Trump takes action against trans people

“One, two, three, four Donald Trump, no more! Five, six, seven, eight fight the bigotry! Fight the hate!”

These words echoed throughout the UW Oshkosh campus on Monday night in response to the president’s attitude and actions regarding transgender people.

On Oct. 21, The New York Times leaked a memo they obtained stating that the Trump administration is considering narrowly defining gender as a “biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth.”

According to the memo, the Department of Health and Human Services is spearheading an effort to establish a legal definition of sex under Title IX, the federal civil rights law that bans gender discrimination in education programs that receive government financial assistance.

According to The Williams Institute, an estimated 1.4 million Americans identify as transgender.

On Oct. 21, hundreds of people gathered at the Washington Square Park in New York to protest against the proposal, using the hashtag #WontBeErased on social media to attract more people to the protest.

The hashtag was also used on the UWO campus to attract people to a protest, which was hosted by the Students for a Democratic Society.

SDS President and UWO alumnus Ryan Hamann said he organized the protest because he felt a call to action to “fight back.”

“I think it’s disgusting quite frankly,” Hamann said. “Trans people are people just like everyone else.”

UWO student and founder of Q+ Unity Xan Hammel said she was at an Appleton protest on Saturday and came to the UWO protest to express solidarity and spread awareness.

“Well, I’m trans … and we’ve only just recently gotten the rights that we have with housing, with jobs, but he [Trump] wants to make sure that we will no longer be protected under Title IX,” Hammel said.

In April, the Trump administration also announced plans to roll back a rule issued by former President Barack Obama in 2016 that prevents doctors, hospitals and health insurance companies from discriminating against transgender people.

In July, the president announced a ban on transgender people serving in the military.

According to a tweet the president sent out on Twitter, American military forces could not afford the “tremendous medical costs and disruption.”

Healthcare for transgender people in the military would cause about a 0.13 percent increase in health care spending, according to the Rand study.

According to the Military Times analysis, the military spent roughly $41.6 million on Viagra alone in 2016.

SDS member Landon Klein, who was present at the protest, said he is worried that things will only get worse for the LGBTQ+ community.

“I think it basically tells a good chunk of the population that they don’t matter,” Klein said. “I think this will enable bigots to be more brazen with their hatred and bring more harm toward trans people and the LGBTQ+ community.”