Area non-binary person says 'just existing' today is activism

President Trump may believe that with an executive order declaring there to be only two sexes, he has effectively nullified the existence of an estimated 1.3 million Americans.

But while his stroke of the pen and the State Department’s subsequent suspension of its policy allowing transgender, intersex and nonbinary people to use X as their gender on legal documents have created new barriers in the lives of the trans and non-binary community, these folks are not going away. 

They’ve always existed and always will. Wishing away a scientific reality doesn’t alter that reality and the reality is that scientists know that sexual identity is way more complicated than having two X chromosomes or just one. 

For many years now, scientists and researchers have come to understand gender as fluid and complex. This has left parents struggling to decide whether to raise their child as a boy or a girl. It is estimated that nearly one in every hundred births falls into this category.

So declaring there are only two sexes via executive order would seem to make as much as sense as an EO declaring five the sum of two plus two.

Trump, Wisconsin GOP takes aim at trans community

For people in the trans community, life is already a struggle. We talked to a non-binary person in the area who chose to remain anonymous (we’ll refer to them as Lynn), given the new, more regressive attitudes in the country and the hostile actions of the Trump administration. Much of the energy of their daily routine is devoted to simple awareness of the now greater threats they see all around them, they say.

“There’s just a lot of uncertainty,” Lynn says. “There’s a lot of confusion. And I think that is by design from this administration. Because the executive orders aren’t law. They’re just getting people to comply on their own out of fear. Under Biden, it was very easy to change your identity marker on federal ID documents. Now a lot of people are in limbo.”

Lynn says that having a supportive governor like Tony Evers will help but points to Texas, where the AG voided all sexual identity changes to birth certificates, forcing those people to revert to their birth-assigned sex. Further is the matter of gender-affirming care – treatment and counseling for those seeking to transition. A Trump executive order – which appears to violate anti-discrimination laws – bans this care in hospitals for people under 19, threatening those institutions with withholding of Medicaid funding.

All of this also represents a more diabolical threat to the trans community, says Lynn, who points out that anytime anti-trans legislation is introduced, whether it passes or not, it goes to the very humanity of trans people. The Wisconsin GOP has spent much of the early legislative session  focused on just such legislation.

“I don’t have the data in front of me right now but we do know that when people and political leaders are spewing hateful rhetoric, that does increase the rate of violence against that community,” Lynn says. “We saw that in the Asian community during the pandemic. And rates of suicidal ideation go up. 

“You look at someone like State Senator Rachel Cabral-Guevera posting about suicide awareness and then, you know, sponsoring bills attacking trans people and it’s like, yeah, how do you reconcile that? How does she reconcile that in her brain?”

Furthermore, Lynn says, no matter how many of Trump’s transgender policies are implemented (what the trans community calls “transgender erasure") the damage is done because of the impact it has on society’s perceptions and attitudes.

The Trevor Project recently conducted a survey that revealed 39 percent of LGBTQ+ young people seriously considered committing suicide within the past year. For the trans community alone, that number rises to 46 percent.

In a plea to her GOP assembly colleagues before they advanced an anti-trans bill, Rep. Lee Snodgrass pointed to this latest data. 

“Please, please let children live peacefully without harassment or denial of their core identity,” she posted. “Whatever happened to ‘live and let live?’ This absolute cruelty must stop.”

Appleton an oasis of tolerance

Lynn doesn’t just blame Trump for America’s attitudes toward the trans community. They say people who are misguided by fear over such unfounded notions as litter boxes in schools aren’t stupid. It’s based, they suggest, on a distrust of systems and that they on some level understand that distrust. Lynn is suspicious of politics and politicians themselves.

“The LGBTQ community’s existence isn’t political,” they say. “I sometimes hear people talking about ‘both sides.’ And I think, this is not a ‘sides’ thing. The trans kid trying to figure out what bathroom they can use is not on one side and the angry person at a school board meeting shouting vile things isn’t on the other. That’s a false dichotomy. It’s politicians and leaders who make trans experience political. And so you know, kids in bathrooms, that’s something really easy for people to misrepresent into something really scary sounding.”

Which doesn’t mean Lynn doesn’t appreciate true political allies, such as Snodgrass or State Senator Kris Dassler-Alfheim. And they recognize Appleton as an oasis of tolerance in Northeast Wisconsin.

“It’s not all doom and gloom,” they say. “Appleton is a unicorn when it comes to acceptance. It’s not perfect but it’s definitely the best place to be in this area. We have a long history of really awesome advocates.”

But on the national level, Lynn becomes a bit more cynical, pointing to California Gov. Gavin Newsom distancing himself from the trans community on a recent podcast. They see people like Newsom using the LGBTQ+ community as a political prop.

“There’s just a fundamental lack of trust in the government,” they say. “I don’t think the government can save us.”

'We should have systems that accept us'

The politicization of trans people was on full display this past week in Madison when the GOP passed four anti-trans bills in the assembly, including two that would restrict trans kids from joining women’s sports teams, another that would prevent minors from accessing gender-affirming medical care. This would include puberty blockers, surgery or hormone replacement therapy.

The fourth would require parents’ permission for a student to go by different names or pronouns. 

While Gov. Evers is sure to veto these bills, trans people can’t help but feel targeted and dehumanized, Lynn says. They insist that, now more than ever, the community needs to step up. What does that support look like to Lynn?

“We need people when you’re with your family and they’re saying some stupid things about trans people to speak up,” they say. “We need allies to fight for us when we’re not around and when we are around. But especially when we’re not around.

And vocal support is important but it doesn’t mean the queer community is 100 percent going to trust you. It’s about your votes and your actions.”

Lynn argues that the trans community is in a bind when it comes to its own activism. For one thing, it’s not safe to be openly trans in everyday life, let alone as a public advocate. They say there’s a debate within the community about how exactly to respond as a group to the latest assaults on their rights.

“That’s also a result of Trump’s actions,” they say. “Like, if Trump wasn’t doing what he was doing, then we wouldn’t be in a position to have to fight like this. It’s about figuring out our strategy.”

That strategy includes everything from having a safety plan for particular situations to whether or not to hold your partner’s hand in certain settings to how authentic you allow yourself to be. 

“So we already have strong skills as far as navigating unsafe worlds,” Lynn says. “I mean, it’s not fun. Obviously we’re going to lose lives because of this administration. But that’s why we turn to each other because we can’t get the support we need from the systems out there that are supposed to support us.”

Lynn says they try to tell members of the community to take care of themselves first. Don’t feel bad if you’re uncomfortable being at a protest during these times. It’s normal to feel that way.

“One way of coping is just reminding myself and reminding people around me that we’re doing enough already,” they say. “Just existing right now is enough. Making it through work every day so you get your paycheck so that you can stay living and meet your needs. That is activism right now.

“It’s hard because you want to celebrate resilience. But we shouldn’t have to be resilient all the time. We should have systems that work for us. We should have systems that accept us. Our community should welcome us.”