What The Hell America!

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Hundreds of people gathered Monday at the National Mall to recognize Transgender Day of Visibility. College students stood alongside veterans, federal workers, retirees and concerned family members. They packed umbrellas for the spring rain and brought Pride flags, too. They held up handmade signs that read,— “Trans by the grace of God” and  “Trump is stealing our future.” As members of Congress stood in front of the U.S. Capitol to list all the ways the Trump administration is harming their trans constituents, they listened. Both speakers and attendees said this fight belongs to them, regardless of their gender identity. 

One cisgender woman in the crowd, a 48-year-old federal employee, joined to support her family. Her daughter is trans and so are a few of her nieces and nephews, she said. On her lanyard at work, she wears a trans butterfly pin and another with a rainbow encircled by the words, “you’re safe to be you around me.” 

As a federal employee, the woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the uncertain political environment for federal workers, said she has watched the Trump administration erase thousands of jobs and billionaire Elon Musk’s task force take over federal agency buildings. The final line crossed, the moment that would push her over the edge, would be if she’s asked to take off her pins. 

“I would resist against that,” she said. “And I hope that I wouldn’t lose my job over it, but this is more important than my job, honestly, even though we’re a single-income family. I’ve been working with the federal government for 20 years. But it’s just that important.”

Trans Day of Visibility, or TDOV for short, was created to give trans people a day of joy. It’s a day to celebrate being out and unapologetically trans, nonbinary or gender non-conforming. But as the last five years have brought rising anti-trans political attacks, TDOV has also become something else: a day of loud resistance. As the Trump administration tries to make it harder for trans Americans to live openly without fear of harassment and discrimination, more trans people — and their allies — see this day as a form of protest. 

“My call to action today is to get involved,” Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, executive director for Advocates for Trans Equality (A4TE), said on stage at the rally. “Register to vote. Vote in all those local elections that everyone else ignores. Run for office yourself. If you want a different style of activism, volunteer at your local LGBTQ+ community center. Mentor a trans kid. Start a trans bookclub. Protest outside a courthouse. … Don’t just watch things happen, make things happen. History is made by those of us who take the initiative to show up.”

Other speakers, including Democratic members of Congress, made similar calls to action, urging trans people and their allies to resist the political attacks against them. Those lawmakers stressed that rolling back trans rights is just a stepping stone to attacking other marginalized groups — and that coming together is required to defend against those assaults.  

That’s the message that New Hampshire state Rep. Alice Wade, a transgender woman, delivered from the stage on Monday. The stakes of these anti-trans attacks are deadly, she said, and they affect everyone, Republican or Democrat. 

On Election Day last year, outside her local polling place, Wade said she met a Republican volunteer who confided that his son’s death the previous summer had kept him from engaging much in politics. It was hard for him to talk about it, the volunteer told Wade. But by the end of the night, he was ready to open up. 

“Right about the time the polls had closed, I started to pack up my things, and he pulled me aside and he asked me a question, ‘Are you transgender?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’” 

That was the invitation he was looking for. He shared with Wade that his son was a transgender man who had taken his own life. He then asked about her experiences as a trans woman and what could have contributed to his child’s suicide. 

“I shared how deeply painful it can be for trans people to go through life in a society hostile to our very existence and how transitioning saved my life six years ago,” she said on stage. “Long after he left, I couldn’t stop thinking about that conversation. About a father just trying to understand his child and cope, and how much pain could be avoided if we didn’t treat trans people like political weapons.” 

From 2018 to 2022, the number of suicide attempts among transgender and nonbinary youth in states that passed anti-trans laws increased by as much as 72 percent, according to a study published last fall. And when the presidential race was called for Donald Trump on November 5, calls and texts to a leading LGBTQ+ youth suicide prevention organization exploded in a massive outpouring of anxiety over the election results.

In the crowd on Monday, trans people who have been living in that heightened state of fear since Election Day felt a moment of reprieve and solidarity. Fenyx Mackenzie, a 22-year-old student at Howard University, stood with 21-year-old Miles Sanchez on the National Mall, wrapped in an embrace under a trans pride flag while listening to the speakers. Seeing a united crowd standing up for trans rights — including many cisgender people and people from older generations — made an impression on them. 

“Everything has been very stressful recently, so having this sort of event is nice,” Mackenzie said. “It makes it a little bit less scary and isolating.” 

For the past few months, it feels like every marginalized group is being targeted at once, Sanchez said — and it’s all happening so quickly. They’re not sure what to do, they said; just going through the motions of everyday life is a challenge. They’ve been looking for a sense of community. At this rally, they finally felt that. 

The Trans Day of Visibility rally was organized by the Christopher Street Project, a transgender advocacy group, and co-hosted by LGBTQ+ and civil rights groups including the National Organization for Women, the Human Rights Campaign and Advocates for Trans Equality. Speakers from Congress included House Democratic Whip Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York and Rep. Sara Jacobs, co-chair of the Transgender Equality Task Force.