Opinion: Transgender Day of Visibility Is in March. UD Didn't Get the Memo. 

On Friday, March 6th, the University of Delaware Associate in Arts Program students were invited to attend a debate on the Newark campus hosted by the University of Delaware's Department of Philosophy, Anthropology, and Women and Gender Studies, titled "Debating Sex: Is Biological Sex Binary?" The debate featured anthropologist Agustín Fuentes, author of "Sex is a Spectrum," and Tomas Bogardus, a philosopher who has built a career arguing against transgender and LGBTQ+ rights. Regardless of academic framing, hosting a debate about whether transgender, intersex, and nonbinary people exist is not a neutral act. In our current political climate, it is a dangerous one. It is worth noting that this event took place at the beginning of March, later this month the world observes Transgender Day of Visibility on March 31st, a day dedicated to celebrating transgender people and raising awareness of the discrimination they continue to face. 

For many queer and transgender students, we have spent the bulk of our adolescence and into adulthood watching society debate our existence. This has become all too common in an era defined by bad-faith "just asking questions" rhetoric that to its core denies the existence of our neighbors and classmates. We have watched politicians, media figures, and community leaders lie about us, fearmonger about us, and attempt to erase us entirely. And recently, we have watched institutions that claim to protect us capitulate and open the door to let it happen anyway. 

The consequences of this kind of rhetoric are not abstract. According to the Human Rights Campaign, at least 293 transgender people have been killed since 2020, and transgender people are 2.5 times more likely than cisgender people to experience violence. The Trevor Project reports that 47 percent of transgender youth experience suicidal ideation. The Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law found that more than half of all transgender youth live in states where their rights are actively being restricted. In January, the Lemkin Institute warned that the United States is in the early stages of a genocide against transgender Americans, and on March 11th, issued their third Red Flag Alert for an anti-trans genocide in the USA. These statistics and warnings do not exist in a vacuum; they are the direct result of a culture that has questioned the existence and experiences of transgender people for decades. 

While the Associate in Arts Program did not organize or host the debate itself, it was an active participant. AAP students were welcomed into the Department of Philosophy, and the debate was mentioned in at least one AAP class, where attendance was encouraged for extra credit. It is worth acknowledging that engaging with controversial ideas is a legitimate and beneficial part of academia, and the intention here may well have been no more than that. However, intention does not erase impact. For many AAP students, this may have been one of their first significant exposures to university academic life. When a program serving first-generation, low-income, and historically marginalized students directs those students to an event that treats members of our community as an open question, the message that sends matters regardless of the academic value. 

As both a Blue Hen and a transgender student, I believe in freedom of speech and the fundamental principle of academic freedom. What I do not believe in is a taxpayer-funded university platforming and endorsing hate speech and calling it academia. True academic freedom requires confronting the power that academics hold and the harm certain ideas cause when given institutional legitimacy. The University of Delaware claims to be a welcoming institution for all students. It cannot make that claim while simultaneously making its campus less safe for the most vulnerable among them. Transgender, intersex, nonbinary, and gender diverse students are not up for debate, period.