Trump’s mission to dehumanize transgender people is terrifying
February 2025
Editor’s Note: This is the latest installment of “The Transchick Chronicles,” an on-going series of essays written by trans journalist Stephanie Haskins as she documents her transition, and modern transgender life. Scroll to the bottom for links to her previous entries.
“I feel like I’m broken—like I don’t fit together any more. Like there’s no more room for me in the world or something. Like I’ve overstayed my welcome here on earth, and everyone’s trying to give me hints about that constantly. Like I should just check out.”
–Matthew Quick/Author of Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock
On some days—my very worst days, admittedly—since November 4, 2024 I feel like I have fallen into hell.
This quote above from Matthew Quick says it perfectly.
I feel as if I don’t fit together any more.
And I know all of my transgender siblings feel the same way. It’s like we’ve been emotionally banished to a gulag in a barren, wintry place, where there is no sunshine.
It’s never been easy being transgender—certainly not in the almost six years I’ve been out. While I love living my newly discovered life, I’ve ALWAYS felt some level of disconnection to the rest of the world, and I don’t know any other trans person who hasn’t felt the same way at some point.
I suppose we often feel like the protagonist in Stranger in a Strange Land, a 1961 science fiction novel by Robert Heinlein. He writes about Valentine Michael Smith, a human born on a Mars colony sometime in the future who comes back to Earth in early adulthood and tries to assimilate to a strange and “alien” culture he finds here.
We are aliens as well.
We try our best to live and thrive in a predominantly straight, cisgender, White-privileged culture that pretty much despises us.
Who wants to have us around?
To talk to us?
Where can we exist and feel safe?
Which city or town?
Which state?
Which nation?
Which continent?
Who can we trust?
All questions we have to ask ourselves at some point.
You might think I’m overstating the level of fear we carry with us. You might think I’m exaggerating.
Maybe.
But I don’t think so.
Stephanie “the Transchick” Haskins
Since I last wrote a column for The Reporters Inc., a great catastrophe has befallen my tiny community of a million and a half transgender persons here in America.
Donald Trump has returned to the White House, and he is the chief despiser of me and my transgender siblings. He makes no secret about that. His Republican toadies in Congress have made it pretty clear that hating and making our lives as miserable as possible is at the top of their legislative agenda as well.
The Republicans spent an astounding $200+ million on anti-trans political ads in 2024—messages that preached “Democrats are for THEY and THEM, while we’re for YOU.”
In other words, the good, clean, industrious-oh-so-but-set-upon non-transgender people in America are the YOU and the horrible trans people are the THEM.
Nothing new about that message but…boy, did it sell.
One ad I saw during several nationally televised football games in October ranted about transgender female athletes (who are REALLY boys, doncha know) and how destructive it is to our decent “Christian” culture to allow them to compete with REAL girls in any sporting competition.
The final shot in this despicable commercial showed a smiling (supposedly) transwoman who had long blonde hair, was muscled, tall, and displayed a wispy mustache. Grinning like the tranny ghoul that she is.
The great stereotype: a big boy-man, wearing female clothing, who gleefully wants to steal first place from a REAL female.
And then, after getting his medal, wants to shower with the other girls—PENIS AND ALL.
Of course, the Democrats did and said not one goddamn substantial thing to counter this absurdity.
Oh, there was much heavy sighing and shoulder heaving but anything they said was dismissed as, you know, just a bunch of silly-ass libs on their periods.
The spots ran during NFL primetime games and were obviously aimed at the typical football demographic—straight White guys who drink lots of beer. Guys who are the most frightened and disgusted and threatened by every one of those weak sissy males who wants to get rid of their most precious and glorious possessions—their penises.
Oh, the HORROR.
I’ve been around a long time, working for years for some of the highest-level politicians in the Democratic party in California—and yes, I’ve seen some of them engage in some really brazen and repulsive campaigns and smears as well. But THAT spot was just fucking shocking to me.
It was sleazy and ugly and untruthful and cruel.
And effective.
Some pundits say that commercial and other anti-trans messaging during the 2024 presidential campaign was a tipping point for the election.
But as bad as it was, even worse were some of the dumbest words ever that burbled from the pursed lips of our very own convicted felon president himself.
He actually claimed that kids were receiving gender affirmation surgery at schools—that little Johnnys all over the land were going to school in the morning and returning home as little Janes.
No proof, of course. No details, of course.
Because there was, and is, none. Because it’s not remotely true.
But guess what?
I’ll bet a surprising number of middle-American Republican rubes thought this most-astounding-load-of-bullshit-ever was God’s honest truth.
And while Democrats across the land tut-tutted and tsked-tsked and blew peas out of their noses during dinners everywhere in disgust when they heard Trump spew his hate, they said…and they did…well…pretty much not a goddam thing.
Again.
Yet another metaphorical drive-by shooting in the trans community.
Lie after lie after lie after lie after lie after…
Trump won.
Not by a huge margin, but on that chilly night in early November, I sat in front of my TV set and wept.
What else could I do?
Another four years of Trump saying some awful thing every day, or doing some awful or incredibly stupid or dangerous thing every day.
Every fucking day.
See, I cannot NOT watch—just as I did the first time around as well, every day during his first campaign and term from 2016 to 2021. Until he waddled off to sulk and cheat at golf in Florida.
I thought we were done with him.
And with Grampie Joe in charge, I felt safe. I did NOT have to watch the news every day to see and hear what horrible thing a Democratic president might do or say (for the most part) about my mere existence.
But now, the Great Terror is back.
This time he has previously obscure Midwesterner JD Vance in tow as his Veep—a man who, as it turns out, is just as hateful as his boss.
Vance had a troubled childhood but managed to turn his life around. He graduated from Yale, became an investment banker, and wrote a pretty successful memoir (Hillbilly Elegy) about learning values from so-called salt of the earth people who’ve been largely ignored and disparaged by a more successful White Male America.
By all accounts, Vance seemed to actually be a decent guy early in his career.
He even had a close trans masculine friend of some 10 years who he met at Yale, and with whom he corresponded for some time after graduating.
But then Vance discovered a vat of Trump Kool-Aid, chugged it down, and that relationship evaporated. See, the Trump juice turns those who drink it into hateful queer-baiting homo/transphobes.
Which is odd—and sad—because up to that point, Vance made no secret that he considered Trump to be dangerous, unhinged, not terribly bright, and a threat to democracy.
Vance somehow came to believe that gluing his pale, sweaty forehead to the corpulent backside of Trump was gonna be a tremendous career move. Indeed, it got him elected to the U.S. Senate in 2022, running as a born-again Trumpkin.
And, of course, the Trump cult just loathes queer people; being LGB and Q is bad enough—but when you run across people who identify as T, well, now you got people you can REALLY despise.
Vance became an expert at transgender hating and baiting. For instance, in the fall of 2023, Vance introduced a bill that would remove “X” as an option on all U.S. passports’ gender identity section. (Some trans people have used “X” instead of the male and female options.)
The bill went nowhere, but it obviously excited Trump. On January 20, shortly after his inauguration, he issued an executive order declaring that gender on passports can only be designated as male or female.
That means people like me, by presidential fiat, are now UNPEOPLE.
Let me try to explain why it’s so important for transgender people to obtain documents that legally affirm their new, transitioned identities.
I was lucky—and smart, for once—when I changed all of my personal and legal documentation back in 2022 and 2023 to reflect my new gender status. It was a pretty simple process theoretically, once you learn to carefully read and really study the ambiguous directions written by bureaucrats who don’t give a shit about your difficult, sad journey, and who just want to make it as arduous and complicated as possible.
I suspect they gleefully fantasized about the thousands and thousands of poor bastards, like me—all confused and anxious, who just want to finish filling out these documents. I like to imagine they look like the elderly bank clerks in the Harry Potter movies. I can almost hear their crazed laughter in my head.
Pro-bono attorneys helped me at first, but even THEY made mistakes I had to correct. After a couple of frustrating attempts, I got my name and gender marker legally changed by the Sacramento County Superior Court for $435. I then went to the Social Security office, waited a couple of hours, and got my name and gender changed for free.
Next, a few days later, I was off to the nearest DMV to get a new, updated driver’s license. Not hard or expensive (only $30), but time consuming. And by the way, I had to do it in this exact order: To change my Social Security information, I needed a court order. To get a new driver’s license, I needed both a court order and a verifiable Social Security number.
Then, I decided I really wanted to get my birth certificate updated with my new name and gender. It was very, very important to me—maybe to formally convince myself that I’m legit as a woman.
So, I downloaded a complicated form from the Minnesota Secretary of State’s office. (I was born in Austin, Minnesota.) It, too, was long and confusing—and it was rejected twice. When my application (that cost $100) finally passed muster, I got my new birth certificate a few weeks later.
It says, in black and white, that I am female. Yeah, that sad little penis I once had was declared—for all intents and purposes—to have been mythical after all.
Can you imagine how I felt when I saw that really lovely piece of paper for the first time?
I just stared at it and cried.
Stephanie Haskins’ updated birth certificate
Finally, getting my new passport was quicker and easier than imagined. Theoretically, I could have gotten it done at a local post office, but the reservation process to submit an application is confusing and arduous, so I did it by mail.
When I got it, with my new picture (so pretty!), I became—once again—VERY emotional.
Stephanie Haskins’ new passport
My old passport photo as a sort-of male looked like I was a corpse who’s been propped up by a pole. My eyes half opened, my lips kinda scrunched into a somewhat porcine grimace. I hated it. I was terribly embarrassed by it.
Bottom line, for most trans people, getting identification documents that reflect our true inside-emotional identities is SO very important because these bits of paper or plastic validate us.
They signal that we are, finally, to be forever known LEGALLY as the persons we were always meant to be—SUPPOSED to be. For the entire human universe to see and inspect.
All despite what our new and thoughtlessly cruel government of pious shitbags think.
And yet, all through the last 11 days of January, and now into February, it seems like they cannot stop torturing and harassing us.
Trump’s executive order, like Vance’s bill before it, removes the possibility of trans and gender fluid people being able to check an “X” box to describe their gender identity.
Another non-problem solved. ‘Til Further Notice.
Apparently, Don and JD just aren’t much concerned about the waste of time and money it’ll take to “fix” a “problem” that hurts no one and that isn’t really a problem at all. The only thing this order does is to kowtow to the hateful sensibilities of his White, straight, cisgender, uneducated, uninformed followers who simply cannot stand anyone who is even a little different from them.
Not to mention the very real and very deep hurt to many, many trans people who now feel they can never completely transition. That they are stuck with labels that in no way reflect their true identities.
Cruelty, thy name is MAGA.
And then there’s Elon Musk.
This (allegedly) Nazi-saluting South African billionaire who bought Trump’s attention seems intent on destroying our democracy.
Musk has a transgender daughter who he apparently despises; she has severed ties with him, changed her name, and hasn’t spoken to him in years.
Still, he’s done whatever he can to make her life as hard and miserable as possible, including publicly misgendering and ridiculing her.
That our new “leaders” are just mean-spirited, queer-baiting bigots who actually intend to do damage to all transgender people (especially the innocent young ones among us) is all the more despicable seeing that we truly mean no harm to ANYONE.
The damage they’ve already done, as well as what they propose to do with statutes they intend to enact over the next four years is the pure definition of cruelty.
Elon Musk, Donald Trump and J.D. Vance
Republican lawmakers filed a record number of anti-trans bills in the closing weeks of 2024—some 120 of them. Over the same period in 2023, only 80 were filed. Most of the bills were introduced in Missouri, Texas, and the rest of the deep red south.
Most of the bills want to end the possibility of allowing trans people to update their legal identities—in some cases retroactively.
And, of course, more bathroom bans.
Others intend to restrict our badly needed access to health care.
The impact of these hateful laws on everyday cisgender folks is almost zero. They don’t affect anyone else except less than 1 percent of the people in this country.
Since Trump’s inauguration on January 20, it’s been overwhelming to read all the anti-trans headlines. With breakneck speed, Trump has launched a series of executive orders that aim to deny the existence of trans people and basically exclude us from public life. Here’s just a sampling of the horrors, and the initial efforts to push back and stop him:
Right out of the gate, Trump signed an executive order banning transgender people from enlisting and serving openly in the military, declaring that being transgender “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle.” Trump himself received five deferments exempting him from military service during the Vietnam war including one for heel spurs.
Any doubt that he’s a coward?
The U.S. military tried to follow through on Trump’s order, but it was blocked by a temporary restraining order filed by the civil rights organizations GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) and the National Center for Lesbian Rights. These groups are urging the military to follow current policies while the court reviews the filings.
Trump also signed an executive order demanding transgender women be moved to men’s prison facilities or have their medical care revoked. According to U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, this order violates the Constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. Since then, a federal judge has blocked Trump’s order to move three transgender women to a men’s facility.
On February 5, Trump signed an order banning transgender athletes from women’s sports. NCAA President Charlie Baker said that out of 500,000 NCAA athletes, he’s currently aware of fewer than 10 transgender athletes. Yet the NCAA then announced a new policy prohibiting transgender female athletes in college sports.
During the signing of that order, Trump also said transgender athletes will not be permitted entry into the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
However, high school districts around the country are pushing back. For example, the Virginia High School League (VHSL) announced on the same day it will continue to allow transgender women to play on women’s high school sports teams. Michigan high school sports officials also said they would continue allowing transgender athletes.
On January 22, Trump signed an executive order declaring only “two sexes, male and female” existed. As a result, Social Security stopped sex marker changes, the federal government scrubbed transgender language from websites, and other federal websites completely wiped publicly available health information on transgender care. On February 19, RFK Jr. targeted transgender protections in one of his first moves at the Department of Health and Human services, asserting that a person’s gender is “unchangeable.”
House Democrats said the executive order recognizing only two sexes is unconstitutional. Reps. Mark Takano (D-Calif.), Jamie Raskin (D- Md.) and Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) said in a letter to the acting director of the Office of Personnel Management that transgender people are entitled to the same legal protections as other Americans.
On January 29, Trump signed an executive order restricting gender affirming care for transgender children, prompting social justice groups and transgender teens to file a lawsuit to block the order.
New York attorney general Letitia James told hospitals on February 3 to continue offering transgender care, saying they would be violating state law if they stopped offering care. On February 5, California Attorney General Rob Bonta said L.A. Hospitals are violating state law by withholding transgender care, echoing James’ warnings.
However, Los Angeles clinics lost federal funding and several hospitals suspended transgender care following Trump’s executive order. The Children’s Hospital Los Angeles announced February 5 it is pausing transgender hormonal therapy for patients under 19 years old, despite Bonta’s earlier statements.
Also on February 4, Texas attorney general Ken Paxton suspended three physicians’ licenses after they provided gender-affirming care to children. That same day, Missouri Republicans pushed for laws to permanently restrict children from identifying as transgender.
On February 7, Trump rolled back federal opposition by the Biden administration to state laws that ban gender-affirming care for teenagers, like the Tennessee law banning puberty-blockers.
Three Democratic states sued the Trump administration on February 7 over Trump’s order banning federal funding for transgender care. Washington state Attorney General Nick Brown filed the federal lawsuit along with the Oregon and Minnesota attorneys general Dan Reyfield and Keith Ellison.
And then, on February 13, a federal judge paused Trump’s order restricting gender-affirming care for trans youth. The restraining order essentially put Trump’s directive on hold while the case proceeds. That means medical institutions can’t have their federal funding pulled because they provide gender-affirming care services. The order is nationwide in scope and will apply to institutions across the country.
All of these actions appear to be giving transphobic lawmakers a louder voice. On February 5, Rep. Gerald Connolly (D-Va.) called out Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) for using a transgender slur during a House Oversight and Government Reform hearing. She responded, “I don’t really care. You want penises in women’s bathrooms, and I’m not gonna have it. No, thank you. It’s disgusting.” Then on February 7, Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.) introduced transgender Rep. Sarah McBride (D-Del.) as “the gentleman from Delaware, Mr. McBride“ before McBride delivered a speech. McBride chose not to respond.
Also on February 13, the National Park Service eliminated references to transgender people from its Stonewall National Monument website. What used to refer to the LGBTQ+ community has been changed to just LGB. The Stonewall Inn Gives Back Initiative and The Stonewall Inn responded, “This blatant act of erasure not only distorts the truth of our history, but it also dishonors the immense contributions of transgender individuals—especially transgender women of color—who were at the forefront of the Stonewall Riots and the broader fight for LGBTQ+ rights.”
Many if not most of these executive orders appear to be unconstitutional, according to legal experts. Based on the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, federal anti-discrimination law protects transgender people, and their targeted repression is a form of prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex and gender identity. Some of the orders also deny trans people the ability to exercise control over their own bodies, their medical care, and their futures, while also infringing on our rights of free expression.
However the courts ultimately rule on these orders and actions, the damage has already started. And the impact on the 1.4 million trans people in the U.S. will be devastating.
It’s all just shameful.
To better understand JUST how bad it is, I’d like to introduce you to someone else whose life has been turned upside down by America’s cultural transphobia.
Her name is Aubrey.
She’s a young transgender woman, absolutely striking, with large, soulful hazel-green eyes that speak quietly of a life interrupted. She’s beautiful and serene, with a sly, wicked sense of humor that emerges unexpectedly.
Aubrey was born and raised in Orlando, Florida, and as she started her transition several years ago, she felt increasingly unsafe and unwelcome in her own community.
That makes complete sense because, in the past five years, Florida has passed legislation that makes living while trans in that state almost impossible—something Trump wants to emulate nationwide.
One of the laws bans surgeries and medication such as puberty blockers for minors. It also makes it illegal for doctors and health care providers to provide medication or perform gender affirming surgeries for kids under 18. It allows courts authority to obtain a warrant to take physical custody of any child who is being subjected to “sex-reassignment prescriptions or procedures.”
To be crystal clear, no doctor anywhere in the country will perform any sort of gender surgery on anyone under the age of 18. It does NOT happen. But Florida lawmakers and its truly evil governor Ron DeSantis want to make damn sure that procedures that are NEVER done are…well…NEVER actually done.
PLEASE, Florida doctors, PLEASE continue NOT doing those surgeries that you NEVER do on kids you have NEVER seen or with parents you have NEVER consulted.
STOP IT!
Orlando, Florida
Florida is one of 19 Republican states that have banned gender transition surgeries or other kinds of gender affirming care for trans kids. They make up just 1.32 percent of that age group’s population in Florida, according to stats from the Williams Institute at UCLA.
Here’s a partial list of what Florida’s other new transphobic laws do:
- They prohibit the instruction of sexual orientation or gender identity to 8thgraders and younger. The original law applied to kids in the third grade and younger.
- They define in the state’s education code that “sex” (sic) is either male or female, and that teachers can’t be required to use a child’s preferred pronouns “if such personal title or pronouns do not correspond to that person’s sex (sic).” Oh, and that also includes adults in the workplace at ANY job.
- They ban trans people from using restrooms, locker rooms, or other public facilities that match their IDENTIFIED gender. So, I guess that means I can never again go to Florida and pee in a women’s bathroom.
See, as I’ve written here before, I had a vaginoplasty, and I have absolutely wonderful lady bits now. But I WAS born with a penis so that means I’d have to go into the bathroom with Uncle Ed and Cousin Freedom (they love names like that for kids in Florida) and mount a urinal to tap my kidneys.
Well, that ain’t gonna happen. I DO have standards.
In response to all of this Nazi-inspired legislation, Kelley Robinson, the president of the Human Rights Campaign, told CBS News that “the rights of millions of Floridians are being rolled back by politicians who are attacking the LGBTQ+ community at a breakneck pace to pander to the most extreme fringes of their base.”
So…THAT should give you an idea why Aubrey made the decision to get away from the only state she’d ever lived in, where she grew up, went to school, lived with her mom and brother and other family members, worked, paid taxes, and—oh my God—had to live with the truth that she’s a transgender female.
So scary. So daunting. So hard.
Even more so in Florida.
In September 2023, Aubrey moved to Sacramento, where I live. It’s a city of almost 600,000 in the state’s great Central Valley, and the capitol of California. It’s one of the most diverse cities in the country, and very queer friendly.
I’m glad she’s my friend. We met at a transgender support group meeting, and became friendly because we’re women with similarly unique histories.
Aubrey
On a recent lazy Sunday afternoon, we chat in one of Sacramento’s beautiful urban parks. We sit in the sunshine, watching baby ducks and geese quack and honk in a nearby pond, waiting to be led to food by their parents, or fed birdie-junk food by squealing kids who throw God-knows-what to them.
“I moved to be a lot more comfortable just walking around and not having to look over my shoulder,” she says. “But it was very hard to leave.” She tells me that diminishing access to medical care and treatment during her transition made it almost impossible to stay in Florida.
And while she was very close to her mother in Orlando, she told me her brother didn’t feel comfortable having her around his children. Since moving to Sacramento, she’s struggled to find employment but remains hopeful in a safe, more welcoming place.
Regardless, “It was the only thing I could do,” she says. “I felt like I needed to get out of Florida to survive. It felt like the walls were closing in and that I was under attack—or would be. I just want to live my life. It’s been tough financially, but I WILL overcome.”
She continues, “I do feel energized. Because I can be me.”
She seems wistful. Her pain and homesickness are palpable.
And yet I marvel: She seems to be so fucking strong, despite her current circumstances. I’m not sure I’d have had the courage to do what she’s managed to do with her young life.
We discuss our transgender sensibilities and she brings a new perspective that I’ve never considered.
“Look at left-handedness,” she says. “Only 11 percent of the world’s population is left handed and over the centuries our culture has struggled to accept that not being right-handed is OK. It’s the same with us. We face the same sort of fight to convince others that we happen to be who we are because of the same sort of genetic process.”
This young woman gets it.
Not to mention she—like me—is terribly proud of whom she is. Fiercely so.
“I want to be a happy, successful, VISIBLE trans woman,” she tells me.
We agree that we’re both able to live “stealth” transgender lives—meaning basically undetected as trans women in an unsuspecting culture. Yet we’re both fiercely proud of our identities, and unafraid to acknowledge our journeys to others if we choose to do so.
And we have chosen to live in Sacramento, a vibrant, accepting city of multi-hued faces, a place that seems not to care much about anyone’s sexuality or gender.
Sacramento, California
Sacramento is a “sanctuary city.”
In late March of last year, the Sacramento City Council approved a resolution ensuring that city resources—especially law enforcement—are NOT used to help out-of-state prosecutions of people who come to California seeking gender affirming mental health care, hormone therapy (HRT), or surgery.
The resolution prohibits city funds from being used to cooperate with ANY persons or out-of-state agencies who are investigating people who come here to pursue gender affirming treatments that are absolutely legal in California.
So far, across the country, statewide bans on gender affirming care have been rather limited in scope, but advocates say it’s only a matter of time until states adopt laws to prosecute/persecute “lawbreakers”—such as parents of transgender kids—who seek various treatments for their children in places where those procedures are totally legal. (Again, I refer you back to the actions taken in just the last month that I listed above.)
Are we REALLY going to allow heartless Trump cult members to turn us into an unrecognizable AmeriKKKa?
The land of the free, and the brave and…the Trump.
As a sanctuary city, transgender people in Sacramento can start the process to get on hormone treatments and perhaps start planning other medical procedures—without facing ostracism, open hatred, and perhaps even legal action.
The Sacramento City Council says “This is NOT a symbolic gesture; this is a binding resolution that is more critical (now) than it has ever been.”
Sacramento is the second city in California to declare itself a sanctuary city for transgender people. West Hollywood was the first. California declared itself to be a sanctuary state in 2022.
Other cities in blue states have also passed similar resolutions.
So, we are absolutely NOT alone in our struggle.
We ARE safe in some places.
Yet it’s such an enormous shame and such a true embarrassment that sanctuary cities for ANY American citizen are necessary in the first place.
A 2024 U.S. National Survey on the Mental Health of LGBTQ+ Young People published by the Trevor Project and the Movement Advancement Project (MAP) revealed that an astounding 266,000 LGBTQIA+ young people (ages 13 to 24) have, in the past few years, moved out of states with negative political environments.
They felt they had to move from their homes.
But do the MAGA people in those states care? I’m guessing they don’t.
I AM sure that all of these young people and their families felt they had no other safe, reasonable alternative. So they disrupted their lives and moved away from environments where they felt fear— just like Aubrey—to places where they could feel safe.
And free.
Aubrey is, by far, not the first to come for refuge in Sacramento. But if the Trumps and Vances and Musks have their way, how long do we actually have? How much longer will this sense of safety continue?
I’m hopeful and terrified, all at the same time, as I and my trans siblings sweat out the next four years.
Stephanie Haskins is hard at work on the next chapters of “The Transchick Chronicles.” Sign up for our e-newsletter here to be alerted when they’re published.
To read her previous installments:
June 2021/Transgender Journalist’s Life Story Destined to Become Her Most Important
July 2021/Surgery and Soul: Merging the Exterior with the Interior
September 2021/Crucial Caregiving: Finding the Right Help, from the Right People
June 2022/Vagina Ahoy! Countdown to Long-Awaited Bottom Surgery
July 2022/Post Surgery Reflections: Rocky Recovery Marked by Joy, Pain and Covid
January 2023/Post-Surgery Blues: This Girl Is Sad, Mad and Still Sick (But Getting Better)
April 2023/Hate Trans Folks All You Want: We’re Here to Stay and Determined to Fight
July 2023/What It Feels Like to Be “Uncomfy”
October 2023/What Was I Made For? Searching for Connection, and an End to Loneliness
December 2023/Transgender Euphoria: Realizing My True Identity Brings Unparalleled Joy
March 2024/A Vaginoplasty at Last, Stolen Laundry, and a Desire to be ‘Someone’s Woman’
July 2024/Experiencing Misogyny: An Unexpected, Unwelcome Transition Discovery
Stephanie Haskins is a Reporters Inc. Board Member. You can read more about her here on our Team page. She can be reached at stephhaskins@yahoo.com.
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