Eight years ago, amid his first run for high elected office, then-candidate Donald Trump seemed to buck the prevailing conservative trend at the time by insisting Caitlyn Jenner was welcome to use the women’s bathroom at his eponymous Manhattan skyscraper — a sign perhaps that his would be an administration more accommodating to transgender people in light of that year’s Republican-led effort to restrict bathroom access in states like North Carolina and Texas. Jenner, one of the highest-profile transwomen in the country at the time, would go on to endorse Trump, only to recant in 2018, claiming that Trump had used the trans community as “political pawns” and “ignored our humanity.”
Now, as Trump prepares to return to Washington with a political mandate and congressional majority, he does so in part thanks to eschewing the ambiguity of his 2016 position to wholly embrace an overt streak of transphobia that has come to the mainstream of American conservatism. By ending his campaign with claims that children are indoctrinated into questioning their gender identity at school, and then come “home a few days later with an operation,” Trump’s vow to get “transgender insanity the hell out of our schools,” among other promises, is being taken by many in the LGBTQ+ community as something much more serious than hyperbolic campaign rhetoric.
What have Trump and his allies said they’ll do?
At various points on the campaign trail, Trump has “promised to impose restrictions on several aspects of life for transgender people,” The New York Times said. Those promises include screeds against “gender indoctrination,” as well as vows to “keep men out of women’s sports” and “withhold federal funding for Medicare and Medicaid from hospitals that provide gender transition treatment to minors.” He also ran on a promise to “seek a federal definition of ‘gender’ that is restricted to only ‘male and female’ as assigned at birth,” said LGBTQ+ outlet Them. Trump also resumed his attacks on transgender members of the armed forces, ending his campaign with a “spoof video mocking trans people and their place in the U.S. military” that drew “loud boos at his rallies, as do Trump’s false claims about female athletes and his mocking impression of what he says is a trans woman lifting weights,” said The Associated Press.
What separates this term from his first four years in office is the “precision” with which the planned attacks on transgender communities will be enacted, said Isa Noyola, deputy director of the Transgender Law Center, to USA Today. Trump and his allies “know the inner workings of the bureaucracy enough to now be very targeted, and they’re not wasting time. The attacks are going to come swiftly.”
How are transgender communities preparing for Trump’s second term?
Trump’s victory marks an “existential crisis for the trans community,” University of Toledo political science professor Jami Taylor said to USA Today. “There’s a lot of fear, and it is warranted,” said Taylor, who is transgender. “It’s bad, and there’s no sugarcoating that.” LGBTQ+ mental health services hotline The Trevor Project saw “demand increase about 125% on election day through Wednesday morning, compared to normal days,” said the Los Angeles Times. “I’m not going to sugarcoat it,” transgender writer and activist Erin Reed said to the paper, “I had to talk three or four people down from suicide” on election night. “That’s the reality that people are facing right now.” Members of the trans community should also spend the interim period before Trump takes office updating or getting a passport, updating “every ID your state allows you to,” and stockpiling medication “in case of disruption,” Reed said on X.
There is a “hope” within transgender communities in the knowledge that the “president can’t do anything on their own,” NBC News‘ Steven Romo said. “There are legislators that people plan to call and write to to try to share what they hope gets done in our country.” The transgender community will “continue fighting for our rights, freedoms, and the future we all deserve” by drawing on “strength from the powerful legacy of resistance of our Black and Indigenous ancestors,” Transgender Law Center Executive Director Shelby Chestnut said to The Oaklandside.
Perhaps most encouraging is that, in a year “dominated by anti-transgender messaging” from politicians, a “record number of transgender candidates celebrated historic wins across the United States,” The Advocate said — a trend that has “sparked hope and optimism among LGBTQ+ advocates who see these results as proof of growing support for equality.”