Today is Transgender Day of Visibility. Amid rising panic, you’ll see little sign of it on the Main Line.

Celebrated with flag raises and solidarity marches around the world, Transgender Day of Visibility on the Main Line will largely pass … invisibly.

“I’d love to say we’ll mark it in some way,” says a Devon mom of a 16-year-old transgender boy. “But the truth is: things don’t feel safe these days. A flag in the yard may put a target on our backs. We will mark it in our hearts.”

She’s not alone.

Every family with a trans child we interviewed for this report asked for anonymity. (This is our third story about local trans teens in ten years and the first time you won’t see names and photos.)

The rapid-fire actions of the Trump Administration have sent these families scrambling: for supporting documents, for the continuation of their gender-affirming medical care, for safe harbor in college and beyond.

“Since Trump took office our lives have changed,” reports a Wayne mom. “I am in a constant state of worry for her safety. My 22-year-old daughter now feels serious trepidation. ‘Why does my government hate us so much?’ she asks. Good question. I wonder who will hire her when she’s out of college. I worry about how she’ll be treated.”

The mom in Devon tells us her son is “stealth” trans.

“All around us the world seemed to change overnight; the violent, hateful and incorrect rhetoric seems unescapable. We’ve had family discussions about which states are safe to visit, what colleges are now off the list, and what would happen if our gender clinic could no longer provide care.”

One transgender senior at a Main Line public school used the red-and-blue-coded Trans Legislative Risk Assessment Map to decide where to apply to college.

“I only applied to the blue states with protections because I want to be safe,” he says. The senior eventually chose college in Canada because he fears federal funding cuts to U.S. colleges will preclude the lab research that will bolster his future applications to med schools.

A Great Valley High School mom tells us she’s stockpiled the prescription testosterone her 16-year-old takes to help him present male. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to get it.”

More than four years into his transition, the Great Valley student and his mother believe he’s ready for top surgery. But his usual provider won’t be performing it. After the Trump Administration’s threat to withhold funding, the gender clinic at CHOP has suspended gender-transition surgeries for anyone under age 19. The Great Valley mom worries that the government will scare off other providers of medical care to trans youth.

Indeed, a leading local gender-care provider politely refused our request for comment, fearful of drawing attention to his work.

“This may be the first time in my career that I am going to decline to speak with a reporter about transgender care,” his email reads. “It is really not the time for me to be public facing. While there is incredible value in visibility, there is greater value in discretion to protect the patients that see me and rely on my ability to continue to provide care.”

Several families are so worried, they’re considering relocating the whole family to a country more supportive of the LGBTQ+ community.

More than a few talked about problems with passport gender updates, fearing dehumanizing interrogations and pat-downs – or worse – at airports and border crossings.

In the waning days of the Biden Administration, a Wayne mom rushed to get her college-age daughter’s name changed on her driver’s license and social security card. But her passport will still say she’s male. Trump’s executive order has suspended gender changes on passports.

“We’ll have to use what she has (her dead name and dead gender) even though it is all quite ridiculous…We didn’t move fast enough because we never thought Trump and crew would do their destruction this quickly.”

Trans people have reported humiliating scrutiny by TSA agents when their appearance says one gender and their passport says another. (A group of trans and nonbinary people has challenged Trump’s order in federal court.)

Alarmed at the impact of the current anti-trans landscape on the mental health of her child, the mother of a transgender Conestoga student posted this anonymous plea on a social media:

I have a favor to ask – one that will reduce the likelihood of neighborhood kids attempting suicide…Please show your support for trans kids [on Transgender Day of Visibility] … Put out flags, homemade signs, use chalk on your driveway … If you are an ally to trans youth, you are truly needed at this time, as trans kids risk physical violence when they stand out… The environment has gotten worse, as there is so much messaging villainizing trans kids and adults. Think about a neighborhood kid, maybe 10 or 13, who is just starting to understand themselves and isn’t out yet. Think about how living through the last year feels for them. If they trick-or-treated at your house, petted your dog, or had a snack in your kitchen, how relieved will they feel if they see a message of support outside your house?

Thank you for your time and for being an ally. Take action and spread the word.

All my love,

             — A mom of a kid in your neighborhood.

The stats confirm the Stoga mom’s fears. 2024 saw a 72 percent jump in suicide attempts among transgender and nonbinary youth in states that passed anti-trans laws.

And yes, adult allies are key. Trans youth with at least one accepting adult in their lives are 40 percent less likely to report a suicide attempt.

“If my mother was not supportive, I gotta be honest, I don’t know if I would still be here,” a local high school senior tells SAVVY, who started suffering panic attacks. The anti-trans campaign billboards and TV ads, Trump’s “only two sexes” declarations, and the flurry of trans-disavowing executive orders threw him into a mental health crisis from which he’s just starting to emerge, he says.

Almost every family talked about needing counseling and support groups more than ever.  

Arrive Therapy in Paoli, the area’s only counseling practice focused on the trans and gender-diverse community, reports a huge surge in demand.

“This is the most fearful I’ve ever seen clients,” says Arrive’s owner, therapist Alexander Stefanini. “The intensity and quickness [of the Trump Administration’s actions] has been kind of breathtaking. It’s much worse than I thought it was going to be. Across the board, stress levels have skyrocketed. There’s intense anxiety and panic and some feel kind of paralyzed.”

Six years ago, Stefanini, a transgender man himself, started Arrive with a handful of clients. He now employs 11 clinicians and five support staff (almost all are trans) to counsel 450 active clients. Some clients regularly drive more than an hour for appointments.

Stefanini confirms a “dramatic uptick in parents saying they’re going to send their kids out of the country to go to school and late teenagers telling us they want to go to school in another country. Instead of being scared about their kids going to New Zealand or across the world, parents are saying they’re relieved and thankful they can send them out of the U.S.”

Another surprise: the anti-trans climate has been “clarifying,” according to Stefanini. “I expected clients to say, ‘I’m not gonna transition. This is too stressful; this is too scary … What I actually found is more people being sure of who they are and saying, ‘I’ve put off doing that name change long enough.’ Or ‘I didn’t want to deal with surgery but now I really need to do it.’”

The story’s the same at the nonprofit Eastern PA Trans Equity Project (EPTEP) which assists and champions trans and non-binary people and those who care about them.

“We typically get anywhere from five to 10 calls a day. The day after the election we got 78 calls, the day after the inauguration, 80 calls,” EPTEP Executive Director Corinne Goodwin tells SAVVY. Support groups that drew 2,000 people in all of 2024 have already drawn 1,500 this year.

“Lately, it’s been a whole lot of moms and parents,” Goodwin shares. “They’re afraid for their kids safety, about being tracked, taunted and threatened on social media, about schools becoming less welcoming after Trump’s executive orders.”

We asked Goodwin, a 65-year-old trans woman, for her thoughts on the anti-trans climate. When less than two percent of the U.S. population is transgender, why is this group targeted and all over the news?

Goodwin’s response quotes Yoda in Star Wars: “Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering.”

One big problem, she says: Less than 30 percent of Americans say they’ve met a trans person. “You fear what you don’t know. …The truth is all trans people want is to go to school, get a great education, get a good job, make a bunch of money, and buy a lot of stuff,’ she says, only half-joking.

While she understands the current impulse to lay low, Goodwin and her team “try to be super visible all the time.” She wants the public to know about her community’s accomplishments. The invention of the microchip that powers smartphone, the diagnosis of tuberculosis, the treatment of spinal cord injuries, the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s – all these advances came from transgender scientists, she points out.

What about the notion that trans is trendy or can be groomed? No way, say the families we interviewed.

“Nobody chooses this for their life or for their child,” says the Devon mom, whose family has sought help from therapists, physicians and psychologists for the last five years. “It’s a hard, hard road and not some fad choice they saw on the internet or read in a book. Every time I hear the word ‘indoctrination,’ it makes me sick …My child would shower with the lights off because they couldn’t bear to look at their body, refused to look in the mirror, wore thick, hooded sweatshirts in 95-degree weather, and would just stay in his bed because he couldn’t face the world in a body that betrayed him.” The mom herself considered suicide at one point, she says.

The trans senior at a Main Line public school calls the idea that you can be talked into – or talk yourself into – gender dysphoria “totally ridiculous…Being trans is not about hating yourself. It’s not about wanting to get surgeries just for fun.” He calls those notions this era’s “repackaging” of debunked ideas that all gay men are pedophiles circulated by Nazis and that boys “turn” gay because they were molested by gay men.

One local parent whose name we can use is former T/E school board director and Stoga mom Stacy Stone. We wrote about her son’s heart-wrenching transition journey in 2018.

Seven years later, Dr. Calvin McMillan is finishing his family medicine residency at Brown.  And the mom who once fought her child’s transition is now a warrior for the cause.

“No one on Earth would put themselves through this grueling, years-long journey on a whim, to follow the crowd or to win a race,” shares Stone, who was present for two of Cal’s three transition surgeries. “Instead of a suicidal young girl, I have a happy, healthy, amazingly kind and empathetic son. I’m so very fortunate that his friends and some school staff had his back when I did not. Once I knew better, I did better. I will never stop fighting for him and for all who are being attacked for political gain.”

Contact [email protected] for information about a local Trans Parents Support Group. If you are experiencing despair or hopelessness, please call 988 to reach PA’s suicide prevention hotline. The Trevor Project offers chat, text and call hotlines for LGBTQ+ people in crisis.