“As soon as Trump was elected, I had a really bad gut feeling about what was going to be done to harm the transgender community, along with other marginalized Americans,” he tells them. “The title for the series came into my head three days after he won the election.”
Unfortunately, the Trump administration’s policies have not slowed down since Zosherafatain first began the process of making the film. In the past four years, Trump has blocked homeless trans folks from being admitted to shelters in accordance with their gender identity, repealed trans-specific protections in the Affordable Care Act on the third anniversary of the Pulse nightclub shooting, and fought against job protections for transgender people who experience discrimination in the workplace. Even in the final days of Trump’s presidency, the administration moved to allow adoption and foster care agencies to turn away same-sex couples.
To Zosherafatain, the relentless erasure of the community was one of the most harrowing aspects of the past four years.
“One of the biggest pieces of anti-trans legislation that Trump sought against the trans community was when he tried to erase ‘transgender’ as an identity category in Title IX protections,” says Zosherafatain, referring to a memo issued by former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos in the wake of her resignation. “To me, that was the most horrifying anti-trans action he took. It became an overarching theme in the series, one that every subject in the series had heard about.”
In the trailer unveiled last week, Zosherafatain tells the aforementioned trans student blocked from using the restroom of his choice that the administration’s bigotry is not a reflection of his inherent dignity. “No matter what the president says,” Zosherafatain says, “you exist and you’re human.”
Much of the trailer’s power lies in its subjects. These are four individuals who experienced harassment, assault, and overwhelming levels of prejudice during the past four years, often without any legal recourse or guidance. But instead of wallowing in tragedy, Zosherafatain emphasizes the resiliency of trans people. “Do you know what I am?” says a woman in voiceover. “I am a child of God.”
For Zosherafatain, those moments of joy were just as important to document as the pain and suffering in wake of so many human rights violations.
“Even during the darkest moments during the Trump era, you had these trans people creating joy, even in small ways,” he says. This struck him as especially important at a time when trans people became the preferred targets, scapegoats, and villains of the Trump administration. “Part of this was strategic,” he argues, “to use the trans community as a sort of ‘pawn’ during political discourse and to push through anti-trans legislation as a way of trying to gain votes. It was the first time I saw trans identity became so publicly vilified.”
Part of the paradox of making a chronicle of trans life under Trump is that by the time the series comes out next month, Trump will no longer be president. But while the abuses detailed in the documentary will already belong to the past, the imprint they’ve left will remain.
“It’s going to take a lot of effort to repair the damage caused by the Trump administration,” Zosherafatain says. “Overall, I would love to see the Biden administration pass a federal mandate that bars any state-run and private health insurance from excluding transgender healthcare, hormones, and surgery. That’s something we desperately need, and that was one of the biggest disparities between states that we found while filming and talking to each subject during the production of Trans in Trumpland.”
Trans in Trumpland will be available to stream on Topic’s website.
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