SHOW UP ANYWAY

Last week I heard a conversation that has been sitting in my chest ever since.

A trans man from Florida was talking about a recent interaction he had with a congressional candidate. Somewhere in the conversation he said something that stopped me cold.

“I’m not registered to vote here and I won’t register to vote here until I can get a proper ID.”

I understood it immediately.

Florida is one of several states that no longer allow transgender people to freely update gender markers on driver’s licenses. For many people, that is not an abstract policy debate. It is deeply personal. It is paperwork that feels like erasure. It is pulling out your wallet and seeing a version of yourself you fought to survive.

I understand the anger. I understand the protest.

I even understand the instinct to say: If the state refuses to recognize me, why should I participate in its systems at all?

But that sentence stayed with me because another question followed it.

What happens if thousands of us make that choice?

What happens if we stay home?

What happens if the people most directly affected by anti-trans policy remove themselves from the electorate?

And what happens if the candidates willing to fight for us lose because we were not in the room?

That question is uncomfortable.

I am asking it anyway.

There are multiple states where transgender people face severe restrictions around updating gender markers on identification documents. Kansas is one of them.

Kansas also gives us a lesson worth paying attention to.

In 2022, the governor’s race in Kansas was decided by roughly fifteen thousand votes. The estimated adult transgender population of Kansas exceeds twenty thousand people.

That does not mean transgender voters elected the governor.

It does mean something else.

Presence matters.

Margins matter.

Participation matters.

Kansas elected a governor who, while imperfect and certainly not a universal hero, repeatedly opposed legislation viewed by many transgender Kansans as harmful. The alternative likely would have looked very different.

That should make all of us pause.

Because if a community disappears from the electorate, intentionally or accidentally, consequences follow.

Movements have always wrestled with this question.

Do we participate in systems that hurt us?

Or reject them entirely?

History gives us examples of people doing the harder thing.

Women organized before they had the vote.

Black Americans fought, registered, marched, and voted under systems that often denied their humanity.

LGBTQ people voted before marriage equality, before workplace protections, before visibility became common.

Participation was never approval.

Participation was leverage.

Silence is not always resistance.

Sometimes silence is simply absence.

And systems continue moving without the people who leave.

The ballots are still counted.

The laws still move.

The governors still sign bills.

The school boards still vote.

The machine keeps running.

That reality is painful.

But it is real.

I also think we need to be honest about something else.

Some people would be perfectly happy if transgender people simply stopped showing up.

Low turnout is easier to overcome.

Invisible communities are easier to legislate around.

History is brutally honest about that.

Marginalized groups rarely gain power by disappearing.

They gain power by becoming impossible to ignore.

I keep returning to Kansas because it shows that small communities can exist inside meaningful margins.

And statewide races are only part of the story.

School boards matter.

City councils matter.

State legislatures matter.

Judges matter.

Curriculum matters.

Healthcare access matters.

The future is often built in rooms most people never watch.

I want to challenge another idea too.

Voting under unfair rules is not surrender.

Registering with documents you hate is not surrender.

Showing up despite frustration is not surrender.

It may be one of the bravest things a person can do.

It says:

You do not get to erase me by making participation painful.

You do not get to push me out of the room.

You do not get to make me disappear.

Imagine two futures.

In one, thousands walk away.

No registration.

No ballots.

No voice.

The policies continue without them.

In the other, those same people stay.

Still angry.

Still fighting.

Still demanding change.

Still voting.

Which future is more threatening to exclusionary politics?

I know my answer.

This is not a plea for acceptance.

Fight the policies.

Challenge them.

Organize.

Raise money.

Support litigation.

Write.

March.

Advocate.

Do all of it.

But do not surrender your place first.

Do not leave the field before the game begins.

Because power rarely sends invitations back to people who leave.

I hate that this conversation exists.

I hate that anyone has to hold documents that feel like grief.

I hate that identity can become bureaucracy.

You deserve better.

You deserve systems that recognize you.

You deserve identification processes built with dignity.

Fight for that.

Demand that.

Never stop demanding that.

But while you fight:

Show up anyway.

Vote anyway.

Register anyway.

Stay anyway.

Because history has not been changed by communities that vanished.

It has been changed by communities that refused to.

We are still here.

We are still voting.

We are still fighting.

And we are not leaving.