This is just going to get me in trouble and increase my already generous backlog of alleged-LGBTQ-issues-denial-of-harsh-reality-related asks that I haven't answered (I do have drafts of a bunch of answers, which I will post at some point in the coming weeks!), but I just have to bring this up, because it's really upsetting me.
This whole thing I've been seeing for two or three years now about how it's too dangerous for a trans person to so much as set foot in a not-politically-trans-friendly state to visit for a weekend trip or conference or brief vacation just feels absolutely absurd to me and is having heartbreaking consequences. I find it absurd on a level well beyond a trans person living in a solid blue state fleeing the country for Canada following the election, which I think was probably an overreaction but I also sort of get it on the grounds that there's a very nonzero chance of trans adults getting their healthcare curtailed even in solid blue states and at this point I suppose it's not inconceivable to imagine a dearth of gender clinics even in very blue areas within the next few years.
The first example I ever saw of this was at some point I think early in the Biden years, with someone I know who isn't even trans but has a fairly queer presentation and whose partner is trans (visibly AFAB and nonbinary) deciding that for an indefinite period of time she couldn't take her kids to Florida to see her family (including her mom, their grandma) even for a few days, citing something something Florida being anti-trans something Stand Your Ground laws. This really hurt and rankled me as someone who carries a certain amount of bitterness over growing up not getting to know my grandparents very well and my non-grandparent extended family even much less.
In fact, I still remember the moment I read her Facebook post announcing this (followed by a "By the way, I notice which of my Facebook friends are silent about these issues and by your silence know which of you I'm not safe around" type post) and how my jaw dropped to the floor -- even as I was pretty plugged into the changing social/political landscape and how upset and scared the trans community was over it (I was heavily on Tumblr, for instance!), such an idea had never come remotely close to occurring to me. I remember contemplating making a brief Tumblr post there and then, no argumentation, just summarizing what she had said and concluding with a one-sentence "Holy --, this is what we've come to" type line.
(And by the way, like, it's sad, but she could take her kids to Florida for a few days to visit her family without her trans partner coming along. Extended family visits with the unrelated parent not present are maybe not ideal but happen all the time.)
I have a trans colleague who, a couple of years ago, long before Trump's reelection, was talking about all the conferences she "can't" go to because they're in places like Texas. You know, visiting a conference center or university campus for like three days with a horde of progressive academia people from all over, exactly like the ones you spend your life with in your blue state or see whenever there's a similar conference in a blue state, and maybe like once going out to a bar (in what is probably a big city) with a crowd of those people.
Much more recently, I have a trans Facebook friend, who I believe currently lives in a swing state that went Trump in 2024, who wouldn't go to her high school reunion in Florida because it's supposedly way too unsafe for a trans woman to set foot in Florida for a single weekend because... why?? "I can't afford a hotel and my family in Florida is not accepting of my transition so I don't want to stay with them" I would get. "A lot of my former classmates were bullies to me in high school and some of them might not be very progressive about trans stuff and I'd be uncomfortable" I would totally get. But she frames her reason for not going as entirely "it's unsafe for a trans woman to set foot in Florida (even for two days)".
It strikes me as being a case of someone not wanting to risk spending two or three days in a geographic region where a slightly higher percentage of people vote Republican, because the chances of being assaulted each time one is in a public space during their brief trip (in which they're probably going to a non-university public space like 2-3 times) goes up from the 0.02% they're used to at home to 0.025% or something like that.
Or, it strikes me as reminiscent (and maybe inspired by) the way a lot of us younger people might imagine how black people living in the Northern US around 1955 probably didn't feel comfortable making trips to the South. Except that there were actually laws in place in the South that governed many of the everyday moves a black person would make in public, including which spaces they were or weren't allowed in, which water fountain they could use or which part of a diner they could sit in, etc., and (I and my millennial acquaintances are much too young to really know this), partly because of the presence of these laws and black people visibly being forced into different roles, I could imagine there actually was a concrete difference in how most white people in the South looked at most black people passing by in public compared to how white people in the North looked at them (even though they'd have been used to plenty of prejudice in the North). And I imagine that even under those conditions, Northern black people still traveled to the South if they had to for family reasons and so on.
(I read in an article a couple of years ago written by an African-American who was growing up in the North in the '60's and who went on regular road trips to the South; her father, who would be driving, soon after crossing the Mason-Dixon line, would say, in a heavy voice with a sigh, "Well, we're in the South now." Wish I remembered where to find that article.)
It occurs to me as I write this (one reason it's good for me to write these kinds of thoughts down!) that there is one factor I wasn't really considering which seems less than "absurd" to worry about: public restrooms. As far as I know, there is no distinct bathroom law in Florida or Texas; the trans women I mentioned above would be quite female-passing going briefly into a woman's room and into a stall without talking to anyone; these are young, healthy people without (as far as I know) bladder problems who maybe have to use the toilet in public like once or twice in such a brief trip, while surrounded by friends right outside the bathroom; we're not talking about rural middle-of-nowhere areas where folks in bathrooms may have almost never set eyes on someone with a non-gender-conforming appearance; they already deal with using public restrooms in the more progressive state they live in now where just a slightly lower percentage of people vote for Republican laws; etc. But I suppose I can understand having to go to a woman's restroom as a trans woman being more anxiety-inducing in a Florida/Texas type state than in a blue state or a swing-but-trans-stuff-less-part-of-state-level-culture-wars state. It would be sad for this to be the reason they deprive themselves and their close family members of much bigger experiences.
(And because I know there will be some who read this and conclude that Liskantope, once again, is somehow arguing that trans people are to blame for the whole bigger set of issues that this is tied up in, I don't know what I have time to tell you at this point -- can't blame you if you don't want to go back to my abstract "multivariate causation" posts of ~2016, and I don't know if there's some other way for me to to get through the idea of "it's not their fault these choices are foisted upon them, but given a terrible situation that isn't their fault it's frustrating to think they may be making the wrong choice and it doesn't help their cause for either them or their cis allies to constantly be publicly making irrational claims about risk", however sincerely, without coming across as condescending, a concern troll, etc. On a more meta level, I also don't know what to do about the blatant social taboo against ever telling people their fears are exaggerated alongside a completely lack-of-taboo about fearmongering, apart from repeatedly complaining about that imbalance.)
