Trump official Ben Carson thinks trans women are ‘big, hairy men’
US Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson (Zach Gibson/Getty)
Donald Trump’s Housing and Urban Development secretary Ben Carson made anti-transgender remarks in a meeting with staffers, it has been alleged.
According to The Washington Post, Carson embarked on an anti-trans tirade during an internal meeting on Tuesday (September 17), claiming that “big, hairy men” are trying to enter women’s spaces.
At least one person walked out of the meeting with Carson in protest at his comments, the newspaper reports.
Unnamed staffers also alleged that Carson, who has publicly expressed his support for a ban on “abnormal” transgender people serving in the military, vented that society “no longer seems to know the difference between men and women.”
The former Fox News personality has used his position to roll back rules protecting trans people in housing, publishing guidance in May that would grant homeless shelters the right to refuse gender-appropriate housing for transgender people.
Ben Carson has a long anti-LGBT history
Carson had a long history of anti-LGBT comments before taking up the role, comparing gay people to paedophiles and claiming that equal marriage is part of a Marxist plot.
In 2015, Carson claimed that prisons ‘prove’ being gay is a choice, and while running for President in 2016, he likened transgender people to racists who put on different accents.
President Donald Trump listens as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson speaks (Jabin Botsford/Getty)
He said: “For someone to wake up and think that they belong to a different sex because they feel different that day is the same as if you woke up and said, ‘I’m Afghani today because I saw a movie about that last night.'”
Blatantly dehumanising trans people
Human Rights Campaign president Alphonso David responded: “Ben Carson has spent his career in politics expressing disgust toward the existence of transgender people.
“From his comments on trans people in the military to his support for a proposal that would literally permit emergency shelters to turn away trans people who are homeless to his unqualified support for a White House that has made attacking trans people a mantra, it is hardly surprising that Ben Carson would blatantly dehumanise trans people in his official capacity.
“From day one, the Trump-Pence administration has made it clear that the cruelty of their words and actions is the point, and during a year in which at least 19 transgender people — 18 of them Black trans women — have been killed in the United States, these remarks serve to only exacerbate this crisis, further dehumanizing the most vulnerable among us.
“The tens of millions of Equality Voters in this country are going to hold this administration accountable next year.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Housing and Urban Development said: “The Secretary does not use derogatory language to refer to transgendered [sic] individuals. Any reporting to the contrary is false.”
