The day he took office, President Trump declared, “As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female.” The first day he took office. Why this is an issue of national debate I’ll never understand, but it’s a strange feeling to hear your president say that you aren’t real; that you don’t exist. Growing up I never saw transgender or nonbinary people. I turned to stories with hidden queer readings to understand myself even before I had a community or language: Pinocchio, whose literal body was whittled into existence and made real by showing up for his newfound community, Peter Pan, the forever boy always played by a middle-aged woman, and the Velveteen Rabbit, who was loved into being and told it was the tatters and the scars that made him real.
These are the images that I carried into my queer adolescence. These stories were tattooed on our bodies and whispered to friends and lovers as we helped each other bind our chests, injecting testosterone as we sculpted our own Pinocchio “real boy” bodies, tending the wounds of someone who got jumped, or f*cking each other to tender tears. Our bodies have always been on the frontline of hate, and we have never stopped loving each other real.
I first came out as nonbinary in 2001. I remember thinking that there would never be government recognition or protection for us. I remember the stories we had to tell providers (swearing that we were a “trapped in the wrong body” binary trans person) to access any gender-affirming care. This script was an oral tradition passed down by older trans and genderqueer elders to ensure we had access to the services we needed. We have always cared for our own. In the early 2000s living in Portland Oregon, I changed my name legally for the first time, and with it, the gender marker on my ID from “F” to “M.” With the help of a rogue Social Security employee, I was able to quickly transition all my documents to male. A decade later I was living in New York and playing with queer femininity. When it came time to get a new ID I walked into the Social Security office and DMV, “accidentally” leaving the gender field blank and letting the clerks do the guessing. For some time, some of my identification was female, some was male. For a time I believed everything was female.
In 2024, I got divorced and updated my state ID and passport to the last name Patterdale, a name I had chosen for myself at 18 years old. While making the change, I realized I had the legal option of marking my gender “X.” I’ve been out as genderqueer/trans/nonbinary since I was seventeen, but now at forty, for the first time, it felt like my documents matched me. I’ve never looked to official paperwork for validation, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t nice to feel (legally) seen. With the election looming, choosing to put an “X” as my gender on all my documentation felt like a calculated risk, but it was also about public naming and living who I am and who I have always been. My gender journey has not been linear. As a nonbinary person, I’ve reached from one side of the gender binary to the other, most comfortably landing somewhere in the murky middle. And I have loved that my government identification reflected that reality of my identity.
When the news broke on the day of the inauguration that Trump had taken direct aim at nonbinary and transgender people, I was braced. My phone didn’t stop buzzing as friends from across the country comforted and processed. International friends sent love and comfort, asking what they could to support. The trans/nonbinary community knew this was coming, but it was still terrifying that in one incoherent speech, and with a strike of his pen the President could and would choose to say that my gender, and the genders of all the people I love, are not real and don’t exist. The day after the inauguration, going through my to-do list, I found myself purchasing plane tickets for travel I’m doing later in the year. The airlines required me to input my government name (Sassafras Patterdale) and my legal gender (X). While filling out those forms for the trips I have planned for later in 2025 I was left with more questions than answers. Will my passport be valid until it expires? Will the government reissue me a new one with an “F” instead of an “X?” Will my passport work in a few months, allowing me to see some of my closest and oldest queer friends? Nobody seems to know right now. Compared to the horrors that many other people are facing in the wake of Trump’s barrage of executive orders, this is a minor problem, but it’s still destabilizing.
I had a phone call after the inauguration with the host of a podcast booking me for an appearance next month to discuss my queer books. He explained to me that one of his rules for podcast guests is that we don’t talk about politics. My filters gone after processing all the breaking news of the week, I flatly responded, “I don’t have that privilege.” He seemed shocked. “The President just said I don’t exist. I don’t know if I have a valid passport right now,” I added. He was quiet for a moment, and then revealed that he’d not yet spoken with anyone impacted by any of the presidential mandates. While everyone I know is living in fear and uncertainty, it has been interesting to realize that for much of white/straight/cis America, it’s just another week. I’ve never been someone who could blend in even if I wanted to. Regardless of my gender presentation, I’ve never passed, I’ve always been read as queer walking through the world. I might lose the “X” on my passport, and maybe even my state ID, but even if that happens I’ll still be who I’ve always been. As an out and visible nonbinary person, one thing I can do is use my life, body, and lived experience to remind people that we exist.
In my mid-30s I went back to school and got an MFA in queer fairy tales. I was obsessed with the idea of the portal story, the running away, the (often) outcast misfit who wanders through a doorway, a mirror, or a closet and comes out the other side into a fantastic world. The metaphor perfectly reflects what the trans community and queer culture have always felt like to me. I share this because while we cannot escape from the horrific political/cultural reality we find ourselves in, we must pay attention, we must be loud. We must not go silently. This is not the only world we inhabit. We have created our own lives, and bodies, and families, and homes, and communities. Trans, genderqueer, and nonbinary people have always existed. We have existed long before we had legal protections or recognition. Of course, it’s scary to watch those hard-earned rights stripped away, to live in ambiguity and uncertainty, but we know how to live between worlds. We know how to survive this.
I didn’t expect our government to push rewind on rights, but we’ve been here before and we know how to do this. I’ve spent the better part of twenty years being a genderqueer author, and sadly I expect the invitations to discuss transgender books in public schools and colleges to dry up soon. Editors have told me of mainstream magazines that have received explicit orders from leadership to stop publishing anything queer-affirming because it’s too controversial. There is a lot of horror to come. I am not in denial that queer life in the United States is going to change for the next four years, but it will endure. Trump and his policies can take away protections, and healthcare. He can try to remove us from public life, but he can’t do those things—not really. We will continue to live and thrive and build lives and families. I built this queer life of mine; I sculpted this queer body I walk through the world in. Like the Velveteen Rabbit, it is love that makes me real. The government does not define my worth or my gender. The president can say what he wants. He can try to outlaw our existence, but we have always existed. We have always seen and loved and cherished each other. We have made each other real, and that isn’t something that can be taken away, regardless of what gender marker appears on my passport.
