When the Andersons fled Iowa City in 2022, they joined a growing group of American families escaping states that have become hostile for transgender communities. How many more will there be, and what about the people who can’t leave the places they feel threatened?
According to a June 2023 polling report by the think tank Data For Progress, 8 percent of transgender adults have moved out of communities or states because of the uptick in anti-trans legislation, and another 43 percent have considered doing so. GoFundMe data provided to ELLE found a 520 percent increase from May 2022 to May 2023 in fundraisers helping transgender residents looking to relocate from the state of Florida, which has enacted six anti-LGBTQ+ bills into law in 2023, including bans on gender-affirming care.
After the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services announced in February 2022 that it would begin investigating any reported instances of transgender children receiving gender-affirming health care, which Governor Greg Abbott deemed “child abuse” in a letter to DFPS, Kimberly Shappley began to fear what would happen to her own 11-year-old transgender daughter, Kai, who went viral for protesting anti-trans legislation in Texas when she was just 10 years old. “I just kept thinking that if they take our kids, no matter how mad people are, nobody is going to be able to come help us,” Shappley says. “And if they [did] come for our kids, do I have the money that it would take to fight this in court?”
In August 2022, the family sold their home in Austin and moved to Connecticut. Kai feels much safer, but the adjustment hasn’t been easy. “We’re homesick,” Shappley says through tears. “We didn’t leave Texas because I had some great job offer. We didn’t leave Texas because we had family we wanted to be closer to. We fled the government of Texas. We are refugees in our own country.”
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