How trans visibility became a trap

I renewed my passport the day after Trump won again. It wouldn’t expire for years, but I did it anyway, along with many trans people I knew who could scrape together the fee. We all had the same thought: get your documents in order now, while you still can.

For over a decade, I’ve written publicly about being transgender. Since 2013, my words about transition, identity, and the fight for basic dignity have appeared in Rolling Stone, The New York Times, Vice, and other publications. I wrote because I believed in an idea that feels almost silly now: that visibility would lead to acceptance. That if people just knew the stories of trans people, understood our humanity, they’d stop seeing us as threats or curiosities or political pawns.

Now, approaching 40 years old, I watch as Donald Trump has returned to office with an explicit promise to erase trans people from public life. He calcified his campaign-trail hate speech into an executive order. His allies have drafted policies to void our passports, ban our healthcare, and make our very existence a legal impossibility. It’s the greatest attack on the trans community I’ve seen in my lifetime. And yet, somewhat …read more