As a transgender woman, I am tired. Nationwide, cisgender, white, male politicians attempt to erase us from legal existence. There are state-level bills preventing us from using bathrooms, competing in sports, living on campus, and most recently, an executive order from the President making it impossible for us to obtain legal documents that include our true identities. And instead of seeing our thoughts on these issues reflected in the news, the national media seems to think we need more opinions from cisgender people.
I am tired of my community, my family, being spoken for but not listened to. The time to platform trans voices is now.
The attack on transgender people in the United States has reached a level that some consider to be genocidal. The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention and Human Security issued a statement on Election Day, warning that they “are particularly alarmed by ongoing hate speech from the Republican candidate for President, Donald Trump, who has consistently demonized immigrants and trans people in the USA, blaming them for the myriad struggles faced by Americans that are very real but that have absolutely nothing to do with immigrants and trans people.” In January, they issued a red flag alert for genocide noting that “Elon Musk, an unelected figure close to the president, [felt] free to flash the Nazi salute on inauguration day.”
The Nazis’ first book-burning campaign started on May 6, 1933, at the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft. Magnus Hirschfield’s Institute for Sexual Science was the world’s leading library of knowledge and research into LGBTQIA — especially transgender — people from 1919, until that day in 1933.
The right wing’s claims that the “transgender debate” is a recent phenomenon gain traction only because one of the largest repositories of our history was deliberately erased. And now, the Trump administration is again trying to remove all mention of transgender (as well as queer, and gender-expansive) people from government websites and records, and deny us legal recognition.
In 2024, at least 32 transgender and gender-expansive people were murdered in the United States according to the Human Rights Campaign. The Trevor Project’s 2024 National Survey on the Mental Health of LGBTQ+ Young People reported that 14 percent of trans men, 18 percent of trans women, and 13 percent of non-binary people attempted suicide last year.
I say “at least” because when a minority group is erased from legal recognition, crimes against that community, including cases of suicide, cannot be accurately recorded.
Propaganda has manufactured consent for our eradication, not only in the United States, but in other countries as well. Every legitimate media outlet has a moral responsibility to stop presenting the rights and humanity of transgender people as up for debate.
In order to combat the overwhelming campaign against transgender people, the national media must allow us to speak for ourselves. The media must hire more trans journalists, writers, and artists, and. They must, at the bare minimum, stop platforming transphobic ideology and seek out trans voices beyond celebrities to reflect our true material needs. We are disproportionately unhoused, out of work, and living in poverty, especially Black trans women, our most vulnerable community members.
Our voices must be heard, before our silence becomes deafening.
Samantha Tano is a novelist and former journalist who lives in Rhode Island.