But that's definitely not the conclusion I'm coming to.

...or that the killing isn't obvious enough, or have you been influenced into thinking transphobia is a lesser bigotry that doesn't deserve strong language to describe it?

Ask yourself seriously. I'm not saying the answer can't be "no, my initial opinion stands."

If you don't think "you have no right to exist and we will do everything in our power to make your life a living hell if you try" is genocidal enough to use that term, I really would encourage you to consider why you feel that way.

Is it really because you don't think the intent is clear enough...

In my opinion, people are chronically downplaying things by NOT using that word.

Day one in office, Trump was dead set on ordering the government to not acknowledge our right to legally exist at all.

"You are not allowed to exist" is a fucking strong sentiment.

A significant number of people still think saying the Nazis were committing genocide against queer and trans people is excessive, despite this. It's because people are still homophobic and don't want to fully acknowledge that what happened was bad.

This discourse, to me, echoes the way queer and trans people have been erased from acknowledgement in genocide in general.

Queer and trans people were targeted in the Holocaust, and it took decades to get that widely acknowledged, even though gay men literally had their own color-coded triangle.

But moving on, that second point:

"Devalues the meaning of the word genocide." They suggested "erasure" instead.

I think this, especially coming from a trans person, comes from a very well-meaning place. But it also kind of gets my hackles up.

(Also, even in very clear cut cases, people will dig through bedrock trying to find reasons not to acknowledge genocide, which is how so many people argue what's happening in Palestine isn't genocide when it very obviously is)

So when it comes to things like whether something is legally genocide, the problem isn't really the behaviors or that they aren't killing us directly enough, it's that it's not written to accommodate exterminating groups of people the writers didn't care about, which includes queer and trans people

They are intentionally creating an environment designed to make us "disappear," either by forcing us into the closet, or by making life so terrible we literally die (by our own hands or others). That is already genocidally-intentioned behavior even if they aren't planning on directly killing us.

They are also attempting to inflict widespread suffering on the trans community, through removing protections, making us targets of discrimination, making it hard to participate in public life, and denying us healthcare that can be the difference between life and death for many of us.

Notably, technology has changed things a lot, so people are more aware of trans people and can learn what's happening faster. I'm hoping this throws a big wrench in their efforts.

But they are still using the exact same playbook.

The Nazis initially targeted trans people by invalidating their documents and destroying records of their medicine, culture, and history.

Trump's administration is doing a modernized version of exactly the same thing. They ARE doing the same thing!

That doesn't mean everything is EXACTLY the same.

It also includes causing serious mental or physical harm, forcibly transferring children from one group to another, or inflicting conditions designed to destroy them.

Trump and the Republicans are already unquestionably doing at least two of those to trans people, in ways paralleling the Nazis.

Firstly, even the *legal* definition of "genocide" (which I personally feel is weak and written specifically to allow genocides the writers agreed with) does not only define genocide as "expressly killing everybody in a group."

Basically there's concern about using the term "genocide" because:

- it's too early, because they haven't actively started killing us yet

- it devalues the meaning of the word "genocide"

I disagree on both counts, although I do tend to use "attempted genocide" as a personal compromise.