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

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 between the ages of 14 and 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 Jamie. “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.”