Redrawing U.S. QueerTransness

"With legislative redistricting at a crucial stage, most U.S. adults don’t feel strongly about it," wrote a 2022 Pew survey. Um, nope. And in just in time for one of the major U.S. celebrations of colonialism, lez say no together.

Most importantly for you and me, reader: this statement needs a loud reply from the many queers and trans people who have to move–and less can afford to move–or know people in this situation. People who moved out of the U.S. but even more so across the U.S., particularly who can move and how. By redistricting voting districts you redistrict library, fire, police, and school districts and you vastle swing elections. This is also known as gerrymandering and it has been a long-term project of the Far Right in recent decades, and started as early as 1812 in the U.S. With the Right's gerrymandering fixation, the Left is stuck replying with their own gerrymandering plans.

In other words, the American people supposedly do not care how each person votes in their neighborhood, even while this gerrymandering further concretizes Left and Right boundaries out of the U.S. This is political segregation, and that always has a profound gender and sexual component.

This fuels what I've called Great Trans Migration.

Trans+ people and our people either do know or need to decide to know how they feel about this, and they can do that based on their everyday lives. We could be exceptionally powerful as a voting bloc. I firmly believe we could be as powerful a voting block the early 1990s gays and lesbians were, as LGBTQ+ people were then termed.

We need to stop the forced movement of trans people and their families. We need to stop the forced migration of everyone.

If you aren't trans, you may not know that the world has come to the phrase "trans relocation services" becoming coming parlance among trans people and their families, friends, and allies. Or maybe you think this is just normal. But this is not normal. This is violence that these services have to exist and people have to use them. They mean someone has to move to a place often without ties or very distant ties, and rebuild their entire lives. This is so hard.

In a study with 302 U.S. trans, gnc, and nb adults in December 2024 and with expectations of Trump regime plans and beliefs, "Regarding relocating, almost half of respondents (48%) had already moved or were considering moving to a location they viewed as more trans-affirming within the United States. Nearly one in four (23%) had already made such a move. Further, 45% of respondents indicated wanting to move out of the country."

There are a wide variety of trans relocation services, and I'm drawing on my trans-queer life for anecdotes because research is still limited.

• For the wealthy, I've heard multiple stories of handlers who will find your home, move your things, re-set them up in your new home, and pamper you on the way.
• I've met real estate agents who specifically seek out middle-class and middle-upper class families with trans kids and/or adults to advice them on safe pockets of neighborhoods with supportive schools, playgrounds, gyms, and other spaces. It's worth saying that as a queer transfeminist Marixst, I usually find those who profit off of disaster and voice abhorrent, but it oddly doesn't feel like that at all. The way it largely operates is through word of mouth to keep people safe. One real estate agent told me she discounted her fee, and others work with sale costs they wouldn't otherwise take on to help out. It's a financial, time, and reputation contribution out of love and compassion.
• For the working-class-who-can-even-imagine-someone-would-help-them class, there are volunteer groups in different small cities and towns mainly in the North and the coasts. Some volunteers can arrange some mutual aid for the move, but mostly there are any possible funds arranged after the move, clothes and toys for kids, and help you find housing. People are making welcome packages of food and loving messages, invites to local hangouts. The hope is that this offers people shelter from the storm in the form of sanity and recognition.
• And, tragically, there are no possible relocation services for many, for so many reasons. Either they're happy/safe enough where they live, or their down to a place because any of the following: finances, identity papers, illness, treatment, prison, taken by ICE, fear of ICE, depression, anxiety, climate, elder care, child care, having a local, IRL business, disability, allergies, or you're just plain old in love with the land.

Support for relocation also happens in many ways.

While my interviews with 2000s-era lezbiqueertrans people revealed they felt the rainbow sticker were overdone and commericialized, especially in major cities, they have returned as a bold gesture.

There are also the thousands of stories you or I never hear about. The professors, teachers, Scouts leaders, after school programs, librarians, and even candy shop owners who put rainbow and trans stickers everywhere they can on campuses and talk about queer and trans people in their research with respect and excitement. The college, high school, and middle school staff with the same stickers, who choose events that queer and trans students in mind as much as any and every other group.

It's well beyond those who work with kids full-time. The dentists, therapists, and doctors who are gentle to the disassociated new arrival. The librarians who stock loving books about us that new arrival parents bawl over to see. The trans person who joins the police, EMT, city hall, public works, or firefighters to work in a town with a high number of trans people, who may not thrive in that environment but know that their presence inevitably teaches those who police us who we are, humanizes us, and has any amount of power to keep a kind eye on us in a surveillance state.

No matter what, given those who do move, we are drastically redrawing political divides with this country. In doing so, we are financially burdening trans people and their parties which further marginalizes them. To pay to live is unjust.

I can't imagine that many queer and trans people and people who love us do care supposedly don't about political redistricting. They may not know how much it shapes their lives, but they deeply care. It is our lives.

And just a funny shoutout to Transmedial Moving and all the "trans"-named movers because you give me absolute joy every time I see your trucks. A slice for you: