Berlin. 30 January 1933.

The day Hitler seized power as Chancellor of Germany.

1933 would remain in our collective memory for generations, though for the worse, a fading one. 1933 is universally remembered as the year Nazism took power in Germany, and civil liberties — within the span of 29 days —- were completely eliminated, through the Reichstag Fire Decree, then outright political violence against the “enemies of the State”. Its constitutional order would collapse less than a month later, through the Enabling Act of 1933, consolidating dictatorial powers within the hands of one person: Adolf Hitler. He would later go on to commit crimes beyond reprehension through State systems, most notably the Holocaust, killing an estimated 70+ million people, in particular 6 million Jews.

1933 is also remembered, within the trans community, as the year during which the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft would be destroyed by Nazi forces. The first institution of its kind, it would offer refuge to trans people, in particular trans women, and give them access to the most advanced gender-affirming medical healthcare of its time. Yet, its very existence is foundationally incompatible with the Nazi worldview. Trans people’s lives were deemed Lebensunwertes Leben — “lives unworthy of living”. As such, they burned everything down. Not even a hundred days after Hitler first seized power, the Institut, books, and knowledge — so much of it. Trans health research would be set back by three or four decades, and trans people would end up living effectively in hiding for another generation or two in the Occidental world.

They then turned to hunting down and killing all the trans people in the Institut’s patient records. Trans people, in particular trans women, were thrown into Nazi concentration camps as soon as they were built up; trans women would face the worst violence, and the few survivors, if not any, were left imprisoned even after Germany was liberated. A few — such as Dora Richter — would survive, dying in Bavaria at 74. Many others wouldn’t survive the decade.

Nazi officials burning the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft's books, on 10 May 1933.

Washington, 20 January 2025.

Donald J. Trump, a convicted felon who previously attempted a coup d’État against the U.S., would take power again. Within a few hours, he’d introduce one of the most devastating executive orders in contemporary U.S. history: a total de-recognition of trans identities from U.S. federal law.

Executive Order 14168, ominously titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government”, eliminates trans people from U.S. federal law by executive fiat. Furthermore, it has been used to create a full-blown wave of anti-trans censorship, designed to eliminate any mention of trans people in literally anything associated with the U.S. federal government. Websites such as the U.S. Census and Center for Disease Control and Prevention were taken down, for the express purpose of eliminating trans existence; others replaced LGBTQIA+ and other acronyms with ‘LGB’, a term now infamously associated with anti-trans groups such as the “LGB Alliance”, effectively eliminating all recognition of trans people. Censorship has become the name of the game. Employment discrimination claims for queer people are being brought to a halt, whilst the same institutions responsible for handling them are now refocusing their resources on instituting a private-sector bathroom ban for trans people; anti-discrimination law has effectively been turned on its head.

This all comes whilst trans people themselves face increasing denials of their very identity. It now is completely impossible to change ‘sex’ on any U.S. federal record, something which, in my home jurisdiction of Québec (Canada), had not been the case since 1978. The U.S. Social Security Administration, which conserves gender records, is outright refusing; others, like U.S. passport offices, are confiscating identity documents, and even threatening trans people with arrest for merely applying for such a document. And that’s without talking about trans prisoners, who are being excluded from anti-rape protections, and who are being laughed at whilst they — primarily trans women for now — are being forcibly transferred to men’s prisons, where they are at extreme risk of sexual violence.

Gender-affirming care for trans youth and young adults has been banned under executive fiat, calling it “chemical and surgical castration”, with even deep-blue states complying in advance. Another executive order forces U.S. school to cease teaching about trans people’s mere existence to receive federal funds; Trump is threatening the criminal prosecution of teachers who dare resist. Mind you, most of what Trump is saying is pure fiat, and can only be enforced as long as authorities comply; unfortunately, that seems to be exactly the case. The climate of fear is genuine and palpable; trans people in the U.S. are even preparing grab bags in the event they have to flee the country on short notice.

Guess what the Trump-Musk administration is doing in the meantime? Assigning blame for aviation incidents to what it terms “DEI”. Some hate actors are going even further, blaming a trans woman with no involvement in said incident. I wonder if the people sharing this news knows exactly why they are doing this — whether it’d be to shift the Overton window, like how Elon Musk did with his Nazi salute, or otherwise manufacture consent for further hateful policies.

And as I write these words, it’s not even been two weeks. I cannnot imagine how things will end up in another month.

 

I’ve sounded the alarm myself: this is a genocide. I’ve even issued my own travel advisory for trans people passing through or visiting the U.S.. Other legal experts and community members have done the same.

So why aren’t you listening?

The Nazis took 29 days to consolidate their power. We’re currently at Day 12 of the Trump-Musk administration in the U.S. And I suspect that, if we don’t start going all French Revolution or Haitian Revolution on these oligarchs, there’s no more hope left for us in the short-to-medium term.

You cannot just look into the back mirror and retroactively declare that a given event was a genocide. Genocides are the consequence of multiple stages of dehumanization and targeting, of which many have already been reached in the current global (yet U.S.-led) war against trans people. It’s how the Holocaust, the Holodomor, the Rwandan genocide, the Rohingya genocide, the Gaza genocide, and so many other historical and present genocides have been fomented.

Let’s not make “trans genocide” the next topic history students will have to learn in school.

The best time to fight back was yesterday. The second best time to do so is now.