Content Warning: This article contains references to suicide and self harm.
I am disgusted and ashamed to be a U.S. citizen in 2025. In the first weeks of his presidency, felon and leech President Donald Trump has taken charge of the Republican Party’s campaign against transgender people’s rights with a series of executive orders. These executive orders utilize regressive, dehumanizing language to villainize a vulnerable minority. Trans people represent less than 1% of the U.S. adult population, yet 674 bills targeting transgender rights were proposed last year. Politicians and lawmakers disproportionately and wrongfully target trans people, not in spite of their minority status, but because of it.
I am transgender. I have always been transgender. Republican lawmakers are ripping apart my rights, my identity and my body, which the impotence of the Democratic Party enables. In recent years, Democrats have deprioritized social progress, instead opting for centrist silence on trans people’s rights. Former Vice President and 2024 presidential candidate Kamala Harris only expressed tenuous, wavering support for the trans population.
At this point, I no longer have tolerance for the “debate” over trans people — my livelihood never should have been a debate. If a politician denies that trans people have a right to life and liberty in this country, they are engaging in a crusade of virulent conservative bigotry. Trump’s anti-trans executive orders do not combat a material threat of so-called “gender ideology,” but rather affirm the dictatorial reign of reactionaries. Republicans and their intolerant policies terrify trans people into submission, silence and suicide.
Trump’s first anti-trans executive order, “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” frames itself as a defense of women’s rights by refuting the “ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex.” It states that gender identity “does not provide a meaningful basis for identification” and calls for federal agencies to remove anything that “promote[s]” and “inculcate[s]” gender ideology.
I am not an “ideologue.” I am a human being. The writing in this executive order ignores the existence of real people like me, and it instead attacks an amorphous, undefined group of “ideologues” and their alleged ideology. The language is intentionally vague, illustrating an abstract foe that cannot be concretely observed. Republicans are playing shadow puppet politics, creating the illusion of monsters and commanding people to be afraid.
Trump also banned trans people from military service on account of their “gender dysphoria” and “use of pronouns that inaccurately reflect an individual’s sex” in his second executive order. Here, trans people are again treated as second-class citizens, with their presence supposedly compromising the “excellence” of the military. We are treated as blights on our nation, our identities medicalized as illnesses.
Purporting to protect children by banning gender-affirming surgery, puberty blockers and hormones for citizens younger than 19, Trump’s third executive order was the most disheartening to read. The order refers to gender-affirming care as a “dangerous trend” that causes “blatant harm” and “mutilation” rather than a life-saving necessity that can transform one’s body. The language is unabashedly, undeniably cruel and dehumanizing. Trump published this order on the day I received my first real binder — my birthday. My chest appeared flat for the first time in my life. Shame and fear festered within me as I smoothed my hands over the front of my shirt. Am I mutilated? Am I dangerous?
Through these executive orders, trans people are not allowed to merely live. The right to exist is a privilege when our humanity is under attack. Trans people are politicized, as our accounts of our own existence are wrongfully labeled as inculcation and indoctrination. We are not people — we are mere embodiments of ideologies, free to be suppressed by any lawmaker.
While conservatives celebrate Trump’s anti-trans campaign, I am terrified for the well-being of trans people, and by extension, all queer people. Nearly one-third of queer people aged 13 to 24 said that anti-queer legislation has worsened their mental health. Anti-trans state laws passed from 2018 to 2022 caused an increase from 38% to 44% in suicide attempt rates among trans people aged 13 to 24. National politics correlate to the well-being of queer people not only legally, but mentally — when queer people are disenfranchised, they are in danger.
In tandem with the worsening political climate, the number of murdered trans people almost doubled between 2017 and 2021, with Black trans women at the greatest risk due to their intersecting marginalized identities. The effects of anti-trans legislation and bigotry are widespread and undeniable. This information has been known for years, yet Republicans continue to sacrifice the lives of trans people for their own extreme, reactionary agenda. The writing on the wall is clear. My government does not care if I live or die.
I am afraid to legally and medically transition, so I have remained in stasis. It is unclear if I will have access to testosterone or the ability to change my gender marker on my driver’s license and passport in the future. The anti-trans legislation is terrifying, and it shows no signs of stopping. Anyone who still pretends that there are two sides to the transgender issue is willingly complacent in eliminationist rhetoric that echoes Nazism.
In the end, I am comforted by this fact: Trans people have existed on Earth longer than the United States has. Trans people cannot be effaced from existence, even if they are legally and medically denied the right to self-determination. If living authentically is defined as danger and mutilation, then I will be dangerous, and I will be mutilated. Trans liberation may be out of my grasp, but I will strain to reach for it — I have no other choice but to live, live and live.
Self-harm or Suicide Online Resources
If you or someone you know is having thoughts of self-harm or suicide, you can call Student Intervention Services at (404) 430-1120 or reach Emory’s Counseling and Psychological Services at (404) 727-7450 or https://counseling.emory.edu/. You can reach the Georgia Suicide Prevention Lifeline 24/7 at (800) 273-TALK (8255) and the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline 24/7 at 988.
Self-harm or Suicide Print Resources
If you or someone you know is having thoughts of self-harm or suicide, you can call Student Intervention Services at (404) 430-1120 or reach Emory’s Counseling and Psychological Services at (404) 727-7450. You can reach the Georgia Suicide Prevention Lifeline 24/7 at (800) 273-TALK (8255) and the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline 24/7 at 988.
Contact Alex Kauffman (26C) at amkauff@emory.edu.
Alex Kauffman (they/them) (26C) is majoring in English & Creative Writing and Film & Media Studies. They were born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona. At the Wheel, they have been an Arts & Life campus desk and section editor, and they are currently a senior staff writer. Outside of the Wheel, Alex is a Media and Entertainment Pathways Scholar and a tutor at the Emory Writing Center. In their free time, Alex is an avid movie watcher and iced latte consumer.
