#Death Before Detransition

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

Washington Post: The trans Americans turning to guns for protection

Rodriguez explained why she thought trans people were taking up arms. “A lot of trans people kind of share the sentiment of death before detransition,” she said. “If our hormones are taken away, we’d rather just kill ourselves. So, we’re not going out without a fight.” --------------------------

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The trans Americans turning to guns for protection

“Trans people have every reason to be afraid,” said one trans woman who went out and bought a gun after President Trump was elected.

By Hallie Lieberman BELLINGHAM, Wash.

February 25, 2025

Until recently, May Alejandro Rodriguez was a big supporter of gun control.

A 21-year-old Mexican American trans woman who is a student at Western Washington University, she was interested in producing music and snapping photos of her friends on Fuji 400 film.

But Rodriguez, who voted for Kamala Harris, changed her view on guns when Donald Trump was reelected. She had heard the stories from her trans friends in red states: being forced to use bathrooms that didn’t match their gender identities; having gender markers switched on their drivers’ licenses. She saw kids losing access to hormones and feared adults would be next. She thought back to the trans high-schooler who was killed in her hometown and the trans teen who was attacked in Bellingham last year.

“Trans people have every reason to be afraid because we are being attacked,” Rodriguez said. “Every single day, another right is lost.”

She believed Republicans were playing on fear to stoke transphobia, so she thought trans people should play the game back. “They’re going to fear us no matter what,” she said. “So let the fear come from a place of reality.”

And so when she turned 21 in November, Rodriguez bought her first gun, a Rock Island Armory model M206 revolver.

After the 10-day waiting period, she picked up the weapon and filled out a required form asking whether she was Latino.

“They’re making a database of Mexicans owning guns,” she said jokingly to the White male gun clerk.

“I think it’s racist and a shame,” she recalled him saying. She was surprised by his sympathy.

Rodriguez posted videos of herself shooting on social media. Her Reddit post got 1,500 upvotes. “A lot of people messaged me and they’re like, ‘Oh my God, it’s so cool to see you have a gun. I think I want to get one,’” Rodriguez said.

When Rodriguez recognized she was trans at 14, she handled things herself. Believing her Mormon mother wouldn’t be accepting, Rodriguez bought hormones from a Mexican pharmacy both online and in person. She came out in her junior year of high school. Her mom still hasn’t acknowledged that she is trans.

Rodriguez explained why she thought trans people were taking up arms. “A lot of trans people kind of share the sentiment of death before detransition,” she said. “If our hormones are taken away, we’d rather just kill ourselves. So, we’re not going out without a fight.”

The Washington Post spoke to a dozen trans people for this article. Many of them spoke on the condition of anonymity — or insisted that only their first name be used — for safety reasons. All said they were arming and educating themselves about guns because they were scared of what Trump’s presidency will bring. “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you,” one election ad famously intoned.

Hate crimes against trans and gender nonconforming people had already increased 16 percent in 2023, according to a Human Rights Campaign report based on FBI data. At least 32 trans people were killed in the United States in 2024. One in four trans people reported being physically attacked because of their gender identity, according to a 2022 survey by The Washington Post and KFF. An analysis of Bureau of Justice data from 2017 to 2018 in the American Journal of Public Health found that trans Americans are four times as likely to be the victims of violence than cisgender people. Three-quarters of trans victims of fatal gun violence are Black and Latina trans women, noted a 2024 report by Everytown, a gun-control organization.

Hundreds of trans men and women rally outside the Supreme Court on Dec. 4. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post) In the first few days after Trump took office, he rescinded the order allowing transgender people to serve openly in the military, signed an executive order declaring that gender is binary and declared that trans female prisoners housed in federal women’s prisons must be moved to male prisons. He also moved to end federal support for gender transition care for people under age 19, as well as to ban transgender athletes from competing on girls’ and women’s sports teams.

“People respond to situations of threat or uncertainty by seeking security. And one of the things that people associate with security in the United States is firearms,” said David Yamane, a sociology professor at Wake Forest University who studies American gun culture.

“Anecdotal accounts suggest [an increase in trans gun buyers] is absolutely happening,” Yamane added.

At least 2,500 people have joined the subreddit r/transguns since the election, according to the subreddit’s moderator. National LGBTQ gun groups Operation Blazing Sword and Pink Pistols told The Post that they have seen an uptick in interest in membership, which includes classes. Clara Smith-Elliott, the founder of Arm Trans Women (ATW), an organization that teaches gun-safety courses in Connecticut and Virginia, said her courses have started selling out.

Smith-Elliott thinks an increase in anti-trans laws may be driving interest in her courses. “People who already don’t like trans people … are seeing [anti-trans laws] as tantamount permission to act out against our community,” she said.

“People literally come to me in tears because they’re so scared of what’s going on. They don’t want to have to learn how to use a firearm, but they recognize the need.” Some of those signing up, Smith-Elliott said, are mothers of trans children.

“With personal protection being the top motivating factor, an increasing number of Americans are choosing to exercise their right to self-defense, as evidenced by the recent explosion of new gun owners from all demographics,” the NRA said in response to whether it had seen a rise in trans gun ownership.

Trans gun owners are part of a larger American tradition of minorities purchasing guns for safety, Yamane said, citing the Black Panthers in the 1960s and women seeking self-defense options in the 1970s and 1980s.

“What’s happening today among trans people is in the tradition of people demanding their rights and saying that they’re willing to defend those rights with force if necessary,” Yamane said.

Some gun purchases may be driven by the fear that being transgender may be classified as a mental illness, which could prevent gun ownership in states like Colorado that have “red flag laws.” (New guidance from the Department of Health and Human Services asserts a person’s sex is “unchangeable.”)

A queer Colorado firearm instructor named Drew said he visited a gun range a few years ago and a poster about red-flag laws was pinned on the wall next to one about rights for trans people. “The general implication was, if you were queer, you were mentally ill enough to not own firearms,” said Drew, who spoke on the condition that only his first name be used.

Before Rodriguez bought a gun, she asked her friends for a reality check. Before the election, they would have told her not to buy one, she said: “This time around, no one told me I was crazy.”

Rodriguez is sitting on the gray sectional in her third-floor apartment, pink-lensed prescription glasses perched on her nose, her lips painted a Taylor Swift-style red.

She points her revolver at an “Eyes Wide Shut” poster propped up against the wall.

“So, if you want to shoot Tom Cruise over there, you really want to line it up,” she said to the group of women gathered around her.

Watching the demonstration were Max, 25, and Luci, 19, trans friends Rodriguez knows from college, as well as June, 23, a cisgender barista in a leather jacket. (The trio spoke on the condition that only their first names be used out of concern for their safety.)

June, who has been living on her own since she was excommunicated from Jehovah’s Witnesses as a teenager for being a lesbian, said she was “pretty fearful of guns growing up.” But now, she said she has “realized I’d feel a lot less scared if I could shoot and if I was able to not only protect myself, but my friends and family.”

Rodriguez went over gun-safety rules that she’d scrawled on a small whiteboard above a sketch of Kirby, the video game character, toting a gun.

“Treat all guns as if they’re always loaded,” she said. “Never point at anything you’re not willing to destroy. Finger off the trigger until you’re ready to shoot.” Only Luci, clad in safety-pinned pants with a “unionize sex work” patch, had ever held a gun before — shooting a .22 with her father.

Rodriguez picked up her revolver — which she calls her “little cowgirl gun” — and flattened her index finger next to the trigger to demonstrate.

She then passed it over to Max. “Always just try to keep it pointed in that direction, where no one is,” Rodriguez told her. “Pull the trigger. It takes a fair bit of force.”

Max pulled it, a bit gingerly. “I’m trying to get over the idea that it’s not loaded,” Max said.

A bespectacled environmental studies major, Max said she fears for her safety due to “the exponential rise in anti-trans legislation proposed and passed.”

She had the opportunity to shoot a gun as a kid, she said, and had declined: “I was pretty afraid of guns, and I didn’t want to be comfortable with guns.”

Max has since changed her mind.

Rodriguez practices with a rifle at a shooting range in Burlington, Washington, on Jan. 12. (Nick Cote/For The Washington Post) All the training was in preparation for a trip to Skagit Shooting Range, about 25 miles to the south.

There, Rodriguez paid $69.16 for range time for the four of them; four paper targets shaped like torsos; and the rental of a Sig Sauer P365-XL pistol from the White male clerk.

He briefed them on safety before they headed to the indoor range’s stalls, breaking up into pairs. Despite earplugs, the sound of bullets whizzing through the corridor made conversation nearly impossible.

The shooter in the adjacent stall wore a sweatshirt emblazoned with “Jesus is My Savior/Trump For President” in large letters. If he noticed the shooters next to him, he didn’t let on.

Rodriguez copped a shooter’s pose to demonstrate, her gleaming Doc Martens wide apart, her left foot pitched ahead. She grasped the gun, her arms straight.

June copied the stance and took the gun from her friend. She was a bit shaky as she placed her arms in front of her, aimed and fired.

There was a loud pop as the bullet squeezed out of the pistol and sliced through the cardboard dangling above the target. June felt the sound’s vibration in her teeth. The shell casing clattered to the ground, joining hundreds of others in the range. She turned to face Rodriguez and smiled widely.

“I don’t think I hit the target,” she said.

Now it’s Max’s turn to shoot. Afterward, she’s a bundle of nerves as she sits at a table in the gun store outside the range.

“I kind of honestly, like, forgot to breathe,” Max said. “My chest feels really tight. … It was definitely more powerful than I expected.”

June said her first time shooting a gun was “a little nerve-racking, to be honest.

“But I think learning how to do it makes me feel a little bit more comfortable about holding one. I feel more inclined to get one.”

The group went back to practice some more. After they fired their rounds, they pushed a button that sent the target flapping toward them for inspection. Luci proudly pointed to her perfectly placed body shot.

Though these women felt rejected by their political leadership, they were participating heartily in an American tradition: defending themselves with firearms.

“We have the same Second Amendment right that any Republican has,” Rodriguez said. “We just don’t have the numbers to do, like, a march on Washington. We’re just super easy to pick on. The only equalizer we have, really, is guns.”

[michaelmilkers]

in 2004 george w bush won the presidential election and promised in his acceptance speech to codify a federal ban on gay marriage. 30 states passed bans on gay marriage in the wake of his re-election. and then they fell. one by one by one. it has to get worse before it gets better.

queers. trans people especially. our attitude for the next decade has to be “we’re not fucking scared of you”. do you understand? this has always been at the core of who we are and what we do. we fucking move. we take up space or carve out our own with our bare hands. we take care of us.

do you know the other queers in your neighborhood? do you know who you can call at a bad time? do you know whose house you can crash at? do you know where you can go for a free meal? do you know where you can bring meals to the hungry? do you know the LGBT resources available in your area? do you know the informed consent clinics in your area?

do you know how DIY HRT works? do you know and have friends who don’t? do you know our history? have you read the works of james baldwin and leslie feinberg? are you equipped with knowledge about the forces that work against us? do you understand dialectical materialism? do you know what to say if stopped by the police? do you know what good opsec is? are your legal documents in order? do you know how to get them in order?

scream, cry, rot in your bed, do whatever you need to do to process this, then find something to do. do not fall into despair. in the face of extermination say “fuck you.”

[pears-palette]

I ain't going back into the closet, come hell or high water. Trans existence is resistance.

[ID in Alt]

[transgenderunionthug]

if I need to take half a dozen pills a day to stay functional, i might as well make it aesthetic.

to be clear "fuck pills" means cialis, im not anti-pill

[cyberm0sh]

new patch 👍 design is approx 5x4 inches

as always i do sell these so if u want one, dm me!

[d1rtypuppy]

i had the most profound gender euphoria i’ve ever experienced today. i was applying oil to my chest so i could take off my transtape in the shower, and i was just kind of scrolling on my phone, passing the time a little. occasionally i’d glance at myself in the mirror while waiting a few minutes to let the oil sit.

i saw my growing body hair, my light dusting of stomach hair that continues to fan out towards my sides and the thickening happy trail creeping downwards, and i felt so overwhelmingly excited that it’s starting to thicken and spread.

suddenly, i had this thought… “i love being me.” and honestly, i’ve never felt that way before in my entire life. i started crying genuine tears of joy for the first time ever. i could barely stand to look at myself in the mirror for a few minutes, but not because i hated what i saw. no, this time it was hard to look at myself because i was overwhelmed to find that i didn’t hate what i saw.

then i found myself wondering if this is what transphobes are so afraid of; a 20 year old trans kid reduced to tears of joy on a random saturday afternoon in front of his bathroom mirror because things are finally starting to feel right, my body is beginning to feel like my own? because for once i want to live?

it has been a very long time since i have imagine a future for myself but i’m starting to.

what a beautiful experience being trans is. no one will ever take it from me. death before detransition.

[shapeshiftersvt]

Well!

This sucks.

In 2016, Shapeshifters was two and a half years old when the country we operate in seemed to elect one particular asshole. Today, this company is ten and a half years old, and the same damn asshole is back again.

Under that first term Shapeshifters went from a two-person, back-of-the-dining-room operation to a production floor in a converted warehouse to the beautiful studio we're in now. We sent chest binders in anonymized packaging all over the country and the world for those four years. We hired trans people in our town and purchased services from queer folks in our network. We left behind the landlord who objected to our Black Lives Matter banner and hired models for photoshoots who knew what we were about and were excited to join the work.

Then we took a damn breath. We found stability in our little studio, over the last four years. We experimented with prints and patterns and fashion lines. We worked on new projects with new people.

It sucks that we're back here again.

And: our job now, as always, is to connect you with what you need and connect each other with what we all do.

There's a lot of good advice out there about keeping yourself as safe and healthy and stable as possible, from a lot of activists and poets and people much better at it than me. I speak from my position as a business owner from a family of economists, who's been trained to watch the money. Buy queer when you can, buy local when you can. Keep the money close, trade the same $20 back and forth with your friends for services, re-use and repair what you have.

Buy a binder, or a sew-your-own-binder kit, ora sports bra, or a binding dress, or some cryptid art from us here:

Find a queer-owned business for what you need at Everywhere is Queer:

And also from Hey Famm:

If you are located in or near Western Massachusetts, find some queer folks to support via Bloom Local:

and if you have a few bucks a month to spare, maybe support a trans person on Patreon. I suggest friend of the shop @neolithicsheep :

and Mercury Stardust, the Trans Handy Ma'am, who is a great resource when you need to fix something yourself:

Spend your money for good whenever you have the chance. It matters.

And you matter, too.

Keep talking to us, keep talking to each other, keep in touch with your people. Keep building these systems and these structures and these networks. We're going to need all of them.

And, hey: if you're trans and starting a business, reach out. I'd love to help folks in the early stages, connect you to resources, pull you over some of the hurdles we faced. There's a lot more room for queer business owners now than there was eight years ago. Let's take up that space.

Keep building, fam. It matters and it's worth doing. Every time.

[s0ftp0int]

‘Death before Detransition’

@catboybiologist said it best here -

"Death before Detransition" does not mean that I will kill myself if I can't access hormones or be referred to by my preferred language.

It means that there will always be another way. There will always be a stockpile, or distributors, or ways to synthesize the medicine we need. And even if that fails, there will always be community. There will always be identity. There will always be expression, and identity, or some piece of the trans experience, whether it be societal, physiological, or even completely internal, in perpetuity, that lives through every transgender person.

‘Death before Detransition" means that the only way to erase my reality as a transgender woman is to put me in the ground.”

[evanthetrashpanda]

With everything that’s happening in the world, I would like to share my tattoo idea I want

(If you want to use this in any way, I don’t need/want any credit! This literally took me like 5 minutes in a photo editor!)

[dee-the-red-witch]

And since I hear people are so upset by transition timelines these days, here.

A bit over 3 years ago, and now:

[blessedscavengers]

I have as the kids put it cooked

I have stickers of this print up on my shop for anyone who’s interested!

made in 2025

[kitcactusart]

This has been weighing on my mind a lot lately. I don’t want to have to run like my ancestors did but I am trans and that’s dangerous these days. I love you all, especially my trans siblings. Don’t give up, keep up morale, fight hard.

[celestigail]

In light of recent events...

[8aeddel-vriska]

Made an image.

[melindamagpie]

"When I said death before detransition, I did not specify whose."

Via RebelScum83

[luscrts]

been here, gonna stay here