Los Angeles Some LGBTQ persons fear their rights may be restricted, so Isla Lima filed to change her gender from male to female in official documents the week after Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election.
Trump has declared his aim to revoke certain LGBTQ rights during his second term in office. Trump won the vote on November 5 and will be sworn in on Monday.
Trump reportedly mentioned gender-affirming care when he announced in December that he would issue an executive order to ban child sex mutilation and remove transgender students from our primary, middle, and high schools as well as the military.
Trump wants the law to only identify a person as male or female based on their gender at birth. Regarding transgender athletes, he has pledged to keep men out of women’s sports, according to his fans.
While LGBTQ rights were safeguarded or improved at the federal level under the Biden administration, access to gender-affirming care has been restricted in a number of Republican-run states.
Many transgender individuals claim that their gender dysphoria started early in life. Some people experience melancholy, anxiety, and even suicidal thoughts as a result of the stark contrast between their gender identity and the sex they were assigned at birth.
A transgender woman in Los Angeles named Lima, 26, decided to expedite the filing of court proceedings after Trump’s victory in order to formally change her gender on records.
I’m not aware of the safety net for crossing state lines, even though it might be safe in California. Knowing that I’ll have my ID and that it will have my gender marker and chosen name makes me feel much secure, she added.
It was like, “Okay, this is really urgent,” after Trump.
A survey of more than 1,500 people conducted in August by FOLX, a health and wellness company that has served more than 50,000 LGBTQ people, found that 76% of transgender and nonbinary persons took, or planned to take, at least one precautionary step when polls indicated a tight election.
Measures include accelerating gender-affirming care—which can include medical, surgical, and mental health services—stockpiling medicine, updating gender markers on papers, and advancing marriage arrangements were among those mentioned by respondents.
According to Lima, she works as an intern at ProjectQ, a nonprofit organization based in Los Angeles, because she supports its mission to give LGBT adolescents tools like haircuts and a safe environment.
In an interview, 38-year-old Madin Lopez, the founder and executive director of ProjectQ, mentioned LGBTQ friends who were expediting the legal adoption of children they were already raising.
Manny Mu ño, a nonbinary ProjectQ Associate Director, changed their gender marker from male to X in 2023. That option was offered at the federal level by the administration of President Joe Biden.
“It was a long time coming, so that change was really, really exciting,” said Mu Oz, 36. There’s also the simple worry that it will be taken away, isn’t that right?
Lopez is nonbinary as well, although they haven’t formally altered their gender.
I haven’t made up my mind yet about whether or not to make that legal change. Much of it, in my opinion, is related to what will happen next.
Culture wars
One of the main hot spots in American culture warfare is transgender and nonbinary rights.
The House of Representatives passed a bill Tuesday that would effectively prohibit transgender women and girls from participating in school sports by depriving noncompliant schools of federal funding.
The bill’s author, Representative Greg Steube, has stated that Republicans will uphold their pledge to support women’s sports under President Trump’s direction.
When appropriate, major societies for pediatrics, endocrinology, and mental health support gender-affirming care, including hormone therapy and puberty blockers, which some claim can save the lives of many transgender kids.
Nonetheless, some conservatives label some of the treatments as experimental and hazardous, comparing them to child abuse or chemical castration.
In a statement, Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt claimed that Trump ran on a platform of banning taxpayer-funded transgender operations for federal jail inmates and ending classroom conversations about gender and sex.
She stated that it is obvious that the American people support President Trump, which is why they cast their ballots for him.
According to statistics from a YouGov study conducted in 2024, 36% of Americans thought that society’s acceptance of transgender persons had progressed too far, while 34% thought it had not.
41% of respondents thought it is not a moral concern, 13% think it is, and one in three stated it is immoral to identify with a gender other than the one assigned at birth.
Before relocating to California, Elektra Aida, 24, who oversees frontline services at ProjectQ, experienced harassment in Utah, where transgender persons are not allowed to use certain restrooms.
“I got a lot more people saying, ‘I might move out there,’ after Trump won,” Aida remarked.
I believe it simply reinforced to folks that, regrettably, things don’t appear to be getting better anytime soon.