As proposed anti-trans legislation sweeps through Iowa, there is a battle not just over policies but over societal attitudes. Many of the state’s lawmakers have placed transgender lives at the center of their political agenda, raising questions about whose rights — and whose humanity — are deemed negotiable.
But as lawmakers negotiate restrictions, trans people in Grinnell are negotiating joy, resistance and belonging and finding ways to remain in Iowa in spite of political hostility.
Iowa faces effects of anti-trans legislation, with more efforts to come
In recent Iowa legislative sessions, trans people have been targeted with a barrage of proposed restrictions. In the 2024 session alone, 35 anti-trans bills were proposed by Republican lawmakers — including an attempt to remove gender identity from Iowa’s civil rights law — although only one passed.
This comes after Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds signed Senate File 496 into law in 2023, prohibiting instruction or curriculum about gender identity and sexual orientation through sixth grade. In 2022, Reynolds signed a law prohibiting transgender females from participating in girls high school sports and women’s college athletics.
In 2023, Iowa also banned gender-affirming care for minors, forcing many transgender youth to travel out of state to receive medical treatment such as hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and puberty blockers. A similar gender-affirming care ban in Tennessee was challenged in front of the Supreme Court on Dec. 4 by Grinnell College alum Chase Strangio `04, who became the first openly trans lawyer to argue in front of the Court. Legal analysts predict the ban will be upheld, which could open the door for more severe restrictions on trans rights.
Although the restriction of trans rights has become a dominant political talking point among Iowa Republicans, the state has the second-lowest estimated percentage of transgender adults and nineteenth-lowest of transgender youth.
Across the United States, trans people represent about one percent of the population, yet Republicans spent nearly $215 million in ads attacking trans rights this cycle, or $134 per trans person.
Victor Thorne `26, a transgender man, said he has grown more vocal about trans rights as it has become a “wedge issue” and “political football.”
“You have a combination of people who are oriented towards right-wing thought and people who are not necessarily oriented that way, but feel threatened by the idea that their lives have to change [to accommodate trans rights],” Thorne said. “Those people form this coalition of fear and anger, and it becomes directed towards trans people, and then towards all LGBT people, and honestly, towards anybody who’s different in any way.”
In 2015, state legislatures proposed a total of 21 anti-trans bills. In 2024, that number grew to 669 bills. Currently, 26 states have passed bans on gender affirming-care for youth. As states battle courts over the constitutionality of their anti-trans laws, polls show that three in four people support anti-discrimination laws protecting trans people and more than six in 10 oppose bans on gender-affirming care.
Ellsi Mertens, a transgender woman who grew up in Grinnell and now works at the College, said she thinks the politicization of trans people has happened not because most people care about restricting trans rights, but because they do not care.
“A lot of people didn’t actually care that much about us [trans people],” Mertens said of people who voted for Republicans who used anti-trans rhetoric in their campaigns. “They just didn’t care that things were going to happen to us. A lot of people, even the conservative people, are just toeing party lines and being like, ‘I guess we hate them [trans people] too.’”
But because Republicans won overwhelmingly in a campaign cycle that focused heavily on trans rights, many are worried that lawmakers will feel empowered to carry out their anti-trans agenda. Project 2025, which may act as a blueprint for Republican legislation, lays out a plan to virtually erase all federal protections of LGBTQ+ individuals, despite polling indicating LGBTQ+ issues were not even a top ten priority issue for voters this election.
Angel Arroyo `26.5, who is a non-binary, transmasculine immigrant from Mexico and president of Queer People of Color, said this political moment should challenge the way we think about societal progress.
“There’s been a narrative of progress in the United States, but it all feels very regressive right now, and we [trans people] are getting the brunt of it,” Arroyo said. “The idea of progress prevents us from seeing the way our bodies are at stake — our livelihoods are at stake.”
Jordan Reznick, who is trans and teaches trans-studies material as an assistant professor of American Studies, said that many people have been taught to believe that American culture will always “tend toward more rights and freedoms,” but that this isn’t necessarily the case.
However, Reznick has learned from studying political movements that no matter how much oppression there is, there’s always resistance.
“The result of what happens in history is not just a product of the oppression, but also a product of the resistance,” Reznick said. “Resistance will be most strategic when it looks at history and builds on the strategies that people have developed over the generations. Trans people won’t cease to exist because there’s oppression.”
The heavy decision to stay in or leave Iowa
Many trans people now face a choice — remain in Iowa despite the Legislature’s clear intention to implement further restrictions, or look for a new place to live.
For Morgan Smith `26, who is transfeminine and a co-leader of Trans at Grinnell (TAG), there is power in actively choosing to remain in a state that doesn’t legislatively accept who you are.
“Being trans or queer in a red state is complicated because you are usually trying to be legislated out of existence,” Smith said. “But that’s also why queer people need to be present in those places, because someone has to.”
Opal Polanco `26, a transgender woman, shared a similar sentiment about having spent her life in Ohio and now Iowa — two states that have led the fight against trans rights.
“People telling me I’m not welcome makes me want to be here more,” Polanco said. “Who are you to tell me I can’t be here?”
Polanco said that even if proposed anti-trans bills aren’t passed into law, they set a tone for how trans people should be treated. But the tone the Legislature sets can be challenged and resisted, Polanco said, and that’s the value of choosing to stay in a hostile place.
And when it comes to hostility against trans people, Mertens said there is simply no escaping it entirely.
“The idea of this state is bad, this state is good — the severity of the difference is a bit illusory,” Mertens said. “You’re always going to be at risk if you’re queer. It doesn’t matter what the legislation is, transphobic and homophobic people have been emboldened.”
As Mertens sees it — especially considering her stable job and health insurance — she would rather have a strong community in Iowa than need to start fresh in a place like Minneapolis, even if the state legislation would be a material improvement.
“No matter where you are, queer people should still exist,” Mertens said. “Even if enrollment of queer people goes down at the college, someone who doesn’t realize they’re trans might come here, realize that they’re in a shitty state for trans people and go, ‘Well, there’s at least a trans girl at the library that I see when I go to study — I guess it’s possible to live still.’”
Fredo Rivera `06, who is non-binary and moved to Grinnell from Florida to attend the College, later returning to teach art history, said people should avoid making pronouncements about queer life in a place like Iowa simply based on legislation or political rhetoric. Rivera said it’s easy to think “the grass is greener on the other side,” but that it’s important for “some folks to stay their ground.”
“I want to be cautious about thinking that legislation at the state and federal level results in an environment that is less friendly or amenable,” Rivera said. “If anything, I think it creates more interesting forms of expression and political advocacy.”
The role of Grinnell College in safety, belonging
“A leftist bastion in a red sea.”
That’s the way Smith thinks Grinnell College is often described. But that’s not the way Smith sees it. While the threat to trans and queer individuals is not the fault of the College, Smith said, it has a responsibility to provide resources to affected students — something Smith thinks has fallen short.
“Often you have to go digging to find resources,” Smith said. “Sometimes they’re there, but you may have to go down a rabbit hole to find them. And sometimes they’re not there at all.”
Nixie Clifford `27, who is non-binary and co-leads TAG with Smith, said the College needs to be more transparent in its advertising to LGBTQ+ students.
“We [queer students] don’t all end up here because this was the best place for us,” Clifford said, addressing the College. “So you need to make it the best place for us if you’re gonna try so hard to get us here, and you need to tell us we’re entering a community that is imperfect and unsafe.”
Clifford said he is concerned by the precedent the College set in how it responded to an alleged assault against a gay, Black student this fall and racist vandalism on campus two years ago. He said he isn’t confident the College has students’ best interest in mind, because it’s his experience that if an incident “can be buried, it will be buried.”
“There’s a promise of care in case of harm, but there’s no promise of protection from harm, and it’s not good enough to fix it after it happened. You have to stop it from happening.”
One example Smith and Clifford cited was vandalism to the Stonewall Resource Center (SRC), located in the basement of Younker Hall, which offers a confidential safe space for LGBTQ+ students. Early this fall, Smith and Micho Adler, assistant director of intercultural affairs, said pride flags were torn down, drag closets were broken into and stolen from and the “f-slur” was written on the walls in the SRC. Photos provided to The S&B confirm this account. Ellen de Graffenreid, vice president of communications and marketing, confirmed that although the incident was filed as a bias-related incident, the College did not determine it to be bias-related.
Currently, the SRC is one of the primary resources for trans and queer students. Adler said the goal is to continue improving the space based on student feedback to make it a “welcoming sanctuary.”
Rivera, who served as assistant director of the SRC while attending Grinnell, said it may be time to rethink the physical space dedicated to affinity groups and LGBTQ+ conversations.
“When the SRC was founded, a lot more people were in the closet, and it needed to be a safe space where people could be open about their queer identities,” Rivera said. “Now we live in a different reality, where it’d be really lovely to have a more public facing space that also made a statement to the community. We need more spaces of bright, brilliant, creative expression and advocacy, and having that space in the dorm basement is a hindrance.”
This fall, in an effort to increase trans-studies curricula, the College brought on stef torralba, who uses lowercase letters in their name, as assistant professor of English and gender, women’s, and sexuality studies. torralba, who is non-binary and trans, focuses on how social categories like race and disability intersect with gender and sexual non-normativity, and how power fits into social formations.
“A concrete example is folks seeing more queer and trans representation in media and thinking it equates to being liberated from transphobia or systems of oppression,” torralba said. “But that’s not totally true, and so the question that I like to ask in classes is, ‘Why is that?’”
But in spite of progress on some fronts, many people feel the College is not doing enough to speak out against the current anti-trans legislation or acknowledge the gravity of the current political moment.
“Not speaking out about the bigoted legislation is inexcusable,” Polanco said of the College. “I know that saying something isn’t actually going to change anything, but it still matters, because the main purpose of the legislation is to signal that you [trans people] are not welcome in Iowa.”
Arroyo said the relationship with the College can feel extractive at times — the College draws trans and queer students to Grinnell for diversity, but then is “very dismissive when it truly comes to addressing concerns.”
Anne Harris, president of the College, said that because Grinnell is a non-profit, it cannot lobby legislators. Instead of sending out an all-campus statement on the election, Harris said her approach has been more “relational,” and she has been reaching out to people individually.
“There’s no one thing that is a solution. Nothing rolls back the laws,” Harris said. “But our work is to make our communities and advocacies visible.” Harris said one of the College’s priorities is to ensure it understands the requirements and enforceability of Iowa’s anti-LGBTQ+ laws.
Harris, who has a trans son, said this issue is uniquely personal to her.
“Our son’s experience, and his continuing navigation of multiple systems that either affirm or challenge his identity, makes me realize the power of community and kinship, and of steadfastness and solidarity,” Harris stated.
In terms of material efforts the College is making, de Graffenreid confirmed that the College is actively working to implement single-use gender-neutral restrooms in Noyce Science Center. De Graffenreid also confirmed that gender-affirming care options are provided under both the College employee and student health insurance plans. If Iowa were to ban gender-affirming care in the future, de Graffenreid said she expects the College would look at finding a provider that offered out of state coverage. For students who want to change their preferred name or pronouns, de Graffenreid said they can do so on Colleague Self-Service and reach out to the Registrar to confirm that their official record has been updated.
Preserving community, creating joy, leading resistance
Radical care.
That’s what Arroyo thinks trans people need right now. “I don’t think that trans people should be responsible for professing our stories or establishing our humanity,” Arroyo said.
Arroyo said responsibility falls on all members of the Grinnell community. Allies should be willing to ask questions and have conversations about trans rights, Arroyo said, and form “genuine connections” with queer people rather than thinking about “how to serve minority groups.”
“A big issue in the queer community generally is cis[gender] allies will only partake in the community when they get something from it,” Arroyo said, referencing people whose main interaction with the queer community is through attending the drag show, for example. “I think people are really scared to overstep — and it’s good that people are cautious — but I think that comes at the cost of exotifying queer identities.”
Clifford said that although he thinks Grinnell tends to be inclusive, there is a difference between tolerance and acceptance.
“There is a lot of fear of expressing queerness on our campus,” Clifford said. “It’s like you can have queerness as a part of your identity, but if you do it all the time, it’s too much and it’s too loud. There’s tolerance for queer people on campus, but there’s not love and appreciation for queer people on campus all the time.”
Clifford said that solidarity matters — that the one thing everyone can consistently do is show up for LGBTQ+ students when they need support.
“How you empower trans people is you make an environment for them that is as easy as the environment is for a cis[gender] person, right?” Polanco said. For Polanco, the first thing everyone can do is to ensure they get people’s preferred pronouns correct.
Mertens said allies should also focus on calling people out in plain language.
“When someone starts spouting hateful shit, just go, ‘Hey, that’s an awful thing to say,’” Mertens said. “We don’t need academic talk to people that already hate us.”
But no matter what the College provides and allies are able to offer, trans people in Grinnell say the next few years could be uniquely difficult.
“I’ve lost many friends to suicide, especially around crisis times like when Trump was first elected,” Reznick said. “I feel very concerned for my community, and especially concerned for young people. Your 20s are hard anyways, without being trans.” One recent study of trans adults found that more than 80 percent had thought about suicide, and more than 40 percent had attempted.
However, the fear and uncertainty don’t have to be overwhelming, Mertens said, and trans joy will not be suppressed.
“You need to be ready for when it gets bad,” Mertens said. “But you can’t live in fear of things getting bad. If you let fear control you, they’ve won.”
“I think the phrase, ‘Kill me yourself, coward,’ is something that I have going in my head,” Mertens said. “We’re living in dangerous times, but I don’t need to make it more dangerous for myself. You should be yourself and you should be angry and you should thrive in spite of it.”
Support is available by calling the Trevor Project at (866) 488-7386, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at (800) 273-8255, the Trans Lifeline at (877) 565-8860 and the National LGBT Hotline at (888) 843-4564. Grinnell Advocates can be reached at (641) 260-1615.
