The campaign ads targeting transgender people made watching sports an unpleasant experience for Jamie Roberts this fall, with each commercial break bringing a new serving of rhetoric that she felt questioned her humanity.
A 52-year-old transgender woman, she started gender transition in the late 1990s while attending law school at the University of Georgia. Now, she wonders whether life for her and other trans people could get more difficult as President-elect Donald Trump and his allies become increasingly focused on limiting their rights.
“I’ve never felt unsafe in a restroom in this area, but when I leave Atlanta, it’s very much top of mind,” Roberts said. “Florida just enacted a ban of folks in restrooms within the last couple of years and in public spaces. Ohio just enacted a ban on their colleges. And we have a Republican majority that has campaigned on trans backlash and I fully expect that they’re going to push for that.”
Ohio’s law requires people on public school and university campuses to use the restroom that aligns with their gender assigned at birth. Florida has laws restricting health care for transgender people and banning them from using the bathroom of their choice.
Trump in speeches promised to roll back policy that allows people to transition or navigate federal agencies portraying anything other than their biological gender. His campaign website described those proposals under the headline “President Trump’s Plan to Protect Children from Left-Wing Gender Insanity.”
“On Day 1, I will sign an executive order instructing every federal agency to cease the promotion of sex or gender transition at any age,” he said at a Moms for Liberty event this summer. “They’re not going to do it anymore.”
In response, trans people have been encouraged by LGBTQ+ advocacy groups to make adjustments in anticipation of Trump’s return to the White House and a new trifecta of Republican control that includes both chambers of Congress and a majority on the U.S. Supreme Court. But even at the state level in Georgia, there are indicators that when it comes to the culture wars, the rights of transgender people are the main focus.
Bentley Hudgins, the Georgia state director of the Human Rights Campaign, recently attended an event where roughly 200 trans and nonbinary people obtained passports that accurately reflected their name and gender markers.
Advocates have encouraged this as a first step for trans people concerned about changes under the Trump administration because the document is good for 10 years and can serve as an official ID in many scenarios. Plus, passports can be used to justify a change in gender markers on state documents.
It’s not just legal documents that have received attention. Trans people dependent on hormones or other medication are considering whether access could be limited under Trump and whether they should attempt to stock up.
Hudgins said most trans people don’t want special treatment; they just want to be less of a focus.
A 2022 survey by the Pew Research Center found that 1.6% of U.S. adults identified as trans or nonbinary. Hudgins, who uses they/them pronouns, is nonbinary and identifies as neither a man nor a woman.
“The fact of the matter is that the majority of Americans just are unfamiliar with transgender identity, and a lot of folks don’t even know a trans person,” Hudgins said recently on The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s “Politically Georgia” podcast. “And it gives room for bad actors and for people who want to stoke fear and division and isolation and anger in our communities to take advantage of that lack of knowledge to divide us.”
Many of Trump’s allies, particularly those whose politics are based on conservative Christian values, believe trans rights have gone too far. His campaign spent heavily on ads painting Democrats as out of touch with the values of most Americans on issues such as allowing trans women to compete in women’s sports and granting transgender teenagers access to puberty blockers or other medications.
The GOP-led Georgia Legislature is likely to entertain legislation this year requiring athletes to compete based on their biological sex. The state Senate Special Committee on Protecting Women’s Sports held hearings on the issue where they were told there currently are not any transgender athletes competing in public high school sports in the state, but lawmakers say the law is needed anyway.
In Washington last month, U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson said he would implement rules requiring transgender people to use the bathroom at the U.S. Capitol that corresponds to their gender at birth. That policy is targeted at Rep.-elect Sarah McBride of Delaware, the first openly transgender person to be elected to Congress.
McBride will be sworn into office in January and has indicated she will not attempt to circumvent the new rules. But Hudgins said there are deeper effects.
“It is a simple attack to hurt people, and it doesn’t just target Rep.-elect McBride, but it also attacks all trans and nonbinary people who work and visit the Capitol,” they said. “Public servants who have been working in the Capitol for years are now suddenly the subject of cynical and hurtful political games.”
The effort to restrict McBride’s bathroom access was led by South Carolina U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, a Republican entering her second term who previously said she was “pro-transgender rights.”
Georgia U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, on the other hand, has never wavered from her anti-trans positions. For Greene, it’s a central part of her far-right politics as she has resisted efforts to recognize trans people in the halls of Congress and beyond. Shortly after taking office in 2021, she posted an anti-transgender sign outside her office because a colleague across the hall had displayed the transgender pride flag in honor of her transgender child.
Greene also spoke against the Equality Act, a law passed that year in the House banning discrimination against LGBTQ+ people.
In speeches to conservative groups and on the campaign trail, Greene often attacks Democrats who have backed medical treatment for transgender youths or access for trans athletes. And she spoke on these issues during the Republican National Convention this summer to the cheers of fellow conservatives.
“They promised normalcy and gave us Transgender Visibility Day on Easter Sunday,” she said. “And let me state this clearly: There are only two genders. And we are made in God’s image, amen. And we won’t shy away from speaking that simple truth, ever.”
That is the kind of rhetoric that grinds at Roberts. She said she wishes those politicians who have sought to limit the rights of transgender people would pause to consider their humanity.
Roberts knew she was trans at the age of 6. But she didn’t start the process until her 20s, partially because society seemed to want to convince her that she should do anything but transition. She worked as a public defender in Middle Georgia for 10 years and is now a practicing attorney in Atlanta who helped co-found a housing program for transgender and gender nonconforming people.
“We want the same things they do,” Roberts said of her detractors, fighting through tears. “We want to get a job, provide for ourselves, find happiness the best way we can and go about our lives without people judging us or discriminating against us because our gender identity is not consistent with the sex assigned to us at birth.”
Now, she is bracing for what could come next. “I fear that things are about to become even more dangerous for us than it already is in this country.”
