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