Another Knife In The Back

The hate for us and for everything that a black president did runs deep in the white nationalist Trump administration. The latest attack on us is focused on federal trans employees.

Trump Administration Removes Guidance Supporting Transgender Feds
Government Executive
By Eric Katz
December 7, 2018

The Trump administration has removed from its personnel website guidance for all federal agencies to follow regarding transgender employees, and with the deletion has implemented new policies for transitioning workers.

The removal of the policy, which the Office of Personnel Management previously issued to “address some of the common questions that agencies have raised…with regard to the employment of transgender individuals in the federal workplace,” took place in late November. It is still viewable via the Internet Archive’s “wayback machine,” but is no longer on OPM’s Diversity and Inclusion site.

OPM—the agency responsible for governmentwide human resources policy—has added a new memorandum titled “Guidance Regarding Non-Discriminatory Practices in Federal Employment.” It is located in the general reference materials section of the site rather than the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender resources heading. It does not mention transgender issues, but does compel agencies to only change the gender or name on employees’ personnel files after obtaining legal documentation. The deleted guidance noted that a legal change may be difficult to obtain or the employee may simply choose not to do so, and agencies should still enable the change for email accounts, employee directories, business cards and other items.

I read the comments and they are saying it right to only use the person’s legal name, as one person put it “…This language appears to be reasonable. Having a legally inaccurate name in an OPF could result in adverse issues…” but they do that for non-trans people. Someone’s legal name might be “Johnathan Doe” and their email says “John Doe.”

We use names other than their legal name all the time and it is not a problem but somehow it becomes a problem when a trans person does it.

An employee who serves as president of one LGBT employee resource group who spoke to Government Executive on the condition of anonymity said he has many transgender colleagues at his agency and this has continued their feeling of being “under siege” by the current administration. The employee particularly highlighted the lack of recognition of a name change absent legal documentation, citing expenses or simply losing a court case from a conservative-leaning judge as reasons why federal workers may not have such paperwork.

That is because we are under siege; this administration is doing everything it can to erase us and force all LGBT people back into the closet.

We will not be erased!