Tuesday, March 04, 2025

1984 In 2025

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
CDC will no longer process transgender data
STAT News
By Theresa Gaffney
Feb. 25, 2025


The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will no longer process transgender identity data in order to comply with President Trump’s executive order, agency representative Melissa Dibble told STAT on Tuesday. 

Sexual orientation data is unaffected and “will be processed per usual protocols,” Dibble added. 

The decision will likely affect a number of federal health surveillance systems, including the National HIV Behavioral Surveillance Among Transgender Women and the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. There is a major dearth of data on trans and nonbinary people in the U.S., so these survey systems that include them serve as critical resources for researchers.

The shift already has implications for the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, a singular source of behavioral health data that’s collected from high schoolers every other year. Researchers depend on it to track health behaviors including sexual behavior, substance use, mental health, and more. State and local governments can use the data to develop youth initiatives and policies. It’s the only nationally representative data on trans youth.
Erased! Eradicated!
Less than two weeks after President Trump issued an executive order declaring against scientific evidence that there are only two genders, webpages and datasets that might indicate otherwise were removed from government health agency sites. YRBSS data was one of the first disappearances. The data returned after a court order, but it’s unclear how the judge’s decision may apply to the collection of future data. 

“You can’t build an evidence base if you can’t identify the population,” said one public health worker who has worked with the YRBSS before, and spoke on the condition of anonymity. “So that is a huge fundamental challenge.”
The Ministry of Truth.
Nichi Bei News
By Amy Sueyoshi, 
Feb 27, 2025


On Feb. 12, I had just finished giving a talk titled “Breathing Fire” on queer and trans Asian Pacific American history for the University of Minnesota’s Asian American Studies program. Little did I know that a week later, the essay from which the talk was derived would be taken down from the National Parks Service Website along with 31 other essays that comprised the historic study.

The editor Megan Springate coordinated scores of historians to compile more than 1,200 pages of queer and trans histories to make more public, through the establishment of landmarks, the contributions of queer and trans folks in U.S. history. The LGBTQ-themed study was published on the NPS Website in 2016 and soon after won the Buchanan Award from the Vernacular Architecture Forum for its “monumental, groundbreaking… study of cultural landscapes of LGBTQ communities.”
This is something right out the book! 
As numerous historians such as Julio Capó, Marc Stein and Emily Hobson have been coordinating protest pieces on queer and trans erasure, more than 1,000 people descended on Stonewall Inn to push back against the excision. True, that these are just words rather than actual people being disappeared on the government Website, but I cannot help but think of philosopher Jason Stanley’s book “Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future.” The question now remains, what can each of us do to protect our future, if not the present.
Complete erasure from history... 
The Trump administration reportedly wants to erase terms including gender, transgender, pregnant person, LGBT, transsexual and nonbinary.
By Nick Visser
Feb 2, 2025


The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ordered government scientists to withdraw or pause the publication of all papers set to appear in medical or scientific journals so the Trump administration can review the material for “forbidden terms” such as “gender,” “LGBT” or “pregnant person,” according to a shocking new report.

Inside Medicine, a Substack published by Dr. Jeremy Faust, obtained an email the CDC’s chief science officer sent to researchers instructing them to stop the advancement of manuscripts that are currently being revised or those that have already been accepted for publication. Researchers were told to remove any mention or reference to a list of terms.

That list includes “gender, transgender, pregnant person, pregnant people, LGBT, transsexual, non-binary, nonbinary, assigned male at birth, assigned female at birth, biologically male, biologically female,” Inside Medicine, citing the email, reported.
This is much more that just the rewriting of history... this is a radical removal of research papers on our healthcare! It is dangerous to our health! Medical personnel use the database to treat patients and to track dangerous health conditions that effect us.

I asked my favorite AI...
Perplexity AI: "Compare and contrast: Trump's removal of transgender history to the book 1984?'
Answer:

The recent actions taken by the Trump administration regarding transgender information and George Orwell's dystopian novel "1984" share several striking similarities in their approach to censorship and information control, while also having some notable differences:

Similarities:
  1.     Erasure of information: In both cases, there is a deliberate effort to remove or alter existing information. Trump's administration has removed transgender-related content from federal websites (1 & 3), while in "1984," the Ministry of Truth systematically destroys and rewrites historical records (4).
  2.     Control of language: Trump's order mandates the replacement of "gender" with "sex" on government forms1, similar to how the Party in "1984" implements Newspeak to limit language and, consequently, thought (4).
  3.     Manipulation of reality: Both scenarios involve attempts to shape public perception. Trump's policies aim to redefine gender strictly as male or female3, while the Party in "1984" manipulates facts to suit its ideology (2).
  4.     Use of technology: Trump's administration utilizes website alterations and digital record changes1, reminiscent of how the Party in "1984" uses technology like telescreens for surveillance and propaganda dissemination (2).
Differences:
  1.     Scope: Trump's actions primarily focus on transgender issues (3 & 5), whereas the censorship in "1984" is all-encompassing, covering all aspects of society and history (2 & 4).
  2.     Implementation speed: Trump's changes are being implemented rapidly, with some taking effect within days (1 & 3). In contrast, the censorship in "1984" is portrayed as a long-established system.
  3.     Public awareness: Trump's actions are publicly known and debated (3 & 5), while in "1984," the population is largely unaware of the extent of information manipulation (2).
  4.     Legal framework: Trump's orders are subject to legal challenges and federal rulemaking processes3, whereas in "1984," the Party's control is absolute and unchallenged.
  5.     Motivation: Trump's administration claims to be protecting women and children3, while the Party in "1984" seeks to maintain power for its own sake (2).
In conclusion, while there are parallels between Trump's recent actions and the censorship depicted in "1984," the real-world scenario is less extreme and operates within a democratic system with checks and balances. However, the comparison raises important questions about the potential long-term effects of such policies on society and individual freedoms.

References:
It is Fascists and Dictators who do things like this. 


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