Anonymity has been granted in this article to two transgender students due to recent federal actions. The identities of each person have been verified.
Since his inauguration, President Donald Trump has signed various executive orders attacking transgender individuals, including banning trans athletes in sports, restricting gender-affirming care for trans youth and removing LGBTQIA+ web pages from government websites.
One of these executive orders states the federal government will only recognize two sexes — male and female — and prohibit the ‘X’ gender marker on federal documents.
The first openly transgender congresswoman, Representative Sarah McBride (D-Del.) has been barred from using women’s bathrooms on federal properties per legislation made by a fellow member of Congress.
Several legislative acts over the last few months, at both federal and state levels, also target trans individuals and the LGBTQIA+ community.
“Trans people are being legislated out of public life, banning us from sporting events, banning us from health care access, banning us and our free speech [and] putting restrictions on drag shows,” said Depre Carr, a junior political science and economics major at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
“I fear that if these actions to oppress trans people go further over the coming years, especially under the Trump administration,” Carr said. “We could get dangerously close to irrevocable harm on a massive scale.”
Carr realized she was trans at around 10 years old after experiencing a growth spurt. She felt “unshakable discomfort and anxiety, like nervousness and an angst about my life and who I am and how my body [was].”
The sex education curriculum at her school neglected to teach students about trans people, only learning more about the LQBTQIA+ community when she lived in gender-neutral housing at camp.
“Meeting [the other trans and non-binary kids] recontextualized all of the angst and discomfort I was feeling about my gender and my physical development going through puberty,” Carr said. The environment allowed her to experiment with her gender and what felt right for her and her body. “Being exposed to queer identity, I think is very important for children to either realize that they are genderqueer or to realize that they are cisgender.”
She reached an unlivable state at 15 and started experimenting with her pronouns and underwent hormone therapy shortly after. “I suspect it’s a similar sense of realization when someone has poor vision growing up. Then after a while of the world being blurry, first putting on glasses and the whole world becomes clear.”
Another transgender student at UMass, a freshman psychology major, felt a similar unease when he hit puberty. He said he has always been androgynous, but during puberty, people started to force him into a “rigid stereotypical gender box.”
When COVID-19 occurred, he was locked in with his discomfort and had to face it. Even after he came to terms with his gender identity, he still had to overcome internalized transphobia.
Realizing there was “nothing wrong with me, that I didn’t hate my body, that I didn’t dislike myself” was healing, he said.
A sophomore civil engineering student at UMass felt a comparable discomfort when growing up, specifically when wearing a dress. They didn’t mind presenting femininely on their own terms, but doing so in “the standard heteronormative way felt like [they were] tripping on stage while everyone was staring.”
They went through a period where they constantly thought about identifying as a man, but then realized they didn’t just feel comfortable in one gender. The student came to an epiphany when they realized using ‘any pronouns’ was possible. After testing these pronouns over video game chat rooms, they realized being genderfluid felt like them.
They’ve become more comfortable expressing their pronouns to others, whereas they used to say their pronouns were she/her to avoid prejudice.
All three students mentioned the positive change they’ve felt being at UMass. The freshman psychology major wasn’t out in high school and still is not out to some close family members. At UMass, amongst trans peers, he has been able to “be my own person and live my life the way I want to,” he said.
“Having less rigid standards of gender placed on me has helped a lot with dysphoria,” he said. “Dysphoria is an incongruity in the way you see yourself and the way you are as a person,” he said.
The University Health Services (UHS) has been very helpful for Carr’s medical transition since now she can just walk down the road to get hormone therapy rather than traveling to Boston. The civil engineering major was surprised that UMass had so many gender affirming treatments available, especially at the Stonewall Center.
Gender affirming care is also important for the freshman psychology major, who said gender affirming care is a “step towards seeing the same person in the mirror as you see in your head.”
He noted that many people think that gender affirming care solely constitutes hormones and surgery when it could just come from a haircut. He experienced less dysphoria after cutting his hair shorter.
Carr has been grateful for the gender-neutral housing in Orchard hill: “Simply being comfortable and safe where you are frees you up to focus on anything else you’d rather think about.”
“Unfortunately, trans identity is within the boundaries of political contest, so it’s hard to focus on those experiences that are unambiguously joyful,” she said.
The civil engineering major found joy when their cisgender friend joked around and called them “maybe boy” and “sometimes girl.” Their overall friendship made them realize they “can meet people with this identity and be accepted.”
In 2022, Carr’s classmates held a walkout at Acton-Boxborough High School against a new bill criminalizing people involved in gender-affirming healthcare for trans youth. The event was blissful to Carr since an acquaintance of hers (who was mildly conservative) joined them in support of trans people even though he used to believe in the anti-trans rhetoric he consumed. They used to spend their bus rides as teenagers discussing trans identity.
“I had helped my conservative acquaintance resist those forces that would seek to dehumanize me,” she said.
The freshman psychology major said he relies on other people being open-minded which would be taken away if anti-trans rhetoric persists.
“Sh*t’s scary,” he said. “It’s barely been two full months [into the Trump Administration] and we’re already seeing massive censorship,” he said at the time of his interview.
He emphasized that trans people make up less than one percent of the U.S. population and most people don’t personally know a trans person. “It’s very easy to put blame on people that you’ve never even met,” he said.
“My fear is I know it will be worse,” the civil engineering major said. “I’ve read the books, I see where this goes, and I don’t like it.”
“Maybe it takes the world actually f**king burning for people to understand one another. If that’s what it takes, then listen, it can be rebuilt. I have faith in it,” the sophomore civil engineering major said.
“If I have children someday, I believe it’s possible they will grow up in a world where trans people are no longer on the [political] agenda,” said Carr. “[Conservative rhetoric] has the outcome of dehumanizing us in that they spread disinformation and misinformation that make us seem conniving.”
“While [current rhetoric] is very scary, queer people and queer culture is unkillable,” Carr said. “We should choose hope over despair.”
Norah Stewart can be reached at [email protected].
