Silence = Death

6 min readJun 14, 2020

Silence = Death

On June 12, 2020, the Trump administration finalized a regulation which effectively erases legal protections for transgender patients against discrimination by doctors, hospitals and health insurance companies. Cruelly, he redefines the word “sex”, and through this legalese he’s enabled health services to refuse care to transgender patients.

They argue that these initial protections “coerced” doctors into performing procedures such as sexual reassignment and hormone replacement therapy. They listened to Mr. Severino, who’s had extensive experience litigating religious cases, stated that “controversial procedures, such as ‘sex-reassignment’ surgery… have not been proven to be effective in treating serious mental health conditions,” and made it his life mission to roll back legal protections for birth control and trans rights. In the midst of a pandemic which has killed 117,000 people to this day within the United States alone, our President allowed for these oppressed communities to be turned away for treatment.

Silence = Death

In the early morning hours of June 12, 2016, a lone gunman opened fire on more than 300 people inside Orlando’s Pulse dance club — one of central Florida’s most vibrant centers for LGBTQ social life. 49 people died, and more than 50 were wounded, representing the single deadliest incident targeting the LGBTQ community, and the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history up to that time. Exactly four years later, the U.S. government passes regulation directly targeting the rights of transgender people.

Silence = Death

In a 1983 appearance on NBC’s “Today” show, activist and Gay Mens Health Crisis co-founder Larry Kramer asked host Jane Pauley, “Jane, can you imagine what it must be like if you had lost 20 of your friends in the last 18 months?”

HIV was silently spreading among gay male populations in large American cities, as men who have sex with other men were disproportionately impacted by HIV, as it transmits much more easily through anal sex rather than vaginal. During the initial discovery of AIDS, it was commonly referred to as GRID (Gay-Related Autoimmune Disease), which created early and detrimental associations between homosexuality and AIDS. By 1995, AIDS was the single greatest killer of men ages 25–44 in America. One international analysis found that transgender women in certain communities have 49 times the odds of living with HIV than the general population.

As the anti-gay reaction gained steam across America with the rise of conservatism in the 1980s, the Reagan administration refused to acknowledge even the name of the virus until 1985. The government had failed to medically protect the LGBTQ community back then, and it has failed to medically protect the LGBTQ community today.

Government inaction mounted throughout the decade, until the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT UP, in NYC began to advocate and protest. They designed an iconic poster, with the simple phrase:

Silence = Death

JK Rowling writes that she deeply agreed with the thoughts of Magdalen Berns, “an immensely brave young feminist and lesbian who was dying of an aggressive brain tumour… However, Magdalen was a great believer in the importance of biological sex, and didn’t believe lesbians should be called bigots for not dating trans women with penises.” Rowling notes that “the new trans activism is having a significant impact on many of the causes I support, because it’s pushing to erode the legal definition of sex and replace it with gender”, something which she overplays as a powerful deterrent against protecting sexual predators from entering female spaces. As John Oliver notes, “someone abusing a non-discrimination ordinance to assault someone in a bathroom is almost unheard of. It’s a borderline imaginary crime, like dragon-wrestling and space bestiality. Sure, it’s terrible, but it doesn’t really happen.”

Although JK Rowling believes that replacing sex with gender poses a danger to cis women and sexual assault survivors, she misses a big point: this legal distinction has been used frequently to actually hurt trans women in stripping away our rights, as seen in this recent development with health care discrimination.

Silence = Death

I flip through the pages and watch the movies, understanding implicitly but consciously ignoring the growing desire to be like Luna Lovegood. She’s weird and spacey and kind — everything that I wanted to be. She’s gorgeous, and I know that I want to be like her, but admitting that means admitting that I’m not a boy, and that never ended well for me. I was filled with so much shame.

I died a hundred deaths to become the woman I am today. I clawed my way here. Even when people told me I was “poisoning myself with hormones” or that I would “forever be a man, and too ugly to be a woman”, I followed an old saying: “The woman you’re becoming will cost you people, relationships, spaces, and material things. Choose her over everything.”

I say this not to gain your pity, but to simply show just how stupid and unsubstantiated Rowling’s claims actually are. Never once, in my long insomniac-filled nights and tearful staring contests with my mirror, had I ever thought to myself that I wanted to use my transition as an excuse to “invade female spaces”. Never once had I regretted the changes in my body — a once prison that has since been transformed to my home. Never once had I decided to “change my gender in service of a trend”.

Silence = Death

In 2019, advocates tracked at least 26 murders of trans/GNC people in the US due to fatal violence, the majority of whom were Black transgender women. Some of these cases involved clear anti-transgender bias. In others, the victim’s transgender status may have put them at risk in other ways, such as through survival sex work, homelessness, poverty, etc.

On June 9, Dominique “Rem’mie” Fells, a Black transgender woman, was killed in Philadelphia, PA. On the same day, Riah Milton, a 25-year-old Black transgender woman, was killed in Liberty Township, Ohio.

Say their names.

Silence = Death

My heart fell. I held myself under my sheets, and for the first time in my life, I realized I wasn’t safe: that if I were injured while playing Ultimate in some random conservative town, or travelling en-route to elsewhere, I’d run the risk of being clocked and refused treatment. My heart bled, as my thoughts continued to ruminate on the horrors of racial violence, and the murders of my Black trans sisters.

My god, I thought to myself over and over. They want us dead. They want us all dead.

Silence = Death

Yet, I refuse to stay quiet. On June 28, 1969, Marsha P. Johnson threw the first brick that sparked the riots. On December 10, 1989, Act Up demonstrated against Cardinal John O’Connor’s religious teachings against safe-sex methods during the height of the AIDS crisis by lying down between the pews in front of the pulpit. In 2008, Proposition 8 was protested and campaigned against by thousands of people across California in the fight for gay marriage.

And in 2020, when the clouds clear and the global pandemic is over, we must fight once more. We march, not merely to celebrate and revel in the beauty of our collective queer-ness, but to remember the history of our community and carry on the torch of fighting for equality.

Happy Pride.