Trans Visibility, Resistance, and Hope in an Anti-Trans U.S. Political Climate
It’s hard to be trans in the U.S. right now. I don’t think I need to tell anyone that, but I want to say it anyway. I identify as agender, which, to me, means I don’t have a gender and I don’t want one. Being agender has always been a bit difficult, because most people find my identity unintelligible, but unsurprisingly, it has gotten tougher in the last two months. The highest executive in the U.S. government has declared that because I was assigned female at birth, I’m supposed to be a woman. Right, because someone I’ve never met knows me well enough to know how I feel.
It’s not easy to study trans people in the U.S. right now either. I primarily study trans and gender non-conforming college students, a small yet growing population on university campuses. Prior to the latest inauguration, my colleagues and I were planning on applying for a grant from the National Endowment for Humanities to support our research on LGBTQ+ collegians’ healthy intimate relationships. Now we can’t, at least if the NEH is using the same flagged words as the National Science Foundation. “LGBT” and “gender” are only two of the multitude of words that would likely get our proposal thrown out of consideration.
Not having federal funding to do my research is not going to make me stop doing it. If anything, the pushback from the federal government makes me want to keep doing my research. I study trans collegians’ joy. I study how they create healthy intimate relationships beyond stereotypical romantic relationships. I study how trans students connect with their friends, their families, and their communities and how they find joy in a country that seemingly doesn’t want them to exist. Studying joy brings me joy, and I will take joy wherever I can find it.
Last November, just two weeks after the presidential election, my mentor and I presented our initial findings from the study on trans college students’ healthy intimate relationships at a national conference. As part of their interviews for this study, participants were given the option to submit pictures that represented their healthy intimate relationships. They enthusiastically shared these photos, so we chose to include a few in our presentation slides. During the Q&A session, one attendee asked us about the image collection. Our project on LGBTQ+ collegians’ healthy intimate relationships has been ongoing since 2022, so this person wanted to know if we felt the need to have our participants re-consent to use of their photos since political and societal contexts have shifted since many of them originally shared their photos.
As the only trans presenter, I chose to answer that question. To paraphrase, I essentially said that trans people are not going to go back in the closet just because we live under a transphobic president. Most of our participants consented to us using their photos while Joseph Biden held the presidency, but these students were still facing anti-trans legislation and policies at that time. Over 1,300 anti-trans bills were introduced in the U.S. in 2023 and 2024 (Trans Legislation Tracker, n.d.); that enormous number means it’s unlikely our participants could have been unaware of the political attacks on them. Therefore, they allowed us—and arguably wanted us—to use their photos in our study despite the anti-trans legislation sweeping across the nation. These students were so happy to talk about their healthy intimate relationships, likely because they felt like someone valued them and their lived experiences. The participants were out as trans and/or gender non-conforming, and they were often proud of their identities. Holding a trans identity in the current political climate is an act of resistance, and these participants and I were going to resist.
So no, we didn’t feel the need to have participants re-consent. These students used their agency to be out and proud and contribute to the growing field of trans studies in academia, and who are we as a research team to question those decisions? I’m not going to be paternalistic and pretend like I know the best course of action to protect these students. I barely know the best course of action to protect myself on a day-to-day basis. These participants knew the risks they faced when they gave their initial consent, and I am not going to question that decision on anyone’s behalf.
Being visibly trans may be dangerous in this instant, but it can bring so much joy. Participants regularly smiled during their interviews as they talked about the great intimate relationships they had with their romantic partners, best friends, and families. I felt like they wanted to share how lucky they felt that they had such great people in their lives. They seemingly wanted to tell us how they were thriving despite the political targets on their backs. I came away from multiple interviews in awe of these students. They left me with warm fuzzy feelings that I have only recently been able to identify as hope.
I have hope despite the fact that I feel like my trans identity is attacked on a daily basis. Getting to talk with trans college students, many of whom are younger than me, gives me hope. We’re not going back in the closet. It’s dark and stuffy in there. I would rather live my truth—a truth that affects no one but me—than hide who I am. I am trans. I am non-binary. I am agender. That’s not going to change no matter how many people try to legislate me out of existence. I am emboldened and comforted by how many college students have taken the same stance, that have chosen to be visibly trans in this political moment. We are not going anywhere. We will continue to be out and proud. We will continue to find joy and purpose both connected to our gender identities and separate from them. We are here to stay, and I couldn’t be happier to stand in solidarity with my trans and gender non-conforming siblings.
