CHAPTER 13
Our voices matter.
Two weeks after the convention, I met the little trans girl from the photo, after inviting her and her mom to the HRC office.
“Hi, Lulu, I’m Sarah,” I said, kneeling in order to be eye level with the seven-year-old, who was clearly nervous and a little shy. “What do ya say we go get some juice and your mom and I can have some coffee?”
The three of us walked to a coffee shop a few blocks away and Lulu pulled out a folded piece of paper with a few questions written in big block letters.
“Lulu prepared some questions for you,” her mother explained with a smile.
“Oh, wonderful!” I exclaimed. Lulu adorably smoothed the paper flat to get out the creases. She cleared her throat and began reading her questions.
“Ms. Sarah,” she started, with a slight lisp. “What’s your favorite part about being transgender?”
My favorite part? Growing up, that sentence wouldn’t have made sense to me.
Since coming out, I had been so used to hearing questions about survival or hardship, about negativity and hate. We are inundated with messages that being trans is bad, gross, and a burden for ourselves and others. But Lulu’s question turned that negative perspective on its head. It took more than twenty-five years for me to hear that question for the first time.
I paused and thought about it.
“I think I have three favorite things about being transgender,” I began with a smile. “The first is that it led me to meet my husband, Andy. The second is that I think it’s made me a stronger, better, more compassionate person. And the third? The third is that I get to meet amazing people like you. People who are brave, brilliant, and beautiful.”
Her eyes lit up. Lulu represents the first generation of trans people who, in many cases, have been allowed to grow up as themselves. These youth are insistent, consistent, and persistent in asserting their gender identity, and when coupled with supportive parents and a health-care provider versed on the most up-to-date medical consensus, they are allowed to live practically their whole lives, no matter how long, as their authentic selves.
And despite the hate and pushback they receive from the world, the pride so many of them feel in themselves still leads them to ask that simple but radical question: “What’s your favorite part about being transgender?”
Following the convention, my life changed dramatically. My travel doubled. I was on the road almost constantly, speaking to groups large and small. Two days in New York, two days in Jacksonville, and another two in Miami. Three days in Seattle, a day in Los Angeles, and another in San Francisco. Two in Dallas. One in Virginia. And too many to count in North Carolina, where the state’s incumbent Republican governor, Pat McCrory, was up for reelection. And at each stop along the way, parents would come, bringing along their transgender children.
Each time, I’d ask the trans kids Lulu’s question.
“It means I’m a strong person,” one sixteen-year-old gender-nonconforming youth responded, echoing one of the sentiments in my own answer.
“Trans is beautiful,” proclaimed a fifteen-year-old trans teen in Northern California, quoting Laverne Cox.
“I don’t have to hide anymore,” a nine-year-old trans girl in Fort Lauderdale answered.
In Durham, North Carolina, an eleven-year-old trans boy didn’t beat around the bush. “My favorite thing? That I’m me,” he announced through a big grin.
The parents I met would recount their journeys. In many cases, they had endured horrific bullying from neighbors for embracing and loving their children. Often, they had to fight with their schools for their children to have access to even the most basic necessities, like being called the correct name or being allowed to use the restroom. They’d share their stories through tears, but one common thread existed in each one. They all were hopeful. “Things are changing,” they’d say.
And then November 8, 2016, arrived. I was in North Carolina on Election Day. The Human Rights Campaign had put unprecedented resources—staff, volunteers, and money—into the state, intent on defeating McCrory and sending the message that targeting transgender people for discrimination is not just morally wrong, it’s also bad politics.
The night before, my HRC colleagues and I had joined thousands of fired-up supporters, Lady Gaga, and the Clinton family for the final rally of the 2016 presidential campaign. Hillary walked onto the stage at midnight, just as Election Day arrived, one final time to “Fight Song,” the pop melody that had become her campaign theme song. In the bleachers above her, supporters held up massive letters that spelled “H-I-S-T-O-R-Y.”
The United States was not only about to elect a woman to the highest office in the land, but someone who had laid out the most progressive and inclusive platform of any nominee in history. For the LGBTQ community, her election would solidify all of the federal progress we had seen in the preceding eight years and provide a platform to continue to push our much-needed policy goals forward.
Within twenty-four hours of the rally, the cheers, the excitement, the H-I-S-T-O-R-Y sign all felt like a cruel dream. As the results came in on the night of November 8, it slowly became clear that Donald Trump would win the Electoral College.
Trump had run the most divisive campaign in modern American politics. He had staked his candidacy on bluster and bigotry, on fear and discrimination, and our electoral system had rewarded him with the most significant honor society can bestow on a person: the presidency of the United States.
Almost immediately, I started thinking about all those parents and kids whom I had met over the previous three months. For many of them, President Obama and his administration had been their one source of protection from discrimination. Their bosses, school boards, local governments, and state governments were all either apathetic to their plight or actively hostile to their interests.
Throughout the campaign, Donald Trump had disingenuously claimed to be a friend to the LGBTQ community while endorsing nearly every anti-equality position thinkable. He had endorsed the ability of states such as North Carolina to discriminate against transgender people. He had committed to nominating judges who opposed marriage equality and trans rights. He had promised to sign legislation that would provide a license to discriminate against LGBTQ people nationwide. And as a sign of things to come, he had picked in Mike Pence a vice president whose entire national profile was built on attacking women’s rights and LGBTQ equality.
That the most qualified candidate in modern history—a woman—had just lost to the most unqualified and unfit candidate in all of American history only added insult to injury. Hillary’s loss perfectly encapsulated the nearly impossible double standard facing any marginalized person in politics or the workforce.
As a woman, she was required by our society and structures to work two, three, four times harder than any white man to get to the cusp of the presidency. To exert that degree of effort, to navigate a world designed against your success, requires a degree of commitment, intentionality, and determination that cannot be hidden behind the false humility we so often demand of our political candidates.
We reward candidates, particularly for the presidency, who seem almost apathetic to the possibility of being elected. We love the idea of a candidate who seems to stumble their way into the Oval Office. We put effortlessness on a pedestal, which in turn punishes the marginalized for working twice as hard to get half as far. The very perseverance and determination that we require to succeed is then held against the marginalized, particularly women, as self-interested ambition.
The sexism in Hillary’s loss and the racism that laced Trump’s win were clear. But the biggest tragedy was the hate and discrimination that would be further thrust onto everyday people—Muslims, people with disabilities, immigrants, women, people of color, and LGBTQ people—throughout America.
The morning after the election, many in the LGBTQ community and beyond woke up fearful about what the results would mean for them. The Human Rights Campaign and other civil rights organizations were inundated with questions and concerns. People were genuinely terrified about what the future would hold. The Southern Poverty Law Center would later report roughly four hundred hate-based attacks and incidents in the immediate aftermath of the election. Calls to LGBTQ suicide hotlines skyrocketed. Educators were reporting a dramatic increase in bullying toward their Muslim, Latinx, and LGBTQ students.
Those last two reports—the bullying and the calls to suicide hotlines—struck me the most. It was clear that in the aftermath of the election, a lot of youth were likely feeling completely alone and vulnerable and questioning whether things really were changing.
Amid the troubling reports, my colleagues and I decided that it was important to film a short video message to LGBTQ, and particularly trans, youth across the country. I had not had time to fully digest the results and wrap my mind around the coming abrupt and significant shift from a presidency of progress to a presidency of prejudice. I didn’t really know what to say.
Just two days after the election, still feeling like the wind had been knocked out of me, I recorded a three-minute video message to the transgender youth who were facing fear, uncertainty, and increased bullying. Slowly and somberly, I began to talk directly to the camera.
“As a transgender person, I want to speak directly to all the young transgender people and your parents who are wondering if the heart of this country is big enough to love you, too, and who worry that the results of this election have emboldened bullies in your classrooms and neighborhoods,” I opened, feeling the weight and urgency of the moment. “But know that no election, no presidency, can change these simple and constant truths: You are worthy, you are beautiful, and you are loved.”
I recounted the lessons I had learned from the online harassment I had faced. “And the bullies, they see that. They see our power and they’re jealous of it. You are powerful…
“We need each other now more than we have in a very long time. We need each other to fight against whatever attacks come our way. And we need each other to stand up to anyone who thinks that they can bully anyone because one of the biggest bullies just became president. We have to have each other’s backs. When we see bullying, whether it’s against LGBTQ people, Muslims, people of color, immigrants, women, or people with disabilities, we must call it out.”
I took a breath and continued. “There is one more simple and constant truth that remains unchanged. We—HRC and advocates in D.C. and around the country—we’re here for you, we care about you, and we are going to fight like hell to make sure that every single one of us is treated with the dignity, respect, and fairness we all deserve.”
HRC released the video on the Sunday after the election, just as students were getting ready to head back to the first full week of school after the election. I didn’t have answers that early—no one did—but it was important to make clear to that LGBTQ youth isolated in a life where it seems that no one sees them and loves them that someone did: that they were seen, that they were loved, and that they were not alone.
Sifting through all the bad news of the 2016 election, there was one bright spot. In North Carolina, McCrory had lost his reelection bid. In a state that went for Donald Trump in the Electoral College, McCrory was the only incumbent Republican governor to lose reelection that year, and he lost largely because of his support for HB2 and the ensuing harm it caused to the state.
His loss reinforced that all was not lost: that when diverse voices are heard, when the progressive community stands together, when allies speak out, there is still a way to make the politics of fear and division, of discrimination and misinformation, no longer effective.
And as the dust from the presidential election began to settle, the sadness gave way to preparations for the fight ahead. A quiet determination set in as we anticipated the policies that were likeliest to be rolled back. The trans community was disproportionately impacted, as so much of our progress had been achieved through President Obama—and what comes from one president’s pen can often be struck by the next president’s pen.
Late that November, transgender people from across the country convened at the White House for an event to mark Transgender Day of Remembrance, an annual nationwide commemoration dedicated to the transgender people who had lost their lives to hate and violence during the preceding year. Events around Transgender Day of Remembrance are always rightfully somber, but this event was even more emotional than usual: It was the final time representatives of the trans community would be in the White House for the foreseeable future.
One of our staunchest supporters, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, was scheduled to speak to the room of about one hundred local, state, and federal advocates. Lynch had made history as the first African American woman attorney general, and during her two-year tenure trans rights had become a cornerstone of her legacy. The previous spring, she had brought suit against her home state of North Carolina after passage of HB2, a challenge that would later be rescinded by the Trump administration.
I was asked to introduce the attorney general at the gathering. But before we went onstage, I met with her privately backstage. The white walls were still filled with the “jumbo” photographs of President Obama. Within a few weeks, the frames would remain but the images would be replaced with ones of Donald Trump.
I waited alone until Attorney General Lynch entered through large double doors that led to the West Wing.
“Sarah.” She walked toward me with her hand outstretched. “It’s an honor to meet you.”
“The honor is all mine, Madam Attorney General.” I thanked her for joining our community for the event. And then I thanked her for the speech she had given in the spring when she announced the lawsuit against HB2. “I hope you know how much that meant to our community. It was the first time that many trans people realized that their federal government was on their side. You saved lives that day.”
She grabbed my hand and looked me directly in the eyes. “This administration may be coming to an end, but we aren’t going anywhere,” she said. “We’ll be fighting right beside you outside of government.”
And she was right. In all of the talk about what we might lose, the fact remained that most of our progress was irreversible. The hearts we had opened would not close. The minds we had changed would not reverse. The laws we had passed remained on the books. Marriage equality was the law of the land nationwide. And while the Trump administration would likely seek to roll back many of our administrative advancements, they wouldn’t succeed on every one. We’d have a new alliance of allies standing shoulder to shoulder with us as we fight back.
And we’d need those allies. As much as Pat McCrory’s loss sent a message and offered a strategy, it wouldn’t stave off continued attacks on the LGBTQ community. In many ways, Donald Trump’s election further emboldened hateful elected officials at the state and local levels, just as many of us feared.
In 2017, more than 130 anti-LGBTQ bills were introduced in thirty states. That year, Texas was ground zero for anti-equality forces, where the legislature was considering a dozen discriminatory bills, including a North Carolina–style bathroom bill. In March, I joined hundreds of trans people and our allies in Austin at the state capitol for a citizen lobby day. Two years before, forty people had shown up. Now it was hundreds, including an influx of allies. People came from across the massive state of Texas to push their legislators to defeat the discriminatory bills.
Scattered throughout the crowd were dozens of transgender kids whose unashamed pride in themselves was undiminished by the incomprehensible hate they were facing from within that state capitol. These nine-, ten-, and eleven-year-old kids entered the Texas capitol, one of the largest legislative buildings in the nation, with their heads held high, determined to fight for themselves and others like them.
Throughout the LGBTQ movement, young voices have been the drivers of change. Sylvia Rivera was seventeen years old when she helped launch the Stonewall Riot. Marsha P. Johnson was twenty-three at the historic rebellion. Marriage equality is a reality today in large part because of younger generations that have slowly but surely moved their parents and grandparents to side with love and equality.
Walking through the intimidating halls of the Texas state capitol with these trans kids, I thought back to just how overwhelmed I was in our fight for nondiscrimination protections in Delaware. I had been twice their age and facing a friendly legislature on a fight for a positive bill. These trans and LGBTQ youth were entering a capitol that was vehemently and viciously hostile to them personally. Many of the elected officials in that building had made clear their disgust with trans kids in the Texas papers and on talk radio and cable news. But that didn’t stop these young people from marching into that building to confront their legislators. It didn’t slow their pace. They were on a mission and carried with them a gravity that is unique to young voices.
I first began to understand that gravity in Delaware and had seen it since in states like North Carolina and, now, in Texas. When young people participate in politics, they can speak from a place of history. I don’t mean the history of the past, but rather the history that remains to be written. Young people will be the ones who write the history books of tomorrow. The ones I was standing with in Texas—and all LGBTQ youth and our young allies—will be the ones that get to decide who was right and who was wrong in this moment. As young people, we carry that perspective with us everywhere, from the safest to the scariest spaces in society.
That is a powerful tool. And if there is one thing I’ve learned throughout the last few years, it’s that our voices matter. My voice matters. Andy’s voice continues to matter. These young trans kids’ voices matter. Your voice matters. Our voices matter.
People frequently ask me how I remain hopeful in a world too often filled with hate and so often constructed to marginalize. It’s simple: I remain hopeful because I know that no matter what obstacles stand in our way, nothing—not even death—can take away our voices and our power. And because of those voices, I’ve had a front seat to change that once seemed unimaginable.
Several months after Donald Trump’s inauguration, I met a twelve-year-old transgender girl named Stella. Stella absolutely loves history and politics. She was attending an HRC youth-orientated conference that I was speaking at, and when we ran into each other in the hallway, she couldn’t contain her excitement. Her mouth was agape, just like mine had been a decade before when I first met people like Joe Biden and Jack Markell.
As I had with Lulu, I invited Stella and her mom to come to the HRC office a few days later as my colleagues and I were set to protest outside the White House against a proposed anti-LGBTQ executive order. When I met up with Stella that morning, she was wearing flip-flops, blue jeans, a gray T-shirt with “love” written on it in cursive, and a small blue-and-pink button that read “Trans Rights Now.” I walked with Stella and her mom to the same coffee shop where I’d talked with Lulu a few months earlier.
We sat across from each other and I asked Stella what she wanted to be when she got older. Without any doubt, she proudly proclaimed, “The first trans president!”
As we talked, I learned just how similar we are. Like me at her age, Stella goes to a Montessori school. Like me, she loves history and politics. Like me at her age, her favorite president is FDR. Like me at her age, she loves movies and filmmaking as a hobby. Like me at her age, her childhood dream is to be president of the United States. Like me, she is trans.
She was just like me at her age in so many ways but one: She was herself.
Sitting there talking with her, I realized that I was looking at a twelve-year-old version of myself, just a more authentic, self-actualized one. I was face-to-face with an alternative past. She was me, had I been able to grow up as myself. If science, society, and awareness had moved just a little bit faster to meet a young me in my own journey earlier.
I told Stella that I felt like I was sitting with the first transgender president and invited her to walk with me a few blocks to Lafayette Square, in front of the White House, where we were getting ready for the protest.
That day was a far cry from two years earlier in that same square, when so many of us had celebrated the marriage equality decision. Now, standing there, Stella got on my shoulders. Her mom snapped a picture of the two of us in front of the White House, Stella smiling and laughing, convinced that she was looking at her future home.
Too often we hear that “politics is the art of the possible,” but that belief undersells our power to effect transformational change. Instead, as barrier-breaking leaders throughout history have observed, politics is—and must always be—the art of making the impossible possible. Standing there with Stella on my shoulders, the change was obvious. In one generation, what had once seemed impossible to me growing up was now very real and possible to Stella. She could be herself and still dream.
That progress alone won’t save every life. It won’t stop discrimination or prevent violence. But the fact that Stella is even a reality today demonstrates how far we’ve come.
She represents a small but important step toward building a world where you can be trans, you can be gay, you can be Black, Muslim, an immigrant, a woman, or anything that this society says is mutually exclusive with dreaming big dreams—you can be any or all of those things and still be seen, valued, and respected as an equal.
Sometimes it can feel like we’re taking two steps forward and one step back. Indeed, in just over a year in office, the Trump administration has rescinded lifesaving guidance promoting the protection of transgender students, reinstated a ban on transgender people serving in the military, and in an action that added insult to injury, taken aim at the health-care nondiscrimination rule that Andy had spent so much of his life working toward. They’ve attacked the rights and dignity of people with disabilities, immigrants, women, Muslims, and people of color.
I know that it can feel like we’re almost lost as a country. But we must never forget that even with all of the hate and all of the challenges, no matter who is president, we can continue to change our world for the better. We’ve done it before and we can do it again.
It’s the change that’s allowed a community that was once ignored and later mocked to now stand on the cusp of our chapter in history.
It’s the change that’s taken a movement from Stonewall to the steps of the Supreme Court and brought marriage equality to every state in the land.
It’s the change that has allowed more families and friends, coworkers and classmates, to welcome an LGBTQ loved one with broad smiles and open arms.
It’s the change that Andy had dedicated his life to pushing forward.
It’s the change that made possible, just one year after the disastrous election of Donald Trump, the historic victories of trans candidates running to serve in city halls, on school boards, and finally, in one of the nation’s oldest state legislatures.
And it’s the change that allowed me—someone who just four years before couldn’t bring myself to say the words “I’m transgender” in my mirror—to stand onstage at the Democratic National Convention and declare before the nation that I am a “proud transgender American.”
And we have not come this far to stop now. Not with so much work left to do. In too many places, LGBTQ people are still denied the equal protection of the law. Transgender people, and particularly trans women of color, continue to face an epidemic of violence as 2017 became the deadliest year on record for the trans community. From Texas to North Carolina, hateful laws remain on the books. Barriers still exist. Challenges continue. And through it all, the fundamental truth remains that no one in the LGBTQ community is totally equal until everyone—from the gay Muslim refugee, to the queer undocumented immigrant, to the transgender woman of color—is treated with dignity and fairness.
We must never be pacified by our progress or content with the pace of change. But we must always remember just how far we’ve come and hold firm to our vision of a fairer, more just society.
Every day matters in this fight. But I remain as hopeful as ever that tomorrow will be different. That someday, generations from now, when our understanding of “We the People” finally includes everyone, a young trans student or a young queer student will grow up and learn about this struggle for justice and equality in those history books. And they’ll never have to know what this progress felt like, because they will never know anything different.
That will be because of the courage of the countless LGBTQ people who dared to walk down the street as the person they are or with the one they love. It will be because of advocates and activists who dreamed of a different world. It will be because of the allies who stood up and spoke out. It will be because of our generation.
We are powerful. We are making history. And, together, I know that we are unstoppable.