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
