The sweet smell of baked sugar and butter filled my kitchen nearly every afternoon that spring of 2019. My son was in middle school and upping his cupcake game. He had perfected an Instagram-worthy icing method, in which he piped a channel of every color of the rainbow onto plastic wrap, then rolled it together and squeezed out a swirl of rainbow icing in a small mountain on top of perfectly baked cake. Then he planted a small flag with a friendly message about trans kids. His idea was to hand out cupcakes for Trans Day of Visibility. “I want to raise awareness, Mom,” he said. “I want people to know trans kids are just working on being themselves.”
‘I want to raise awareness, Mom,’ he said. ‘I want people to know trans kids are just working on being themselves.’
On this Trans Day of Visibility, it’s jarring for me to recall how the same day felt then.
That year, in California, the ACLU was fighting on behalf of a trans man who’d been denied gender affirming surgery at a Catholic hospital on the day his procedure had been scheduled. I learned then that the hospital closest to my son’s school was run by a Catholic company.
Raising my kids in a cozy Northern California town, I’d done my best to teach all of them how to treat others with respect, how to reach out to friends who were having a tough time on the playground, how to work with other kids with humor and lightness to help them see it wasn’t cool to pick on the weaker kids. They’d learned to have faith in kindness and learned that neighbors help one another live better lives. But I spent that cupcake spring wondering if I’d handed my trans kid a daisy for a gun fight.
In 2021, Arkansas became the first state to outlaw gender affirming care for minors. Now 26 states have. I expect most parents of trans kids feared Donald Trump being elected again and had a hunch about what to expect if he was, but the administration’s actions have been swifter and more concrete than we thought possible in the U.S.
Trump’s executive orders opposing the participation of the trans community in American life are plainly rooted in bigotry and lies.
My son is in college now and doesn’t have much time for baking. He’s studying engineering and spent the last two weeks disassembling an antique typewriter to study the mechanics of joinery and levers. He’d like to someday work on a team that builds devices for people with mobility challenges. Some of the best companies doing this work are in other countries. To work abroad, or to even see what those companies are doing, he’ll need to use a passport.
Imagine the scene at the airport when a TSA official looks at the F on my son’s new passport and does a double take.
For years he’s had one that matches his identity. But when he renews it in a few months, because of an executive order Trump signed on this first day of this term, it will be returned from the State Department with the wrong gender marker. Imagine the scene at the airport when a TSA official looks at the F on my son’s new passport and does a double take. The flow of travelers through the line will stall. My son’s personal security will drift into precarity. What happens next, I’m not sure. What I do know is that no one, not one single person, will be better for this, and in fact many people — the security officials, delayed travelers and especially my son — will all be worse off.
Despite the wintry chill felt by the trans community and many other communities targeted by Trump, spring is breaking through. Purple crocuses and buttercup-yellow daffodils punch skyward.
More than one friend has asked me how they can support my family, my son, the trans community on this Trans Day of Visibility. My suggestion is that we go back to the basics. I know I’m not the only mom in the United States who raised her kids to treat people with respect and to reach out to others who were struggling. I wasn’t the only mom who taught her kids that it’s not cool when bullies pick on those who are weaker. Even though I used to wonder if equipping my kids with kindness was leaving them unprepared for the fight against cruelty, it’s obvious to me now that simple kindness is a radical act, a powerfully subversive form of resistance.
So, on this Trans Day of Visibility, the job of allies is simple but not easy: be kind.
On this Trans Day of Visibility, the job of allies is simple but not easy: be kind.
Here’s a place to start. Treat others the way you would like to be treated. Keep an eye out for fellow travelers knowing their safety is partially in your hands. Check on friends and loved ones to see how they’re doing — knowing that many people are losing their health care coverage, their sense of belonging and their sense of safety. If you review passports at the airport or work as an administrator at the passport agency, hold on to your own convictions about what you think American citizenship is and should be. Do not be coerced into executing orders that require you to treat others in a way you would not want to be treated. Embrace the best of yourself.
And make cupcakes.