had sex markers, Gill-Peterson said.

Lawrence's transition came to light after she and her partner were investigated for a lesbian relationship. The State Department accused her of identity fraud for "using an inaccurate name."

"She had to fight that," Gill-Peterson said. "This is in 1957, 1958, and she won, and she was then issued her passport again."

Outed at death

There are numerous examples of trans men fighting in the U.S. Revolutionary War and U.S. Civil War in the 1700s and 1800s, Gill-Peterson said.

One is Dr. James Barry, a military surgeon in the 1800s who performed one of the first successful caesareans in which the mother and child survived. He lived as a man for his entire adult life, and reportedly asked to be buried in the bedsheets he died on.

Throughout history, many trans men were only outed upon their death, such as Billy Tipton, a successful jazz musician active in the 1940s and 50s.

"It wasn't uncommon … for them to have tried to have made plans prior to death to avoid autopsy or medical examination," Gill-Peterson said. Three men in suits pose with the man in the centre standing higher behind the other two men, who are seated.

Other historical figures have served as role models for trans people because of ambiguity around their genders.

Chevalier d'Eon was a soldier, diplomat and spy in the 1700s who lived as a man and as a woman at different stages in their life, once inspiring a betting pool over their gender as it became a source of national interest.

The history of gender variance isn't straightforward. Some academics contend that early examples of trans men such as Barry may just have been cisgender women crossdressing to access new job opportunities, and that cisgender lesbians and gay men may have played with gender presentation purely to express their sexuality in strictly gendered societies.

This may be true for some of these figures, Gill-Peterson said, but they are still examples of lives affected by previous attempts to police gender and sex.

People are scared'

In the U.S., incarcerated trans women are expected to bear the brunt of Trump's executive order first, if it stands up to legal challenges underway. Being forced into male prisons brings a significantly increased threat of sexual assault, Gill-Peterson said.

On Tuesday, Trump signed another executive order to cut federal support for gender-affirming care for anyone under the age of 19, despite medical consensus that it is life-saving and necessary.

The U.S. State Department has reportedly suspended all applications for passport gender changes, with the status of passport renewals for trans people still up in the air.

U.S. officials have not made clear what the executive order means for the 3,600 Canadians with "X" on their passports.

While Gemma Hickey, an activist from Newfoundland and Labrador, told CBC last week that they were able to travel into the U.S. with their "X" marker after the executive order was passed, the Canadian government warns people with gender-neutral passports that "you may face entry restrictions into some countries that do not recognize your gender."

"All I know is that people are scared," Hickey said. They've heard from other Canadians who are cancelling trips to the U.S. out of fears that their passport could be confiscated.

Just ten years ago, trans scholars were fairly certain that trans people were finally being understood on a wide enough scale that there was no going back, Michaud said.

The regression we're seeing now is "staggering," they said.

Moulton fears for the safety of trans people.

"That kind of psychological burden of being told that what you are is impossible – it's hard to overstate, really."

Saw this on bluesky and thought I'd share here since I think there's a lot of trans folks trying to find ways out of the US and this could potentially help in the future.