And in case you’re able to continue living your life more or less as it is, I reiterate my advice to focus on your studies and your classes. Keep your grades up and go to graduate school if it makes sense to you. Financial independence is, I think, one of the best ways to stay safe. Depending on your degree program and skills, you may be able to move to a more friendly part of the country or even to a friendly country outside the US.
It’s been pointed out to me that to some extent you need to indicate what you think might happen in order to make sense of any advice about what to do. So it’s totally okay to write: i think the administration will do/might do X, and therefore you might want to do Y", but please don’t argue about X. If you disagree, please focus on , “i think Z is more likely, and therefore W makes sense”. More detailed arguments about whether X or Z is more likely belong elsewhere.
Thanks.
Yeah, fair enough.
@CorpusNeptune If there are LGBTQ+ support organizations near you, ideally on your campus, I expect they’ve got resources to help, and are making plans. At least I hope so, as a cishet guy with empathy. And with friends, colleagues, and family who are not cis or het.
I’d really seriously think of hiding in place. Stock up. Stay home. Stay off social media.
If you have to go out, look as plain, unadorned as possible. Regular jeans, no tshirts with attention drawing slogans.
Just melt into the crowd.
It will be sad to have to do, but you wanna stay safe it needs to be.
If your race will disturb whoever, I don’t have any answers.
I dunno it is that bad yet unless you live in some seriously red county.
Still, I think the OP should seriously consider moving to a place in the US that has no problem with non-binary people (as a matter of police and policy…there are assholes everywhere).
There are still plenty of places in the US where I think nonbinary people can get on with life with little fuss (within some realm of “fuss”).
I think this is probably true.
And I suspect that telling nonconforming people in general that they should all go into hiding is likely to do a shitload of damage to some. It’s true that being out in some circumstances may also incur a shitload of damage, and everybody has to judge their own circumstances – but there is no hope at all for acceptance if everybody’s in hiding and this all goes back to Something We Do Not Admit Exists.
Find a support network.
I know you said you’re out of high school so maybe community groups or supportive public places. If you were in Denver, I would suggest go to dinner at Hamburger Mary’s and make support contacts.
Many colleges have LGBTQ organizations. If your college has one, consider joining. I second the recommendation to focus on your studies and choose your major prudently.
If (big if, I opine) the US declines into autocracy, it will follow the footsteps of innumerable middle income countries over the past few decades. The great majority of them didn’t engage in genocide, or precursors to genocide. Don’t assume the worst case scenario, because it probably won’t happen. It’s prudent to plan for it though.
I can’t opine on this, but I hypothesize that the situation for non-binaries will remain better than it was during, say, the 1980s in the US. Because from what I’ve read the above ground situation was pretty medieval at that time.
Consider getting a passport, I’d recommend sooner rather than later. You might have to bite your tongue and apply with the gender and name on your birth certificate. Without a passport, traveling to another country is really, really hard.
You might as well get the passport card, as well as a regular passport book. (There’s an extra fee, but as I recall it’s small.) You can use that for travel into Canada or Mexico by land. I’m kinda sure you need the regular passport book for travel by air and sea, even to Canada and Mexico. But it’s handy as an ID card, from the federal government.
Passport processing is going to start taking an even longer time than usual, so think about moving quickly. My wife and I are going to apply this weekend for new passports, even though ours don’t expire for another couple of years.
Since everyone keeps mentioning the possibility of moving states, here’s a map that is relevant:
Wisconsin is still light blue, meaning there is low risk within the next 2 years of any anti-trans legislation being enacted. The adjacent states of Minnesota and Indiana both have actual protections in law, so might be places to plan to go to if necessary.
And, yes, this is specifically trans stuff, but it basically covers anything enbies would be worried about as well.
That said, this is a pre-election map, and does not take any possible national legislation into account. That said, the deep blue states are the ones most likely to fight back against any national legislation.
You can read more here:
You can travel there. Visit who?
How long can you stay?
Do you have loads of money for hotels and food, Ubers?(As a college student)
What’s your family gonna say?
Are you safe there?
This not a great idea.
I think you’re safer in your home surroundings. Doing what you do.
If you look unique, change that.
Don’t tell people your preferred pronouns.
In other words blend in.
The time to fly your flag is another time. Not now.
Unless you’re willing to be hurt or killed for your identity.
I don’t think you are, or you wouldn’t be asking this question.
I’m just trying to tell you how to be safe.
I’ve been practicing invisibility for years. I don’t like to be noticed much. (It’s a personal problem). It can be done, mostly it’s easy.
Doesn’t hurt at all.
(Yes, society needs to accept everyone. And everyone should have all these rights. But it’s just not that way. Especially now.)
But it also won’t look like a normal genocide. It would mostly be banning stuff. They go after gender affirming surgeries and hormone replacement therapy. They might go after “drag” yet define it in such a way that any clothing that doesn’t conform to one’s gender assigned at birth is illegal.
Heck, I’m not going to go over all the steps. Here’s an unrolled Twitter thread from a trans activists I follow:
(Yes, this is trans stuff, but it’s all overlaps. The OP hasn’t mentioned what GAC (gender affirminve care) they’ve received, if any. But don’t assume it only applies to binary folk.
Agreed. Except none of that is genocide, though all of it is repressive. I’ll quote one of the linked tweets with approval:
It will lead to high (but not total) incarceration rates of trans people, just like we have today for black men due to the “war on drugs”, and increasingly also have for unhoused people.
It will, as always, affect the more marginalized first.
Repression will continue until it stops and it won’t stop on its own. I wouldn’t dwell too much on step 8, until we reach steps 4, 5, and 6.
Sure it is. Literally the first step is, since depriving trans folk of HRT means a lot of them will no longer be alive.
I didn’t spend all morning on the 6th convincing people not to end themselves for no reason.
I’m a cranky old cis dude, who somehow grew into one of the ‘elders’ of small semi-intentional community in a very blue city and state - after much discussion and soul searching, this morning we took down the Pride flag we’d been flying for the last several many years. We have a goodly proportion of gay and trans residents, one of whom put it pretty clearly as “I’m gay and I’m proud, but I’ll decide when to be loud” - the thought of attacks against her home worried her more than against her person. My own appearance and demeanor make many strangers think I’m MAGA, so perhaps my best ally-ship is maintaining a safe house. Nonetheless, I hate despise and resent being put in the position of advocating anyone hiding their light under a bushel.
Things can be really bad without being genocide. Hell, not all atrocities are genocide. Raphael Lemkin, the man who coined the term genocide heretofore, “A crime without a name,” was wary of it becoming an insult to be thrown around as opposed to a specific word for a specific crime against humanity. This isn’t pedantry.
Can I conceive of a shift to genocidal policy against the trans community? In America? Yes, I can. But that’s not what was under discussion in the thread you linked to (whatever the opinion of its author).
Props for your work on Nov 6. I volunteered for the Dems from September to early November: no regrets.
…I can’t empathise enough how unsafe colleges will become under Trump. What happened in the last few months during the pro-Palestine protests should illustrate that. Organizations were banned, students kicked out, expelled, suspended, new policies introduced affecting “masking to “distributing literature.”
This was all under a Biden presidency.
This is what will happen under Trump.
Colleges will not be safe. Not under this regime.
I’m expanding this to include trans people, because many nonbinary people also identify as trans, so its relevant. In the UK the Labour party (on the so-called left) have continued the ban on puberty blockers for trans kids that was introduced by the previous government. Its lead to a vastly under-reported rise in “deaths of young trans people on the NHS waiting list.”
Things won’t “remain better.” The Republicans spent an estimated 215 million dollars on anti-trans ads. They will focus will be on banning care, banning access to public spaces, and forced de-transitioning, which is genocide.
Illinois I think you mean.
It may not hurt you. It hurts some people a very great deal.
That wouldn’t be a problem if hiding didn’t hurt anybody, now would it?
It hurts some people all the way to death.
And it won’t stop if everyone’s pretending there’s nothing to be repressed.