feeling a strange empowerment at my most marginalized
9 April 2025
I’ve talked a few times about Trump’s executive order regarding gender, strictly defining gender as a binary according to one’s “sex at conception.” But what I haven’t talked about, and what has been significantly more relevant to my life, is his other executive order, this one about trans children.
In essence, this executive order takes aim at all transgender individuals under 19 (which unfortunately includes me). Specifically, it strictly bans
the use of puberty blockers, including GnRH agonists and other interventions, to delay the onset or progression of normally timed puberty in an individual who does not identify as his or her sex; the use of sex hormones, such as androgen blockers, estrogen, progesterone, or testosterone, to align an individual’s physical appearance with an identity that differs from his or her sex; and surgical procedures that attempt to transform an individual’s physical appearance to align with an identity that differs from his or her sex or that attempt to alter or remove an individual’s sexual organs to minimize or destroy their natural biological functions. This phrase sometimes is referred to as “gender affirming care.”
To put in more simple language, it bans HRT, including puberty blockers, and all gender affirming surgeries, such as bottom surgery, facial feminization surgery, top surgery, and more, even for 18 year olds.
I have been on HRT for over 2 years now. I started when I was 16. If I had my way, I would’ve started when I was 15. And I am 18 until the summer. So, when I read the news on January 28th, I began to panic. I couldn’t stop thinking about what would happen if they took away my HRT. How long would I go without it, what might happen to me, physically, mentally, emotionally, did I even think I could bear that? And I thought about the injustice of it. How, not only was my bodily autonomy violated and restricted as a minor, but I am now 18, supposedly with a right to my own body, to my own medical treatment. And yet it was now illegal for that bodily autonomy to be respected.
Of course, I calmed down. I figured that the state I resided in would protect me for at least the 6 months until I was 19. But I also knew that this was the beginning, not the end. And I thought about how I might ensure my body is never controlled or violated by any other person or authority. So, I naturally looked into other avenues. Ultimately, I’ve come up with a plan for if somehow they manage to revoke my agency in this way. I don’t think I need to worry about the power the state has over my body anymore.
But what I’ve really learned from this is what my position really is in our social hierarchy. More importantly, I’ve learned what it’s like to have my existence criminalized by the state. And I’ve learned the natural consequences of that.
Throughout much of my life, I would have considered myself generally “leftist,” but not really radical. At one point, I recall describing myself as a “capitalist,” like a centrist that was reasonable and just believed in common sense political changes. And yet as I’ve both experienced more firsthand and read, listened to, and talked about other’s own firsthand experiences, it’s become blindingly obvious that there is no space for non-radical politics. There are a whole host of other avenues through which to talk about that, namely decolonialism and anti-racism, but, more currently relevant, is how my own body has been radicalized, regardless of my own wishes.
When I first came out shortly before my 16th birthday, my mom had us talk to my doctor, coming out to him. When I explained that I wanted to get on hormones and that she didn’t want me to, he said to me something along the lines of “don’t you see how that is a radical choice?” And I didn’t disagree. It is kind of a radical choice. But if you are trans, you know it is a radical choice that nothing will stop you from taking. If you are not trans, it may be difficult for you to understand, and it is difficult for me to put into words exactly. But this is a choice that, for me, and for many other trans people, is simply unquestionable. It endlessly pulls you towards it.
In the years since then, I return to that moment again, and again, and again. And each time, I ask myself, was he wrong? And each time, I come to the conclusion that, no, he wasn’t really. A lot of my experiences with cis people, whether well-meaning or not, have also persuaded me of this. It becomes really obvious that our existence is wholly foreign to them. It’s radical. And ultimately, it’s deeply political. It is essentially a holistic, absolute, and necessary refutation of everything patriarchy stands for.
I still have some friends, even in 2025, that consider themselves “apolitical.” Even as their friends fear their families being deported, fear their healthcare being taken away, fear being fired for their identity. But I know that I can never be apolitical, because my existence is politicized. My existence as a transgender person is political not because I make it political, but because my position within our society is political. And my existence in spite of that position makes it radical. In essence, my position offers me a dilemma: choose radicalism or choose death. I will never choose death. So I choose radicalism.
Strangely enough though, I find this deeply empowering. Because if it is my existence that is fundamentally radical, then radicalism is neither a choice, nor a “project” of sorts, nor a statement. It is just living. And, it’s kind of empowering knowing that each time I step outside, I am performing a radical action. All the conservative bigots who claim we are destroying the family or whatever nonsense, are kind of right. Because I think we are destroying the patriarchal family, in the sense of a cishet white man who controls his wife and children like his property, protected and enforced by the state and by business, isolated and alone cut off from their community. And I think that’s pretty fucking awesome.
But more importantly, it in a way creates a prerogative for me to be radical, to tell my friends how to fuck with ICE and the cops, to feed those our economy has decided must go unfed, to meet new people and spread subversive ideas about what freedom and life and friendship mean to me. When your body is criminalized, everything becomes clear to you.
On January 28th, I read the news. I got on the train home. I sobbed while staring out the window grateful there was a loud family to drown out my little tears. They laughed and loved one another and were so plainly and transparently joyful. And when I was done, everything became incredibly clear to me. I knew exactly what I had to do, and I knew I would do it. And then I did it. I may not have that same moment of pure clarity at the moment. But I do know just as I knew then that once we are criminalized, there is nothing to hold us back.