Former President Donald Trump has put forward executive orders that have had a significant impact on communities across the United States, one of those being the LGBTQ+ community.
Executive orders such as “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” directly targeted LGBTQ+ people, according to the Human Rights Campaign. Skyline College’s Sexuality and Gender Alliance (SAGA) members felt the impact of these policy changes.
SAGA president Kai Kyaw said that the day before Trump was elected, he had already mentally prepared himself and looked to what actions he could possibly take in response.
“I was looking into organizations that would be able to take action and do things that would support the community… on a more local level, because sometimes I felt powerless as an individual or even as a community organizer,” Kyaw said. “Not being able to control anything that was happening to us from a federal level, and even on a state level, was debilitating.”
Kyaw said that the club had been a place for students to discuss the U.S. administration’s impacts on people in their communities, but more importantly, it had offered members a safe environment to escape the stress caused by the political climate.
“We just utilized our space… for us to come together and support each other in more social ways,” Kyaw said.
SAGA member Shanie Silva said they thought it was important to keep a balance between discussing what SAGA as a group could do in response to new policies and just using the club as a space to de-stress.
“If SAGA was a place where we only talked about depressing, serious issues, I don’t think I would have been able to come here as often as I did,” Silva said.
Kyaw also talked about how he felt the administration’s policies reached many of his friends outside California as well.
“Hearing from my friends in other states that were more conservative, and hearing that their medical care was going to be stopped due to the federal administration, was heartbreaking,” Kyaw said.
When asked what people who were not part of the LGBTQ+ community could do to support them, Kyaw said that he had hoped to see more people speak up in support publicly.
“I hoped that more people would show up and speak out. I felt like, as queer people, we were often scared to be ridiculed or that people would show up and say negative things about us,” Kyaw said.
“When I was maybe 13 years old, I started questioning my identity, my gender identity, and whether or not I wanted to do hormone blockers or start testosterone hormone replacement therapy,” Kyaw said. “But the possibility of not being able to access that was terrifying as an individual, for myself.”
Silva said that while SAGA is an LGBTQ+-centered club, it is not exclusively for that community.
“Our goal regarding allyship and stuff was, firstly, just more understanding. There were a lot of misconceptions surrounding the queer community, and while I didn’t expect everyone to know every sexuality, every gender, that is a common misconception,” Silva said. “We don’t. It’s appreciated if people made an effort to learn about different pronouns, different sexualities, gender identities, and expressions… but it wasn’t required for them to know everything.”
