Transitioning Into the Trump Transition: A trans-woman’s feelings before the storm
Trigger Warning: Transphobia experiences and suicide
The eerie invisible fog of hate has loomed over the country since November 5. Even those that live in liberal states have started to feel the weight of millions of votes cast against their existence. Will it even matter what state a person lives in when the Wehrmacht starts their march? Probably not, but we can all be sure that Kentucky’s streets will be some of the first they march on. Or maybe I’m overdramatic and the new regime won’t follow through with Project 2025.. One can dream.
I wish I could say I have no reason for being so dramatic, but sadly, a deep lurking fear I have felt for the last 10 years may become reality. I spent almost eight years in Canada trying to run from the red state of hate, wishing I could just be myself in peace.
“I hope you get sent to Kentucky and get murdered for being trans! I hope you fucking die for being trans!” — words once screamed at me from the other side of an apartment door in Toronto. Solidifying that state of fear I had for ever returning home. I was able to stay in Canada for years after, however the fear of those words has not left my mind a single day since they were uttered.
Of course, I couldn’t stay in Canada forever. They’d have to drag me out of the country before I’d ever go back to Kentucky. Which is what they ended up doing after a failed attempt at claiming refugee status there. Looking back on it now, it was a pretty extreme action for me to take that never would have worked. However, that’s just how much I was afraid of coming back to this state. A state I have since come to fall in love with.
I had lost everything when I was deported from Canada so the only option I had was coming back home. When I first moved back to Kentucky, I locked myself up in a room and never went out much. I started planning on how I was going to kill myself and end the fear at last. To do so I was going to go to a bar and get the liquid courage to finish the job. What I didn’t think would happen was a group of people instantly welcoming me with open hearts, but they did, and they saved my life that night. They showed complete love to a stranger and talked to me about all I had been going through. Someone even gave me a list of therapists to go to and the name of an incredible endocrinologist to start my transition. I started to feel comfortable being myself around them and it helped me to become myself around others too.
It’s been over five years since I started to officially transition. Something I never thought I’d get to do. For those five years I gained a confidence I had never had in my life beforehand. People didn’t even know I was trans unless I brought it up, well other than my family which still deadnames and misgenders me, but outside of their words I never had a single thing said to me out of hate after starting to transition in Kentucky. Where was this fear I was so wrapped up in for so many years? I thought maybe the world was starting to accept people for who they are.
Online you could still hide that hate going strong as the cowards hide behind a screen, likely having never met a trans person in their entire life. After all, we make up a messily 1.6% of the world’s population. Then the hate started to pour out from the internet more and more. They graduated from behind their screens and took to cameras to shout about the alleged damage we were doing to their kids. Then they started speaking up at town halls, PTA meetings, and climbing out of box trucks with guns.
There it is, that fear I thought was finally gone had come back to show its ugly face, more orange than ever before. Of course, I was optimistic even after reading Project 2025. I thought there was no way Trump was going to get elected again… yeah, I guess that’s what I get for being optimistic. On election day, my eyes were stuck on my phone updating constantly to see where the votes were going. It isn’t all that shocking that Kentucky would be the first state to go red, but again, I let my optimism convince me that there was hope left in this world.
As the night went on it was clear that Trump was going to win. I was flooded with fear. Do I take the easy way out and plan to kill myself again? That’s certainly better than being classified a predator and getting locked up just for going outside and being trans. Especially when shortly after Trump’s win it was stated that yes, Project 2025 would be implemented.
While I have had my name and sex legally changed and most people don’t even know I am trans,my existence as a ghost hiding among cis women will only last so long. As much as I see myself as a woman, it is clear the Trump administration does not. How long before hormone treatments will be banned, or names and sex legally changed back? How much estrogen can one hoard before it goes bad? Should I get bottom surgery now before it’s too late? Maybe I can learn a new language and move to another country, or at least head west to the liberal states? How far can I get before the Wehrmacht catches up?
All those questions that keep running through my head day and night but there’s one that keeps coming up the most, “What if I just stay here and do what I can to help those around me?” It’s true things look bleak, the fog of hate is manifesting a physical form and Kentucky isn’t going blue overnight. Maybe it never will, but if we stay and help others, one day it will be, and that fear will slip away. That’s not me being optimistic, that’s me ready to make it reality.