When Is It Time to Flee?

“Fleeing the land of the free,” as termed by Jayesh Rathod, a law professor at American University researching trans Americans leaving the country, is not just a matter of a few individuals here and there. As conditions in the U.S. have deteriorated, he recently told me, “it became obvious that this was a phenomenon.”

“I asked, ‘What is the point at which you are going to decide that it’s time to go?’” Rathod said. “Several of them said, ‘We’ve already reached that point, what more do we need to see?’” They pointed to the administration’s restrictions on trans people using accurate gender markers on passports, its barring and separating trans people from the military, and to the Dobbs decision. While Rathod is still at work analyzing his interviews and didn’t want to quantify this, he said, “It just kept coming up, interview after interview, people saying, ‘I don’t want to wait too long,’” and making explicit references to Germany in the 1930s. “That framing,” he said, “was pervasive.”

Both Rosenbaum and Riesman come from families who have fled pogroms and the Holocaust. Rosenbaum’s uncle told people to get out in 1939, and “everyone thought he was crazy,” they recalled. The lesson Rosenbaum took from their Jewish heritage, they said, was, “(a) Be in solidarity with the other people who are getting picked on because you’re going to need their help, but (b) keep a bag packed and your eye on the exit.” Both Rosenbaum’s and Riesman’s mothers supported their decision to leave without question, which Riesman said was actually a bit frightening, even if it made the couple more confident they had made the right choice.