Donald Trump Has Come For My Trans Daughter

I never thought that the president of 'the land of the free', would turn his firehose of hate on my own child. If he can target her, he can target your children too

Photo by Norbu GYACHUNG on Unsplash

I’m writing this post as a mom. And I’m betting that so many of you are parents or aunts and uncles, that you will understand why I’m speaking to you in a very personal way.

While I normally write about the assault on reproductive healthcare issues, today I’m responding to Donald Trump’s vicious new war on another vulnerable group besides pregnant women.

That’s his full fledged attack on trans people.

My oldest daughter is a trans woman.

I have four wonderful children and now Donald Trump, his co president Elon Musk and his allies have aimed their poisonous arrows at my daughter who is a member of the smallest minority group in the country.

What did she or any other trans person ever do to Donald Trump or any of his Republican accomplices to be targeted and demonized relentlessly?

Absolutely nothing. But Donald Trump needs to distract Americans from all his Project 2025 plans being enacted and his Elon Musk- led destruction of the federal government, so he chose a small, vulnerable and defenseless group of Americans to scapegoat.

Trans people had already been the obsession of right extremist Republicans in states like North Carolina which banned them in 2016 from using the rest rooms coinciding with their gender identities.

And in the past several years, states like Texas, Tennessee and now Kansas, which stand up relentlessly for parental rights when it comes to parents preventing their kids from being vaccinated. But override parental rights when parents have a trans child.

Most Republican - led states have now decided they don’t care one whit about parental rights when parents want their trans teen to receive medically recommended gender affirming care care. They have banned it. In Texas, they even investigate families for child abuse if Attorney General Ken Paxton believes that a minor is receiving gender affirming care.

Talk about not minding their own damn business.

And I’m not talking about surgeries. Almost no trans person under 18 gets surgeries despite Donald Trump’s ridiculous campaign lies about children going to school as one sex and then coming home later in the day as another sex.

That never happens. Ever.

But trans people are a perfect target for a bully like Donald Trump.

There are only 1.6 million trans people in the U.S. out of a total population of 335 million.

That’s just 0.6% of our entire population

There are only 300,000 trans teens between 13 and 17 and 399,000 between 18 and 24. To put this in perspective, there are about 25,000,000 12-17 years total and there are over 30,000,000 18 to 24 year-olds.

TRUMP SPENT MILLIONS ON ADS DEMONIZING TRANS AMERICANS

So despite the fact that trans people are a miniscule portion of the population, Trump spent countless hours and millions of dollars on the campaign trail and in his ads, spewing lies and hatred about them. Trans people who are American citizens and supposed to have equal rights to every other American.

Yet Donald Trump has devoted far more that 0.6% of his Executive Orders to targeting trans men, women and young people.

Imagine if you would feel if you or one of your children, was being vilified by the president of the United States.

Vilified, just for being who they are. How nature created them.

My daughter didn’t ask to be transgender but when she realized that depression that she had suffered from for years, was relieved by recognizing that she was trans, she began her journey.

Today my wonderful daughter is the mom of two sweet rescue dogs who were found abandoned, she is bright, creative, devoted to her career, she loves hiking and going camping and is in love with her live-in partner. They are even considering having a child in a few years.

Even though she lives in a big, cosmopolitan city, occasionally she gets harassed on the street. But mostly she has just gone about living her life, hanging out with friends, riding her bike around town and seeing us - her parents and her three siblings.

She is a caring person who raises money to help other trans people who are destitute or need medical help.

However, thanks to the duly elected president, for the first time since she has been living her true identity, she is afraid. She needs to update her passport and the Trump administration insists that she must renew it under her “dead” name, as a male. Even though, she looks like the female she now is.

She worries - what if Trump tries to ban gender affirming care for adults, as he has tried to do for young people.

What if she is unable to get the hormones that she needs to literally stay alive.

No trans person asked to be trans. It’s not a choice. Nature is just nature.

Transgender people existed in ancient, medieval and American colonial societies. They are part of cultures all around the world on every continent. And in many countries and cultures they have been and are today, completely accepted and not stigmatized - like they are in the America of 2025.

Nevertheless Trump venomously unleashed Executive Order after Executive Order directed at singly trans people as “others” that deserve to literally be erased from American society.

He declared that the U.S. government will only recognize two sexes which are defined at the moment of conception, something which isn’t even factually correct doctors say, since gender characteristics don’t start to even show up in a fetus until 9 to 13 weeks after conception.

He has banned all trans girls from kindergarten through college from playing sports at very school and college which receives some federal funding. If they allow trans girls to participate in sports - like all other students -that funding will be withdrawn.

His excuse for kicking trans girls off sports teams and out of bathrooms and locker room is that he is “protecting women” and ending a “war on women’s sports.”

The reality is that most American girls will never encounter a trans girl on their sports team since there are so damn few trans girls to start with and most look just like all other girls.

In other words, they’ll never know they are trans.

Trump also demanded that the NCAA ban all transgender women from college sports - so they did. But out of the 500,000 athletes participating in NCAA sports, there are fewer than 10 who are trans, according to the president of the NCAA.

So he really headed off a huge issue there… tens trans athletes facing off against 550,000!

And let’s be clear, the trans girl sports ban has zero to do with protecting women, which is also his excuse for supporting abortion bans.

In the case of abortion bans, what they really are about - is controlling women and forcing them back into traditional subservient roles.

Now - attacking trans people. Well, Trump, like every good authoritarian knows, you’ve got to find a “bogey man” to terrify people with. Because if people are petrified that some big hairy mythical trans woman is going to invade your daughter’s locker room and knock her over on a sports field, you won’t pay attention when he doesn’t lower the price of eggs or gas like he promised.

Now, back to more of Trump’s anti trans Executive Orders.

He also banned hospitals and medical centers which provide gender affirming care to young people under 19 - even though 18 year-olds are legal adults - from receiving any federal funding.

He has ordered the State Dept to stop issuing passports to trans people seeking to update their passports with the gender that they identify with, along with any name changes that they have made.

And now at Trump’s behest, the army has forbidden trans people from enlisting and also banned gender affirming care for any current army members. The other branches of the military are expected to close their doors to trans enlistees soon too.

There are estimated to be about 15,500 trans people actively serving their country out of 1.3 million active duty military members. Fifteen thousand trans men and women ,who have been willing to patriotically put their lives on the line for you, me and Donald Trump, and are now being targeted and demonized by the president of the United States.

Trump’s purge of trans people has even extended to the Stonewall National Monument website where references to trans and queer people were deleted from the site, even though the monument memorializes the 1969 NYC riots in that were led by trans women protesting police harassment.

The Stonewall uprising marked the start of the modern gay liberation movement and now Trump is trying to wipe its trans women leaders from history.

I’M AFRAID FOR MY DAUGHTER & OTHER TRANS PEOPLE

FYI - Elon Musk has a trans daughter Vivian Jenna Wilson,20, who he has called “dead, killed by the woke mind virus.”

She told NBC News that Musk as a father was “cold, uncaring and narcissistic.”

As a mother I can’t understand how Musk or any parent could turn their back on their child. A child who is a college student, just being herself.

But no doubt the country’s co-president has shared and amplified Trump’s own transphobia.

Listen, since trans people make up such a tiny portion of the population, I know that not many of you are walking in my shoes.

But I believe that as parents and people who truly care about how Trump and Republicans have robbed women of their rights over their own bodies, that you will understand and relate to how fearful I feel for my daughter.

Like all parents I want to protect and defend my child - even when that child is an adult.

Yes today, my daughter and all other trans people are in Trump and Elon’s cross hairs, but when one minority is scapegoated, it won’t be long before the co-presidents desperately need to find a find new target to distract Americans with.

That could come as soon they cut taxes for their billionaire pals, and then slash programs and services that millions of Americans need in order to pay for the richie rich cash grab.

That’s when another minority will find itself on the receiving end of lies and vitriol.

So I hope that in your way you too will stand up for trans rights, realizing that when one group’s rights are extinguished, all our children are at risk.

Thank you readers for hearing me out.