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Some Trans People Are Preparing to Flee the US and Seek Asylum Abroad [1]
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Date: 2023-01-10 14:57:46.337000+00:00
The national landscape, accompanied by some of her own personal experiences, has made a future in the U.S. feel untenable for Willgohs. In March 2021, when Willgohs had just started her transition, she was traveling across the state for work when she decided to stop at a public bathroom. A man followed her inside and pushed her up against a wall. “I thought he was going to choke me to death,” she told VICE News. Today, she mostly feels safe in Fargo, North Dakota, where she lives, but she’s careful in rural areas. And when she leaves the state, she often doesn’t feel safe at all.
Rynn Azerial Willgohs, a 50-year-old transgender woman, has been rapidly researching ways to flee the United States. She’s from the U.S., but with physical attacks against transgender and nonbinary people on the rise and lawmakers targeting transgender people with increasingly draconian legislation that criminalizes their very existence, Willgohs is worried.
“There’s like 30 states right now I wouldn’t even drive through,” Willgohs said.
Her own experiences, and the increasingly hostile national climate, inspired Willgohs to start TRANSport, a budding non-profit that seeks to help trans people transition, navigate bureaucratic mazes, and ultimately finance their journeys as they flee the country.
Willgohs is considering claiming asylum in Iceland, a country she visited last summer and considers more accepting—and safer—than the U.S. And she felt like being trans was a “non-issue” while there. Though there’s currently a lack of clarity around whether it’s even possible for trangender U.S. citizens to claim asylum elsewhere—and an expert told VICE News it’s unlikely—the devolving situation in the U.S. has inspired people like Willgohs to try.
“All you need to do is look at the news and see how bad it’s going to get in the country,” Willgohs said. “We’re accused of being pedophiles and of grooming children. We’re being accused of being a social contagion that makes every child think they are in the queer community. That’s the farthest from the truth.”
“All you need to do is look at the news and see how bad it’s going to get in the country. We’re accused of being pedophiles and of grooming children. We’re being accused of being a social contagion.”
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[1] Url:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy7qnj/trans-people-fleeing-us-seek-asylum
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