Nothing about us without us – unless you happen to be transgender.
The Center for Values in International Development (C4V) is almost 5 years old, but it is only now dawning on me – C4V’s founder and current president – that my two separate worlds as international development practitioner/ethicist, and openly transgender woman, have more than a coincidental overlap.
This awareness, however, itself has come from a coincidence. After recognizing an explosive increase in politically opportunistic targeting of transgender people – me and people like me – all over the world, neither I nor almost any other transgender people whom I know are being given the opportunity in the media or in other public forums to speak about what this all means for us. One might think that journalists would take the logical step and ask those who now find ourselves dead center in the culture war against LGBTQI+ people what this vilification of our demographic means for us. Instead, many lesbians, gay men (and particularly drag queens), and cisgender people are prominently being invited by those who control the media to speak on our behalf. While we appreciate the allyship, be clear that we have not delegated them to speak in place of us. We have voices, if anyone cares to listen – or even ask.
A storm in a teacup? Hardly.
The gravity of the situation cannot be minimized. In the United States alone, in 2024 the Republican Party spent over $215 million in coordinated attacks on transgender people. The Democratic Party chose inaction and strategic silence, spending and saying almost nothing to defend my tiny demographic (we constitute less than 1% of the American population). And, around the world, it is estimated that approximately 70 countries now have laws that explicitly target transgender individuals. These forms of criminalization include anti-cross-dressing laws, prohibitions against gender-affirming health care, and laws that outlaw same-sex relationships or gender non-conformity.
Transgender and nonbinary people also often stand in double jeopardy in many anti-LGB countries that incorrectly but commonly conflate sexual orientation and transgender identity. Journalists often speak of us as part of the “gay community”. Even if some of us do identify as gay or bisexual, that is not uniform across our demographic, and it is not what is most important to us. As slightly crudely put, being transgender is not about who we go to bed with, it is who we go to bed as.
Claiming our authenticity remains our biggest challenge. As if criminalization were not bad enough, in 20 countries transgender people are unable to have their authentic gender identity legally recognized, or even their names legally changed, resulting is a lack of proper identity documents. Without such documentation, finding employment, taking advantage of air travel, being able to marry, to sign a lease, get a driver’s license, vote, and so many other aspects of life are off limits. We are simply but officially denied our authenticity, while others (often with no small degree of self-righteous “justification”) claim the right to identify who we are (and what toilets we may use).
Legal, democratic, and demographic identity challenges aside, transgender people everywhere are facing an increasing wave of harassment, violence, threats, bigotry, stigma, humiliation, and denial of our civil and human rights. Here, in the United States, U.S. Senators Josh Hawley and Rand Paul have proposed legislation and have expressed intentions to eliminate “transgender” as a demographic category in various contexts. They seek to restrict the use of gender identity in several federal data collection programs, and they and very many state legislators have pursued policy initiatives to prevent the funding of transgender-affirming healthcare, often justified by arguments about biological determinism or concerns over the implications of recognizing gender diversity. These proposals can and do significantly impact the visibility and rights of transgender individuals – me and people like me – in areas such as healthcare, education, and civil rights protections.
What does all this anti-transgender vitriol have to do with international development? Quite simply put, and in my words as an ethicist: international development starts with and ought to be consistently guided by a strongly shared moral commitment to recognize and respect universal, equal, and inalienable human dignity – the foundation of human rights. When, around the world, one very small, very vulnerable minority who represent no threat to the rights and freedoms of cisgender people is being viciously targeted, we have a serious and global dignity problem. And, unlike so many other “development problems” that we focus on as international development practitioners, this dignity problem is truly international. We cannot consign this one to “the Global South”. International development means just that – the development of all human beings (and the care of the environment that make such development possible and sustainable), and it is not “over there”.
So why am I speaking out now? Why am I leaving the convenience of my compartmentalized world? What gives?
It’s the silence, and especially the truly comprehensive lack of access to transgender voices in this current predicament. International development is, rightly, very robust in its concern for women and gender issues, and especially on very serious concerns of gender based violence. That said, I see little to no programming that involves transgender or nonbinary issues, or that invites their voices. Our voices. So much for “nothing about us without us”.
Yes, excluding funding on HIV/AIDS, USAID is reportedly spending approximately $10 million in the current fiscal year in programming that touches upon transgender and nonbinary issues, but only when such issues are grouped under a much larger umbrella covering the promotion of gender equality and support for the rights and dignity of far more numerous lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and the very small population of intersex individuals. Of this relatively small amount (out of USAID’s total budget of $39 billion, $10 million is but 0.025%), only an indeterminate fraction of this is actually directed at the development needs and aspirations of transgender and nonbinary persons. Some philanthropic organizations do a little better, specifically the Ford Foundation and the Open Society Foundations, but generally in a narrow band of applications that they alone define.
And since “development” is not “over there” but everywhere, how much care, attention, and funding are being made available to support transgender and nonbinary people in this country? With due recognition to truly important programs such as the Trevor Project, and the advocacy and caring work of groups such as Advocates for Transgender Equality (A4TE), the Human Rights Campaign, and GLAAD, it is no match for the politically-motivated massive expenditures seeking to justify the denial of gender affirming health care, the curtailment of rights for transgender and nonbinary folk, and even the official denial of our existential being by striking us from the federal lexicon of data collection.
The final question of this blog remains unaddressed. Why is Chloe Schwenke raising these issues now, and on the C4V website? At the considerable but necessary risk of seeming to be narcissistically self-aggrandizing, I know of no other American leader in the international development industry who is similarly comprehensively experienced (projects in 42 countries, and many years living and working in the Global South), academically accomplished, well-published, well established in the practitioner world and in the academic world…and who is also transgender. In our industry, I remain the only transgender political appointee ever (under President Obama) in any of the federal foreign affairs agencies (in my case, 3 years at USAID as senior DRG advisor for Africa). And, despite this hard-earned record, not a single journalist or media person has ever reached out to me to comment on the current global anti-transgender movement. Not one.
Given the widespread lack of media articles citing transgender and nonbinary voices, and the reality that this space (limited as it is) is now occupied by other cisgender queer or straight folk, my predicament of feeling ignored (shunned?) is probably not mine alone.
It is time to call attention to this gap, and challenge journalists and the media to start listening to transgender and nonbinary (and intersex) voices.
Chloe Schwenke, Ph.D.
President and Founder, C4V
Photo Credit: Alexander Shelegov