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Audio By Carbonatix
One of the crueler projects of the Trump administration has been its effort to erase transgender people from existence.
Early in his second presidency, Donald Trump issued an executive order threatening to withhold funding from medical providers that offer gender-affirming treatment. Though that order was halted in court, some providers — including Phoenix Children’s Hospital — complied in advance. The Trump administration has also attempted to purge any mention of trans people from government sites and has threatened entities that rely on federal funding to the same. Earlier this year, an Arizona State University travel abroad webpage suddenly scrubbed all mentions of trans people, though the university said that was a mistake.
Eager to please him, Trump’s biggest sycophants have hopped aboard the trans erasure bandwagon. Several months ago, Kari Lake made a stink about having to share a Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport bathroom with an apparently trans woman — who, it would seem from Lake’s tweet, did nothing to bother Lake in any way. Now Rep. Andy Biggs, who is running for the GOP nomination for governor, has gotten in on the trans-hate act.
In response to a video of California Gov. Gavin Newsom saying, “There’s no governor that’s done more pro trans legislation than I have,” Biggs tweeted, “Gross. There’s no such thing as ‘trans kids,’ only children infected by the woke mind virus.”
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Phoenix New Times has reached out to Biggs’ office with questions about the tweet but has not heard back.
However Biggs might explain his tweet, it’s patently false. Yes, there are trans kids and trans people, and there have been for centuries across a wide variety of cultures. “Transgender persons have been documented in many indigenous, Western, and Eastern cultures and societies from antiquity until the present day,” wrote the American Psychological Association in a 2023 article. Nor is being transgender a sign of mental illness, as many right-wingers claim. While the feeling of being born into the wrong body certainly can cause distress, “many transgender people do not experience their gender as distressing or disabling, which implies that identifying as transgender does not constitute a mental disorder,” the APA article states.
A host of entities that know better than Biggs — the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics — agree on this point. Trans kids exist and they’re not mentally ill or disturbed just because they’re trans. There are nuanced discussions to be had about gender-affirming care for minors (a decision best left between doctors and parents) and about trans women in sports (a phenomenon that barely exists, much less constitutes a competitive crisis). But by barking about “woke mind viruses,” Biggs shows he’s incapable or unwilling to consider the issue through any lens but the one that helps him stay in Trump’s good graces.
What’s more, rhetoric like Biggs’ plays a direct role in the actual crises trans people do face. A 2023 UCLA study found that more than 40% of trans adults have attempted suicide and that “56% have engaged in non-suicidal self-injury over their lifetimes.”
“A lack of societal recognition and acceptance of gender identities outside of the binary of cisgender man or woman and increasing politically motivated attacks on transgender individuals, increase stigma and prejudice and related exposure to minority stress, which contributes to the high rates of substance use and suicidality we see among transgender people,” wrote study author Ilan H. Meyer.
Two years earlier, another UCLA study found that trans people are “four times more likely than cisgender people to experience violent victimization, including rape, sexual assault, and aggravated or simple assault.” Simply put, transgender people face far more risk from cisgender folks than vice versa.
“No matter what Rep. Biggs or anyone else might say, trans kids exist,” said Democratic Rep. Greg Stanton when asked about Biggs’ tweet. “They deserve to feel safe and welcomed in our community, just like all children.”
New Times has also reached out to Biggs’ gubernatorial rivals — Democrat Katie Hobbs and Republicans Karrin Taylor Robson and Rep. David Schweikert — but has not received a response.
