😬 yes, we're scared...and angry

Being trans in America is a LOT right now

I attended a workshop last week from SpeakOUT, the nation’s oldest LGBTQ+ speakers bureau. I was reflecting with a friend how my story I learned to tell with this organization felt outdated.

We like good stories with happy endings. My story that I practiced telling last year ends with a moment of acceptance, joy, and comfort in my trans identity.

A coming-out story

But right now in the US, I feel like we're in the middle of the story, not the end.

We are actively fighting the legal battles to exist in our paperwork and have access to necessary medical care.

And it's scary. Even me, in my supportive family and stable place to live and running my own business, I feel scared. A lot of people feel scared right now.

And that's okay. Being scared is a really typical and healthy reaction to a threat to one's health and safety. It makes sense.

A lot of us are also angry at our government’s betrayal of us, attempting to erase our rights and our personhood.

I’m frustrated at the logistics of it all. Being trans right now and figuring out any kind of paperwork is like doing your own taxes, on paper, except that someone fed the instructions into a shredder, wrapped some tape around the bundle, dumped a cup of coffee on it, and handed it to you. Is it better to have an F or M gender marker or worse to have a(nother) gender marker change on record? Impossible to know.

This affects anyone who’s ever had a gender marker changed on any of their various identity documents (whether through a mistake or not). A lot of people have mismatched gender markers on their documentation, because it’s always been a lot of bureaucracy and cost to change everything at once.

Some folks who have not had to deal with this bureaucracy think the gender marker thing is bullshit, or a hillarious distraction from the real issues. The problem is, these bullshit, unspecified gender marker rules can have very real consequences like not being able to get a passport, or a visa, or health care. Even if any given person doesn’t experience bad consequences from their documentation, it’s still SO much stress trying to figure out what the “right” thing to do is.

I find myself going down rabbit holes trying to figure out what might happen with my identification documents, and some of it is real and some of it is just fearmongering.

If you go to the DMV and request a change back from ‘X’ to ‘F’ on a drivers license, will they process that or will they take your ID, punch a hole in it, and refuse to issue you a new one because you’re clearly trans? A Real ID drivers license is a federal ID technically falling under federal, not state, regulations.

How would you drive your car back home from the DMV appointment? Your ID would be sitting in the pile of deactivated IDs. Your car insurance would no longer be valid. Your car registration would no longer be valid. What a nightmare.

So, I chose not to go to the DMV.

But then what if you’re at the airport, trying to re-enter the US, and you have a Real ID and a passport that don’t match. Would that get flagged? I don’t think so, I think it would be fine, but I’m worried that the rules seem to be changing on a daily basis.

I’m a US citizen, but I’m not feeling the safety I’m accustomed to of being a (white, lifelong) citizen right now. I don’t feel like my government has my best interests at heart, to say the least.

Being gender-nonconforming in this political climate can be a radical act, but it can also be the only option available when the rules prohibit other options.

Especially if you don’t have access to gender-affirming hormone therapy, gender-nonconforming clothes, words, and actions may be the only way you have to express your gender.

Using a public bathroom that you don’t look like you belong in may be both gender-nonconforming behavior, and also following the law based on assigned sex at birth.

That’s right: bathroom laws often require trans people to go in the bathroom they don’t look like they belong in. For example, a trans man with a beard might be legally required to go in the women’s room.

Bathroom laws primarily target trans women, with a goal of making it highly uncomfortable and unsafe for trans women to use any public restroom. It might be illegal for you to use the women’s restroom, even though you look like the woman you are, a woman who is likely to get harrassed (and, outed as trans) in the men’s bathroom.

As one of my readers pointed out, trans women who are on one of the most common testosterone blockers, spironolactone, need to pee often as a side effect. These bathroom bills are all about making it uncomfortable and painful simply to exist in public life.

If you’re like, that’s so complicated, I don’t get it, you’re right! It is extremely complicated! It’s so hard (and stressful) to know what the right thing to do is.

It’s infuriating that a small but influential fraction of my fellow Americans think all this stress, the threat of this logistical and legal nightmare, is the right thing for our government to impose on us.

While they think they can erase us, they can only erase our paperwork.

So, what can we do?

Donate to the ACLU.

Call your government officials. (If you are a resident, not a citizen, you are still a constituant who your officials are tasked with representing, and your voice still matters).

Support the trans people in your life.

And let’s keep writing the story together.

Thanks so much for reading! Let me know what you think in the comments.

Take care,

Rey