Tomorrow Will Be Different: Love, Loss, and the Fight for Trans Equality

by Sarah McBride

One in four transgender people in the report had been fired from their job because they were transgender. One in five had been homeless. And 41 percent had attempted suicide at some point in their lives. Nearly half had tried to end their lives, in many cases because the world was too hateful to bear.

At eleven years old, I met my political idol. Joe Biden was a towering figure to me. Even before he was selected as Barack Obama’s running mate, he was the hometown kid who had made it big, the Delawarean who had become a national figure with presidential ambition and buzz. When I first met him at a local pizza shop while eating with my parents, I was star-struck. Here was the guy I had seen on the news—right in front of me. He had just gotten off the Amtrak from D.C. and was meeting his wife, Jill, for dinner. They sat right next to our table. And knowing how much it would mean to me, my parents introduced me as he walked over. I was speechless. I just stared up at him, barely able to introduce myself. He kneeled down, ripped out his schedule for the day from his briefing book, and pulled out a pen. “Remember me when you are president,” he wrote, followed by his signature. I stared at the page for the remainder of dinner and, when we got home that night, promptly hung it in my bedroom next to my Little League trophies. The February 1, 2002, Joe Biden schedule became my prized possession as a kid.

I learned about our history. I came across the story of Lili Elbe, one of the first trans women to undergo gender affirmation surgery, whose story was told in the book and film The Danish Girl. Europe in the 1920s saw pioneering efforts in expanding the culture’s understanding of sexuality and gender, progress largely wiped out with the Nazis’ rise to power in Germany. I read articles from newspapers in the fifties about Christine Jorgensen, the “blond GI bombshell.” And I first learned the names Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, the transgender women of color who threw the first bricks launching riots protesting anti-LGBTQ police violence in New York City at a bar called the Stonewall Inn. That uprising, known as the Stonewall Riots, helped launch the modern movement for LGBTQ rights and dignity.

I got a call from Jack. “You kicked ass,” he said, clearly having checked the results online. Jack and I had frequently talked about his own run for student body president at Brown University, which he lost. Fifth place out of five candidates. “Thank you, but winning your student government race is a bad omen for things to come,” I said, reminding him of his, and Bill Clinton’s, early losses in college campaigns.

The theme of my term continued my long-standing passion for inclusion and equality that I had developed as a precocious reader of history. Everything I did was about “making AU as inclusive, accessible, and open as possible.” Every initiative, every policy, every speech fell within that theme, including our robust work on LGBTQ equality.

Each of us has a deep and profound desire to be seen, to be acknowledged, and to be respected in our totality. There is a unique kind of pain in being unseen. It’s a pain that cuts deep by diminishing and disempowering, and whether done intentionally or unintentionally, it’s an experience that leaves real scars.

Having certain privileges does not mean that your life is easy or that you do not face challenges. It just means that you don’t experience specific kinds of obstacles or barriers faced by someone with a different identity or background. And our empathy should require us to acknowledge the plight of others in both its similarities to ours and in its differences.

Walking into the White House for the Pride event three weeks later was awe-inspiring. Uniformed Secret Service agents greeted guests as we made our way through the small East Wing, down a long windowed corridor, and into the central part of the White House, the famous structure that appears on the twenty-dollar bill.

Allowing transgender people to update those documents makes a profound statement that we are respected and acknowledged as who we are. They make clear how the person should be treated. Perhaps more important, identification provides a vital layer of security and protection for us. IDs that still reflect a transgender person’s sex assigned at birth can out the carrier, exposing them to discrimination, harassment, and, potentially, violence. Imagine having to reveal a deeply personal piece of information that could put you in danger every single time you fly on a plane, go to a bar, or use your credit card.

Prior to the change, the State Department required that individuals undergo gender affirmation surgery in order to update their gender marker. This, unfortunately, was a common, misguided, and burdensome policy that effectively put a $20,000 (or more) charge on accurate identity documents. And that’s just for those who plan on having gender affirmation surgery. Many in the community never do, because they feel like they do not need it, they can’t undergo surgery for medical reasons, or they can’t afford it.

Even if you hold the right positions on paper, it is easy to deprioritize something that feels abstract. When our workplaces began including openly gay, lesbian, and bisexual people, it changed companies’, governments’, and people’s priorities. Now there would be a trans woman walking the halls, joining them in meetings, and sharing coffee with them. It’s impossible for our rights to remain abstract when a person is, quite literally, sitting across from you. As I had realized throughout my coming-out experience, and as I would routinely reiterate, I’m an admittedly imperfect messenger for that role. My privilege and experiences limit my perspective. It’s easy to express—and genuinely feel—empathy for a young, white, conventional-looking trans girl; it’s another to maintain that empathy when your differences are compounded by race, gender expression, class, religion, or circumstance. Nevertheless, I’d made it into the White House and I hoped to utilize it to do some small good.

After I finished telling him my story, Straut reflected on his own background as a Black man from Chicago. He then told me about the attitudes toward LGBTQ people in his neighborhood growing up: “We never talked about this when I was a kid.” Though, looking back, he said there was someone who lived down the street from him when he was growing up who may have been transgender. We sat for an hour, a significant amount of time for someone in a senior leadership position at the White House. I had the opportunity to humanize an issue—a group of people—for an old friend of the president and a senior staffer at the White House. No more could Straut say he didn’t know anyone who was transgender.

In other battles for trans rights, anti-equality activists and politicians had stoked unfounded fears that protecting transgender people from discrimination throughout daily life, including in restrooms, would allow sexual predators to dress up as women to harm or assault women and, particularly, young girls. The argument was completely disingenuous. A person intent on committing a crime in a restroom is offered no cover from laws that merely protect transgender people from discrimination or harassment. More than a dozen states and more than a hundred cities had passed similar bills without any problems of that kind. These arguments were just recycled talking points from previous gay-rights fights. “Protect our children,” read the antigay signs in the 1970s and ’80s. “Preserve parents’ rights to protect their children from teachers who are immoral and who promote a perverted lifestyle.” Just as these arguments preyed on people’s stereotypes and ignorance about gay identities, so too do these new antitrans arguments. They feed on the lack of understanding of trans identities. They were wrong and false then and they are wrong and false now, but they were politically potent.

When I was coming out to close friends and family, I had wanted to come out to Beau personally, but given his national profile, I held off on reaching out, worried that I would burden him. Instead, Beau learned about my news through my public coming-out note. That evening, I got a call from him. “Sarah,” he started. I was struck by his seamless adoption of my new name. “It’s Beau. I just saw your coming-out note.” He was driving with his wife, Hallie, and wanted to call to express his love and continued friendship. “I’m here with Hallie and we just want you to know that we love you, we stand with you, and you are still as much a part of the Biden family as ever. This doesn’t change anything.” A few weeks after my meeting at the governor’s office, I reached out to Beau to get together, catch up, and talk about the gender identity nondiscrimination bill. I told him we’d need his help to push back on the lies that would inevitably come from our opponents. I worried that bringing up the counterarguments to our bill might cause Beau to beg off, not wanting to get into the middle of a controversial fight. But he was unequivocal in his support and his willingness to help. “Just let me know what you need,” he assured me.

“Hey, kiddo. I just want you to know that Beau is so proud of you, Jill is so proud of you, and I’m so proud of you. I wanna know one thing, are ya happy?” “I am,” I responded, taken aback that he had even heard about my transition. “That makes me so happy. Give me a hug!” He pulled me in for an enveloping embrace, a quintessential gesture for the gregarious vice president. It was a powerful moment for me. As much as I had cherished that signed Joe Biden schedule growing up, this small interaction meant infinitely more to me. If meeting Joe Biden at eleven had assured me of my love of politics, his embrace at twenty-two helped confirm my belief that despite the cynicism that surrounds politics, there are still good and decent people in the arena. And with the support of both the Bidens and the Markells strongly behind us on the gender identity bill, I felt prepared for the fight to come in Delaware.

For all of us, the political is personal. And the truth is this: Sometimes vulnerability is the best, or only, path to justice. Those with power or privilege won’t extend equality easily. Logic isn’t enough. The legislators had to see that transgender people are people. They had to understand our fears. Our hopes. They had to see our families. They had to feel the humanity of the issue. And then, we hoped, they would no longer be able to look us in the eyes and deny us the equal protection of the laws they swore to uphold.

“Legislators will be exhausted after the marriage fight,” I said to Lisa and Mark. “They won’t have any energy left for the fight that they are less excited about.” Lisa is a “legislator whisperer” if there ever was one. “I actually think the legislators will be energized after the marriage fight,” she said. “They will feel empowered after making history and they’ll be fired up to do it again.”

“And it described the treatment of transgender people. It indicated that forty-one percent of trans people attempt to commit suicide because of the prejudice and discrimination that they experience. You can imagine how frightened I was that first day reading that. But I also read that that percentage comes down dramatically when the person is accepted by their family, and even more so when they are accepted by their community.”

“If my happiness somehow demeans or diminishes your marriage, you need to work on your marriage,” she had said, declaring her sexual orientation on the floor of the Senate.

Not understanding how the crime he was talking about would still be illegal, Simpson again retorted, “And then when you confront the person, that’s his alibi. ‘I perceive myself as a female.’ ” Maintaining her composure, Patty tried again to reason with the senator. “But that ‘alibi’ isn’t to the offense, it was to why you were in that room. If it was a female predator going into a female bathroom going after girls or a male predator going into a male bathroom to go after boys, the fact that they are going after a child in and of itself is the offense, it’s not where they were doing it. A teacher who goes after a child in a school can’t say, ‘I’m a teacher so I’m allowed to be here.’ It doesn’t matter that you were allowed to be there.”

I thanked the senator for the opportunity to come back up, and in a tone probably a bit too heated, I called the arguments logical fallacies. “There are fourteen states and a hundred cities and counties that have public-accommodations laws that allow transgender people to utilize restrooms in accordance with their gender,” I said forcefully. “And there has not been a single documented instance of a transgender person or a person claiming to be transgender going into a restroom or going into a locker room and doing anything that harms people or assaults people.”

Throughout the fight for equality, young people have been on the front lines of change. When President Obama endorsed marriage equality in 2012, he cited something very simple for his change of heart: conversations with his daughters.

Trans visibility was also increasing at a rapid rate. Laverne Cox burst into the mainstream consciousness with the premiere of Orange Is the New Black on Netflix. That year, 2013, was eventually dubbed the “transgender tipping point” by Time magazine. And D.C. felt like the center of it all.

Through our work, Andy and I were keenly aware of the discrimination and mistreatment that transgender people often face in medical settings. In one survey, 70 percent of transgender people reported experiencing some form of discrimination in a health-care setting, including health-care professionals refusing to touch patients. Not every health professional knew we were trans, but some figured it out, and others needed to be told. We were also cognizant of Johns Hopkins’s deeply troubled history with trans people. Once a leader on gender-affirming treatment, in the 1970s and ’80s the psychiatric department had come under the control of a right-wing extremist, Dr. Paul McHugh, who, while having no expertise in gender or sexuality research, harbored strong negative feelings toward LGBTQ, and particularly trans, identities. He would not only close down Hopkins’s work on transition-related care, he would also go out of his way to advocate against the rights and dignity of trans people, calling us “caricatures” and “mad.”

But the president also knew the topic was deadly serious. He outlined the continued work ahead: the need for marriage equality in all fifty states, the lack of nationwide workplace protections, the violence faced by the community, and the continued epidemic of AIDS. “This year, we mark the forty-fifth anniversary of Stonewall,” he proclaimed, referring to the riot against police violence that had launched the modern LGBTQ movement. “And this tremendous progress we’ve made as a society is thanks to those of you who fought the good fight, and to Americans across the country who marched and came out and organized to secure the rights of others.” The president closed by articulating a view of America that frames our greatness not as the product of a bygone era, but rather from our ongoing journey toward a deeper understanding of freedom. “That’s how we continue our nation’s march towards justice and equality,” he told us. “That’s how we build a more perfect union—a country where no matter what you look like, where you come from, what your last name is, who you love, you’ve got a chance to make it if you try. You all have shown what can happen when people of goodwill organize and stand up for what’s right. And we’ve got to make sure that that’s not applied just in one place, in one circumstance, in one time. That’s part of the journey that makes America the greatest country on earth.”

But despite these historic steps forward, we were still a long way from full nationwide equality. Progress isn’t always linear and can often elicit a dangerous backlash, one that often targets the most marginalized within a community. Violence against LGBTQ people, particularly trans women of color, appeared to be ticking up. In 2016, at least twenty-two trans people were killed in the United States, the most lives lost on record in a single year up until that point.

It’s no surprise that antitrans extremists have targeted bathrooms. Every fight for civil and human rights over the last several decades has included controversies about restrooms. It’s partly because we all feel vulnerable in those spaces, so it is easy to instill fear in people. But it’s also more calculated and sinister than that. Access to a restroom is necessary everywhere: in schools, in workplaces, and in public venues. These so-called bathroom bills are nothing more than an attempt to legislate transgender people out of public life.

As I passed the Pennsylvania delegation, an older transgender woman, Joanne, whom I had met earlier in the year, stood up and walked toward me. Joanne looks like your quintessential grandmother, and exudes the warmth of one. We were both smiling as she pulled me into a hug. We held on to each other for a couple seconds, and when we pulled away, both of us were crying. She kept her arms at my sides and held me about a foot from her face and said, “I can’t believe I’m seeing this in my lifetime.” Standing there, I couldn’t help but think of all Joanne had seen. The years of invisibility followed by the years of feeling like a liability. Now she was attending a major party convention with a record number of openly transgender delegates—twenty-eight in total—and she had just witnessed an arena full of people affirming our dignity and celebrating our lives. For Joanna, it took decades for it to happen, but change came. She saw it in her lifetime.

“Ms. Sarah,” she started, with a slight lisp. “What’s your favorite part about being transgender?” My favorite part? Growing up, that sentence wouldn’t have made sense to me. Since coming out, I had been so used to hearing questions about survival or hardship, about negativity and hate. We are inundated with messages that being trans is bad, gross, and a burden for ourselves and others. But Lulu’s question turned that negative perspective on its head. It took more than twenty-five years for me to hear that question for the first time. I paused and thought about it. “I think I have three favorite things about being transgender,” I began with a smile. “The first is that it led me to meet my husband, Andy. The second is that I think it’s made me a stronger, better, more compassionate person. And the third? The third is that I get to meet amazing people like you. People who are brave, brilliant, and beautiful.” Her eyes lit up.

Throughout the campaign, Donald Trump had disingenuously claimed to be a friend to the LGBTQ community while endorsing nearly every anti-equality position thinkable. He had endorsed the ability of states such as North Carolina to discriminate against transgender people. He had committed to nominating judges who opposed marriage equality and trans rights. He had promised to sign legislation that would provide a license to discriminate against LGBTQ people nationwide. And as a sign of things to come, he had picked in Mike Pence a vice president whose entire national profile was built on attacking women’s rights and LGBTQ equality.

That the most qualified candidate in modern history—a woman—had just lost to the most unqualified and unfit candidate in all of American history only added insult to injury. Hillary’s loss perfectly encapsulated the nearly impossible double standard facing any marginalized person in politics or the workforce. As a woman, she was required by our society and structures to work two, three, four times harder than any white man to get to the cusp of the presidency. To exert that degree of effort, to navigate a world designed against your success, requires a degree of commitment, intentionality, and determination that cannot be hidden behind the false humility we so often demand of our political candidates.

The sexism in Hillary’s loss and the racism that laced Trump’s win were clear. But the biggest tragedy was the hate and discrimination that would be further thrust onto everyday people—Muslims, people with disabilities, immigrants, women, people of color, and LGBTQ people—throughout America. The morning after the election, many in the LGBTQ community and beyond woke up fearful about what the results would mean for them. The Human Rights Campaign and other civil rights organizations were inundated with questions and concerns. People were genuinely terrified about what the future would hold. The Southern Poverty Law Center would later report roughly four hundred hate-based attacks and incidents in the immediate aftermath of the election. Calls to LGBTQ suicide hotlines skyrocketed. Educators were reporting a dramatic increase in bullying toward their Muslim, Latinx, and LGBTQ students.

Sifting through all the bad news of the 2016 election, there was one bright spot. In North Carolina, McCrory had lost his reelection bid. In a state that went for Donald Trump in the Electoral College, McCrory was the only incumbent Republican governor to lose reelection that year, and he lost largely because of his support for HB2 and the ensuing harm it caused to the state.

I first began to understand that gravity in Delaware and had seen it since in states like North Carolina and, now, in Texas. When young people participate in politics, they can speak from a place of history. I don’t mean the history of the past, but rather the history that remains to be written. Young people will be the ones who write the history books of tomorrow. The ones I was standing with in Texas—and all LGBTQ youth and our young allies—will be the ones that get to decide who was right and who was wrong in this moment. As young people, we carry that perspective with us everywhere, from the safest to the scariest spaces in society.