Transgender Americans feel ‘invisible,’ fear for safety over Trump’s rhetoric, policies

I don’t really know the people around me.

That's the feeling Caitlin Cunningham, a Missouri coffeehouse owner, has had after the 2024 election. Cunningham, who is nonbinary, has moments of alienation and worry even as they go about their routines in daily life.

"Standing in line at the bank and thinking the person behind me doesn’t think I’m a human being or would love to see me in some kind of camp, or shipped off to a different state so they didn’t have to deal with me,” Cunningham said.

For Cunningham and others, the message from the U.S. government is hitting harder and harder.

This past week in Florida, Jane Haskell watched as President Donald Trump continued to needle at gender identity, one of his major campaign issues, in his State of the Union address. In that speech, Trump railed against transgender rights while touting executive orders he signed targeting such rights on his first day in office, saying: "Our country will be woke no longer."

"The president's celebration of these policy proposals ― and the villainizing language used to describe these proposals ― further solidified that we are a target population under this administration," said Haskell, a trans woman who serves as director of collaborations for SAGE, a national organization serving LGBTQ older adults.

Trump's 2024 campaign featured attacks on the the transgender community ― about 1% of the U.S. population ― in TV ads and at rallies, provoking fears and now realizations that going after the community would be among his immediate priorities.

Those worries were only amplified by his State of the Union speech. While many of his measures face logistical and legal challenges, they’ve prompted confusion and anxiety in transgender and nonbinary communities, putting lives on hold and compounding pressures felt by those in red states where similar legislation has been tested or taken root.

Among other things, the president quickly moved to revive his previous ban on transgender people in the military, called for transgender women prisoners to be housed in men’s facilities, removed references to the community from a national monument and said the government would recognize only male and female identity, affecting the ability of people to identify otherwise on items such as passports.

“A lot of things are changing without people knowing when exactly they’re going into effect,” said Haskell, who was unable to update her gender marker earlier this year in Florida despite having made her appointment just a week before. “A lot of it is being found out after the fact because it’s happening so fast.”

Allison Scott, director of impact and innovation for the Campaign for Southern Equality, an LGBTQ-advocacy organization in Asheville, N.C., said Trump’s executive orders were issued without much direction, leaving much open to interpretation. That means unpredictability and inconsistency, and she’s heard reports of documents going unreturned or passports unprocessed.

“The issue is the impact on people's lives,” said Scott, a trans woman in the process of trying to renew her own passport. “…. Maybe they can’t have a job now, maybe they can’t travel for a vacation, maybe they can’t go see a family member in another state. Those are not just throwaway things. The flippancy with which these executive orders are coming out and playing with our lives shows a lack of humanity.”

Some people who considered blue states a refuge now fear such distinctions may not make a difference. Instead, they're looking to each other for solace.

“On a national level, we’re telling trans people they don’t matter,” said Elsa Ruggiero, who operates an LGBTQ-friendly hair salon in north Texas. “They’re invisible at best, and targets at worst.”

For some, safety is found in community

Where can one feel safe?

“I don’t know if there is a place I would feel a hundred percent safe at this point,” said Adam Honigfort, a trans man in east Missouri.

For Honigfort, a 32-year-old quality assurance specialist, moving isn’t financially feasible; additionally, he’s now unable to change his gender marker, which impedes how and where he can travel.

“If I was going to move, I would want to leave the country,” he said. “Even though some states are more progressive in the way they’re handling things, if it’s federal law, it’s federal law.”

Scott, who lives in a blue dot in the red state of North Carolina, agreed, saying it’s really not about red-blue state distinctions; it’s about communities.

“While our neighborhood, our little dot of love and support in this world, is a great place to live, the real world means we are all being impacted at the federal level and the state level is starting to go by the wayside of what it can do,” she said. “…. I think we're starting to see that this really binary thinking of red and blue was never the answer to safety.”

Big cities aren’t necessarily safer, Cunningham said ― not when all it takes is one person emboldened to act on their prejudices.

Transgender people are more likely to experience violent attacks than the non-LGBT population, research shows. The Williams Institute at the University of California Los Angeles School of Law, using data collected by the Department of Justice's National Crime Victimization Survey in 2022 and 2023, found that transgender people experienced violent attacks at a rate of 94 per 1,000 people compared to just 21 per 1,000 non-LGBT people.

The number of incidents rose in the yearsfollowing Trump's election in 2016, the institute noted. Some fear his reelection could produce another upswing.

“Anywhere queer people are right now, you’re not safe is really the crux of it,” Cunningham said. “It’s not even necessarily about spaces where you feel safe; it’s about, can you pretend to be something (you’re not) so that people don’t want to hurt you?”

Haskell, of SAGE, said she and her partner thought about leaving Florida after the election, then reconsidered.

“We thought, let’s wait it out; we don’t know what’s going to happen,” she said. “People need to balance fear with, how do we stay calm and grounded. This is an everchanging landscape.”

The role of community safe spaces

In the meantime, safe spaces loom ever more crucial for the community.

For all the awkwardness she felt in high school, Ruggiero, owner of Splash of Red Hair Studio in Fort Worth, knew she could find solace in her hairdresser, who always restored her confidence. That experience, and her close ties to the LGBTQ community, have informed the inclusive atmosphere she strives to cultivate at her salon.

“When I started working for myself, I realized I had a unique opportunity to provide that service,” she said. “Especially in Texas, where there’s so much more transphobia and situations where people are treated poorly, or less than, because they’re trans. For me that’s just so mind-blowing. I could never imagine telling another person that I know their gender better than they do.”

Ruggiero, 28, knows some of her clients are scared, feeling helpless and hopeless.

“The best we can do is be loud about our support for the trans community and loud in our dissent for anti-trans verbiage and action,” she said.

Dandy Lion Café, the openly queer coffeehouse Cunningham operates in Ashland, Missouri, had struggled with autumn doldrums, prompting them to consider shutting down. A Trump victory, Cunningham feared, would be the last straw.

“And then he won,” they said. “I was like, we can’t close. This is a safe space for people. There was a reckoning of how it’s immediately more dangerous for us to be open and authentic and out in the community in the way that we are – but if I’m not there, where are these people going to go? If I close down, that’s just another win for hate and vitriol.”

At the same time, Cunningham implored community members for their support as well, either via donations or by coming in more often to keep the space financially viable. Cunningham thinks such spaces will be crucial in coming months as hubs for community organization and education.

The community, they said, has responded.

“It was really evident in that response that going somewhere else wasn’t an option,” Cunningham said. “I feel like right now, at least, I can do more good here.”

Part of helping people feel safe is making the space feel safe. Dandy Lion has had security cameras since its inception, but the ongoing escalation in rhetoric has prompted Cunningham to take other security measures and ensure staff are appropriately trained.

“Having been an educator for 10 years, I’m really prepared for an intruder,’ they said. “…. Luckily, we’re in a small community and we can recognize a new person coming in… It becomes evident if somebody is not familiar with the space.”

'Let us live our lives'

Advocates said the current climate has spurred rare levels of community building as people look to find support and discuss ways to push back. They recommend people empower themselves by doing what they can – for instance, getting their documentation in order.

“Obviously it’s getting harder, but there’s still a lot that can be done,” Scott said. “Any kind of legal step you can take right now, we are urging people to not delay. You don’t know what’s going to come tomorrow or next week, but it’s not like it’s going to stop.”

Haskell recommended seeking perspective and guidance by speaking to trans elders, who in their prime years experienced a more repressive climate.

“What notes can we take from them?” Haskell said. “How did they survive and push the movement forward? Transgender people have been leading the LGBTQ rights movement for a long time, and if we’re able to tap into that history and wisdom, we can find hope and strategies to move forward in this movement.”

Ruggiero has heard community members and allies say they’re weary of the fight, and she can’t blame them.

“It’s so important that we don’t let our exhaustion win out,” she said. “That’s what people who are against trans people want, is for us to be exhausted and stop fighting and stop caring. It’s important to tap into our resilience as much as we can.”

Honigfort said trans people just want to live their lives in peace.

“If you don’t want to respect us, just stay out of our way as much as you can,” he said. “Let us live our lives. I don’t understand why that’s so hard.”