Transgender Asian Americans face double discrimination

Three weeks after Donald Trump returned to the White House, he signed several executive orders targeting the rights of transgender people. The Trump administration's hardline stance on gender issues, as well as its moves to heat up geopolitical competition with China, have left transgender Asian Americans feeling anxious.

"I have put forward 20 years of service to this country. I've gone on deployments and carried a weapon," Alexandria Holder told DW. "If they decide I can no longer continue serving, they can't take those 20 years away from me." 

Holder, a flight chief and master sergeant in the US Air Force, was proud of her identity as both a Korean American and a bisexual transgender female.

But she was among approximately 15,000 transgender military personnel in the US who have been targeted by Trump's executive order aimed at revising the Pentagon's policy on transgender troops, potentially barring them from serving.

Other executive orders that limited gender-affirming care and the rights of transgender athletes were also signed within the first month of Trump's second term.

A 26-year-old transgender male who lived in Pennsylvania and wished to be identified as Albert, told DW that he is worried more about his race than his gender over the next four years.

"You look at me and think 'Asian,' right? Because I'm more visibly Asian rather than being trans," Albert said. "If I am in a space, I am Asian first. That's not something I can do anything about or hide."

Born in Wuhan, China, Albert was adopted by a White American family when he was 1-year-old.

He said that Washington's hardline China policy and geopolitical tensions sometimes "bring out the worst in people" and can lead to hate crimes like what was seen during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Because bigotry is irrational, some people might project their feelings of fear onto Asian Americans," Albert said.

'Your identity should not matter'

Following her father's path, Holder joined the Air Force in 2004. "When I first enlisted, there was a ban on open transgender military service," Holder said. "So, no transgender people could serve unless they served as their birth gender."

Holder enlisted during the age of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," a policy passed in 1993 that limited investigations of sexual orientation yet banned LGBTQ+ troops from serving openly.

Things changed during the Obama administration. After "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was abolished in 2011, Ash Carter, the Secretary of Defense at the time, allowed transgender troops to serve openly in 2016.

Holder started her gender transition with an Air Force doctor after Carter's announcement, but the policy changed again soon after Trump won the 2016 election.

In 2017, Trump announced on Twitter that the country "will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the US Military."

"Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail," Trump said.

Trump later launched his first transgender troops ban in 2019. However, the ban didn't work retroactively, so Holder was safe to continue serving as a female.

President Joe Biden briefly overturned Trump's 2019 ban in 2021. But now, the ban has returned with the executive order signed by Trump in late January.

Holder found the executive order disappointing.

"You're putting up your right hand, you're swearing to defend the Constitution of the United States, you're putting your life on the line to defend this country," she said, "does it matter if you're gay or if you're transgender?"

"As long as you are doing what you are supposed to be doing and putting yourself out there, your identity should not matter at all," she added.

Anti-transgender rhetoric under Trump

Trump's anti-transgender rhetoric picked up during the 2024 presidential campaign. According to American public broadcaster NPR, Trump's team invested at least $17 million (€16.4 million) on an anti-transgender television ad, which was aired over 30,000 times in seven swing states.

"You're inundated with ads," Albert said. "I feel like this election was different in the amount of ads you got."

All seven swing states where the ad played were won by Trump. Additionally, an Associated Press poll revealed that 55% of voters nationwide believe that support for transgender rights in government and society has "gone too far."

But this wasn't Albert's first realization that society didn't accept his identity.

Growing up in a White family in a conservative neighborhood in suburban Philadelphia, Albert constantly felt excluded for being ethnically Chinese.

 "Living in a fairly White area, you are the perpetual foreigner," he said.

There is fear discrimination against Asian Americans could accompany the overall adversarial political climate vis-a-vis China and Trump's anti-immigration rhetoric.

Politicizing transgender issues

Yuan Wang, the executive director of Lavender Phoenix, an advocacy group for LGBTQ+ Asian and Pacific Islanders in the US, said that many transgender and non-binary people are refugees and children of refugees.

"In recent years, it's become really clear to us that conservatives see transgender issues as a wedge issue for them. They see it as a way to create controversy," Wang told DW.

"We don't expect Trump to get into office and then suddenly say kind things," Wang said. "We know that this is one of the tools he used to get elected."

According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), there are 339 anti-LGBTQ+ bills in legislative progress across the country.

"I think being trans shouldn't necessarily be made into a political spectacle," Albert said. "Most trans people just want to live their lives and be left alone."

Holder, who could be ousted from the military under Trump's executive order, said that she was open to dialogue with people who are against her rights.

"I would love to share my story and my experience in uniform and show people that we're not enemies, that we can perform as well as any other person in uniform, that we can serve honorably and do our duty to our country," Holder said.

"We aren't some sort of infection that's corrupting the military," she said. "We just want to serve."

Edited by: Wesley Rahn