‘We get through it together’: Trans and nonbinary students share concern for future after 2024 election

For students like Ze’mer Parr, Donald Trump’s victory presents a potentially existential problem.

“I’d rather not become illegal in the eyes of the United States government,” Parr, who is the communications assistant for Rainbow Alliance at Pitt, said.

After the 2024 election, transgender and nonbinary students at Pitt and community members across the city are reckoning with what a second Trump administration means for them.

Throughout the election cycle, the Trump campaign and Republican groups spent over $21 million on anti-trans advertisements. Earlier this year, Trump said he wanted to pass an executive order banning gender-affirming care and restrict trans athletes by rolling back Biden-era Title IX protections.

Parr, a junior digital narrative and interactive design and communications major, said they felt “numb” following Trump’s victory on Nov. 5.

“That might be because, mentally, that’s where I’d been at for a pretty long time,” Parr said. “I was upset, of course, but I heard a lot of other people crying about it, being really upset about it and I just kind of didn’t feel that much, or at least not outwardly.”

Nearly one month later, Parr said they are still in a “state of disbelief.” One of their biggest concerns is that Project 2025 will be implemented, a thought they find “very terrifying.” Project 2025 proposes a plan to decrease protections for transgender individuals under federal law and calls for the ban on transgender people in the military to be reinstated.

“I’d like for trans health care to not be obliterated before my eyes, especially because I’m still in the process of trying to go on hormone therapy, and I’d hate for that to just be taken away,” Parr said.

Emma Moran, senior physics and astronomy major and president of Out in STEM — a club for LGBTQ+ STEM majors — spent election night with her roommates watching the results come in. As the electoral college began to show a shift in favor of Republicans, Moran, who identifies as agender, and her roommates, each of whom are nonbinary, felt a sense of dread creeping in.

“I woke up at like 6:30 that morning, saw the results and just laid in bed for about an hour, but then it kind of hits like, ‘Oh god, I run this club. We have to make a statement,’” Moran said. 

Moran said they wanted to show support for club members, especially first-year students who they see as being more “vulnerable.”

“Their first semester of freshman year, a lot of them probably got out of shitty situations where they couldn’t be [themselves], for lack of a term,” Moran said. “It feels weird to call the freshmen kids, but they feel like kids to me.”

After being a “wreck” during the first day, Moran didn’t want to “wallow in despair” and thought about how the trans community has survived “objectively worse than this.”

“We get through it together,” Moran said. “Let’s put our energy towards our community and helping each other.”

Mak Blough, a senior psychology student, social media manager for Out in STEM and one of Moran’s roommates, felt the need to “do something” after learning the results of the election. Blough created a seven-page list of resources they shared on the club’s Instagram.

“I’m very passionate about mental health and mental health resources, so I just started scouring the internet for every phone, crisis line, mutual aid thing, local organizations in Pittsburgh that are resources,” Blough said. “I found ones for women, for LGBT people, for trans people, for people of color and started compiling it into a giant Word document. I don’t think I really paid attention to any of my classes [the day after the election] … I was just working on this document.”

Blough currently works as a peer specialist at Western Psych and plans on going into the mental health field after graduating, with a focus on helping people who are a part of the LGBTQ+ community. They said one of their primary concerns is a rise in suicide rate, which is already higher for young LGBTQ+ people. Since Election Day, LGBTQ+ youth calls to mental health crisis lines have spiked by 700%.

“I think a lot of kids are going to be afraid. They’re going to feel like they don’t have a future, or that they’ll never get the future that they want, and unfortunately, that can lead to a lot of suicidal ideation,” Blough said. “I want to be optimistic about it, but frankly, I think it’s going to be very bad.”

At TransYOUniting, a local organization that offers crisis housing, food assistance and mutual aid to trans people, Dena Stanley, co-founder and co-director of the organization, said her phone “has not really stopped ringing” since the election.

“The response is just fear — a fear of losing their insurance, fear of not being able to get the name changes … because there’s so much uncertainty of what [Trump] is going to do once he gets into office because of the rhetoric that they have been spewing around trans individuals,” Stanley said.

Stanley also expressed fears of increased suicide rates and an uptick in violence against trans individuals, especially among younger trans individuals. As an older member of the trans community, Stanley emphasized the importance of finding community during the next four years.

“We’ve been here, we’ve been surviving and we’re going to continue to survive,” Stanley said. “Find community. That’s the biggest thing. Find community, because we’re going to need it, but know that this is not the end at all.” 

Moran speculated on what legislation and responses they may see toward trans people under the Trump administration. They said they were concerned about the effect on trans healthcare across the country and how Trump might embolden a rise in hate and violence towards members of the LGBTQ+ community, especially those who are visibly transgender.

“I think the hard part right now is … we don’t know how far it’s going to go,” Moran said. “We’re preparing for the worst and praying to any god that might be up there that it will never get that bad.”