Post #3901344

2026-07-18 03:16 UTC

1/ Long before I knew I was a trans woman, my wife and I had already made one decision about where we would never live. The Bible Belt was off the table. That decision had nothing to do with my gender. At the time, I did not know I was transgender. We simply knew that the politics, culture, and values of much of that region were not compatible with the kind of life we wanted to build. So we had already drawn a rough mental map of the United States. There were places we could imagine living. And there were places we had crossed out. Then, in October 2023, my life changed in a way I had not expected. I finally understood that I was a trans woman, and I began transitioning. Suddenly, geography meant something different. Where I lived was no longer only about politics, cost of living, climate, jobs, or whether I liked the culture of a place. There was now another question. Would I actually be safe there? I did not discover Erin Reed or Erin In The Morning until late 2024, more than a year after I started transitioning. By then, I had already watched the political environment around transgender people become increasingly hostile, but I did not yet have a clear picture of how much the country had changed. Recently, I decided to go backward through Erin's older risk maps. The first map specifically tracking risk to transgender adults was published in September 2023, just weeks before I started my transition. Looking at it now feels strange. It is like finding a record of something that was happening around me while I was too busy living through one of the biggest changes of my life to notice the whole picture. Using the standard I use for myself today, where "High Risk" or worse means somewhere I would not consider moving to, 14 states were already off my map in September 2023. Fourteen. At the time, I had not started HRT. I had not changed my identification. Most people in my life did not know me as a woman. I was only beginning to understand what my future might look like. And without realizing it, I was beginning that future in a country where more than a quarter of the states were already places I would not now consider safe enough to build a life. Florida was already in a category of its own. It was the only state under a "Do Not Travel" advisory. That distinction matters to me. There is a big difference between saying, "I would never move there," and saying, "I would not even willingly go there." One is about where you choose to build a life. The other is about vacations. Weddings. Visiting family. Road trips. Connecting flights. Stopping somewhere long enough to use the bathroom. When I started transitioning, Florida was alone in that category. Then the map started changing. I only know the early part of this progression in hindsight. By December 2023, the number of states above my personal "do not move" threshold had grown from 14 to 16. Then 2024 began. Indiana and Utah moved into High Risk. The number became 18. Iowa followed. Nineteen. Then Idaho. Twenty. At the same time, I was living through my own completely different timeline. I was learning what transition meant for me. I was watching my body change. I was figuring out how and when to tell people. I was starting to build a life that finally felt more honest. Meanwhile, state legislatures were debating people like me. Whether we should have access to healthcare. Whether our documents should recognize us. Whether we should be allowed to use public bathrooms. Whether our gender should have any legal recognition at all. By June 2024, New Hampshire had moved into High Risk. That one stands out to me. Because for years, my mental map had been simple. My wife and I had already written off the Bible Belt. When I later realized I was trans, it was easy to think that maybe the practical answer was still basically the same. Avoid the Deep South. Avoid the most aggressively conservative states. Stay somewhere blue. New Hampshire did not fit that mental picture. It was not Alabama. It was not Mississippi. It was New England. And suddenly the idea that anti-trans hostility could be neatly contained inside the parts of the country we had already rejected stopped making sense. By then, 21 states had crossed my personal threshold for somewhere I would not move. Still, I was not following Erin's maps yet. I can only see the progression now. Fourteen. Sixteen. Eighteen. Nineteen. Twenty. Twenty-one. Written that way, it looks almost clinical. But every number represents something real. A state deciding transgender people can be excluded from bathrooms. A state restricting healthcare. A state changing the legal definition of sex specifically to erase people like me. A state making it harder or impossible to correct identification documents. A state deciding that discrimination is something the law should protect instead of prevent. (continued below)

Replies (1)

@technotenshi@infosec.exchange 2026-07-18 03:17

2/ Then came late 2024. That is where my relationship with these maps changes. Before then, I can only look backward and see what was happening. After that, I started watching it happen. In September 2024, Texas moved into the category containing the worst anti-trans laws. The state began refusing gender marker changes on driver's licenses, even when transgender people had court orders. It also began collecting information about people attempting to make those changes. By that point, identification documents were no longer an abstract issue to me. I had changed, or was in the process of changing, the documents I carried. Having an ID that reflected who I actually am felt incredibly ordinary. That was the point. I wanted to be able to hand someone my driver's license without having to explain myself. Meanwhile, another state was deciding that transgender people asking for exactly that should be denied and tracked. Then, just one month later, Texas crossed the other line. Odessa passed an ordinance allowing $10,000 civil bounties targeting transgender people in bathrooms. Texas moved into "Do Not Travel." Florida was no longer alone. By late 2024, I had discovered Erin's work. And then the election happened. From that point forward, the map seemed to accelerate. Georgia got worse. Wyoming got worse. Ohio got worse. Washington, D.C. lost some of its previous safety as federal spaces began adopting anti-trans restrictions. By the end of 2024, 23 states had crossed my threshold for somewhere I would not move. Almost half the country. Then 2025 began, and the problem stopped being only about individual states. The federal government itself became part of the risk. Executive orders began reshaping policies around healthcare, identification, education, and legal recognition. Institutions started complying, sometimes even where state law supposedly protected transgender people. By March 2025, the number of states I would not consider moving to reached 24. Almost exactly half the country. And that number has mostly stayed there. But saying the number stayed at 24 hides something important. The map can stop shrinking while the places already inside the danger zone become more dangerous. If a state moves from High Risk to the category containing the worst laws, it does not change my personal count. I already would not move there. But it still matters. It means a threat became law. A restriction became enforceable. The consequences became more serious. And sometimes a state crosses the final boundary. From somewhere I would not live... to somewhere I would not go. Florida was first. Then Texas. In February 2026, Kansas joined them. Kansas had already been one of the worst states for transgender adults. But the state escalated further with a bathroom law built around private enforcement, allowing ordinary people to target transgender people through lawsuits. A bathroom bounty system. Now there were three states in my own country that I would not willingly travel to. Then came Idaho. In July 2026, Idaho became the fourth. Its bathroom law created the possibility of extraordinarily serious criminal consequences, including potential felony charges and prison time. And suddenly the list was: Florida. Texas. Kansas. Idaho. Four states in my own country that I would not willingly travel to. That still feels strange to write. Not countries. States. Places I can reach without crossing an international border. Places where the road signs look the same. Where the money is the same. Where the same flag flies outside government buildings. But where the legal reality of my existence can change when I cross an invisible line on a highway. Over the same period, my own transition kept moving forward. My identification changed. My body changed. My life changed. I underwent gender-affirming surgery. And as I became more settled in who I am, parts of the country became more determined to legally deny people like me. That contradiction is difficult to explain. Here in Washington, my driver's license is just my driver's license. It says I am a woman because I am a woman. I take it out of my wallet when someone asks for identification and then I put it away again. Nothing dramatic happens. But somewhere else, that same piece of plastic can become politically contested. Some states have stopped transgender people from changing their gender markers. Some have threatened to reverse changes that were already made. Some have treated accurate identification carried by transgender people as fraudulent or illegitimate. Texas created a database of people who tried to update theirs. And then there are bathrooms. I am a woman. My identification says I am a woman. I live my life as a woman. I have medically and surgically transitioned. And there are still places in this country where going to pee can become a legal question about whether the government accepts that I am who I am. This is not about worrying that someone might give me a dirty look. It is not about whether a town feels conservative. It is not simply about feeling unwelcome. It is about laws. Arrest. Detention. Lawsuits. Bounties. Databases. Felony charges. The possibility of having to explain my identity, my documents, or even my body to law enforcement because I needed to use a bathroom. When my wife and I first drew our mental map of places we would never live, the decision was ours. We looked at the country and decided that some places simply did not fit the life we wanted. Years later, after I started transitioning, I discovered that a second map had been forming underneath the first one. And the "Do Not Travel" list went from one state... to two... to three... and now four. At first, my wife and I chose which parts of the country we did not want to live in. That was easy. Those were our choices. Now I find myself looking at a much more complicated map. Places where I could live. Places where I would not move. Places I might still visit cautiously. And places where I simply will not go. The United States still has the same 50 states it had when I started transitioning. The borders have not moved. But my version of the country is smaller now. And what is hardest to accept is that, increasingly, I am not the one making that choice. Some states are making it for me. #TransRights #Surveillance #DigitalRights #LGBTQIA

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