This statement is also available as a PDF.
You can find a member-compiled list of trans organizations and resources at this link.
The Trans Feminist Action Caucus, with the full support of the CUPE 3903 Executive Committee, reaffirms its solidarity with the trans community. This reaffirmation comes in light of increasing threats to trans people’s rights and lives, both here and abroad. The recent wave of anti-trans policies in the United States and their echoes here in Canada are the latest round of attacks against trans and nonbinary people by governments and powerful people seeking to erase us from existence. These actions put lives at risk, particularly those of trans youth who are being denied access to life-saving, gender-affirming care, which has been shown to improve mental health and reduce suicide rates (Tordoff et al. 2022), and which represent the global consensus on the best practices under the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (Standards of Care, version 8).
Executive orders signed by the U.S. President, such as “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” and “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness,” are but the most recent, and most authoritarian, examples of anti-trans policies that restrict the definition of gender to an essentialist (and false) binary; deny access to healthcare for trans people, particularly youth; and mandate incarceration of trans women in men’s prisons, putting them at greater risk of abuse and mistreatment. Horrifyingly, federal agencies have quickly implemented these executive orders, including blocking trans Americans from updating their gender marker on their passports.
In Canada, anti-trans sentiment has been growing among right-wing conservatives in recent years, with harmful policies and rhetoric gaining traction. Since 2021, four provinces have introduced legislation to forcibly out trans people; most of these laws target children. The government of Saskatchewan has invoked the notwithstanding clause and is fighting children and teenagers in court in support of a law that either forcibly outs kids to unwelcoming parents and homes by making school staff mandatory reporters of being trans—or that forces trans or questioning youth to stay in the closet. During the fall 2024 provincial election, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe announced his intention to advance changing room policies based on the gender presumed to be assigned at birth. Alberta’s legislation, also facing a court challenge, has gone further, blocking access to gender-affirming care for trans youth, introducing barriers to learning about gender identity in schools, and requiring participation in sports leagues to be based on gender assigned at birth.
By redefining trans, gender non-conforming, non-binary, and any person not comfortably fitting within a binary system of gender, such laws attempt to dehumanise us and erase us from existence. Across United States government websites, “LGBTQIA+” has been replaced with “LGB,” erasing not only trans people, but our intersex, asexual, queer, two-spirit, and other siblings who live beyond the bounds of the cishet box. Particularly egregious, the U.S. National Park Service removed all mentions of trans people from the Stonewall National Monument’s website, misrepresenting by erasure the truth of the Stonewall Riots: it was a rebellion led by trans women of colour that became one of the launching points for the queer rights movement in the United States. Stonewall is a key part of trans and queer history. Without the “T,” there is no LGB.
Trans people will be here whether or not the state chooses to recognise our existence. In leveraging the mechanisms of state power to remove us from language, to cut off our healthcare, and to isolate us from our communities, state actors think they can make us disappear. They will fail. As the Trans Feminist Action Caucus of CUPE 3903, we stand in unwavering solidarity with our trans and nonbinary siblings and communities. We recognize the ongoing hate, violence, and systemic oppression faced by trans people, while also rejecting it. We will continue to build a community grounded in liberation, where trans people and people of all genders are treated with the same dignity and worth as they are due by virtue of our shared humanity.
To all trans people in the United States, Canada, and beyond: TFAC, along with the Executive Committee of CUPE 3903, stands with you in resistance. We won’t let ourselves be erased.