Welcome to episode 6 of The Spectrum. This was recorded on February 3, 2025. In this episode we will look at Trump’s 3rd Project 2025 transgender ban.

This one is in an executive order dated January 28, 2025 and is titled, “PROTECTING CHILDREN FROM CHEMICAL AND SURGICAL MUTILATION”. It’s real title should be “Ensuring Transgender Children Suffer”.

This disgusting executive order seeks to make treatment of transgender children impossible. It is a vast overreach of executive power and it is based on lies.

First, it starts with the premise that any surgical or hormonal treatment is “maiming”. And it makes the claim that “countless children soon regret that they have been mutilated”.There is only one way that these words make any sense and that is if you have pre-conceived notion that this is the only possible outcome.

It is based on the premise that gender issues are a psychological disorder and that treating it through physical means is always wrong. It is based on the idea that a child does not know his or her own identity. These are both false premises. 

The order claims to “end reliance on junk science”, but the order itself is not based on any science at all but obvious prejudice again dressed up to make it sound like they are trying to protect the very children they are hurting.

As one example, the department of Health & Human Services is directed to publish a review of the best practices for promoting the health of transgender children. You can bet that there won’t be one bit of actual science referenced in this review. Instead it will be Project 2025 propaganda dressed up to look vaguely like science.

It uses the threat of withholding federal funding to medical institutions that treat transgender children in a way that actually helps them.

It threatens to use the Justice Department to take action against those who treat children.

It threatens parents who love their children and want what is best for them. For a political party that claims to value parental rights so highly, this executive order seeks to deprive parents of the rights to take care of their own children.

There is no doubt that if they are successful in this order they will attempt to make treatment of adults impossible as well. This goal of all of these actions and those that will follow is to attempt to make transgender people cease to exist in America. Of course, transgender people will still be there. But, officially, the country will not admit to that. It will be official policy that there is only one way to be a man and one way to be a woman and any person who tries to go outside those rigid definitions will be subject to official censure and perhaps legal action. Certainly, anyone trying to help them will be.

Let’s look at some of the fallout we can expect form this executive order if it is ultimately implemented as broadly as Trump hopes:

1. Suicide rates among transgender children will rise
2. Transgender children will suffer the effects of body changes that hurt their mental health

I base this on a 2024 survey by the Trevor Project that showed 12% of LGBTQ+ young people attempted suicide in the past year. And 46% of transgender and nonbinary young people considered suicide. Combine that with the fact that young people who reported living in accepting communities reported attempted suicide rates at less than half the rate of those who lived in communities that were not accepting. Also, 90% of LGBTQ+ young people reported their well-being was negatively impacted due to recent politics.  Put all of this together and it’s clear that the people Trump claims to be protecting do not feel protected. They feel persecuted.

If Trump think he’s protecting young people, why do the young people think they are being persecuted and not protected? That’s easy. It’s because they are right. The Trump administration is ignoring the truth that these young people are telling them and making their lives a hell on earth. 

Donald Trump will have the blood of young transgender and non-binary people on his hands. These are lives that could have been saved and that we could have helped grow up into happy, productive adults. Instead he is going to make their lives miserable. And many will end up taking their live because he is trying to create a world in which their truth is denied.

The extraordinary effort Trump is making to make transgender people officially invisible is incredible. According to an report published in 2022 by the UCLA Williams Institute about 0.6% of the US population identifies as transgender. What may alarm the Project 2025 people is that breaking this down by age groups, about 1.4% of youth aged 13-17 identified as transgender and 0.5% of adults.

I’m not questioning these statistics. But, statistics like this are challenging to properly collect and even more challenging to interpret. Why are more young people identifying as transgender compared to the older population. There are many possible reasons.

1. The actual number hasn’t changed but more of them were receiving care and so numbers are now more accurate.
2. The subject is more widely known about so young people learn about it rather than just wondering why they feel differently than their peers.
3. Until late 2024, the general trend had been for more societal acceptance making it safer and easier to admit things that older adults still feel stigma about.
4. Since gender is complex and interacts with many other aspects of our psychological makeup, some young people may question themselves and later realize that what they thought was a gender thing was something else.

It’s impossible to say which (or more likely how many of each of these) account for this difference and there are probably other possibilities that never occurred to me.

We should also note that the survey does not include young children. The youngest age of reporting is 13. The report estimates that about 1.6 million people over the age of 13 are transgender. While this is a large number of people, it is a very small part of the US population.

All we can say about this is that it gives us an approximation about the size of the population we are dealing with. This was at a point where accommodation for transgender people was at an all time high. You can expect these numbers to go down  — if there are even organizations capable to making the attempt to measure them during the next few years — because people will be afraid to self report.  With Trump’s push to make the words transgender, non-binary and gender identity disappear from any official government document or website and now from any organization that gets money from the government, it will be even harder for transgender people to find help.

Let me be perfectly clear about my position as an adult concerned about the welfare of children. 

We know that gender identify in all humans forms at a very young age, typically by 4 years old. We also know that gender identity does not change. Non-binary identities are more complex but the non-binariness of the identity is not going to change.

We know that if a young person expresses that their gender identity does not match with their physical sex that getting them treatment that prevents them from experiencing the wrong puberty will save them a great deal of emotional trauma. Doing this will make the person’s transition easier. They will fit into society more seamlessly and they are much more likely to grow into happy, healthy adults. Yes, it is true that given our current state of medical science, they will be giving up the ability to have children themselves. However, if they understand the pros and cons of their medical treatment they can make an informed decision. Ultimately, this is their body and it is their right to make the decision (with the help of parents and trained medical professionals). The government has no right to control the bodily autonomy of these people. However, Republicans don’t seem to think bodily autonomy is anything that anyone should have these days.

Gender and the interactions with other aspects of personality and identity are very complex. Sometimes people mistake a concern over social roles with a gender issue There are cases of young women wanting access to the opportunities that were available to young men thinking that they waned to to boys but when the issue was examined more closely they wanted the options that were available to the boys and didn’t actually have the gender identity of a boy. Those kinds of situations still happen today and this is why proper medical evaluation is needed. Because this treatment is life altering, we need to be as sure as possible that the person (whether a minor or an adult) is making the right decision.  However, because treatment is so much more effective for young people, we must not deny them the option. Instead, we need to get them the help needed to understand what the right decision is.

Trump’s executive order will instead, deny the truth that these children speak and force them to endure physical changes they do not want. It will create psychological trauma. It will lead to deaths that could have been prevented. And it does this by pretending to protect these children. It is disgraceful and disgusting. 

While there are risks with any medical treatment, the risks of puberty blockers is low, especially when compared with the risk of leaving the child untreated. If the young person, in consultation with parents and medical professionals, realize this is not the right path then stopping the puberty blockers will allow puberty to occur.

I urge every professional and institution that works with these children to find every legal way to resist this illegal and reprehensible executive order. I urge anyone who cares about the welfare of our children and a parent and child’s right to make the decisions they think are best for their children to reach out to elected officials at every level of government from local to national and let them know how un-American this executive order and any actions inspired by it are.

There are links in the show notes to the executive order, the survey and study referenced as well as FAQ’s on puberty blockers. It is important to understand that puberty blockers can be used for other reasons (such as treating precocious puberty). Trump’s executive order may make it more difficult or impossible for these children to receive treatment.

If you have a story about LGBT life experience you would like to share, please reach out to me at spectrumpodcasthost@gmail.com

If you know a transgender or non-binary young person, do your part to let them know they are loved for who they are and that you support their decisions.

Take care and stay safe.

rump’s executive order: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/protecting-children-from-chemical-and-surgical-mutilation/

Trevor Project 2024 Survey of LGBTQ+ Young People: https://www.thetrevorproject.org/survey-2024/

Williams Institute Report on Transgender Population: https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/trans-adults-united-states/

FAQ on puberty blockers: https://www.healthline.com/health/are-puberty-blockers-reversible#what-theyre-for