Battening Down in the Borderlands

Many of you are asking how I’m doing nowadays.  Thank you for asking. These are not good times to be transgender in America.

I did renew my passport before the election. Unless the government goes to extraordinary lengths to identify whose passport has ever had a gender marker change, something that would be incredibly expensive and time consuming to do, I should be good for another ten years. After that, who knows?

I expect my Medicare coverage for estrogen will end sometime this year, which will increase that cost one hundred times over, from five dollars every 90 days to $500 every 90 days. It is difficult to see a new item in the news almost every day unveiling new limits on transgender life.

Fortunately, I am able to travel in the world without prejudicial treatment, except for the occasions in which people are aware of my TED Talks, books, or television appearances. Additionally, as I was saying to our mayor just this morning, my white male entitlement  serves me well. I just assume people are going to be accepting of me, and forge ahead accordingly. Usually it works out fine. On the rare occasions in which it does not, I am always taken aback. It is possible those times will be on the increase.

I spoke to the Metro Mayors Caucus retreat a couple of weeks ago and in the Q&A one person asked why I don’t just withhold the information that I am transgender. In most situations I do withhold that information. At a restaurant, airport, hotel, store, or just about any other setting, I do not announce myself as transgender and no one knows that I am. But again, in settings in which I speak or lead, it is generally known that I am transgender.

The bottom line is that I am not as much concerned about how I will be treated by the public as I am about all trans kids and the transgender adults who clearly do not pass in their new gender. They are in for a very tough time.

I am concerned about my legal rights being chipped away, right by right. The flurry of executive actions being taken is dizzyingly disarming. I know it is a plan to flood the zone with so many orders that we can’t keep up. But we must. Every one of these orders impacts people all over the globe. And not just people. Programs protecting elephants in Africa, virgin jungles in South America, and coral reefs in Asia are already being affected by the dismantling of USAID.

I believe certain priorities must be at the forefront of our opposition. First, anyone who has a basic understanding of American history knows that all the framers of the Constitution felt Congress, particularly the House of Representatives, should have the power of the purse. This is the first time in the history of our nation that a toothless House of Representatives has abandoned that power. Our democracy will not survive that abandonment, and I’m not sure we can wait two years until Democrats can flip the House. Former Treasury Secretery Robert Reich just published a frightening post on just this subject. https://robertreich.substack.com/p/this-is-what-dictatorship-looks-like?r=45vjat&fbclid=IwY2xjawISNl9leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHWoF-xZBj6OnbY6-PGTKUrAdPEe9XfzZEVQgIQnBAq-nZo0YxR5r9BCQFg_aem_vfpZLpp3_tt-rrg7PhmTGA&triedRedirect=true

Even the small town in which I serve as mayor pro tem has 4.5 million dollars at risk if last week’s executive actions are reinstated. That is why I believe stopping the power grab over funding must be the leading edge of our opposition. We lose our democracy without it, and all other issues become moot.

And what about the transgender population? When it comes to sports, that ship has already sailed, and I do not think there is enough support, even on the left, to fight that battle. Transgender people in the military? That is going to be a tough battle too, since it is a relatively recent protection. Transgender women being housed in male prisons? That is a death sentence, and should qualify under cruel and unusual punishment, though with today’s Supreme Court, who knows? They seem to want to fiddle while Rome burns.

Losing trans specific medical care through Medicaid, Medicare, and other health insurance? That will be devastating to many, and costly to the rest of us. But make no mistake, it is coming. And after they have wiped away all transgender rights, they will start with the LGB population, and then people of color. I see the trajectory. At this stage in the process, the willpower to stop them does not exist. Project 2025 is becoming a reality, and white evangelical Christians will wield their power with impunity. They have already abandoned the teachings of Jesus. Why stop there?

I was asked in November to write a letter to an English court stating that a transgender American citizen, sentenced to deportation because of actions against an employer, would be in danger if she was sent back to the United States. I declined to write the letter because I did not believe the person would be in danger. But that was then.

For me, the biggest problems are internal. I already consider myself to be a person who comes from the borderlands and lives in the liminal space between genders. I do not claim a cisgender experience. I claim a transgender experience. While there seem to be some indicators, I do not have a clue why I am transgender. I just know my former wife, best friend, and therapist believe I would have ended my life if I had not transitioned. I do know it became more and more impossible to sustain my life as Paul.

Someone asked me a while ago what would likely happen if I detransitioned. I told him that the numbers are not very encouraging. Well-known trans people who detransitioned have had a very clear trajectory. We know that trajectory because of the very definition of those people – they are well-known. As far as I can discern, 100 percent of nationally and internationally well-known transgender people who detransitioned have ended their lives.

And it appears to me that the majority of Americans do not care. As long as they feel safe, they do not care what happens to me. I am full of doubts about my identity. If you are honest with yourself, you are too. We all are. Every one of us feels there is something wrong with us that at our core makes us unworthy of deep human connection. Add to that self-doubt the fact that a majority of the nation is attacking your very identity? Well, it does not take long before that self-doubt turns to shame, and that shame turns to despair.

I am embarrassed by all the decades in which I did not understand that, while my own brown-skinned daughter was living it every day. It is not just me. A lot of us are running scared, and we have every reason to be.