Why We Need a Digital Rights Framework for Gender-Diverse Communities

By: Jess Reia, Assistant Professor of Data Science and Faculty-lead at the Digital Technology for Democracy Lab at the University of Virginia

Disclaimer: The views expressed by CDT’s Non-Resident Fellows are their own and do not necessarily reflect the policy, position, or views of CDT.

Few topics are more polarizing than gender identity and expression for the current U.S. administration and its supporters. In the most recent U.S. election campaigns, several candidates used anti-trans discourse to worsen polarization, a rhetoric reflected in President Trump’s first day in office. On January 20, President Trump signed various Executive Orders, including one on so-called “gender ideology” and “biological truth,” in which he declared that only sex assigned at conception exists, either male or female. Part of a global agenda, and interconnected to other systemic issues in the U.S., the rampant attacks on transgender rights both online and off expose the importance of having a digital rights framework that considers the unique needs of gender-diverse communities. 

We see now that it is not only authoritarian governments attacking trans rights, as many countries, usually considered exemplary democracies, are also failing to offer basic protection to those at the margins of society. For example, in the United States in December 2024, the American Civil Liberties Union tracked at least 574 anti-LGBTQIA+ bills in the 118th Congress, most of them targeting gender-diverse communities through restrictions on healthcare (many on gender-affirming care), free speech, and civil rights. If we count the bills carried out from the previous year, that number is as high as 669. Even when these bills are defeated, their existence contributes to fearmongering and the current trend of dehumanizing trans people, which causes harm, anxiety, and human rights violations. Germane to this conversation is a reckoning of the ways digital technologies will compound or counter these threats to trans people.

In response to these threats, our team at the University of Virginia’s Digital Technology for Democracy Lab conducted research that aims to reimagine digital rights frameworks for the trans community. The study serves as an exploratory research project on trans data and public health supported by the UVA Center for Global Health Equity, and is inspired by our 2022 response to a White House Office of Science and Technology Policy request for information. A trans-centred approach is frequently excluded from decision-making spaces and international forums focusing on digital rights (such as the UN Internet Governance Forum), but can take us steps further in safeguarding fundamental rights for everyone.

Digital technologies and gender identity and expression

These anti-trans attacks should matter to digital rights advocates. Digital technologies serve as platforms for knowledge-sharing and care, yet are also arenas where anti-trans attacks are platformed and rampant. This feeds into a sense of ambivalence about being online as a transgender person. On the one hand, platforms such as social media networks serve as venues for community-building and become vital support networks, enabling individuals to share experiences, access resources, and foster a sense of belonging. In some instances, digital technologies may be the only place individuals find information on gender-affirming care.

On the other hand, these platforms can also facilitate harassment, abuse, and violence, becoming arenas for online gender-based violence (OGBV), particularly affecting transgender communities and women. For transgender individuals, OGBV manifests in specific ways, online and offline, such as the dismissal of gender identity, sharing of images without permission, hateful comments, and threats of violence and death. Simultaneously, there is a concerning trend of bills limiting the freedom of expression of educators and advocates in the U.S. 

Other concerns include the widespread use of biometric data (i.e. faces, fingerprints and iris scans) and automatic gender recognition (AGR) systems (including but not limited to facial recognition), which assume an individual’s gender based on biometric markers often to verify identity. Beyond issues of accuracy, these AGR Systems pose risks related to misidentification and discrimination against people undergoing gender-affirming care.

Building a Trans Digital Rights Framework

This approach is of utmost importance because digital rights frameworks rarely reflect the unique needs of adult gender-diverse communities. In our report, we present a first attempt at conceptualizing principles, guidelines and responses that can be relevant to other communities dealing with the ambivalences, possibilities, and risks of being visible and online. This framework applies to adults, and is not intended to address digital rights issues related to minors. We refer to these principles as a Trans Digital Rights (TDR) Framework. To build a solid foundation for inclusive digital rights advocacy, we cover issues pertaining to data collection, citizen-generated data, and artificial intelligence, then present guidance to a range of actors that includes:

• Reimagining the right to be forgotten in relation to gender transition: Reimagine mechanisms that facilitate the exercise of the right to be forgotten applied to trans identity information and gender transition, allowing people to exclude, deindex, or delete their outdated, useless, or decontextualized information from online and offline databases.
• Incorporating a purpose limitation principle: Incorporate a requirement for companies collecting information on gender identity and expression to only collect data necessary for the service they are providing, while being transparent about how that data will be used and limiting its use for other purposes.
• Enabling 2SLGBTQIA+ positive content moderation: Enable 2SLGBTQIA+ positive content moderation policies that are conscious of the ways both over censorship and underprotection of online spaces limit the ability of gender-diverse people to use the internet – and social media specifically. It should be a user choice, not a platform requirement. Additionally, adding more user control over recommender systems can help avoid unwanted advertisements that could reinforce binary gender identities. Learn more about “2SLGBTQIA+” and gender-diverse communities.
• Prohibiting deadnaming and misgendering in online platforms: Include clauses that prohibit human rights abuses based on gender, sexuality, and gender identity in terms of service (ToS) and policies of digital platforms, and recognize targeted deadnaming and misgendering as hate speech.
• Addressing mis/disinformation and polarization: Address specific challenges that misinformation and polarization create for transgender individuals as an important first step for public awareness. It is equally important to understand the weaponization of historical hatred of gender-diverse communities and work together with specialists to tackle these issues. Examples are de-platforming extremist and transphobic content, and preventing misinformation on gender identities, gender-affirming care, and other aspects of trans lives.
• Bringing digital rights into transgender-focused governmental data collection: The federal government should apply digital rights principles to data collection to increase data inclusion, visibility, and understanding of trans people and the issues they face while also protecting data privacy, even (and especially) in countries and jurisdictions lacking robust privacy regulatory frameworks.
• Considering gender identity data as sensitive data: Under many data protection frameworks, sensitive data receives heightened protections, often requiring consent to collect it, mandatory Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA), and limits to its use.
• Preventing deanonymization: Federal agencies, companies, and other non-state actors must adopt measures to prevent data de-anonymization relating to respondents’ gender identities in data collection processes, from research projects to censuses and surveys.
• Rethinking data breaches from the perspective of attacks on trans rights: As data breaches can lead to significant privacy violations, outing individuals without their consent and increasing their vulnerability to discrimination, harassment, and targeted violence, we must rethink data breaches to incorporate the profound and disproportionate impacts on transgender individuals and communities.
• Informing on intended uses of data: Make it clear to survey respondents about the intended uses of the collected data and the conditions for sharing it with other agencies. Individuals with gender non-conforming identities may feel comfortable providing this type of data under certain circumstances. Still, they certainly would hesitate if they knew their data would be available to other federal or state agencies that could put them at risk.
• Facilitating the removal and changing of gender identity information in IDs: Policymakers should ensure access for trans individuals to correct name and gender information for both physical and digital IDs and any other government data. Additionally, we need to consider the removal of gender information altogether from IDs.
• Involving advocates, civil society, and community organizations: Invite actors working on promoting digital rights to join the conversation about 2SLGBTQIA+ data equity—and vice versa—to generate a productive exchange about moving forward collaboratively. Additionally, invest in capacity-building of gender-diverse communities, learning from data stewardship efforts, and developing policy recommendations and guidelines for data collection alongside gender-diverse communities and advocates.

After detailing principles and guidance in the TDR framework, our report also introduces seven policy recommendations aimed at different actors (i.e. government, civil society organizations and advocates, industry, and academia.) These recommendations vary from broader actions, such as the need to engage with civil society organizations and advocates to improve data collection and evidence-based policymaking while strengthening open data efforts, to more specific actionable items. Examples of the latter include improving mechanisms that allow the participation of trans people in digital rights advocacy, building platforms for knowledge-sharing, designing trans-friendly AI impact assessments and trans-inclusive adoption tools, as well as prioritizing responsible, ethical and trans-friendly health care, online and offline.

You can download the full report from LibraOpen, the online archive of University of Virginia Scholarship. 

The work we present here is an attempt to fill in gaps in current research and advocacy, as well as build bridges between the trans rights and digital rights movements. This research was led by Dr. Jess Reia and co-authored with researchers Rachel Leach and Sophie Li. The project received funding and support from the UVA Center for Global Health Equity, the UVA School of Data Science and the Digital Technology for Democracy Lab at the Karsh Institute.