Transmissions: My reality

In about a month, I will have to spend a week in Georgia for my day job.

It used to be that I'd relish such a trip but, in 2025, it requires a bit more forethought. For example, I worry that, if I take my passport for identification, versus my Real ID-enabled driver's license, I could see my passport confiscated, leaving me without a valid identification source.

With the Trump administration's insistence that there are only men and women, and this is an immutable fact from birth, we have seen an ongoing struggle over identification documents. On the first day of his second term, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the Department of State and the Department of Homeland Security "to require that government-issued identification documents, including passports, visas, and Global Entry cards" focus only on sex assigned "at conception."

At conception, I am pretty certain I was a couple of somewhat differentiated cells at the time and did not have an inherent sexual identity, though, to be fair, my memory of that time is pretty sketchy.

Due to this executive order, some saw their passports confiscated or even mutilated, though this largely stopped after the order was stayed by a federal judge in April. Now, the case, Orr v. Trump, will likely end up decided by a hostile U.S. Supreme Court that has served as a rubber stamp for nearly everything this administration has wanted.

I worry, too, how I will be treated. I have had trouble in the past at Transportation Security Administration checkpoints, including one agent at Boston Logan International Airport during the first Trump administration who ordered me into a second pat down of my breasts, because I was wearing a bra, and he was unclear of my gender. I cannot imagine this has gotten much better.

I also hope I don't end up having to use a restroom during my travels. Looking at trans journalist Erin Reed's Anti-Trans National Legal Risk Assessment Map on her Substack, I will be changing flights in Kansas, which has a bathroom ban targeting transgender people. Maybe I should go on the plane, perhaps while flying over Colorado.

Of course, my destination, Georgia, is not very safe either. It is not as bad as Kansas – let alone Texas or Florida, states that transgender people should absolutely avoid – but the Peach State also added some anti-trans laws over the last few years. I'll be largely insulated at my workplace, and in a crowd of my co-workers, but I certainly hope nothing bad happens while I'm there. I'll breathe a lot easier when I'm home. 

That said, even in my home state – California – we're seeing a governor who has become very timid over trans protections. Indeed, Governor Gavin Newsom appears to be lining up for a 2028 presidential run by, on one hand, talking tough to Trump while vastly softening his once pro-trans stance. Newsom vetoed one education-related bill that conservative lawmakers targeted as pro-trans but was a technical bill around school curriculum, including insurance coverage for hormone replacement therapy. 

Newsom signed the Transgender Privacy Act bill and another bill that bolsters California’s status as a “trans refuge state.” He also signed a bill to make it easier for adults and minors to change their names to conform with their gender identity.

Meanwhile, our federal government is shut down, and even more trans rights hang in the balance. Negotiations between congressional Democrats and Republicans have already hindered trans care and trans participation in sports, with much more at stake.

This is just a taste of what it means to be a trans person in 2025. Every moment is a negotiation between our existence versus the comfort of the non-transgender world at large. Yet, in spite of everything, we continue to navigate it.

Our government wants you to believe that transgender people – a naturally-occurring variation in the human condition that has been documented for centuries – does not exist, and it will do all it can to make that a reality.

Yet, as difficult as the federal government chooses to make our lives, we continue to exist.

You see, I have long contended that the government lacks the ability to realize that transgender people are real and can only picture us as some sort of fraud to achieve some illicit gain, or as mindless dupes who have been coerced against our will to transition.

Neither tends to be true.

Being a transgender woman is simply who I am. It was all those years prior to my transition that I found myself feeling like I was performing a role in a very ill-fitting costume. This is the real me, and the only thing I'm seeking to do is live as authentic a life as I can.

You'll find that the majority of other transgender people likely will tell you variations of this same thing.

By applying all the pressure the administration can, the government feels that we will just take the easier path and live as it claims we are. Yet, for the majority of transgender people in America in 2025, we are just learning to navigate an increasingly hostile system while remaining true to ourselves. And even in all of this, there still are transgender people coming out every day, standing against a world rigged against our success.

Can you think of anything more badass than coming out and living openly as a transgender person in 2025? That takes far more guts than I had, three decades ago, when I was coming out.

The transgender community may face far worse in the next few years as this administration ramps up attacks against us and tries even more avenues to remove our rights. Yet, I have hope and confidence that transgender people will still remain.

Gwen Smith is mindful that she currently has it better than a vast majority of her trans siblings. You can find her at www.gwensmith.com.