And what is a Genocide?
The Grim Future for Transgender Individuals
So, Genocide. Hear about it a lot. Can you give a good definition of what it is?
No, really? Do you know?
If you’re like me (circa yesterday) you probably think it’s the systematic extermination of a group of people, particularly an ethnicity. You know like the genocide going on in Palestine.
Well, you’re not wrong, exactly. Extermination is one characteristic of a genocide.
But did you know that it is just one of ten characteristics?
The Characteristics of a Genocide
According to Gregory H. Stanton, president of Genocide Watch, a genocide consists of ten stages. I kind of don’t like the word “stages,” though, because it implies a sequence. These events do not have to happen in order and often are simultaneous. But that’s the word, so the following are my conceptions of the stages:
Classification – This is the part where the perpetrating society declares “us” vs “them” in regards to the victim class. It’s also where stereotypes start getting propagated.
Symbolisation – This is the part where the perpetrators identify the victims with visible and symbolic markers in order to find them more easily during other stages.
Discrimination – This stage is when the dominant groups in the society begin removing the rights of the subordinate class.
Dehumanisation – This stage is characterized by official insults and rhetoric that belittles the victims and makes them appear as vermin or subhuman.
Organisation – This is when the organizations systemically performing the genocide are planned and internally justified.
Polarisation – Member of the dominant class use propaganda and mass-media to widen the gap between their base and the victimized group.
Preparation – This is the stage where the rhetoric turns from planning to broadcasting their intentions and from planning to implementation
Persecution – This is when violence against the group begins, financially, professionally, and socially. The victimized group is physically separated and treated differently legally than non-members.
Extermination – The part we all recognize as genocide: when the mass extermination of the group and its identity are enacted.
Denial – In addition to pretending the genocide is not happening while it is happening, history is rewritten in an effort to hide what was done.
Ok. Got it. Genocide sucks: why are we talking about it now?
Well, obviously genocide is happening all over the world, and most of the big ones are being documented. But as a Trans Woman I need to draw attention to the genocide affecting me and my transfolk siblings.
The Transgender Genocide is Already Here
This is not a drill, or an exaggeration. The current occupying regime of the United States is already well along the process, and I would say have perversely used these stages as marching orders. Allow me to explain:
Classification
This has been happening at least as long as human history. Transgender, transmasc, transfem, assigned male at birth, assigned female at birth, Pre-op, Post-op, passing, non-passing, medically and socially transitioning; Transgender individuals are broken down into little groups and organized into hierarchies of acceptability, within our own communities, within the larger queer community, and throughout society.
Symbolization
Like the pink triangles on our brothers and sisters in Nazi Germany, transgender people are branded as such, though not yet in such a visible way. Instead its done clandestinely in FBI profiles, medical records, in social media algorithms. How long will it be before we are forced to include it on our official documents like passports and drivers licenses.
Discrimination
Speaking of drivers licenses, on February 27th, 2026 early in the morning, the government of the state of Kansas categorically revoked all the IDs of transgender individuals living in the state with no grace period. Any transgender person caught driving without having obtained a brand-new license—starting that day—was subject to a misdemeanor charges punishable by imprisonment as well as monetary fines. In addition, bounties were introduced where neighbors and community members could receive cash bonuses for identifying and turning in transfolk. And of course, the legislation also included the most popular of all forms of anti-trans discrimination, bathroom bans: make it illegal and punishable for a trans individual to use any public restroom facility as neither gendered restroom is safe for a transgender person.
Dehumanization
Just the other day I was denied a mammogram for being transgender: I was told those are only for “Born Females.” I was prevented from receiving life-saving preventative medical care because the person taking appointments didn’t view me as a legitimate human woman. I was told I’d need to go to a different, far away facility to receive a separate (and thus inequal) procedure, and I’d need either a lump or discharge AND a recommendation from another doctor. So, no baseline imaging to compare future mammograms with: I was essentially told to go disappear and die of a horrible disease that is treatable if caught early enough.
In federal prisons, official policy is now to deny transgender individuals access to their treatments (a death sentence in many cases) and forced de-transition (a fate worse than death in many cases). Instead, transgender individuals will be subjected to conversion therapy, and physical, mental, and sexual assault from prisoners from the general population. This is not future scary stuff: it is literally happening, right now.
Microaggressions like deadnaming us, or misgendering us, or even making jokes about pronouns. None of this is acceptable.
Organization
The means of systematically discriminating against and preparing for the current genocide of transgender individuals has been very clearly on display for decades. I mean, Adolf Hitler and the Hitler youth were doing it in the 1930s. But never was it so clearly on display in recent memory than in Project 2025 and the executive orders of the reigning tyrant.
Source: https://accountable.us/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Project-2025-Anti-LGBTQ-Policies-One-Pager.pdf
Here’s a brief quote:
Project 2025 calls on the Department of Justice (DOJ) to defend the First Amendment right of those who would discriminate against LGBTQ+ people. It also objects to the DOJ notifying states that their bans on abortion and medical services to transgender persons may violate federal law.
Project 2025 recommends the next Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary reverse the focus on “‘LGBTQ+ equity,’ subsidizing single-motherhood, disincentivizing work, and penalizing marriage,’ replacing such policies with those encouraging marriage, work, motherhood, fatherhood, and nuclear families.” The Project 2025 playbook laments the fact that family policies and programs under President Biden’s HHS are “fraught with agenda items focusing on ‘LGBTQ+ equity,’” making it clear that they intend to roll those agenda items back.
Project 2025 intends to abolish the Gender Policy Council within the Executive Office of the President, which it views as promoting abortion and the “new woke gender ideology.” Project 2025 said that eliminating the GPC would “eliminate central promotion of abortion […] comprehensive sexuality education […] and the new woke gender ideology.” In place of the Gender Policy Council, Project 2025 proposes “new structures and positions” that would promote “life and strengthening the family.”
Project 2025 calls on the next conservative Administration to limit the application of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, which held that Title VII’s sex discrimination protections applied to LGBTQ+ people. It also calls on the next conservative Administration to not allow Bostock’s holding to be extended to the broader categories of “sexual orientation” or “gender identity.”
Project 2025 attacks the existence of transgender individuals, saying society today includes the “toxic normalization of transgenderism.” It calls on the Department of Defense (DOD) to “reverse policies that allow transgender individuals to serve in the military.”
Project 2025 recommends the next conservative Administration dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)’s DEI apparatus, which includes issuing “a directive to cease promotion of the DEI agenda, including the bullying LGBTQ+ agenda.”
Stay tuned to see which of these are already in place!
Polarization
They say America is polarized conservative vs progressive, right now, but that’s not really accurate: America is polarized between love of self and love of others. This is a country where half the people who heard Black Lives Matter, honestly believed it meant their lives didn’t. This is a country where half the people see extending the rights of others means they are losing and being systemically replaced.
The rhetoric on trans people has been very clear: we’ve been told we are child molesters, sexual predators, mass murderers, and more—despite the fact that cis men are far more likely to be any of those things. We are called the r-word, idiots, mentally ill, and more on a daily basis. We are constantly threatened with death, injury, imprisonment, institutionalization, and sexual assault.
I personally was spat on while standing on a beach minding my own business with my dog waiting for my family who were shopping for souvenirs.
Preparation
Lets talk executive orders for a moment
Rolled back protections for LGBTQ individuals in terms of healthcare equity and discrimination.
Defined transgender individuals out of existence
Removed federal protections against hiring discrimination for many groups, including DEI programs targeting gender identity
Made it dangerous and punishable for educators to discuss gender in relation to identity or make mention of transgender individuals.
I could go on, but you get the point. Legally, the occupying regime has made discrimination and bias against the transgender community acceptable and even encouraged. The systems are already in place.
As far as the actual final solution, concentration camps have already been created targeting the minority communities in America, along with a secret police force performing extrajudicial arrests, disappearances, and murders. When the administration tires of bullying the racial minorities of America (literally another ongoing genocide) I’d wager the transgender population is next in line.
Persecution
Violence against transgender individuals is nothing new.
source: https://reports.hrc.org/an-epidemic-of-violence-2024#epidemic-numbers
According to Human Rights Campaign, from 2012 to 2024 372 transgender individuals lost their lives in violent incidents. 83% of those were trans women.
What is new, is the framing of every mass shooting or murder as being committed by a transgender individual, or someone trans-adjacent. Few of these stand up to any scrutiny and leave the news cycle immediately once some critical attention is given to the accusations. One of the supposed left-wing transgender shooters had a giant SS tattoo on her arm, another blamed all transgender people for tricking them into transitioning in their final communications.
Going beyond these, the aforementioned Kansas legislation, bathroom bans, bounties, invalidation of documents, forced detransitioning and more point to the current systematic persecution faced by transgender individuals.
But I’ll go one step further. Have you ever heard of “Trans Panic?”
Trans Panic is a legal defense amounting to “my client isn’t a cold-blooded murderer: he murdered that trans woman in the heat of the moment after seeing her genitalia didn’t match his assumptions.” It’s not a particularly strong defense, but it has been successfully used to escape murder charges via acquittal or a less serious sentence. In reality, Trans Panic occurs not when the man (and it’s always a man) is in a relationship with a trans woman and his friends find out. Not wanting to be thought of (incorrectly) as a homosexual the man murders the woman in cold blood and then claims surprise.
The whole concept is disgusting and flawed. Even if it was in the heat of the moment, what other surprises justify murder? Natural hair color? Tattoos? Piercings? Religion? Nope. Your interpretation of a person’s external primary genitalia is the only thing.
Extermination
This is the one that is up in the air whether we are there, yet. I’m of the opinion that is certainly has begun: our identities have been criminalized, we are being imprisoned, our brothers and sisters are being killed and tortured. I guess it depends where you draw the line between cis men being cis men and okay this is actually extermination of the transgender population.
Denial
In his famous poem (https://hmd.org.uk/resource/first-they-came-by-pastor-martin-niemoller/) Martin Niemoller describes the escalation of violence by the Nazis from radical groups on the Left to his own class of people over time. The poem is everywhere and Niemoller is thought of as a genius. But there are some people he conveniently leaves out.
On May 6th 1933 the Hitler youth broke into the first modern library and medical facility specializing in transgender medicine. The Nazis didn’t particularly distinguish between homosexuals and transgender individuals, but the numbers who perished within the LGBTQ+ community are staggering: even the most conservative estimates put the number between 10000 and 15000 individuals with others as high as 100,000. It seems like the world at large hasn’t bothered to count. It happened, but when did you learn about the persecution of transgender women in Nazi Germany? It hadn’t occurred to me until I was in my late 30s watching transParent. Has it not been erased from the popular recollection of history?
Niemoller says the first victims were the communists, omitting the LGBTQ+ victims also included in that first mass imprisonment and execution campaign. What was the reason for this omission? Ignorance?
No.
In fact, Niemoller was a member of the Nazi party himself and an early supporter of Hitler. He only spoke out against the Reich in the late 1930s when it began making moves against his own community. The fact that his remorse for his silence does not extend to the LGBTQ+ community points to only one thing, he approved of those murders. So, I’m not that into the Niemoller poem personally.
There are plenty of people who would look at you quizzically if you posited a transgender genocide at the current date. Certainly even allies would say it’s not that far along yet, or it doesn’t count as a genocide because of X,Y, and Z. This is ignorance-fed denial. Certainly, no one on the national stage has called it a genocide. Our well-intentioned allies are righteously enraged on our behalf, but somehow put forward Newsom and Buttigieg as 2028 candidates, both of whom have publicly expressed doubts on the validity of transgender individuals.
A minimum of nine of these stages have already begun. The genocide is here friends. No one is willing to connect the dots yet, and it may in fact be too late to stop it.
I guess the only thing left to ask is, when we’re all gone, this time will we be remembered in the history books?