Since President Donald Trump took office for a second term, the administration has been attempting to make life harder for transgender Americans to live openly and safely. From recognizing only “two genders, male and female,” to withholding funding for gender-affirming care, the trans community is being targeted and suppressed in the “age of Trump.”
Sometimes the best thing to do when you are under persecution is to be publicly bold. That’s exactly what Glendale resident Alysha Scarlett – a transgender woman, writer, journalist and former member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) – is doing.
Scarlett’s recently published book “‘Star Wars’ Is Still Intact: Re-finding Yourself in the Age of Trump,” reflects on her insights after leaving the LDS Church and embracing her gender identity. The book is a collection of essays that covers everything from body image to the Trump resistance movement in Utah.
“It’s a world-altering time to be alive,” said Scarlett. “If we are bold, things will probably be OK.”
Re-Finding Herself
Scarlett grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah, in the LDS Church, which she described as a “purity cult” and an “all-consuming” insular community that is “not just a religion, but also a culture and a lifestyle.”
“It’s not just about giving a belief system that enables people to thrive,” she said, adding that the church has “always been about power and control.”
“My entire youth, I actually believed caffeine was morally wrong,” she laughed.
That’s why it was so incredibly life-altering when she lost faith in the church. She didn’t just lose her church, she lost her whole world.
“A whole lifetime of belief shattered” on July 12, 2015, when Scarlett decided to read a document called the “CES Letter.”
When an LDS Church member Jeremy Runnells was expressing doubts about his faith, the Church Education System (CES) director invited him to share his concerns. Reynolds wrote an 84-page letter detailing all his questions about the church’s origins, history and practices. The CES director never responded. Runnells published his letter publicly, which many have attributed as their reason for leaving the church.
After reading the CES Letter, Scarlett went on to read 10 more independent books on the church’s history and decided to resign from the LDS a year later in 2016.
She described her departure as feeling like “taking the red pill” as Neo did in the 1999 science fiction film “The Matrix.” But, that decision to take the journey into “reality” was not easy – family and friendships were lost in the process.
The same year she left the church, Scarlett began to embrace the idea that she was gender non-conforming, and within the following years, that notion that she was female-presenting.
In 2022, during the drive back to Salt Lake City from a work trip in LA, she had the feeling that her “body called for breasts.”
“The feelings didn’t go away,” Scarlett said. “And at this point, it became a matter of my body, not just gender expression.”
She began going to therapy to prepare for the “fallout” of coming out as transgender, which she did by the end of the year. After coming out, she was once again abandoned by her parents and further separated from her loved ones.
“I had 321 panic attacks, sometimes my body was just screaming, ‘I want to break into a female body,’” said Scarlett. “But once I started hormones, they [the panic attacks] went away. … I knew my body was telling me ‘I’m a woman,’ and I was just conflicted [because of the fear of the fallout].”
Scarlett started the process of medically transitioning in Utah, where only about one-third of the expenses were covered by insurance. In Utah, for example, you cannot get prescribed progesterone, a hormone that helps with breast growth, “unless you’re legally affirmed,” she said, “and most trans people [there] are not legally affirmed.”
A few months into the process of medically transitioning, in February 2023, Scarlett decided to move to California where gender-affirming care is more robustly supported.
“There’s definitely legitimate joy in getting gender-affirming care,” said Scarlett, who was elated after receiving her breast augmentation later that year. She finally felt like “I’m a girl” in body and spirit.
The Age of Trump
Scarlett has legitimate fears for her life during this second Trump administration, which is acting with “no guard rails” since the Supreme Court determined that presidential immunity from criminal prosecution extends to all of a president’s “official acts.”
Trans erasure is nothing new. For years, conservative lawmakers have introduced legislation to prevent trans people from being legally recognized, by redefining legal definitions of sex to blocking essential healthcare.
“We’ve seen 25 states ban gender-affirming care for youth,” said Scarlett, adding that in Iowa, “they took trans people out of civil rights protections a couple of weeks ago.”
However, this effort is now being championed by a sitting president and taking place on a federal level. Trump issued multiple executive orders targeting the trans community in the first couple weeks in office.
Attacks from the administration include the State Department blocking new passports being issued for trans and nonbinary Americans, placing restrictions on gender-affirming care, banning trans girls from school sports, barring transgender people from military service, removing LGBTQ+ history from government websites, cutting funding to LGBTQ+ programs, censoring education and forcing trans people to serve prison sentences under their assigned gender at birth.
Many are standing together in resistance against the destruction of civil liberties, yet Scarlett still fears the Trump era will give rise to increasing hate crimes, or that it could even lead to trans and nonbinary people being taken away to camps alongside immigrants and other marginalized groups.