I transitioned during the first Trump administration, wondering if the authorities would change my name and gender listing on my passport, DL, social security card, and birth certificate. To change my name in Texas required fingerprinting, which prints are still on file with Texas and the FBI. I proudly stood before a judge in court to finalize my legal name change. If you've seen the recent movie, Will & Harper, you’ll know just what a harsh and difficult climate Texas presents for trans persons.
Colorado, of course, is better, but I don't live in a big metro area, such as Denver, but in a city of 80K in very rural Northern Colorado. It helps that Col State U is just up the road in Fort Collins. Yet, the proximity to Wyoming and Nebraska, two states that are nearly as anti-trans as Texas, as well as the rural Trump supporters in and around my town, constantly remind me that I have only a thin layer of protection in state laws that could be nullified instantly in a dictatorship/theocracy, which Trump and his ardent Republican supporters are carrying out. They meant everything they said in Project 2025.
Red Alert
So, for me, politics aren’t merely a matter of discussion or entertainment as some folks take it, almost like a sport. Nor are politics, for me, a means to "one-up" someone or win an argument. Winning arguments never made me feel better about myself. How we choose to govern ourselves (while that still remains an option; right now, that’s highly debatable) reflects who we are as a people. I have to be on the alert. Imagine, say, someone who publicly converted to Judaism in 1930s Germany, and you have a glimpse of the target on my back.
I know I’m trans and most people see that as soon as I open my mouth, due to my voice. Support and words are well and good. Yet, what happened in November revealed to me what America has always been and right now insists on being. Yes, a bare majority sided with Trump’s agenda, many for reasons that had nothing to do with trans persons. But it’s a package deal. I wouldn’t buy a car with incredible gas mileage and low maintenance costs but with the drawback that it could spout exhaust deadly to passersby, saying to myself, well I want a cheaper gas/maintenance bill, that poison and dead-people stuff be damned. Yet, an incredible number of Americans bought into a similar rationale in voting for Trump, all along seeing the hideous attack ads, vitriol, hatred, and outright lies he and his campaign spewed about trans persons, immigrants, and women. Wow. I didn’t see that coming. Not at all. I thought that the American people would come to their senses and see that this isn’t a game or a way to have lower grocery prices.
Shock & Flaw
In the wake of that utter shock (I wept the morning after the election and spent November in a hideous tailspin), I had to rely on Pam’s bravery, good sense, and steadfast love. You see, I get stared at in public. I lock eyes with the starers. You’d think they’d drop their gaze out of decency or at least a sense that their mommas taught them better than that. But they don’t. They undress me with their eyes, like I’m a spectacle, a thing for their perusal. More than half of those who voted did so for a candidate who repeatedly portrayed trans people and other vulnerable populations as things to be stared at, shunned, locked away, and limited in their healthcare options. Trump and JD Vance’s crass use of me and my posse as political footballs to whip up his fanatic base was something I incorrectly thought only a fringe of maniacs could stomach. Then a majority of the electorate on November 7th showed me that, no, using trans people, women, and immigrants as things was negotiable, provided they could have lower egg prices (which, curiously, are going in the opposite direction. Hmm.).
Oh, He Won’t Do That …
What happened on November 7th necessarily changed my awareness of and regard for Americans. A majority, whether they intended their vote to do so, chose a leader and administration who, at minimum, promised they would do hateful and deadly things to vulnerable populations. Then, many of those same people said to me, “Oh, he won’t do that.”
In just two weeks, he has, and it’s the tip of the iceberg, for while his executive orders thankfully don’t carry the weight of law, the same electorate who voted for him as president also voted in representatives, senators, and state and local governments who share and spout that agenda. Congress will soon start making into law the tenor and force of those executive orders. The evidence for that summary of the situation has already happened over the past eight years in states, local governments, courts, and school boards in which the Republicans hold a trifecta. Do you know that in Florida, if I use a women’s bathroom, I can be arrested on felony charges and sentenced to prison? Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Montana, Tennessee, and many other states have also put in force similar laws and policies to punish trans people for simply being who we are.
You Know I Love You, Don’t You?
I’ve had to reevaluate my relationship with dozens of persons whom I assumed loved and supported me. You can’t know how disorienting and frightening that is. For a while, I actively looked at options to live abroad. I’ve decided, however, that I get to be me on my own terms, and that they’ll have to kill me if they come for me and my posse. I don’t say that lightly. And I say it praying that things won’t come to that. Then again, ten years ago, who saw it would come to what’s already transpired?
All the above is a way of saying that, yes, I am now uncertain about people I call friends. After all, I assumed that, except for a few fanatics and crazy-ass billionaires, America was a land and people that still loved and supported me, furthering my existence as I do theirs. Now I know that America—or a majority of the electorate—isn’t that.
So, I find myself endangered in a land in which I previously thought I and others like me could be free to be who we are. Sadly, the first Trump administration revealed dozens of people I had thought were supportive friends to be anything but. Most all of them reviled, then blocked me. Only a few did I block, but only after stating to them where I draw the friendship line, for the safety, support, and well-being of me, my family, and my posse.
What Are Friends For?
I’ve found that friendship is like any relationship, whether in-person or on social media. I’ve learned that it requires work, testing boundaries, digging beyond the veneer. I’ve discovered that I can’t just “chat” with people I have some reason to believe, however small, would look aside from a campaign of hate and ruination to vote for what we have today. So, I felt the need to clear the air with America because I don’t know.
And while people try to settle where they stand with each other, the theocratic tyrants will push forward their agenda. So, how to cope, how to cope? I rely on
the love I have in my life,
friends like the ones I have who’ve reached out in droves with their concern, support, and deeds, and
Pam’s steadfastness and undying heart that brims with joy and compassion.
Claiming My Joy
All the above and more are so much more substantial to me than the little game-players in the so-called houses of power. As long as I’m living, I’m here to protect my posse, especially in the way I live. I will be a joyful, irrepressible trans person whose very life shows the lie that Trump and his zealots are trying to impose. And I’ve dedicated myself to joy. Cuz, well, fuck ’em. Them and the horse they rode in on (which, admittedly, isn’t fair to an innocent horse). So, let ’em fuck themselves. They’ve no claim on my joy.
