I sent to the Times, but they did not take it. I hope those who read here will share it. I am chair of the Friends of the National Museum of Disability History and Culture.
The reported move by House Republicans to prohibit the inclusion of transgender history in the American Women’s History Museum is not simply misguided—it is a deliberate act of erasure with far-reaching and dangerous consequences. See HR 1329 reported out of the House Committee on Administration, authorization of the American Women’s History Museum Act.
At its core, this effort asserts that certain people’s stories are unworthy of being told because acknowledging them would affirm their existence. It is an attempt to legislate invisibility—to decide, by political decree, who counts as part of our shared human story and who does not.
This is not about curation. It is about exclusion.
If allowed to stand, this action sets a chilling precedent: that any group can be written out of history if those in power find their existence inconvenient or ideologically uncomfortable. Today it is transgender people. Tomorrow it could be people with disabilities, racial minorities, immigrants, or anyone whose lived experience challenges a preferred narrative.
The consequences are profound:
- Institutionalized erasure: Museums—our nation’s memory keepers—would become tools of political filtering rather than truth-telling.
- Legitimization of discrimination: Denying a group’s history reinforces the false notion that they do not belong, fueling stigma, harassment, and violence.
- Educational distortion: Future generations will inherit an incomplete and manipulated understanding of society, weakening critical thinking and civic integrity.
- Policy spillover: Once exclusion is normalized in cultural institutions, it becomes easier to justify exclusion in law, healthcare, education, and employment.
- Erosion of democratic values: A government that dictates whose history is “acceptable” undermines the very principles of pluralism and freedom it claims to defend.
This proposal also ignores a simple truth: transgender people have always existed, have always contributed, and have always been part of the broader fabric of women’s history and human history. Their stories are intertwined with movements for equality, creativity, resilience, and social progress.
History is not a tool for ideological comfort. It is a record of reality.
We cannot allow public institutions to become instruments of selective memory. Silence, in this moment, is not neutrality—it is complicity.
We must respond with urgency and clarity:
- Flood congressional offices with calls and written objections.
- Demand media scrutiny that exposes the absurdity and danger of this effort.
- Stand in solidarity with those whose histories are being targeted for erasure.
Because once we accept that some people can be written out of history, we accept that some people can be written out of our society.
And that is a line we cannot afford to cross. Being silent makes us complicit.
