Every Time We Fall For It

A Trans Perspective on the 2024 Election

By Elysian Alder | Editor-in-Chief

“We’re sorry for the wait. We’re experiencing high demand for LGBTQ+ support and are connecting you to a national crisis counselor.” For many in the LGBTQ+ community, these were the harrowing words that greeted them when they reached out to the national suicide hotline on election night for support. And they weren’t alone.

The Trevor Project, a nonprofit dedicated to crisis intervention and suicide prevention for LGBTQ+ youth, reported a staggering — and deeply troubling — 700% increase in crisis contacts the day after the 2024 election, with election-related conversations spiking by 5,200%. 

The organization also found that 90% of LGBTQ+ youth said their mental health had taken a significant hit because of recent political discussions and events. For transgender and nonbinary youth, the impact of political and legal policies is even more severe, with anti-transgender laws leading to a 72% rise in suicide attempts. According to CNN, more than 500 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been introduced since 2023 — almost all of them proposed by Republican lawmakers across the country.

This is not a fringe issue. A Gallup survey found that 7.6% of U.S. adults now identify as LGBTQ+. Each generation has seen a dramatic increase: More than one in five Gen Z adults (ages 18 to 26) identify as LGBTQ+, compared to nearly 10% of millennials, less than 5% of Generation X, and only 2% of baby boomers. For younger generations especially, today’s political rhetoric and policies carry a weight that can be too heavy to bear.

Maybe these numbers feel abstract. But if you claim to care about the LGBTQ+ community or equality in general, they should matter. Behind these numbers are real people: your classmates, professors, friends, family members, co-workers, neighbors. Even if you don’t believe you know someone in the LGBTQ+ community, statistically, someone in your life is likely part of these targeted groups, even if they haven’t shared that with you. Your vote — whether for a candidate promoting anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, a negligible vote for a third-party candidate, or a decision not to vote at all — carries real consequences. It impacts their safety, dignity and well-being. It impacts their very right to exist.

I am one of those affected people.

And I get it—when the economy is struggling, people worry about their finances and their future. Times are tough, and in this country, we turn to our leaders for solutions to rising costs and economic hardship. According to the census, 36.8 million people lived in poverty in 2023. I know what that looks like because I lived it. For much of my childhood and adolescence, I experienced poverty and homelessness firsthand. But the individualist mindset that often dominates these conversations—the idea that everyone should fend for themselves—misses the point entirely. Economic struggles and systemic inequality don’t exist in a vacuum, and the policies that target marginalized communities are often the same ones that keep the people of our nation trapped in cycles of poverty.

Watching the election results unfold was a whirlwind of negative emotions for me. Now, there’s a lingering discomfort in not knowing who around me might have voted to uphold hatred, violence or the persistence of harmful ignorance. This election has shaken my once-firm belief that people are inherently good, that the world itself leans toward goodness. 

According to ABC News, this campaign poured more than $21 million into anti-transgender and anti-LGBTQ+ television ads. One such ad proclaimed, “Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you,” targeting audiences during NFL and college football broadcasts. The ad’s impact on voter behavior is debated: Future Forward reported a 2.7% shift in Trump’s favor, while surveys from LGBTQ media advocacy groups GLAAD and Ground Media found the ads largely ineffective.

This rhetoric leaves me torn between the urge to withdraw from public life entirely and a desperate need to fight back — louder, bolder and queerer than ever.

But the reality is sobering: The president-elect, a man convicted of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records and found liable for sexual abuse, will now govern our country with the backing of a Republican-controlled House and Senate. This prospect is troubling — not just for the direction of the United States, but for its far-reaching global consequences.

But let’s set aside those real, global implications for a moment and focus on what this has the potential to mean here in this country. 

In an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, Vice President-elect J.D. Vance dismissed gender-affirming care as “pharmaceutical conversion therapy.” He even floated the baseless claim that wealthy parents might encourage their children to identify as transgender to improve their chances of Ivy League admission. This theory not only lacks evidence but runs counter to data. Studies by the Common App, a nonprofit undergraduate admissions service, show that fewer non-cisgender students, particularly those identifying as nonbinary, are applying to and being admitted by Ivy League schools. A CNN survey found that more than a third of transgender respondents live in poverty, with 30% reporting that they’ve been homeless at least once in their lives.

Looking back, in 2022, Vance stated in an interview with Mission America that if he’d been in the Senate at the time of the same-sex marriage bill, he would have voted no on it. In 2023, Vance proposed legislation to ban the use of “X” gender designations on passports — a marker that accommodates nonbinary and other LGBTQ+ identities and was first allowed by the State Department in 2022.

Unsurprisingly, Trump’s proposed policies go even further. Speaking at a Moms for Liberty event, he pledged to sign an executive order directing federal agencies to “cease the promotion of sex or gender transition at any age.” 

The phrasing “at any age” is particularly noteworthy — and alarming. It alludes to restricting access to gender-affirming care not only for minors but for adults as well. This is a significant escalation from the usual anti-transgender rhetoric focused on youth, now seemingly targeting the autonomy of every transgender person, regardless of age, and denying them the right to make decisions about their own bodies and identities. 

This isn’t a new target on our backs — it’s just bigger now, with more attention drawn to it.

During his previous term, Trump’s administration proposed and finalized a rule that gutted nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ+ individuals in health care. By redefining “sex discrimination” under the Affordable Care Act to apply only to biological sex, the rule allowed medical providers and insurers to deny services to transgender patients and others based on gender identity, jeopardizing access to essential care.

Now emboldened, some lawmakers are already pushing forward bills in Texas, which defines “male” and “female” based solely on reproductive anatomy, leaving no room for intersex or nonbinary individuals. The bill also bans recognition of nonbinary gender identities on official documents and perpetuates stereotypes about physical differences to enforce gender segregation in public spaces. Meanwhile, other bills target transition-related care, banning insurance coverage for such treatments under state-funded plans and allowing doctors who provide gender-affirming care to be sued.

Even in Congress, the election of Representative-elect Sarah McBride, the first transgender person to hold a seat in Congress, was met with vitriol and hostility. Republican Speaker Mike Johnson and Rep. Nancy Mace introduced and supported a bill to ban transgender people from using bathrooms that do not match their assigned sex on federal property. Yet, in an interview with The New Yorker, McBride said she does not anticipate transgender issues being the main focus of her time in Congress. Gallup’s surveys also show that less than a majority of voters view transgender issues as extremely or very important to their presidential vote choice. Still, it is telling — and disheartening — how elected officials respond when faced with transgender people, who are, at the end of the day, simply people. 

When, according to these surveys, 52% of voters identify the economy as the most pressing issue, it raises questions about why so much time and money are being spent on issues like transgender policies instead of addressing the economic concerns that voters prioritized when electing these officials.

If you ask me, the relentless fixation on anti-LGBTQ+ policies is no accident; it’s a distraction, designed to steer attention away from the issues voters say matter most, like the economy and healthcare. And every time we fall for it, the damage spreads. For some, that harm begins with waiting on hold during a crisis, hearing the words, “We’re experiencing high demand,” and wondering if anyone is truly paying attention—if the people who claim to stand for equality actually mean it.