Transgender Day of Visibility: Imagining the limits of discrimination

To me, one of the most extraordinary aspects of what is unfolding under the current US administration is the way that media and progressive politicians and leaders have struggled to accurately describe what is happening. There has been so much hyperbole, so much ominous and frightening rhetoric in the US over the last decade, that it is as if all the useful words have been expended, leaving those that remain inadequate to describe sudden and precipitous societal change. These changes and this exhaustion of language have direct implications for the entire world, and for marginalised communities in particular.

For those of us trying to forecast how far our societies might lurch to the right, it is not looking good. We are seeing, hearing, and feeling reality blur as President Trump’s executive orders strip and dismantle Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), particularly targeting the rights and very existence of transgender people in America.

Beyond the US, there have been flow on effects to countries like Australia. A week ago, university researchers across Australia who are working on joint projects with the US were sent a questionnaire, with a specific question on whether their project was linked to DEI, or whether it supports the recognition of trans people. Last week, researchers at the CSIRO—Australia’s premier scientific research body—received the questionnaire too. Separately, seven universities in Australia, including the University of Technology Sydney, Monash University, the University of Western Australia and Australian National University, have already had their US funding cut on research projects since the Trump administration came into power. To give some perspective, Australia received $386 million in US research funding in 2024.

At the same time, trans people travelling to the US now risk a permanent visa ban if it is discovered that their passports reflect legal changes hard-won in their own countries. Additionally, little more than a month ago, the Queensland government banned access to puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for any new young people seeking essential healthcare from the Queensland Children’s Gender Service. 

As the CEO of AusPATH—an organisation that has been on the front line of accessible healthcare for trans people for well over a decade—I can tell you that words are failing us. In hindsight, the signs have been evident for years.

We have watched the slow, steady escalation of anti-trans rhetoric matched with a profound silence from our media. Permanent travel bans on trans Australians and potential detention for false travel documents? Pressure on Australian universities and institutions to remove all reference to trans people? The indefinite stopping of all essential healthcare across Queensland? 

To each of these, the Australian media has been relatively indifferent. Yet the seismic rollback of access to care, work, and freedom of movement that trans people in the US are now experiencing—within the first 100 days of this new administration, let alone the other extraordinary and horrifying things that have occurred to migrants and people of colour—is a clear sign. 

In Australia, limited understanding about the health needs of trans people and poor media coverage make us vulnerable to discrimination and the rollback of essential care. 

This is a fundamental problem that faces us all. Can anyone seriously still hold on to the myth that trans people and other diverse groups who make up a small but valuable part of Australia’s workforce are merely struggling with feelings of being directly targeted? Permanent travel bans. Risk of detention for false travel documents. Removal of all reference to trans identity. Restriction to essential healthcare for young people that remains available and affordable to other children who are not trans. This is not a struggle over feelings. It is a struggle to find the courage to name a thing for what it really is. 

What then should we be doing to find our words and our courage? 

The most important thing to remember is that the Trump administration is proposing a radical realignment based on a profoundly flawed idea: that making space for a diversity of identities fundamentally weakens society, and that strength and stability come through stripping out difference. It is an argument so breathtakingly flawed that it would require Americans to ignore and forget the last 250 years of their own history. We would be fundamentally compromised by accepting the same kind of revision. 

Things now will not return to the way they were. Rather, we need to remember that Australian society is made up of a diversity of cultures—religion, race, gender, sexuality, Indigenous or migrant, abled or disabled. We all fall into one or more of these rich, vibrant, and life-defining categories. Our citizenship should mean contributing to society because of the differences that make us who we are, not despite them. By making space for the difference of others, space is made for us too. We have always been stronger for that. 

It is my hope that government, businesses, organisations, and individuals in Australia have merely been caught off guard by the speed and force of change out of the US. Describing the profound reordering of our global relationship to the US and to other countries will require clear, unambiguous language—words that do not leave us compromised. 

I hope we can find them sooner rather than later, for the sake of trans people and all of Australia’s rich diversities too.