Fear and resilience: Transgender students express concerns over Trump’s anti-trans policies

Blake Frumkin, a sociology major at Los Angeles Valley College, swears that the new Trump administration will not force him to change his true identity. 

President Donald Trump has removed funding for gender-affirming care for those under 19 years old and blocked federal funds for schools that support students socially transitioning.

Frumkin says that he has struggled with his gender identity since he was 12 and transitioned from female to male by the age of 15.

“I started feeling weird about myself when I was 12 or 13 and my body started changing,” he said. “I started trying out different identities, and by 15, I had settled on male. I changed my name and my pronouns and socially transitioned. At 18, I started testosterone. I’ve been on it for a little over four years now, and I had top surgery a year later in 2021.” Top surgery is also known as masculinizing chest surgery. 

Frumkin said that he sees the actions of the Trump administration as a direct threat to the transgender community and fears such changes can lead to violence and death.

“Once they’re shown that it’s OK to be hateful,” he said, people who dislike transgender people “will become more outwardly aggressive.” 

Suicide attempts among transgender and nonbinary youth have increased by 72% since there has been an increase in anti-transgender laws, according to the Trevor Project, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group that provides various services including crisis counseling for young people.

“I was speaking with a trans elder and they shared this phrase with me that resonated deep in my bones,” Frumkin said. “It was death before detransition, and it rings true for me, I would rather die than have to transition back.” 

Frumkin said the threat of losing access to hormones and gender-affirming surgeries is terrifying.

“I am so terrified of losing access to my hormones,” Frumkin said. “I would probably start growing breast tissue again. I would get my period back. I have been on a waiting list to get a hysterectomy, and I’m terrified that I’m not going to be able to get it before access to gender-affirming care is taken away.”

By Nathalie Herrera

When advertising student Ember Young first arrived on the University of San Francisco’s campus as a freshman, they still identified as a woman. They said growing up, being nonbinary, let alone queer, was not acknowledged. This was one of the reasons Young moved from Los Angeles to San Francisco, known for its embrace of LGBTQ+ communities. 

“My parents were not always the most supportive of me,” Young said. “That was actually a big stressor for me and why it was so hard for me to find my identity.”

Young said that they came into their “authentic self” when they joined student organizations like the Black Rainbow Party, a space for Black queer folks on USF’s campus.

“That was where I found more people who share the same identity as me,” Young said. “Even though I am nonbinary, I am a more masculine person. There were times where I felt like I hated parts of myself that were feminine, and I needed other representation to really show me that it wasn’t dirty or gross for me to like those parts of myself either.”

Young found LGBTQ+ representation and support from other areas on campus, including professors and leaders in the student housing administration. Young said that made them feel safer on campus because the decisions that impact them as a nonbinary student are not made solely by cisgender individuals. 

“It wasn’t just men, it wasn’t just women,” Young said. “It was a conglomerate of very diverse people, and that is something that matters to me.”

Through their major in advertising and minors in African American studies, psychology and design, Young has also met numerous professors who identify outside of the gender binary, which Young said made a big difference in their sense of belonging on campus. 

“The fact that professors even asked about things like pronouns — it makes a big difference,” Young said. “It shows that they’re thinking about people that may be different from them.”

However, the sense of community Young has found on campus does nothing to change the personal impacts President Donald Trump’s executive orders have on them and others.

“As a person who uses social media, that’s kind of all the content that I’m seeing right now,” Young said. “What did Trump sign today? What is the next thing that we’re losing, or what is the next thing that he’s attacking? That’s really nerve-wracking.”

However, Young finds an outlet for these stressors in their homework assignments, which often require creativity and reflection.

“Almost all our assignments can feel like an outlet for how we’re feeling, especially as a person who’s taking design and production courses,” Young said. “It’s led by my own interests and my own concerns for what’s happening sociopolitically.”

Trump signed an executive order stripping the transgender community of gender-affirming care and further insulting them by removing the “T” in LGBT from the Stonewall National Monument’s government website.

“It feels like everybody is kind of under fire,” Young said, “except for the rich white men.”

For students like Young, having access to resources on campus, such as the Gender and Sexuality Center, the Cultural Centers, and the Marshall-Riley Living-Learning Community (MRLLC), can be life-changing. 

Through the MRLLC program, Young and more than 20 other Black students learned about Black revolutionaries and historical figures who stoked social change across the country. This experience showed Young how integral transgender individuals, such as Marsha P. Johnson, who played a prominent role in the 1969 Stonewall uprising, are to Black history.  

“Not only was I learning about historical figures, a lot of them were queer and some women. That was something that opened my eyes,” Young said. “Not only were they trans and queer, but they were also in positions of power. The reality is that I don’t have to be cis or I don’t have to be straight to do these things.”

By Tasmin McGill

Anti-transgender legislative changes enacted by the Trump administration have made day-to-day life difficult for UC Berkeley student Maya Perez-Pearsall.

The fourth-year music student said it is difficult to get out of bed in the morning. She forgoes immediately checking her phone, avoiding the stress that comes with seeing constant headlines about President Donald Trump’s actions toward the transgender community. 

Despite renewed fears about losing her rights under Trump, Perez-Pearsall has found support within the transgender community on campus as a transgender woman. 

Perez-Pearsall transitioned five years ago, but has since not been able to use a public restroom without the fear of someone misgendering and harassing her. 

“I could see people grimacing at me,” Perez-Pearsall said. “They distance themselves from me or approach me like I have some kind of contagion.” 

Last year, the Berkeley College Republicans posted flyers on campus for an event that read, “Eradicate transgenderism.” Perez-Pearsall said she felt hopeless when she saw it, but was not surprised. She said the lack of repercussions was a reflection of the little support Berkeley offers its transgender students. 

Perez-Pearsall is among the 0.4% of students who identify as transgender across the UC system. She said transgender identities have not been adequately represented in her classrooms and history-related curriculum, which has made her feel more isolated as a transgender woman on campus. 

Perez-Pearsall said transgender people, like music figure Wendy Carlos, have made significant contributions to society. Carlos’ inspirational work in electronic music made her the first transgender woman to earn a Grammy and deserves to be taught within the context of music history.

“There has to be a conscious effort and a unified effort to get transgender people recognized,” Perez-Pearsall said. “Because there are prevailing ideas within history that tend to forget us or turn us into these one-note characters and not people with lives and not communities of people that had a big impact.” 

Trump signed an executive order calling for the dismantling of the Department of Education and ending all policies and programs supporting transgender rights. Perez-Pearsall said these “anti-education” actions will put the already minimal transgender course curriculum at risk of being taken away.

“They’re dismantling the main system in the federal government that’s able to fund a lot of services that are for underrepresented people,” Perez-Pearsall said. “So I think that’s just a full disinvestment in education.” 

Perez-Pearsall relies on student-led queer organizations to help her cope in daily life. While she is grateful to know that every person at her school does not subscribe to anti-trans rhetoric, she feels disappointed by the lack of allyship from some of her fellow peers. 

“I’ve known a lot of people who I talk to about these issues regarding trans people in higher education, and they kind of just shrug their shoulders,” she said.  

Perez-Pearsall said spending time with her transgender peers has been beneficial. Whether that involves simply hanging out with friends or attending events hosted by student-led LGBTQ+ organizations, she said that being trans in America is truly an act of resistance. 

“It’s OK to not feel brave all the time because I sure as hell don’t right now,” Perez-Pearsall said. “That is what is going to get us through this, being honest with ourselves and moving with it. Because this is only temporary.”

By Jeremiah Rojas

Elliott Bravo and Kayden Minton started dating at Banning High School in the city of Wilmington in Southern California when Bravo was in the 11th grade and Minton was in the 10th grade. They did almost everything together, including eating lunch, joining the school tennis team and alternating walking each other home.

Today, Bravo and Minton attend different colleges, about 100 miles away from each other. Bravo is a second-year psychology student at Los Angeles Harbor College, local to the community in which they both grew up. Minton is a first-year student at UC San Diego studying marine biology, making this the first year in the couple’s three-year relationship that they have been apart. 

“I can’t just come over and talk to them about everything, with everything going on [with Trump],” said Bravo, who has transistioned to male. “Since they’re at a UC, they’re usually very busy as well.”

For Bravo, this is the hardest part — should one of them experience name-calling or violence, they would be miles away from each other. 

In some ways, Minton and Bravo are opposites. Minton is outgoing, and so moving to a school further from home meant wanting to make new friends. 

“I don’t see many like myself,” said Minton, who is nonbinary. “I can’t really find a community here.” 

Bravo is much more introverted; he is content to hang out with the same group of high school friends.

However, when it comes to their fears, the couple is like-minded. 

Among their biggest concerns is simply having their genders recognized and affirmed. Minton receives gender-affirming hormone therapy, and Bravo hopes to once he can afford it. They are unsure how accessible that will be under the current administration. 

Having their name and identity accurately represented on official documents is of vital importance to the couple. With President Donald Trump’s executive order erasing the existence of transgender and nonbinary people, Minton is unsure if they will continue to be able to have “X” listed as their gender on legal documents, and Bravo is uncertain if he will continue to be able to have his gender listed as male. 

While they have both legally changed their names and genders, they are reminded by what happened to actress Hunter Schafer, a trans woman whom the Trump administration issued a male passport. It demonstrates the “harsh reality” that trans people will face over the next four years. 

Minton plans to get their Ph.D. in marine biology, and Bravo wants to get his master’s degree in psychology. With new policy changes, they are afraid their correct names will not be on the degrees they will have taken years to achieve.

Going forward, what Minton and Bravo want to see the most is solidarity from administrators, college and university officials, as well as legislators. While Bravo says he does not live in the most progressive area, he thinks that Harbor College will protect its trans students by being vocal in their support. Minton noted that UC San Diego has a history of activism, so they are surprised that the school has yet to make any statement of support for its transgender students in the wake of Trump’s latest anti-trans legislation. 

“I don’t know who’s with us, I don’t know who’s on our side, I don’t know who cares about my rights,” Minton said. “I feel like the biggest thing I’d like to see is somebody saying, ‘We’re here, we’re here with you, we got your back.’”

Although full of uncertainty, Bravo and Minton hope that being in a more progressive state like California will bring them more support from officials and legislators soon. Until then, they say their relationship, filled with compassion and understanding in light of the times, is the greatest source of comfort.

By Daniela Castillo