When America elected Donald Trump into office, they elected an out-and-proud transphobe. With his election, the transgender community is panicking, and rightfully so.
Trump’s public and consistent belittling of the trans community was not enough to stop the country from putting him in a position of power. On his official website, donaldtrump.com, his platform document states that they wish to reverse Biden’s changes to the Title IX Education Regulations, which currently prohibits sex discrimination in federally assisted educational programs.
If Trump is successful, discrimination against LGBTQIA+ students in public schools will be legal. Schools could ban students from bringing their partners to prom, ignore bullying towards a LGBTQIA+ teen, and even out students to their potentially unaccepting parents should they be suspected of being queer. These small acts of transphobia could destroy a queer teen mentally, and Trump is endorsing this.
In a video from the same website titled “President Trump’s Plan to Protect Children from Left-Wing Gender Insanity,” he says that he aims to prevent hospitals from providing gender affirming care for minors. This would block doctors from properly caring for their under-age queer patients, creating a living hell for these children.
He later goes on to state that he “will ask Congress to pass a bill establishing that the only genders recognized by the United States government are male and female, and they are assigned at birth.” Trump is attempting to prevent trans individuals from being openly recognized and identified as who they truly are, whatever gender that may be. If a bill like this were to make it through Congress, an excruciating life would await the trans community as they are federally denied the right to identify in a way that makes them feel comfortable in their skin.
Going further back in history, In a 2023 speech, Trump said after his second inauguration, he would direct the Food and Drug Administration “to investigate whether transgender hormone treatments and ideology increase the risk of extreme depression, aggression and even violence.”
For years, Trump has made uneducated claims in an attempt to ruin the lives of individuals within the trans community. According to the University of Washington, in a study done on 104 transgender or non-binary youth, “those who received gender-affirming hormones or puberty blockers had 60% lower odds of depression and 73% lower odds of self-harm or suicidal thoughts.” When teens are given the right to express who they know they are internally on the external level, depression and self harm become less likely because these teens finally feel comfortable within their bodies. Trump ignores this, as his deep transphobia overrides sense and science.
It’s understandable that a second Trump presidency is the American trans community’s worst nightmare come to life.’
You may hear trans people call gender-affirming care lifesaving, or that they would have died if they didn’t come out. Sadly, none of that is an exaggeration. Gender dysphoria, which occurs when someone’s gender assigned at birth does not align with their gender identity, consumes a trans person’s life. It’s physically and emotionally tiring to act the part of your assigned gender at birth when deep down, you know it’s not you.
The 24/7 discomfort trans people feel as their assigned gender leads to many problems. According to the National Library of Medicine, trans individuals not on cross-sex hormone therapy have a nearly four-fold increased risk of probable depressive disorder. Many trans teens simply want to escape the depression, sadness, and anxiety that controls their life as their assigned gender. Unfortunately, Trump and people who voted him into office are forcing queer teens into a reality where escaping this mental state is nearly impossible.
It is hard to know if Trump will succeed in putting his proposed policies into law, but it is absolutely safe to say that the future is incredibly terrifying for trans youth with the possibility of anti-transgender laws, as these laws “significantly increased incidents of past-year suicide attempts among transgender and non-binary youth by as much as 72%,” according to a 2024 study conducted by the Trevor Project using data from over 61,000 transgender youth.
Now more than ever, your trans friends and family need your support. Be a helping hand when they need it. Keep an open mind. Use their chosen pronouns and name. It may not seem like you are doing much, but even having one person to lean on can be what keeps a queer person going.
If you truly love and support your trans friends, then you cannot support an openly transphobic president. You must actively fight against what Trump is aiming to do. Use your voice to stand up for the trans community, and from now on, fight against electing a transphobe into office. Your trans friends are counting on you to fight with them.
