The point is both cruelty and wiping trans people from public society. The not only don’t understand being trans, don’t feel trans so it must not be real, and being transgender seems to upset their god they feel. Their god created the trans person trans but that doesn’t fit with the world view of these Christians. So if their god is not powerful enough to get rid of trans people then the entire LGBTQ+ they will do it for him. Sound like they created god in their image rather than being in his. Hugs
A trans Kansas resident recently changed her name but not her gender marker on her license, fearing what Kansas may do if she did. The Kansas DMV still flagged her ID.
by Nate Zuke
Andrea Ellis of Wellington, KS was one of many transgender Kansans who opened her mail on February 25 to learn that in less than 24 hours, her driver’s license would be invalid. The letter, issued by the Kansas Department of Revenue, informed her that because House Substitute for Senate Bill 244 (S.B. 244) “requires Kansas-issued driver’s license and identification cards to reflect the credential holder’s sex at birth,” her current license would become “invalid immediately” on February 26.
Ellis had been following the news closely in the past few months. She knew S.B. 244 would be going into effect. But she never expected the state to send her a letter invalidating her license.
That’s because Ellis had never changed the sex marker on her license in the first place.
Ellis last updated her driver’s license on January 7, 2026, after completing a legal name change in December 2025. Fearing her license would be revoked if she updated her sex marker, she deliberately held off on doing so.
“I saw the writing on the wall after listening to [Attorney General] Kobach’s testimony for H.B. 2426,” she said. H.B. 2426, containing the original transphobic legislation sponsored by Republican Kansas Representative Susan Humphries, would later be repurposed as S.B. 244 using the Kansas State Legislature’s “gut and go” trick. This allowed legislators to strip the original contents of S.B. 244, replace it with the contents of H.B. 2426, and pass S.B. 244 without giving the public time to weigh in, dodging accountability for the bill’s contents.
Most bills being passed during this session of the Kansas Legislature won’t go into effect until July 1, 2026. S.B. 244, however, contains a provision that allowed it to go into effect as soon as it was published in the Kansas Register, the state newspaper of record, on February 26. This tactic echoed 2025, when the Kansas Legislature made the same maneuver with Senate Bill 63 to rapidly ban gender-affirming care for minors in Kansas.
On February 25, transgender Kansans like Ellis started receiving letters in the mail informing them that as of February 26, their licenses would be rendered invalid. With no grace period, many recipients of these letters found themselves with less than 24 hours to figure out what to do in a rural state where driving is necessary for most people.
Ellis was confused about the letter she received, but felt as though she had no choice but to comply. She spends nearly an hour and a half each day driving to and from her job in Park City. Thursdays are one of her days off, so she didn’t have to call out of work on the 26th to go to the DMV. Still, having to suddenly get a new driver’s license was extremely inconvenient, as it would be for anyone.
“Wellington doesn’t have a DMV, so when I got the letter in the mail, I had to decide between going to the DMV in Winfield or the DMV in Derby,” said Ellis. Both locations were over thirty minutes away.
When Ellis left her house on Thursday morning, her license was officially invalid. She couldn’t comply with the new law unless she was able to get to a DMV, but in order to get to the DMV, she was forced to break the law. Every minute she was on the road, she was at risk of being arrested, jailed, or fined. Fortunately, she reached her destination without any trouble.
Once Ellis arrived at the DMV, she presented the letter to a confused employee. “It seemed like none of the DMV staff had any idea what was going on. I don’t think there was time for them to have any training on how to handle the SB244 stuff,” Ellis said. After presenting her letter, she was forced to surrender the license she had been issued less than two months ago and watch as the DMV employee cut a large chunk out of it, rendering it officially invalid. Her altered license was returned to her alongside her new temporary paper license. Both credentials designated her sex as “M.”
Paper license in hand, Ellis got in her car and started driving northeast to El Dorado, a town roughly 40 minutes away. “With a background like mine, I have to do something when there’s a crisis going on. I can’t just sit still,” Ellis said, referencing her past military service and reflecting on her deployments to Afghanistan. That morning, Equality El Dorado, the town’s local LGBTQ+ organization, had posted on Facebook asking for volunteers to help drive trans Kansans to the DMV, as well as cash donations to help people cover the unexpected cost of a replacement license. Other organizations, such as the LGBTQ Foundation of Kansas, also sprung into action to try and help transgender community members.
Ellis was ready to pitch in once she arrived in El Dorado, but she was stopped in her tracks. When she parked her car and checked her phone, she learned the Derby DMV had called her and left a message requesting that she come back to the DMV as soon as she could. Apparently, there was a problem with the new license she had just been issued. She tried to call the DMV back to get more information, but no one answered her calls. Frustrated, she got back in her car, canceled a doctor’s appointment she had scheduled for later that afternoon, and resigned herself to the fact that she was going to have to spend the majority of her day off at the DMV.
The DMV employee had to call a manager over for assistance, and Ellis waited patiently as the DMV staff tried to solve the issue. “They didn’t tell me what the problem was, but I overheard them saying there was a ‘flag’ tied to my ID in their system that they had to remove,” Ellis explained. Eventually, she was given another temporary paper license. Just like the license that had been cut up that morning, just like the first temporary paper license she had been issued as a replacement, and just like her original Alabama birth certificate, the sex marker printed on her newest paper license identified her as “M.”
By the time Ellis met up with me at Pennant Coffee/Good Company in Wichita, a local queer spot, a coffee shop by day and bar by evening, she’d driven a total of over 131 miles and spent close to three hours on the road. Sitting at Pennant, surrounded by pride flag decorations and chatting with the visibly queer and trans staff, it felt surreal to think that we were in one of the worst states in the U.S. to be transgender. But Ellis’s story proved the extent the state was willing to go to torment its transgender residents.
“I had never even changed my sex marker. All I did was change my name in December, so that’s the only way they could’ve flagged me,” Ellis said.
The fact that Ellis was flagged for her name change alone suggests the state of Kansas is intensely monitoring transgender citizens. In a state where changing one’s legal sex marker has now been rendered impossible, Ellis’s story shows that even just changing one’s name can be enough for a transgender person in Kansas to be identified, targeted, and forced to surrender their legal documents.
On February 27, 2026, the ACLU of Kansas announced it would be filing a lawsuit challenging S.B. 244. However, for the time being, S.B. 244 remains in effect. With the 2026 Kansas gubernatorial election looming large in November, it is extremely concerning to see the way the state is already using its power to not only disenfranchise its citizens, but effectively immobilize them in a state where driving is so essential to daily life.
Nate Zuke (he/him) is originally from Omaha, Nebraska. He has lived in Wichita, Kansas since 2016. His Bluesky handle is @natezuke.bsky.social
I have never understood the rights hate of LGBTQ+ people just for being different. I used to think it was they couldn’t understand it because they did feel that way. If they did not feel that way then it must be wrong or not exist. The very same things they say about trans people they said about gay people when I was a school kid. I remember that people were pushing to ban gay guys, and it was always gay guys just like it is always trans women, from teaching because they would molest the kids. Now it is we can’t let trans people use the bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity because of some fear they will molest the little girls. Always to protect the kids but if that was the goal then may I mention religious leaders? I think also the fear some religious right wingers have is that they find trans women attractive and that terrifies them. They want to force kids to go through the wrong puberty so it is harder for them to fit in with the stereotypes people have of what is masculine or feminine. For some they think they are doing the bidding of their deity but I don’t remember reading Jesus saying anything about trans people. But he did preach love and tolerance a lot. Maybe the pain and cruelty is the point after all. Hugs
Trans youth almost always feel less suicidal while undergoing treatment. (Getty
Trans youth almost always feel less suicidal while undergoing treatment. (Getty)
Yet another study proving that trans youth almost always feel less suicidal on gender-affirming care has been thrown on the pile of evidence that puberty blockers are safe and effective.
Research set to be published in the Journal of Paediatric’s February volume has once again proved that trans adolescents show “meaningful reductions” in depression and anxiety after beginning clinically-endorsed hormone therapy.
Co-written by paediatricians in Nevada, Texas, and Missouri, the study examined the wellbeing of 432 patients before and after undergoing treatment.
The participants, aged 12 to 20, were surveyed on their mental health before and at least 364 days after beginning appropriate medical treatment such as puberty blockers and hormone replacement therapy (HRT).
Trans youth regularly come under attack by politicians. (Getty)
Using the Ask Suicide-Screening Questions (ASQ) toolkit – an internationally acknowledged assessment of suicidality in young people and adults – researchers found significant improvements in the mental health of patients across the board.
Suicidality among participants decreased significantly over time, according to the study’s results, with rates continuing to decrease as time went on.
The reductions, clinicians noted, were consistent regardless of gender identity, treatment duration, and, interestingly, the age at the start of therapy.
This not only once again proves that gender-affirming care is remarkably effective in improving the wellbeing of trans patients, but that its effectiveness in reducing suicidal tendencies does not diminish as patients get older.
Clinicians recommended following-up the study with a “larger sample and longer follow-up” to sufficiently prove the consistency of gender-affirming care’s mental health treatments.
Politicians continue to ban puberty blockers despite evidence
Numerous studies across the globe have proven that gender-affirming care is almost always a good thing for trans people, especially trans young people.
One study from October 2024 found that 97 per cent of trans under-18s were “highly satisfied” with the results of gender-affirming treatment, while another from March in the same year found that, out of 548 patients who accessed trans healthcare, just two regretted it.
Regret rates for gender-affirming treatment are very low according to a paper from May 2024, which found that patients are more likely to regret knee surgery, breast augmentation, and even having children than those starting gender-affirming care.
Despite the mountain of evidence proving that gender-affirming care can be, and almost always is, life-saving, anti-trans politicians and political pundits regularly claim trans young people shouldn’t be allowed to access clinically-approved medical treatment.
Wes Streeting has routinely come under fire for his policies on trans people. (Getty)
At least 27 states in the US ban gender-affirming care in some capacity, preventing over 40 per cent of America’s trans youth population from accessing care. Puberty blockers are also banned for trans youth in the UK, despite being freely available for cisgender youth.
The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ+ suicide prevention organisation, warned these bans have “detrimental impacts” on the mental health of trans young people, who are already disproportionately likely to feel suicidal.
Research conducted by Dr Natacha Kennedy in the University of London found that Wes Streeting’s ban on puberty blockers for trans young people is “significantly, extensively, and relentlessly harming trans children and young people”.
She spoke to the parents of trans young people who were once “happy, well-adjusted, and little different from most cis children”, but who have now resorted to self-harm because of an inability to access care.
Suicide is preventable. Readers who are affected by the issues raised in this story are encouraged to contact the Samaritans on 116 123 (www.samaritans.org), or Mind on 0300 123 3393 (www.mind.org.uk). Readers in the US are encouraged to contact the National Suicide Prevention Line on 1-800-273-8255.
I love Erin’s posts and reporting. The attack on trans rights and health was planned and coordinated by religious conservatives who felt they lost the culture war on gay acceptance and same sex marriage so they decided to jump quickly on the trans issue with lots of money. Their first attempt failed because they went after the idea of trans people itself. So then they changed to the old “protect the children” play book with the entire focus on protecting little cis girls but they never mention the trans boys that cis boys need to be protected from. See how patristical it is? It is all about males needing to protect the little womans. They don’t care about trans kids, they don’t care about female sports. It is about not letting trans kids transition with puberty blockers and the correct hormones as then the kids will grow up as they are fitting the societal view of what men and women look like. That scares the straight cis male religious guys because they are terrified they will be attracted to a trans woman. Imagine the horror if trans people moved freely in society not raising any question of their gender because they conformed to how society sees each gender. That sounds like a grand thing to me, but it terrifies these fanatical religious grifters that want to control how everyone lives to please their god. They make up untrue and scary what ifs, what if a man uses the letting trans people use the bathroom of their gender ID to go into a girls … notice they phrase it girls not womans because that make people more protective from the start, and they harm a little girl, your little girl? Well nothing stops a man from doing that now! Predators don’t need permission and won’t wait for it. And that has happened where a straight cis male dragged a little girl into the male bathroom and raped her while his friend watched. There was a famous court case on it. Look it up if you want. Want to know what has not happened, a trans woman going into the female’s bathroom and assaulting a female. Sorry. The right has tried hard to make one happen, but each claim of a trans person in a locker room or bathroom acting inappropriate has been debunked and disproven. This is all a made up scandal and crisis by people who can not accept the society progressing beyond the old traditional binary they grew up with and they think their holy books claim must be as their god insists on it. Weird how it is always how their god insists on what they already believe or promote. Handy that. So many people can not move past the idea that if it dangles you MUST be a boy regardless of how you feel and if it is an inny you must be a girl regardless of anything else idea. They can not seem to grasp personal feelings, needs, or medial science. Hugs
The bill would establish the Affirming Health Care Trust Fund, administered by the State Treasurer, to support clinics and providers outside the reach of federal funding threats.
Vermont Bill Would Create State Trust Fund For Private Trans Youth Care Clinics As Trump Threatens Hospital Funding
The bill would establish the Affirming Health Care Trust Fund, administered by the State Treasurer, to support clinics and providers outside the reach of federal funding threats.
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Across the United States, gender-affirming care has come under sustained attack in Republican-led states and from the Trump administration. For transgender youth, those attacks have been especially severe, with roughly half of U.S. states now banning such care outright. At the federal level, the administration has waged an intense pressure campaign against hospitals, threatening funding and prompting many systems to drop their care programs altogether. That campaign has now escalated further, with the federal government moving to threaten hospitals’ entire Medicaid and Medicare funding if they continue providing transgender youth care. In response, some states and cities are beginning to fight back by establishing their own funding mechanisms for trans healthcare. The latest example comes from Vermont, where lawmakers have introduced a bill to create a trust fund for gender-affirming care designed to be entirely insulated from federal funding threats.
H.576, introduced by Representatives Daisy Berbeco, Tiffany Bluemle, and Troy Headrick, would establish the Affirming Health Care Trust Fund. Administered by the State Treasurer, the fund would provide direct monetary support to healthcare providers and nonprofits offering gender-affirming care in Vermont. It would cover costs for patients who would otherwise go without treatment, fund the establishment of Vermont-based clinics, and pay for malpractice and liability insurance for clinicians who continue offering care. The bill is part of an increasing movement towards private clinics as a mechanism to survive federal threats.
The bill also includes provisions designed to protect patient information from both federal pressure and out-of-state threats, going further than the recent “refuge” or “shield” laws passed in several blue states to protect transgender youth care. It explicitly bars the board and other state actors from disclosing patient-identifiable data, the identities of providers, or the identities of award recipients to the federal government. This is a significant protection given the wave of abusive legislation and attempts to subpoena transgender healthcare records nationwide. While federal preemption may ultimately be litigated, these provisions give clinics a stronger legal footing to resist such demands—particularly as similar subpoenas have been repeatedly quashed in recent court cases.
The bill comes as families scramble to locate alternatives to hospital systems that are abandoning them. With more than 20 hospitals closing their doors to transgender youth care out of fear and preemptive compliance with the Trump administration, many families have been forced to seek alternatives. Just this week, major hospital systems across Colorado, for example, have stopped providing care. Groups like the Trans Youth Emergency Project say they have the capacity to refer displaced patients to private clinics, and in many places those clinics do exist and are absorbing demand. But as hospital-based programs continue to shut down and demand rises, those private providers will need sustained support—and more clinics will need to be created. Bills like this are a targeted way to do exactly that.
If this bill passes, Vermont would be the latest state to protect care in this way—but it would not be the only one. Massachusetts passed a similar measure last year, allocating $1 million toward transgender youth care clinics, though that funding has already come under criticism as insufficient to meet statewide need in the wake of major clinic closures. In New York City, newly elected mayor Zohran Mamdani has pledged $65 million for transgender healthcare. If that funding is realized, it would position New York City as a major hub for private clinics capable of absorbing demand created by hospital closures across the country. This strategy could prove to be a critical backstop for private providers that are already emerging—and that are likely to come under increasing strain in the years ahead.
The bill allows funding from state appropriations, private donations, grants, and—importantly—federal funds under a future administration that is protective of transgender healthcare. It would take effect immediately upon passage, with the board required to convene by August 1, 2026. There are still hurdles ahead: the bill must advance through committee, pass both chambers, and ultimately receive meaningful funding to function as intended. But its introduction alone signals something important. At a moment when hospitals are retreating and families are being forced into crisis planning, Vermont lawmakers are putting forward a concrete framework to protect access to care rather than surrender it. For Vermonters who want to see their state take a clear stand, residents can find and contact their legislators through the Vermont General Assembly website to make clear where they stand on protecting transgender healthcare.
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Top Democratic officials put out a new guide, entitled “Deciding to Win,” that encourages Democrats to be a little more like Republicans on “identity and cultural issues.”
Left: David Axelrod // Public domain, Middle: James Carville // JD Lasica // Wikimedia Commons, Right: David Plouffe // Noam Galai // Wikimedia Commons
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This week, the self-styled centrist group WelcomePAC released a document entitled “Deciding to Win”—advised on by some of the Democratic Party’s most prominent strategists, including David Axelrod, James Carville, and David Plouffe—urging Democrats to act a little more like Republicans on so-called “identity and cultural issues.” The 58-page memo reads like a compendium of the consultant class’s worst instincts, encouraging candidates to become little more than poll-tested avatars and walking focus groups, trading conviction for triangulation. While the document rarely defines which “cultural issues” it means, the few times it does make it clear: queer and transgender people stand to lose the most if this vision of the Democratic Party takes hold.
The document begins with five key pillars for the party. Some of them make a lot of sense, such as “messaging on an economic program centered on lowering costs, growing the economy, creating jobs, and expanding the social safety net,” critiquing “the outsized political and economic influence of” the “ultra-wealthy,” and support for a $15/h minimum wage. Others, though, encourage the party to abandon platforms that have been central to its identity and mission to protect the most vulnerable in society, calling for the party to “Moderate our positions where our agenda is unpopular, including on issues like immigration, public safety, energy production, and some identity and cultural issues.”
While the document rarely defines what “identity and cultural issues” means, the examples make its targets clear. Support for the Equality Act—legislation that would codify gender identity and sexual orientation as protected classes under federal law—is cited as proof the party has “moved left.” Another section lists “protecting the rights of LGBTQ+ Americans” as a priority voters supposedly don’t want Democrats to emphasize. Elsewhere, a discussion of how to mobilize voters “sitting on the couch” reveals that the most popular policy among them is “defining sex as binary and based on biology at birth across federal agencies.” Later in the document, it explicitly calls out transgender sports participation as an issue that the party should “moderate” on.
Screenshot of Deciding to Win Chart of “moderate” policies
Imagine a world where Democrats actually heeded this advice. The “define sex as binary” policy—already championed in Republican-led states and now embedded in everything the Trump administration does—has had devastating consequences for transgender Americans. It has stripped trans people of the ability to update their passports, creating serious barriers to travel; defunded organizations that affirm gender diversity; and fueled crackdowns on college campuses that allow trans students to use restrooms matching their gender identity. It’s a policy of bureaucratic erasure, one that threatens to undo decades of hard-won progress—yet it’s presented, almost casually, as a “moderate” position Democrats might adopt to win votes.
It’s a vision of politics that would turn Democrats into little more than Republican Lite—a “big tent” party spacious enough for those who despise us but not for those who most need protection. In that world, Democrats would lose not just the meaning of leadership but the very soul of why the party exists. And it’s a fantasy built on delusion: no amount of fine-tuned messaging or poll-tested calibration will ever transform the party into the perpetual winner these consultants imagine.
We don’t have to imagine what happens when Democrats follow this playbook — we’ve already seen it. In New Hampshire, Democrats capitulated on multiple anti-trans bills, including bans on youth sports participation and gender-affirming surgery, only to suffer one of the party’s worst defeats of the 2024 election cycle, losing 20 seats. By contrast, Democrats in Montana fought hard against similar measures and mounted some of the most visible resistance to anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in the country, picking up ten seats in the state House—one of the party’s strongest showings nationwide, in a state Trump carried easily. In Kentucky, Governor Andy Beshear vetoed anti-trans bills, including a sports ban, and still won reelection in a Trump +31 state. And in New York, a ballot measure enshrining gender identity protections outperformed Kamala Harris’s statewide margin by a wide margin.
Despite the evidence, a faction within the Democratic Party still treats queer and trans people as expendable—convinced that by trimming the edges of equality and tolerating “a little” discrimination, they can win back power. It’s a ruinous illusion. This kind of triangulation doesn’t blunt Republican attacks; it validates them. Every state that once embraced sports bans or “compromise” restrictions has since escalated to banning medical care, censoring books, and policing bathrooms. Capitulation has never advanced LGBTQ+ rights—not in policy, not in public opinion, not once. Democrats aren’t losing because they’ve been too loud or too firm in defending equality; they’re losing because the far right invests in its own moral narrative while Democrats second-guess theirs. The only way forward is to stand unapologetically on principle—as Andy Beshear did in Kentucky, citing it as the very reason for his success—not to chase the approval of consultants who mistake cowardice for strategy and appeasement for leadership.
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These bans have been successful in part because of a toxic and ruthless ecosystem of far-right influencers, like Riley Gaines, who have formed entire careers around attacking trans athletes by prioritizing hate and misinformation.
“So much of what we see … just seems like it’s wrapped up in really hateful and negative messages that aren’t good for anyone,” says Mary Fry, a professor of sport and exercise psychology at the University of Kansas. “We’re creating issues where maybe we don’t need to.”
The anti-trans attacks in sports are also affecting cis women. Ayala, a competitive cyclist, remembers one race where she and her trans friend both made the podium. When photos of the event were posted on Facebook, people accused her of being trans, and she was added to a “list of males who have competed in female sports” maintained by Save Women’s Sports.
Earlier this year, 16-year-old AB Hernandez became the target of nationwide hate and harassment when the president of a local school board publicly doxxed the track and field athlete and outed her as transgender. Right-wing activists misgendered her and called her mom “evil;” swarms of adults showed up to heckle her at games; Charlie Kirk pushed state governor Gavin Newsom to condemn her; and President Donald Trump threatened to withhold federal funding from California over her participation.
While transgender athletes are very rare, this type of harassment towards them is playing out across the country and internationally. A trans girl was harassed at a soccer game in Bow, New Hampshire, by adult protestors wearing XX/XY armbands, representing an anti-trans sports clothing brand. And in British Columbia, a 9-year-old cis girl was accosted by a grown man who accused her of being trans and demanded that she prove her sex to him.
While research into the relative athletic capabilities of trans and cis women is ongoing, far-right groups, including the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Leadership Institute, have been putting hate before science to turn the public against trans athletes since at least 2014. And it’s working.
Laws, rules or regulations currently ban trans athletes from competing in sports consistent with their gender identity in 29 states, with 21 beginning the ban in kindergarten. The majority-conservative Supreme Court announced this month that it’ll be taking on the question of the constitutionality of the bans. Meanwhile, the federal government is pressuringstates without bans to change their policies in compliance with a Trump executive order that attempts to institute a nationwide ban.
Trump signs an executive order calling for bans on trans women and girls from women’s sports. Photo by: The White House.
These bans have been successful in part because of a toxic and ruthless ecosystem of far-right influencers, like Riley Gaines, who have formed entire careers around attacking trans athletes by prioritizing hate and misinformation.
“So much of what we see … just seems like it’s wrapped up in really hateful and negative messages that aren’t good for anyone,” says Mary Fry, a professor of sport and exercise psychology at the University of Kansas. “We’re creating issues where maybe we don’t need to.”
Harassment and Mental Health
Grace McKenzie has been deeply affected by these hate campaigns. A lifelong athlete, McKenzie has stayed healthy by playing multiple sports where she’s met “amazing people.” Shortly after she transitioned in 2018, she was thrilled when she was invited to join a women’s rugby team at the afterparty of a Lesbians Who Tech conference.
Grace McKenzie. Photo courtesy of McKenzie.
“Rugby became my home, it was my first queer community, it was the space where I really discovered my own womanhood,” McKenzie told Uncloseted Media. “I could be the sometimes-masculine, soft-feminine person who play[s] rugby and loves sports.”
But that started to change in 2019, when McKenzie and others on her team started to hear rumors that World Rugby was considering a ban on trans athletes. Fearing the loss of her community, she started a petition that racked up 25,000 signatures—but it wasn’t enough, and the ban took effect in 2020.
As anti-trans rhetoric in sports has ramped up, McKenzie says she’s had soul-crushing breakdowns that have left her “sobbing uncontrollably and unconsolably.”
“It would be these waves of such intense despair and rage—it was like going through grief for five years,” she says. “I have to wake up every single day and read about another state or another group of people who say that they don’t want me to exist.”
While McKenzie says she’s found the strength to keep playing where she can, sports psychologist Erin Ayala has seen clients leave sports altogether due to the hate toward trans athletes.
“It can be really difficult when they feel like they’re doing everything right … and they still don’t belong,” says Ayala, the founder of the Minnesota-based Skadi Sport Psychology, a therapy clinic for competitive athletes. “Depression can be really high. They don’t have the strength to keep fighting to show up. And then that can further damage their mental health because they’re not getting the exercise and that sense of social support and community.”
That was the story of Andraya Yearwood, who made national headlines in high school when she and another trans girl placed first and second in Connecticut’s high school track competitions. The vitriol directed at her was intense: Parents circulated petitions to have her banned; crowds cheered for her disqualification; the anti-LGBTQ hate group Alliance Defending Freedom launched a lawsuit against the state for letting her play; and she faced a torrent of transphobic and racist harassment.
“It’s a very shitty experience,” Yearwood, now 23, told Uncloseted Media.
Fearing more harassment, she quit running in college.
“I understood that collegiate athletics is on a much larger and much more visible scale. … I just didn’t want to go through all that again for the next four years,” she says. “Track obviously meant a lot to me, and to have to let that go was difficult.”
It’s understandable that Yearwood and other trans athletes struggle when they have to ditch their favorite sport. A litany of research demonstrates that playing sports fosters camaraderie and teamwork and improves mental and physical health. Since trans people disproportionately struggle from poor mental health, social isolation and suicidality, these benefits can be especially crucial.
“In some of these cases, kids have been participating with a peer group for years, and then rules were made and all of a sudden they’re pulled away,” says Fry. “It’s a hard world to be a trans individual in, so it’d be easy to feel lonely and separated.”
Caught in the Crossfire
The anti-trans attacks in sports are also affecting cis women. Ayala, a competitive cyclist, remembers one race where she and her trans friend both made the podium. When photos of the event were posted on Facebook, people accused her of being trans, and she was added to a “list of males who have competed in female sports” maintained by Save Women’s Sports.
Ayala isn’t alone. Numerous cis female athletes have been “transvestigated,” or accused of being trans, including Serena Williams and Brittney Griner. During the 2024 Paris Olympics, Donald Trump and Elon Musk publicly accused Algerian boxer Imane Khelif of being trans after her gold medal win, as part of a wave of online hate against her. She would later file a cyberbullying complaint against Musk’s X.
While women of all races have been targeted, Black women have faced harsher scrutiny due to stereotypes that portray them as more masculine.
Yearwood remembers posts that would fixate on her muscle definition and compare her to LeBron James.
“I think that is attributed to the overall hyper-masculinization and de-feminization of Black women, and I know that’s a lot more prevalent for Black trans women,” she says. “It made it easier to come for us in the way that they did.”
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A Big Distraction
Joanna Harper, a post-doctoral scholar at Oregon Health & Science University and one of the world’s leading researchers on the subject, says that the jury is still out on whether the differences in athletic performance between trans and cis women are significant enough to warrant policy changes.
“People want simple solutions, they want things to be black and white, they want good guys and bad guys,” Harper says, adding that the loudest voices against trans women’s participation do not actually care about what the science says.
“This idea that trans women are bigger than cis women, therefore it can’t be fair, is a very simple idea, and so it is definitely one that people who want to create trans people as villains have pushed.”
Even Harper herself has been the victim of the far-right’s anti-trans attacks. Earlier this year, she was featured in a New York Times article where she discussed a study she was working on with funding from Nike into the effects of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) on adolescents’ athletic performance.
Riley Gaines and OutKick founder Clay Travis attack Harper’s study on X.
“That Nike chose to fund a study on trans athletes doesn’t actually say that they’re supporting trans athletes. They’re merely supporting research looking into the capabilities of trans athletes,” Harper says. “You don’t know what the research will show until you get the data … but the haters don’t want any data coming out that doesn’t support what they want to say.”
Harper says this anti-trans fervor and HRT bans are making it more difficult to conduct studies in the first place.
And while the far-right argues that they are “protecting women’s sports” in their war on trans athletes, multiple athletes and experts told Uncloseted Media that this distracts from bigger issues in women’s sports, including sexualharassment by coaches and a lack of funding.
“If the real goal was to help women’s sports, they would try to increase funding [and] support for athletes,” says Harper, noting that women’s sports receive half as much money as men’s sports at the Division I collegiate level. “But that’s not what they’re doing, and it becomes pretty evident the real motivation behind these people.”
Since Trump’s reelection, Grace McKenzie has somewhat resigned herself to the likelihood of attacks on trans people getting worse. Despite this, she finds hope in building community with other trans athletes, such as the New York City-based trans basketball league Basketdolls.
“If that’s the legacy that [the anti-trans movement] wants to leave behind, good for them,” McKenzie says. “Our legacy is going to be one about hope, and collective solidarity, and mutual aid, and I would much rather be on that side of the fence.”
Meanwhile, Fry remains hopeful that conflicts can be resolved and that trans people may be able to find a place in sports over time.
“If we could all have more positive conversations and not create such a hateful environment around this issue, it would just benefit everyone.”
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The thing I like about the video is that she points out how the state claims it must do this to protect kids from the dangerous drugs yet allows their use for straight cis children just not for trans children. The law states it is about making kids accept their birth assigned gender and keeping them from transitioning.
They tried these laws with kids who were gay decades ago and some still fight for it. Force gay kids to accept a heterosexual orientation through conversion methods and then outlaw being homosexual along with erasing anything homosexual from society. It did not work. The courts vigorously defended and backed up gay people’s rights to exist as themselves and have full equality of societies benefits as straight people do.
Sadly we have much different courts now stacked with bigots and racists by bigots and racist who will push and promote the bigotry. But in the law itself they wrote the bigotry out loud, clear, and easy to see. The republican lawmakers are making it plain this is about erasing trans kids and that will make erasing trans adults much easier. I wonder if they will succeed, but I am worried. The video is well worth the watch. If you do not wish to watch the video but prefer to read the transcript she provides a link to it in the description box. Many of the podcasters now do. Hugs
Left: David Axelrod // Public domain, Middle: James Carville // JD Lasica // Wikimedia Commons, Right: David Plouffe // Noam Galai // Wikimedia Commons
Scottie's Playtime 