
By Barnett Wright | The Birmingham Times

Sydney Kay Duncan, a writer, attorney and trans woman living in Birmingham, never thought she would experience “a horrible feeling to not feel welcome in my own country,” Duncan said.
But that’s been happening to Duncan and other members of Birmingham’s trans community, they say, since President Donald Trump returned to office two weeks ago and began signing multiple executive orders (EOs) targeting the LGBTQ community. Those include limiting access to gender-affirming care, barring transgender individuals from serving openly in the military and eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion programs within federal agencies.
“Trump’s executive orders and the policies they intend to enact will cause deep harm to transgender people and do nothing to better the lives of everyday Americans,” Duncan said. “They are cruel policies meant to demonize a minority population…”

Gina Mallishan, Development Director at AIDS Alabama & Executive Director at Jefferson County Memorial Project, said transgender people are facing “significant challenges, including restrictions on health care access and military service. This is forcing the community to prepare for setbacks while continuing to fight for equality in an increasingly hostile environment.”
The legal landscape for the queer community “has once again been marked by heightened tension and uncertainty,” Mallishan continued. “Policies aimed at rolling back protections for LGBTQIA+ individuals, particularly transgender people, create fear and vulnerability.”
Trump’s EOs were not a secret to most in the transgender community. During his campaign for his second term, he made gender identity a focal point of his run for president.

“I’m completely unsurprised by what’s happening,” said Sylvia Swayne, Alabama’s first openly trans candidate who ran unsuccessfully for the House District 55 seat in the 2023 Democratic primary runoff. “This is just faster than I thought it would be. If anyone who’s been paying attention not only to Donald Trump’s politics … but also his history in general should not be surprised about what’s happening.”
“We’ve been down this road once before with same president,” said Daronisha Boyd, the founder and executive director of Transgender Advocate Knowledgeable and Empowering (TAKE), a Birmingham nonprofit that provides holistic services to transgender individuals, “and it’s the same behavior that continues to inflicted on us which I believe to be actual hate because it’s not about governing America.”
That’s a point a number of trans people in Birmingham made.
“[Trump’s EOs] are cruel policies meant to demonize a minority population in order to keep a constituency engaged and distracted from the fact that they don’t have actual policy solutions to the real problems we as a country face,” Duncan said. “Bullying trans people doesn’t lower grocery prices, solve crime, create jobs, or secure our borders.”
Swayne agreed. “A lot of legislation about transgender people is often used to target other groups or distract people from the real issues … when we spend all of our time talking about trans people we’re not expanding Medicaid in Alabama, we’re not doing the things that help everybody … We want to make sure our kids are taken care of, we want to make sure we have access to health care and to jobs — trans people and the LGBTQ community are not problem.”
So what happens now?
“We will continue to fight, especially as Black trans women we understand what it means to be in a place of hardship and most of all in survival mode. What’s been considered a crisis to most Americans right now has always been a crisis to us for 100 years or better,” said Boyd.
“In a region marked by struggle and resistance, we may face marginalization, but we are no strangers to persistence …,” Mallishan said.
Don’t expect trans people to go anywhere, Duncan said. “Trans people have a place in the world. We have and always will exist and no policy or law will ever erase us,” Duncan said.