On January 20, 2025, the 47th president of the United States signed Executive Order 14168 into law. The title of this Executive Order is: “DEFENDING WOMEN FROM GENDER IDEOLOGY EXTREMISM AND RESTORING BIOLOGICAL TRUTH TO THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.” Here is why it matters: This executive order attacks all transgender people in the United States, whether they are trying to play sports, get a passport with the correct gender marker, or are a federal employee that wants to have pronouns in their email signature. In one study, they linked transgender people’s mental health directly to the anti-transgender legislation being passed in the states that they lived in. This means that transgender people’s mental health is about to get a lot worse with this executive order. Transgender people lead the board in the most suicidal minority; I can only imagine how much worse it will be and how many lives we will lose in the next four years. 

I bring up this specific executive order attacking transgender people, there are many others, because I am a transgender man and I do not know if I will be able to go on my intercultural trip to Germany this summer because of it. I have done nothing to deserve this executive order nor has any other transgender person. We are harrassed, laughed at, beaten, murdered, and persecuted simply for existing. This executive order will not stop transgender people from existing or ‘protect women’ as the title claims; the only thing it will do is put more people in danger and continue the erasure of transgender people from society. Most of the people in the government believe we are only perverts and thugs that lurk in the dark ready to attack you and your children at any moment. I’m 5’6”, who am I gonna attack? A dwarf? The idea is as absurd as it sounds. As transgender people, we walk out of our houses every day knowing that it could be our last if someone hates us enough, so why would someone who has that fear perpetuate it onto other people? This executive order has only succeeded in adding fear to a marginalized community, sending the community into a mental health crisis, and continuing the erasure of it. How am I expected to get up and act like everything is normal, when the government of MY country passes executive orders like this? How do I pick myself up when there is NOTHING that I can do? How do I keep calm when no one I know is talking about what is happening to my community? I feel like I am screaming into a void. These next four years are only going to get worse, how am I expected to thrive or to even survive when in the first month I am practically banned from leaving the country, cannot sue for discrimination because being transgender apparently doesn’t exist, and cannot even start top surgery talks until I turn 19? It is frustrating to no end and sometimes it feels like I am suffocating. The only thing that is keeping me above water is planning a protest for transgender people’s rights. Transgender Day of Remembrance is March 31. This day is to remember the people we have lost to violence, and this year we will make their and our voices heard as we march from EMU to the court square. We can only survive together.