‘We Have Seen a Lot More Hate’: Trans People Are Already Terrified

Just before the presidential election last November, Carolyn Fisher was in her living room in Birmingham, Alabama, when her nonbinary child walked in and said that he, along with four other transgender kids, were planning on dying by suicide if Donald Trump won the upcoming election.

Fisher and her husband were both lifelong Republicans and supporters of Trump. Holding a spiral notebook, Carolyn’s 16-year-old, who uses the pronouns he and they, made a case against voting for Trump.

“He laid out why a vote for Donald Trump was voting against him as our child and why Donald Trump should never be president. He had literally been keeping notes of everything Trump and other Republicans had been saying about trans and nonbinary people, how they were mentally delusional and mentally ill. When he laid all of that out, my husband and I, we both just looked at each other and started crying.”

Fisher, together with members of the Rainbow Youth Project, contacted the parents of the other children who were part of the pact.

The Fishers later voted for then-vice president Kamala Harris, even going so far as taking a picture of their ballot to show their child.

But Trump still won, and during the president’s inauguration speech on January 20, the Fishers heard him say that their child effectively doesn’t exist when he signed a sweeping executive order that, among other things, calls for the ending of trans care, requires housing trans women in male prisons, and allows only male or female markers on official documents like passports and not the “X” that was introduced in 2021 for people who identify as nonbinary, intersex, or gender nonconforming.

“As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female,” Trump said.

When a bishop at the National Cathedral service for the inauguration this week asked Trump to protect “gay, lesbian, and transgender children” the president dismissed her pleas in a Truth Social post and called her “nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart.”

The executive order contains provisions that require further federal action to become law, and this document should be viewed as a roadmap the Trump administration has drafted to signal what new rules they are planning on implementing. But experts say the order published this week, in conjunction with Trump’s very public comments, are designed to strike fear into the trans community.

“I think there’s a huge amount of it that is just about fear, and a part of it is trying to scare people into compliance” Allison Chapman, a trans rights activist, tells WIRED. “Enforcement takes a lot of time, energy, and resources, so what we really need people to do is to not voluntarily comply in advance. There needs to be an active resistance to these things.”

The Rainbow Youth Project, an organization focused on helping young LGBTQ+ people, received over 6,000 calls in just the first couple of days after Trump’s November election win. That’s up from the usual 3,600 calls a month. It didn’t stop: The hotline received over 8,000 calls in December.

Now, after Trump’s comment and actions on the first day of his presidency, the group’s crisis helpline is once again receiving a torrent of calls. Sixty-two percent of incoming calls this week, the group tells WIRED, are from trans and gender-nonconforming adolescents age 14 to 17.

The callers are expressing varying degrees of emotional and mental distress, often expressing feelings of hopelessness and fear. One of the most common sentiments shared is “my country does not want me to exist.”

While the Trump administration’s actions are causing huge distress for the trans community and their families, a stark increase in the attacks, both online and offline, are already coming from Trump supporters who feel emboldened.

“We have already seen an uptick in the hate against us,” Fisher says. “We had someone who came to our home just last Tuesday and put a note in our mailbox that said: ‘He’s your daddy now, he’s your president. You people won’t exist anymore.’ So yes, they’re definitely emboldened.”

A trans pride flag they had hanging on their porch has been stolen twice in the space of a week. At her local Piggly Wiggly, a supermarket, she overheard people at an adjacent table talking about how glad they were that Trump had “gotten rid of” trans people.

“He didn’t get rid of them, they’re always going to exist—but he damn so put a target on them, especially my teenage son,” Fisher said.

And the attacks are also targeting the groups who are trying to help the LGBTQ+ community.

“We have seen a lot more hate,” Lance Preston, executive director of the Rainbow Youth Project, tells WIRED. “We’ve been receiving a lot of messages, crazy shit, like ‘Trump is your president, now all of you are gonna have to go away. We don’t want you here.’ We get those in contact submission forms every day, and since the election it has just grown exponentially. It’s really sad.”

Some activists are also concerned that those who have always stood with the LGBTQ+ community could be too scared to speak up under Trump’s new administration.

“Every time something like this happens we notice supporters backing down and just getting quiet,” Chris Sederburg, who helps trans and gender nonconforming people through the Rainbow Youth Project, tells WIRED. “Not all of them, but a lot of them do because they’re scared of what’s happening. They’re scared of what might happen to them or they might catch hate for it.”

Sederburg, a trans man who works as a trucker, communicates with young trans people on social media and says that the response this week from the community has been one of “intense, immediate fear.”

For Jamie Anderson, a 40-year-old teacher living in Texas, her biggest fear is that Trump’s administration forces her 15-year-old daughter Dawn, who came out as trans last year, to make a traumatic decision.

“My biggest worry is that she’s going to have to go back to living a lie, like not being who she is meant to be,” says Anderson. “She’s happy now, she’s a lot happier than she was right before she came out. She was super depressed. We had no idea what was going on. And finally she comes out, and she’s this whole brand-new, amazing, loving child.”

But that’s not Dawn’s biggest fear. When WIRED asked what that would be, Dawn remained silent. Moments after the interview, Dawn sent a message: “I am afraid the government will take me away and end up killing me because I am transgender,” adding that she was now willing to share this in case “it might help others understand what I’m going through.”

(Jamie and Dawn are not the women’s real names. WIRED is using pseudonyms to protect their identities.)

The Fishers, meanwhile, are considering moving to a different state, possibly to California, where they feel their child would be more protected. But Carolyn Fisher worries about other families and trans and nonbinary children who may not have that option.

“I just want these kids to know that there are people out there, even Republicans, even conservative Christians, who love them and accept them for the way they are, and we want them to stay here with us,” Fisher says.

If you or someone you know needs help, call 1-800-273-8255 for free, 24-hour support from the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. You can also text HOME to 741-741 for the Crisis Text Line. Outside the US, visit the International Association for Suicide Prevention for crisis centers around the world. If you are a member of the LGBTQ+ community in need of help, you can contact the Rainbow Youth Project here or by calling ((317) 643-4888.