First they came...Last they came

Defiant Hope Despite the Dark Echoes of 1933

May 6, 1933

When I was in school, they taught us about Nazis burning books. Because I occasionally had a good history teacher who wasn’t just a coach passing out worksheets, I was also taught to never trust people who advocate for book bans and book burning. What they didn’t teach us in school was which books the Nazis burned.

On May 6, 1933, Nazi youth—whipped into a rage by Hitler’s anti-LGBTQ propaganda—raided Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sexual Research), one of the first facilities in the world to focus on research and medical care for transgender people. Four days later, they burned Hirschfeld’s 20,000+ volume library of gay and trans history and scientific research.

Those are the books they burned.

For more on Hirschfeld’s clinic and research, check out my friend Wendy the Druid’s Queer History 101 post today at her site:

Queer History 101: The Day They Burned Our History

Echoes

The Nazis weren’t the first violent political force to try to wipe out LGBTQ literature, arts, knowledge, and people. When the Church de facto ruled Europe during the Dark Ages, they tried to erase us. When the U.S. expanded west under Manifest Destiny, our genocide of indigenous people included cultural erasure of two-spirit people.

It’s been 92 years since that night in Berlin, and now we have the U.S. and UK governments taking their turns going after trans people again. In both countries, transgender people have been declared less than full persons under the law.

Here in the U.S., Trump has issued more than a dozen Executive Orders specifically targeting trans rights (I can’t even update my fucking passport!) and has used dehumanizing language about us in other EOs, proclamations, and social media posts.

The GOP introduced 500+ anti-LGBTQ bills (many specifically anti-trans) in state and federal legislatures this year. With carryover from last year’s bills included, we peaked at 850+ active bills targeting us. translegislation.com and erininthemorning.com are great resources for tracking this shit.

And, yes, we do have book burning, too. One of Trump’s first orders was to erase transgender Americans from NIH and CDC data, and then his regime moved on to erasing us from historical accounts (even the Stonewall National Memorial website). The Department of Health and Human Services released a 400-page anti-scientific report about youth gender-affirming care that pushes for conversion therapy.

The Trump regime’s state-led book burning (after years of Moms for Liberty pushing LGBTQ book bans in schools) and the spectre of what that could lead to inspired my poem “Don’t Remember Me for My Resilience.”

"Don't Remember Me for My Resilience" a poem by Miranda

They want to take back the gains that trans people have made in rights, medical care, and social acceptance. Many Christian nationalists even want to imprison or execute us.

Defiant Hope

So where the hell is the hope, Miranda?

There’s a reason I’m calling hope defiant. The Trump regime wants us to lose hope. Moms for Liberty wants us to lose hope. The GOP wants us to lose hope. Religious zealots want us to lose hope. They all want transgender people (really all LGBTQ people) to disappear, to crawl back in our closets, to make ourselves small because they only feel big when they subjugate others.

Though the threats are real and many, there is hope to cling to. Here are a few things that give me hope:

1. More transgender and gender non-conforming people are living as their authentic selves than ever before, and most of us have people in our lives who truly love and support us—spouses, partners, parents, children, siblings, friends, colleagues.

2. In the U.S., courts have been deciding more and more cases in favor of our rights. Despite the GOP’s 50-year+ mission to install ideologues, jurists are looking at our humanity and the overwhelming scientific evidence that supports us.

3. Also in the U.S. political realm, multiple states and municipalities are standing with us (even against extortion threats; see: Trump administration backs down in dispute with Maine over trans athletes)

4. Recent elections outside the U.S. show the tide (hopefully) turning against right wing populism and its anti-trans rhetoric.

5. Trans joy leads us to self-actualization and a strength that transphobes can’t understand and can’t destroy.

6. More people are realizing that civil rights are intersectional—black rights, indigenous rights, women’s rights, immigrants’ rights, workers rights, queer rights and all others connect and are based on personhood, dignity, and self-determination.

7. The last one is a double-edged sword: they can’t kill us all. Even before Trump returned to office, the U.S. had policies that amounted to the social murder of transgender people, particularly trans women of color. So, yes, this country is already killing people in our community. If things escalate to disappearing, imprisonment, and extermination (which will occur without due process) like they are doing to certain immigrant groups with that G-d damn torture prison in El Salvador, they can’t get us all. We will keep fighting for our lives. And yours. For a long time, historians thought the Nazis killed Dora Richter—one of the first transgender women to undergo “full” medical transition at Hirschfeld’s clinic—during the May 6, 1933 raid, but recently discovered evidence shows she survived and lived a long, full life with her partner. (see: Historians thought this trans woman was murdered by the Nazis, but she escaped and lived to be 74)

May 6, 2025

Last they came—this isn’t the first time they’ve wanted to erase us.
Last they came, we didn’t even make it into the G-d damn poem.
-from “Don’t Remember Me for My Resilience” by thepoetmiranda, my poem that I linked above.

Even when they knew they would be despised, our transgender ancestors stepped out into the light with hope that the world could be a better, kinder place. Their hope carried us this far, and our hope is what will carry us forward.

💜Miranda📚