1/ Long before I knew I was a trans woman, my wife and I had already made one decision about where we would never live.
The Bible Belt was off the table.
That decision had nothing to do with my gender. At the time, I did not know I was transgender. We simply knew that the politics, culture, and values of much of that region were not compatible with the kind of life we wanted to build.
So we had already drawn a rough mental map of the United States.
There were places we could imagine living.
And there were places we had crossed out.
Then, in October 2023, my life changed in a way I had not expected.
I finally understood that I was a trans woman, and I began transitioning.
Suddenly, geography meant something different.
Where I lived was no longer only about politics, cost of living, climate, jobs, or whether I liked the culture of a place.
There was now another question.
Would I actually be safe there?
I did not discover Erin Reed or Erin In The Morning until late 2024, more than a year after I started transitioning. By then, I had already watched the political environment around transgender people become increasingly hostile, but I did not yet have a clear picture of how much the country had changed.
Recently, I decided to go backward through Erin's older risk maps.
The first map specifically tracking risk to transgender adults was published in September 2023, just weeks before I started my transition.
Looking at it now feels strange.
It is like finding a record of something that was happening around me while I was too busy living through one of the biggest changes of my life to notice the whole picture.
Using the standard I use for myself today, where "High Risk" or worse means somewhere I would not consider moving to, 14 states were already off my map in September 2023.
Fourteen.
At the time, I had not started HRT.
I had not changed my identification.
Most people in my life did not know me as a woman.
I was only beginning to understand what my future might look like.
And without realizing it, I was beginning that future in a country where more than a quarter of the states were already places I would not now consider safe enough to build a life.
Florida was already in a category of its own.
It was the only state under a "Do Not Travel" advisory.
That distinction matters to me.
There is a big difference between saying, "I would never move there," and saying, "I would not even willingly go there."
One is about where you choose to build a life.
The other is about vacations.
Weddings.
Visiting family.
Road trips.
Connecting flights.
Stopping somewhere long enough to use the bathroom.
When I started transitioning, Florida was alone in that category.
Then the map started changing.
I only know the early part of this progression in hindsight.
By December 2023, the number of states above my personal "do not move" threshold had grown from 14 to 16.
Then 2024 began.
Indiana and Utah moved into High Risk.
The number became 18.
Iowa followed.
Nineteen.
Then Idaho.
Twenty.
At the same time, I was living through my own completely different timeline.
I was learning what transition meant for me.
I was watching my body change.
I was figuring out how and when to tell people.
I was starting to build a life that finally felt more honest.
Meanwhile, state legislatures were debating people like me.
Whether we should have access to healthcare.
Whether our documents should recognize us.
Whether we should be allowed to use public bathrooms.
Whether our gender should have any legal recognition at all.
By June 2024, New Hampshire had moved into High Risk.
That one stands out to me.
Because for years, my mental map had been simple.
My wife and I had already written off the Bible Belt.
When I later realized I was trans, it was easy to think that maybe the practical answer was still basically the same.
Avoid the Deep South.
Avoid the most aggressively conservative states.
Stay somewhere blue.
New Hampshire did not fit that mental picture.
It was not Alabama.
It was not Mississippi.
It was New England.
And suddenly the idea that anti-trans hostility could be neatly contained inside the parts of the country we had already rejected stopped making sense.
By then, 21 states had crossed my personal threshold for somewhere I would not move.
Still, I was not following Erin's maps yet.
I can only see the progression now.
Fourteen.
Sixteen.
Eighteen.
Nineteen.
Twenty.
Twenty-one.
Written that way, it looks almost clinical.
But every number represents something real.
A state deciding transgender people can be excluded from bathrooms.
A state restricting healthcare.
A state changing the legal definition of sex specifically to erase people like me.
A state making it harder or impossible to correct identification documents.
A state deciding that discrimination is something the law should protect instead of prevent.
(continued below)
Robert Berger
Als Antwort auf queer.de • • •Aber wer erwartet anderes von der meines Erachtens ersten echten Nachfolgerin der NSDAP?