It’s a distressing time to be a trans person just trying to mind your business.

This March, the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention issued its third “red flag” warning about the risk of “anti-trans genocide” in the United States, warning about laws and policies designed to “criminalize” the entire trans community “based solely on its existence.”

In February, Kansas invalidated the IDs of all trans people in the state with a single day’s notice. Finally, just recently, the International Olympic Committee mandated that all persons competing in women’s events must submit to genetic screening—which will also ban all trans women and many intersex people from participating in Olympic sports.

As a trans person trying to walk my dog, pay my bills, and answer work emails in time to fold the laundry and make dinner, it’s profoundly stressful to say the least.

Dozens and dozens of peer-reviewed, scientifically valid studies in dozens of countries and contexts show that letting people make their own choices about how they live their own lives in their own bodies is very good for their well-being.

But it’s been this way for years. The tide of contemporary anti-trans legislation has grown from 2016’s famous (and failed) “bathroom bill” in North Carolina to a wave of speculative legislation funded by conservative billionaires creating division by stoking manufactured mass hysteria.

The numbers are staggering: a 668% increase in anti-trans legislation from 2021 to 2025, according to the Lemkin Institute. Since we all huddled down on our couches and started a sourdough hobby in 2020, the Institute says, we’ve had six consecutive record-breaking years in anti-trans bills introduced across the country.

But the horrors don’t stop in the legislatures.

A recent executive order banning trans people from the military calls trans people inherently dishonest and dishonorable. The US 4th Circuit Court of Appeals just ruled that states can legally compel trans adults like me to “appreciate [our] sex” by banning our access to gender-affirming healthcare. And when a Texan politician called billionaires a more........

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