It is often claimed by many trans activists that genocide is being committed against the trans community via “anti-trans laws.”
More recently, Anne Fausto-Sterling, a biologist and trans activist, made this very argument in a post made on Twitter and Mastodon, another social media alternative. Accusations of genocide are very serious and should not be used without good reason.
This begs the question: is genocide being committed against the trans community?
Let's break it down piece by piece.
What is genocide?
The term genocide typically brings up images from intolerable injustices committed against various groups in history. The most pronounced being the Holocaust committed against the European Jewish people by the Nazis in Germany. This is because the term genocide was explicitly defined as a result of the Holocaust during the Geneva Convention in 1948-1949. The documents created during the Geneva Convention describe genocide as:
“genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group…”[1]
The Convention further described the elements of genocide as:
“1. A mental element: the ‘intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such’; and
2. A physical element, which includes the following five acts, enumerated exhaustively:
- Killing members of the group.
- Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group.
- Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.
- Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.
- Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.’”
Using these very specific qualifications, let's go step by step to see if there is a genocide against trans people.
The very first part includes the mental element of intent. There are two parts to this mental element. The first is the intent to destroy. The second is the definition of what kind of group is being targeted, specifically religious, ethnic, racial, or national group.
Are trans people a religious, ethnic, racial, or national group?
Intent is already very difficult to determine, and as mentioned in the definition of genocide is the most difficult to prove. Is the intent of many of these lawmakers to completely eliminate “trans” individuals? If you look into the motive behind many laws being passed, the people proposing these bills state that they intend to protect children from sexually explicit content that they are not old enough to be able to handle.
Let's look at the example of the Florida bill known colloquially as “Don't Say Gay.” Officially labeled “Parental Rights in Education,” the bill restricts discussing the topics of gender identity and sexual orientation in grades kindergarten through the third grade.[2] Age wise, this includes children age 4-9. Why this age group?
Psychologist Jean Piaget, who explicitly studied cognitive development, defines two stages involving this age group: preoperational (ages 2-7) and concrete operational (ages 7-11). One of the major differences in these age groups is the change from self centered thinking in the preoperational stage to being able to separate themselves from the topic being discussed in the concrete operational stage.[3] What does this mean? It means children age 2-7 tend to apply everything that they learn to themselves. If you discuss gender identity to this age group, they are more likely to conclude that their gender identity is also in question.
In other words, children in this age group literally can't think about these topics outside of themselves. Is protecting children from topics they are not capable of handling appropriately trying to eliminate trans people?
The other example to think of here is the issue of child centered drag performances. Authors of these bills have explicitly said that the goal is to protect children from adult content. You certainly wouldn't want to show a child pornographic material, would you? Is protecting children from adult material attempting to erase trans people?
For the matter of the mental element of genocide, I think it has not been met in terms of trans individuals.
The physical element includes five acts that meet the conditions of genocide. There are a few that can be eliminated automatically. The first is killing trans people. There is no group in the US that makes a deliberate attempt to kill trans people. The second that can be dismissed is causing serious body or mental harm to a group. There is no group that intends to cause serious bodily or mental harm to trans people.
That leaves us with three remaining acts, let's look at them in detail.
“Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”
There are many that claim that laws being passed to prevent “gender affirming care” are being passed to attack the trans community. Advocates claim that “gender affirming care” is “life saving care” and that not having these treatments results in trans people committing suicide.
Is this true? One of the largest studies of its kind says it isn't true. The Swedish study found that suicidality remained virtually constant at every stage of transition from the initiation of hormones to after surgical procedures.[4]
Recently, reports out of the UK from Tavistock clinics have indicated that these treatments aren't helpful either. But the UK is “transphobic,” right? Except they are not the first to make this observation. This Finnish study from 2019 demonstrates that cross sex hormones aren't enough to give relief from gender dysphoria.[5]
This probably explains why Finland has changed their protocols for treating gender dysphoria and why they suggest intensive psychotherapy instead of the gender affirming model.[6]
In 2020, Sweden also had to change their policies, putting a halt to hormonal and surgical interventions and instead opting for psychosocial support until adulthood. Apparently, after extensive research, they determined the risks outweigh the benefits.[7] It's probably why France followed soon after.[8] The most recent country to implement changes is Norway, who has determined that puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and gender affirming surgeries are experimental and lack evidence proving efficacy.[9]
If it is true these treatments don't actually prevent suicide, then can you say that preventing these treatments is causing suicide?
What other options are there? According to the available research, the vast majority of children who identify as trans don't carry that identity into adulthood. In fact, the percent of kids who “grow out of” their trans identity is somewhere between 68-90%.[10]
This is likely why the medical organizations from these other countries suggest psychosocial support to adulthood. But does the psychosocial support actually work?
One study has shown that group Cognitive Behavioral Therapy was able to significantly improve the moods and outlooks of trans identifying teens. It also gave them coping mechanisms to help cope with the many social pressures that trans and gender nonconforming individuals experience.[11]
Why are these therapies not being sought after by trans activists?
Jack Turban, a prominent trans activist and medical doctor, wrote a study that identified anything except for the gender affirming model of treatment as “conversion therapy.”[12] This has been turned into a rallying cry for trans activists, who claim that any psychosocial therapy is conversion therapy and an attempt to eliminate trans people.
If “gender affirming care” doesn't work, is pushing for “gender affirming care” pushing for suicide?
If most kids grow out of their trans identity, is pushing for “gender affirming care” pushing for harm against a community?
Is discouraging use of therapy that works in favor of “gender affirming care" pushing a group into self destruction via suicide?
“Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group…”
During the Holocaust, many individuals had medical experiments performed on them and often these experiments were done with the intent to prevent pregnancies or to eliminate the fertility of these individuals.
Is this happening in the trans community?
Let's take a closer look into what treatments people are seeking, since so many of these laws are looking at preventing treatments. For younger people, the traditional thing they want to do is block puberty. And the most common medication to block puberty is Lupron. But is that the only thing the drug is used for?
Lupron is in fact the same medication Canada and the US uses to chemically castrate sex offenders and pedophiles to control their sexual urges.[13]
In addition, cross-sex hormone therapy has a known risk to permanently and irreversibly damage the reproductive systems of individuals undergoing these treatments.[14]
These are treatments that many of these laws are trying to ban in children. Trans activists claim that these laws are an attempt at genocide, and yet these “gender-affirming” treatments are doing harm that can actually be considered genocidal…
Forcibly transferring children…
“Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
Despite the clear harm that can be caused by these treatments, some still push for these treatments. What happens to those who object to these treatments?
Some parents are now having their children taken from them for not pursuing the gender affirming model. Unfortunately, these cases happen with divorced parents where one parent refuses to consent to these treatments.[15][16]
Not only are some children being removed from their parents, but in some cases, children are leaving of their own accord.
California senator Scott Wiener authored a law that will take in families of trans identifying children who are seeking “gender affirming care.” The bill will also take children into custody of the state to allow for them to seek out medical transition.[17] This law went into effect January 1, 2023.
Of note, it is also Scott Wiener who proposed a bill in 2020 which does not require people who commit acts of oral or anal sex on minors to be registered as sex offenders.[18] It seems concerning that a person who is interested in protecting pedophiles also is interested in removing children from their parents.
Who Is Committing Genocide?
The claim of genocide by trans activists like Anne Fausto-Sterling appears to have no legs to stand on. For one, there is no clear intent to commit genocide against trans people, but additionally the trans community is not of any particular nationality, ethnicity, race, or official religion (although one could argue that transgender ideology is a religion, it is not a recognized religious group).
But, if one could prove intent, who is actually committing acts that would qualify as genocide?
Who is promoting treatments that don't prevent suicide in trans people while simultaneously calling treatments that help trans people “conversion therapy”?
Who is promoting treatments that eliminate and prevent births and pregnancies in trans individuals?
Who is removing children from families who question if these treatments are worth the harmful side effects?
It appears the group that is most harmful to trans identifying individuals are the activists who claim to be protecting them.
You have to remember this is a postmodern "genocide." I've been accused of this myself, endorsing "cultural genocide" for celebrating the ongoing decline of religion (as a hypocritical bigot, this person was completely content with the decline of Xianity; she didn't see that as "cultural genocide"). I've covered this in depth, but in summary, it's all about labels.
If children are encouraged or facilitated to complete puberty unimpeded, they'll more than likely (80+%) resolve the discomfort with their body, and they won't feel the compulsion to transition. They won't take wrong-sex hormones, with the risks and irreversible effects that go along with them, they won't amputate body parts, and they won't become life-long medical patients.
But social constructivists don't care about any of that. They even tell lawmakers that it's unacceptable, and even bigoted, to regard transition as an undesirable outcome. They don't care about the wellbeing of kids. They don't care about the individual. Critical theorists themselves will complain that there has been too much focus in the individual and the universal, and not enough on identity characteristics.
What they care about is blurring boundaries and subverting biology. What they care about is bolstering and populating novel "identity" groups. What they care about is that kids might no longer need to think of themselves as "trans." That's it. That's the entire "genocide."
It's eerily like Islam. In Islam, believers are either part of the thing, or we kill you. In genderism, believers are either part of the thing, or they've been "genocided." They're both absolutist ideologies, they just differ on being the aggressor or a manufactured victimhood.
If medical science intervenes and repairs a defect which prevents a baby from hearing, that's "erasure" of "deaf identity" and, as Nyle DiMarco melodramatically wails, "cultural genocide."
In a similar vein, "fat genocide" is the “the effort to eradicate fat people via weight loss as a form of genocide perpetrated by the medical profession” (direct quote from Fat Studies literature). You heard that right. Encouraging people to eat healthier and exercise is a form of "genocide," because there will be fewer fat people. Or more accurately, fewer people who "identify as" fat. And "erasing" an "identity" group is "genocide."
If you think the language is bizarrely histrionic, you'd be right. And if it sounds exceedingly unhealthy, you'd be right about that too. But it's not an accident or sincere misunderstanding. It's deliberate. The point is to use the most incendiary language possible, to warn you off getting in their way. It's why they've labeled trying to address a trans-identifying girl's homosexual shame or a trans-identifying boy's sexual abuse trauma as "conversion therapy." It's deliberately intended to make you think of ice dunking or electroshock treatments that gay men were subjected to, trying to make them "straight." Rather than what it is: normal, everyday talk therapy to resolve distress.
Like a brightly colored frog warning you it's poisonous. Ignore it. Unlike the frog, there's no substance, only the mimicry of substance.
More insidiously, it's intended to create panic in kids, that there's gangs of people roaming out there trying to murder you, or your government actively wants you dead. Even your parents are suspect. You can only trust your "trans family." We're the only ones who understand you. It's classic cult tactics. And comparable to when religions send believers out to proselytize. It's not to convert the non-believers, but to create uncomfortable interactions with non-believers so the faithful will be drawn back to the safety of their fellow believers. Us vs them.
