It was just last month when CNBC ran a story on young people in “post-Roe” America deciding their futures. “I want to leave the country,” said Lexi McKee-Hemenway, a college student who said “she’s been approached by several students since the start of the school year asking for help with obtaining an abortion.”
If the overturning of Roe v. Wade is inspiring young women to leave the country, what about transgender people, who face an even more unwelcoming environment? Well, they’ve put together a service to help each other flee the United States and seek asylum overseas.
VICE reports:
“There’s like 30 states right now I wouldn’t even drive through,” [Rynn Azerial] Willgohs said.
Her own experiences, and the increasingly hostile national climate, inspired Willgohs to start TRANSport, a budding non-profit that seeks to help trans people transition, navigate bureaucratic mazes, and ultimately finance their journeys as they flee the country.
Willgohs is considering claiming asylum in Iceland, a country she visited last summer and considers more accepting—and safer—than the U.S. And she felt like being trans was a “non-issue” while there. Though there’s currently a lack of clarity around whether it’s even possible for trangender U.S. citizens to claim asylum elsewhere—and an expert told VICE News it’s unlikely—the devolving situation in the U.S. has inspired people like Willgohs to try.
The increasingly hostile national climate … the devolving situation in the U.S. We’re to the point where people can lose their jobs for following allegedly “transphobic” Twitter accounts, the Marines are taking steps to avoid misgendering officers, you can get kicked off of social media for “deadnaming” someone — for a tiny minority, the trans community has wielded some amazing power recently.
Who bets no one actually leaves the country?
Will Iceland be accepting transgender asylum seekers? They don’t quite seem to have settled on their new trans utopia. Try California … it’s a state of refuge for trans kids and their families.
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