On January 20, 2025 Donald Trump was sworn into office for the second time. Since then there has been a direct attack on transgender rights. In the span of 5 weeks he’s signed executive orders recognizing male and female as the only two, unchangeable, sexes, restricting bathroom use and sports inclusivity for trans people, changing the sexes on people’s passports without their knowledge, and removing the option of putting an X down for sex. The Trump administration claims that these laws were made under the notion of protecting cishet women, however, many trans women have expressed distress in the rise of violence against them.  When Trump signed orders to move trans women to men’s prisons, he put them in direct danger. Trump doesn’t just want to hurt the trans adults who have fought for years to receive the care and treatment they need, he wants to prevent trans children from ever getting the opportunity of gender affirming care. 

“Gender affirming care, and the normalization of gender affirming care, is necessary for transgender people to exist in society as they do now,” Holly Chinowsky, a transgender student at Seattle Community College said. “It allows people to conform to the norms expected of the current gendered society, and without it, trans people would suffer both mentally and societally.” However, it goes beyond surgery and hormone replacement treatment, trans people also need acceptance and understanding at a societal level. Both are equally important in their own ways as, “they’re inherently interlinked, with medical care reinforcing and aiding social care,” Chinowsky said. Nonetheless, “for social care to be effective, society at large must be at least somewhat trans-friendly, which can be a difficult thing to achieve in conservative areas.” As America begins to lean more conservatively, the scale starts to tip against compassion for trans people. “However, the fight to legally safeguard medical transition is a practical political matter, which is aided by general societal acceptance, but requires it to a lesser degree.” 

The new laws brought about by the Trump Administration are only the beginning. “I’m concerned about a general cultural swing against trans people that will harm both social and medical care through denormalization,”  Chinowsky said. “Things like preventing government workers from writing their pronouns in their email signature, drumming transgender people out of the military, and banning trans children from competing in sports do real work to shift public perception towards seeing trans people as an alien outgroup, as well as directly limiting trans people’s rights and freedoms,” Chinowsky continued. While current legislation mainly targets trans youth, Chinowsky expressed a common fear among the trans community; that the administration will “introduce more legislation limiting medical transition for as many people as they can, possibly including adults.”