Trans women open up about living in and navigating an increasingly hostile America

Kristin works in the pharmaceutical industry, collecting and analyzing data for new oncology drug applications.

She’s also a trans woman on the front lines in the existential battles being waged against her community by the Trump administration and the Christian Right. Those battles are not just the ones impacting trans people's everyday rights – birth certificates, bathroom usage, passports for travel or IDs for voting or driving – they are the ones that seek to erase them as individuals entirely. 

Ten years ago, she said, the trans community, while not embraced by all of society, had become largely accepted and mostly left alone. At the very least they weren’t overtly targeted by legislators and were not such a volatile flash point in the culture wars.

“The whole country was on our side,” she said. "All the sports organizations were on our side. All the businesses and musicians were on our side. Now we’re here. Now it’s toxic.”

The past decade, Kristin admitted, has tested her resolve.

“I used to think, I can weather this, but the last ten years I’m at my wits’ end,” she said. “And so I don't know how to reverse this, but I’m mentally drained. I’m emotionally drained. It's physically wearing on me, and as an activist, I just don't know what to do anymore.” 

Kristin was among five trans women who were joined by Helen Boyd, a queer activist, academic, author and former gender studies teacher, on a panel at the Appleton Public Library to talk about the impact of the new hostile environment on their lives and on their psyches. The event was hosted by the Appleton Area National Organization for Women. 

The women displayed a range of emotional responses, everything from weariness to fear to defiance and hope. They also issued warnings about the slippery slope society is on.

“This isn’t going to stop with trans people,” argued Helen. “They’re coming for our voting rights. They’re coming for our bodies. They’ve already come for our (reproductive) choice. Don’t fool yourself that cis women aren’t next. That gay men aren’t next.”

A backdrop of increasing transphobia

Megan, a professor of physics, echoed that, insisting that “anything that makes people examine who women are and what we look like and how we behave is bad for all of us.”

The conversation covered everything from the practical impacts of legislation to how allies can most effectively support the community to how the new backlash is forcing trans women back into hiding from which they had finally emerged to the biology of sex and gender. Even to the subtler ways transphobia can sometimes manifest.

The backdrop for the panel discussion is the reams of anti-trans executive orders over the past 15 months, including restrictions on gender-affirming care; bans on military participation; bans on the use of ‘X’ gender markers on passports; the mandatory reversion to given or ‘dead’ names on legal documents, including passports; criminalization of the use of a woman’s bathroom by a trans woman; sports bans and more. This is in addition to a slew of bills in the Wisconsin legislature that Gov. Evers recently vetoed. 

The restrictions and bans are not just demoralizing for trans people, the panelists all agreed, they impact their lives in very real ways.

Travel presents perhaps the most overt obstacles for trans women today.

“I’m retiring pretty soon,” Kristin said. “I was kind of looking forward to going to Europe and maybe Idaho and some other states, but in a national park, you can't use the bathroom. If I use the guy's bathroom, I'm going to have a problem and maybe have to defend myself. But if I use a women's bathroom and get caught, then I face jail. There's that proposal that they want to have the FBI investigate people like us as extremists or terrorists, and that's really scary if that happens. And the reason this is scary is because I could be labeled a terrorist.”

Megan pointed out how all of that will impact professional development for trans people. It has already affected her.

“I was about to go to a conference this fall,” she said. “I can't, because I am not going to a state where it's not safe for me to go. And that would be the case for any conference in Texas or Florida. As we travel, we have to make decisions based on: Can I drive through this state? Can I connect in this airport? And so people are losing out on professional development opportunities as well as just the ability to freely move around.”

‘It’s monstrous’

Trans participation in women’s sports is another hot-button issue, despite the incidence of it being almost negligibly rare. Megan, an athlete herself, said the current preoccupation with it among culture warriors and the Christian right is merely a ruse – and a dangerous one at that. She says while many people – even allies – view this as a distraction, she does not, calling it a “back door into other kinds of exclusions.”

She pointed to studies that show trans women – especially those who are pre-puberty – enjoy no advantage over other girls in sports. She further noted that people have rarely cared about women’s sports at all and are now pretending to do so only to weaponize them against trans women.

“When we say trans women can't be part of sports, what we're really saying is anybody who doesn't fit in a very specific Western European mold and definition of what a woman is, can't participate,” Megan said. “When we have these sports bans, we're putting women into a box, and we are instituting testing that is always invasive and usually wrong. 

“The inclusion of trans folks, especially trans students, in athletes, is good for their mental health, their well-being, their sense of community. We're talking about a group of people who are already marginalized and feel alone and threatened, and we're saying they can't have the same opportunities that everybody else has. It's monstrous.  I will not give an inch on (the subject of) trans student athletes.” 

‘Othering’ trans women

For Daisy, the chair of Hate Free Outagamie, a grassroots activist group, transphobia manifests in subtler ways. She pointed out the effects of “othering” trans women and how it sometimes happens unthinkingly. She told the story of having to go to urgent care because of breathing issues and chest pain. The doctor told her she was experiencing the effects of estrogen, rashly eliminating – based on her being a trans woman – other more likely possibilities that likely would have been top of mind in the case of a cisgender person. 

“Turns out it was bronchitis,” Daisy said. “Just one of the many forms trans misogyny can take. Or another example would be the pressure for trans women to pass as cisgender women, whether it be needing to shave all the time, or wear makeup or try to appear as feminine as possible to try to counteract those mannish aspects of ourselves.”

Other examples of micro-agressions Daisy pointed out are telling a trans woman they look great or asking if the name you offer is your chosen name.

“Instead of them just accepting, it’s just my name,” she said. “You don’t need to add ‘chosen.’ Or saying, ‘Oh, we knew you were trans.’ It just feels like ‘othering’ to do any of that.”

‘Othering’ refers to ways in which trans people are treated as fundamentally different based merely on being trans.

Martha, the President of the Bay Area Council on Gender Diversity, called it folly that transphobics think they can erase trans people by pretending they don’t exist or by making their lives harder.

“Trans people have been with us from the beginning of time and you might as well try to welcome us,” she said. “We’re everywhere.”

Martha said such welcoming and inclusion have been pivotal in her life. She pointed to the Women’s Fund in Green Bay that supports programs for women and girls, including a garden party it holds every June.

“I was (really) scared , because I didn't have confidence how the women would welcome me, and much to my joy, I knew probably 15 or 20 of them because of different committee activities that I was with,” Martha said. “And now I'm just another one of them. So please open your door, extend the invitation. There may be some initial fear, but come up, say hi, find out what amazing people we are.”  

Martha went on to talk about monthly gatherings in Green Bay that allow closeted trans women to find a safe zone. Especially during a time when the current atmosphere is forcing people to retreat, when an estimated 40,000 trans people have fled for Canada. It can be, she said, transformational.

“We gather two to four people who have never been out of their houses before, presenting as their authentic self, and when they come in and they claim that space, the explosion of trans joy is really a treat and a gift to behold,” she said.

Being a good ally

When it comes to allyship, various members of the panel, while expressing appreciation, pointed to ways some allies either fall short or misapprehend what might be effective.

For Megan, the message was pretty simple, but with caveats.

“Listen, speak and act – in that order,” she said. “But take us at our word for our lived experience, whether that be a few months or, in my case, almost 25 years. So we know what we're talking about because we've experienced it. And if it seems odd, well, everybody's experience is odd.”

“They need to know that you have their backs and we need to know that you have our backs,” she said. “There's a certain level of fatigue – and anybody who tries to be an activist or speak out knows this well – of being the person in the room that is expected to speak about her experience, about something that is in many ways often extremely private and personal.”

She also cautioned to avoid becoming the center of the matter even as you seek to support a member of the community. Resist, she said, the temptation to be a hero and just be helpful.

Kristin advised that when engaging with transphobia on social media to remember that you are trying to reach, not the transphobic, but the many neutral observers paying attention to the dialogue, people who are persuadable and looking for good information. When she is so engaged, she said, she is confident and fearless, though not combative. She’s not afraid, she said, to push the topic of puberty blockers and hormones.

As far as responding to the transphobic battle cry, “Define what a woman is!” which tends to be hurled as a discussion-ending gotcha! the advice is not to engage. The matter of sex and gender and biology is too complicated and layered, she said, to think there can be a breakthrough at that point.

The ‘folly’ of sex and gender

Helen and Daisy dismissed what they see as the folly of the argument itself, noting that everything from chromosomes to hormones is fluid in all of us. Helen argued that no legal definition of a woman passes muster.

“Why are we still falling for these ridiculous arguments about who a woman is or isn't based on biology?” she asked. “When we talk about gender and sex and ID and all of this stuff, these are all categories that are created to put one set of people in charge and make everybody else secondary or other, right? So that’s the reason that the categories exist – and this is true of race, this is true of gender, and it's just incredibly frustrating.”

Helen concluded by saying so-called debates about what constitutes a trans person are pointless because it’s a settled issue.

“Trans people know that they're trans,” she said. “Trans people know who they are. Trust them. We trust everybody else to tell you who they are. These fights against trans people are just a fight against all of us.”

Daisy added that no one wants to be defined by their genitalia, echoing Helen that the whole notion of gender and sex falls apart because not everyone is born with the same chromosomal aspects or the same hormonal characteristics.

“When (California Gov.) Gavin Newsom said that we should focus on more normal things and not on pronouns. I really struggle with that,” Daisy said. “We should not be willing to cede this ground just because it’s seen as a toxic issue now because of a lack of pushback over the last ten years.”

Megan is adamant about not giving ground when it comes to trans women’s rights. There is great danger in doing so, she said. 

“Push until it gives,” she insisted. “There is no ground to cede. I will die on this hill.”

She argued that the reproductive rights debate is instructive in that regard.

“The arguments that I would get into with family members, with friends, my position was still,  I make no exception,” she said. “It is a woman's choice. You stay out of it, and you don't start quibbling about weeks. You don't start quibbling about this exception or that exception. The moment you go down that hill, the moment we took that bait from the Right, Roe was dead and the same thing is happening here. 

“So speak up,” she added. “True, genuine allies are people who are willing to take the bullets that are aimed at us.”

‘A sense of wrongness’

The panel, with the exception of Daisy, all middle-aged and beyond, also recognized that even as trans and queer folk, they enjoy a certain privilege as accomplished white people with the emotional resilience and support to better withstand much of what comes at them every day. Trans youth in America, on the other hand, are highly susceptible, lacking the armor of self-sufficiency or psychological acceptance, of contextualizing the feelings they may be experiencing. 

According to a 2023 CDC study, one in four trans or questioning high school students had considered suicide. It’s obvious why.

“It hit me when I was seven years old,” Kristin said. “I'm here in Wisconsin, and I had no idea what's going on with me and I carried this all through the nineties, and I just kept it to myself. I just shrugged it off but I don't know what's wrong with me. I don't know why I feel this way. So I just kind of learned to ignore it, but it gnawed away at me all these years. Well, then the Internet came out, and I started researching it, and I started realizing, well, maybe I'm one of these trans people.”

Daisy referred to it as “a sense of wrongness” around the time she hit puberty. 

“And it didn't matter what I tried to do, like, maybe try socializing more, maybe try dressing different,” she recalled. “None of it was really working until it clicked for me. Ah, I'm not a man. And then it all just made it all just made sense to me. And you know, I came out maybe like three years ago now to some close friends.”

Helen, who is a queer woman, said it’s important to imagine what it’s like for today’s young trans community, for trans people of color, or who are trans immigrants or those who don’t have access to education or safety. She said a former student of hers who runs the area LGBTQ+ support group Diverse and Resilient, said something that lifted her.

“(The former student) said to me recently, ‘I can’t imagine doing anything but staying and fighting,’” Helen said.

“I think that's what gives me hope. It's not just trans youth, it's all of the ways that trans people are resilient. And I also have a deep belief that the majority of people at this point understand that trans rights are human rights, that trans women are women, but we have to beat back all the negativity.”

Megan concluded that, while it might sound self-serving, there are no braver or more empathetic people than trans people.

“We often go through a lot and still come out of it somehow, despite it all,” she said, “with our humanity intact.”

Trans women open up about living in and navigating an increasingly hostile America © 2026 by Kelly Fenton is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0