When Elliot Vogue was a sophomore in high school, he knew he needed to create his own community while transitioning.
The 17 year old lives in a self-described “small, conservative, homophobic” town in South Dakota, an unwelcoming climate that inspired him to create a Gay-Straight Alliance at his high school. His hope was that queer kids could find each other and foster a supportive space while navigating their teenage years. After the school’s administration refused to greenlight the club, Vogue formed his own on-campus group, meeting without faculty supervision and in secret to avoid harassment.
Despite the potential risk of being discovered, Vogue said that organizing the group — which numbered around 10 students — was a matter of necessity. Before creating the GSA, his transition was hard. Family members would repeatedly tell Vogue that his identity was “just a phase.”
“I went through school feeling pretty alone,” Vogue tells them., “especially when I came out in middle school and basically all my friends dropped me.”
Now, Vogue is four months into taking testosterone and said he is “at a great point in his transition” as he prepares to go off to college in Iowa. Before he leaves, he is working to get his name and gender marker changed on his documents, but unfortunately, his home state has attempted to stand in his way.
Earlier this year, South Dakota attempted to pass House Bill 1076, a legislative proposal that would have made it illegal for trans people to change the gender marker on their documents. The bill was introduced by state Rep. Fred Deutsch (R-Florence), the author of several previous anti-trans bills put forward in the Mount Rushmore State. In 2016, Deutsch sponsored a bathroom bill vetoed by former Gov. Dennis Daugaard, and he has since signed on to legislation seeking to allow health workers to turn away patients in the name of their religious beliefs, among other efforts.
But with Vogue’s help, trans activists were able to defeat HB 1076 — one of a handful of anti-trans bills put forward in the South Dakota legislature in 2021. After having been put in touch with legislators by The Transformation Project, a South Dakota-based group that supports trans youth in the state, Vogue testified before the Senate committee to help defeat the bill.
“I need to be living my life worrying about college and not my rights being taken away,” he told a committee earlier this month, in comments cited by the Associated Press.
As he testified that day, Vogue said he thought about everything that his fellow LGBTQ+ classmates had gone through just to have a safe space to be themselves. “It really hurts having to hide away because just when we feel safe and understood, South Dakota legislators remember how much they hate trans people,” Vogue says. “I just wanted to be a kid.”
The efforts in South Dakota show how activists have coalesced to fight back as Republican lawmakers rapidly advance anti-trans legislation aimed at harming trans youth. Over 20 states have introduced similar pieces of legislation in 2021, which are mostly centered around banning trans girls from participating in high school sports and banning doctors from treating trans patients. But while the attacks on their right to exist are unprecedented, trans youth and their allies have joined together to ensure that no one has to be invisible just to survive.
The Transformation Project, one such group, has been instrumental in helping form a coalition of LGBTQ+, civil rights, and other advocacy groups that pool efforts and resources to oppose anti-trans legislation. According to its executive director, Susan Williams, South Dakota’s small population gives it an advantage: Lawmakers are easier to contact, so when the legislature is not in session, advocates work to better educate politicians about trans youth.
In addition to forming relationships with legislators, Williams says the coalition hosts letter-writing campaigns, organizes protests, and even offers workshops and trainings to help create the next generation of young activists.
“Once [legislators] are able to meet a trans person, or a family with a trans child and hear their stories, they are able to realize that this is a human issue, and not just an issue that’s on paper on a bill,” Williams tells them. “What we see is, once we can share a personal story with them, then they’re much more open to being educated, and see this as an issue that actually affects real life.”
