Trans Texas college students bearing more hostility as officials push binary gender definitions

Lindsey Byman, Jayme Lozano Carver, Ayden Runnels and Stephen Simpson, The Texas Tribune

When Liz Graff started their second year of law school this fall, the nonbinary transgender student noticed a shift in how their peers treated them.

Male classmates stopped holding the door for Graff or bumped into them on the sidewalk. In class, students called transgender women “men.” Peers said publicly that people expressing gender identities that diverge from what was assigned at birth has gotten out of hand.

To Graff, these actions add up to represent an increasing hostility on campus toward transgender students.

“I’m looking around, like, ‘What’s going on?” said Graff, who transferred to the University of Texas at Austin from the University of Houston this fall but ascribes the change to the larger political atmosphere. “I’m being treated differently.”

In September, a video of a Texas A&M University student confronting a professor for discussing transgender identities went viral, kicking off a blur of action. The professor was fired and the university’s president replaced. Hundreds of miles away, Angelo State University officials quietly unveiled limits to discussing transgender identities in class. Days later, the school’s parent system, Texas Tech, issued its own restrictions to faculty.

And most recently, on Oct. 2, UT-Austin said it was “enthusiastically” reviewing an offer from President Donald Trump to receive federal funding advantages if, among other things, the college adopted a binary definition of gender.

“I didn’t expect people to cave so easily,” said a transgender Texas Tech University alumna. “At the same time, I think people are legitimately very, very frightened right now, and I think that’s especially true of institutions.”

The Texas Tribune spoke to more than a dozen transgender and nonbinary Texas students about how their lives on campuses have changed in recent years. Many of them asked to remain anonymous or have only their first names published, because they fear backlash from university officials, students, parents or the general public.

Many told the Tribune that state and federal policies have emboldened their peers to disregard their gender identities, and administrators to slash campus support services and dilute their quality of education. College campuses — long considered safe havens to meet people with varied experiences and explore identity — have become hostile environments that invalidate their sense of self, and where they fear for their safety and mental well-being, students told the Tribune.

Many of these students face an internal debate: remain at universities that they feel cast them aside, or leave the state they call home.

“I know I could be a lot better off if I lived somewhere I wasn’t considered a monster,” said Beth, a Texas Tech transgender student.

The shift from acceptance to intolerance at Texas Tech

Lubbock was once the nation’s second most conservative city, set in a county that has voted for the Republican nominee in every presidential election since 1948 with the exception of Texas’ own Lyndon B. Johnson. While political conservatism has long dominated the region, Texas Tech in the last decade has offered freedom for LGBTQ+ students to safely and openly celebrate their identities.

Texas Tech held its first pride week in 2015. Three years later, it hosted its inaugural Big 12 LGBTQIA Allies Summit, a three-day event that ended with a screening of “Love, Simon,” which chronicles a gay teenager’s coming-out story. Stickers signifying faculty and staff were LGBTQ+ allies adorned office doors. At one point, the campus pride index scored Tech five stars for queer friendliness.

“There’s, like, this porous boundary between Texas Tech and Lubbock, and I think a lot of that progress probably started to bleed into the community,” the Texas Tech alumna said. “It was a big deal, because Lubbock is very conservative, and so you had people coming onto campus to support these events.”

But then, that atmosphere shifted. In 2023, Texas Tech sponsored its final pride week and LGBTQIA summit before the state Legislature banned DEI initiatives, including programming specific to gender identity or sexual orientation. School officials later discouraged students from having a lavender graduation ceremony, which celebrated LGBTQ+ students and their allies.

All this time, the university’s free speech zone has remained active with picketers comparing transgender people to pedophiles and holding signs that warn, “God will destroy you!”

Last month, the five-campus Texas Tech University System became the first in Texas to limit how and when faculty mention transgender and nonbinary people. System officials directed professors to comply with state and federal directives recognizing only two sexes and a Texas law that requires government records to identify individuals as their biological sex: male or female.

“Texas law is clear that there are two genders, and taxpayer-funded universities must operate in full compliance to maintain the public’s trust,” said Texas Tech Chancellor Brandon Creighton in a statement to the Tribune.

Creighton was tapped last month to lead the system after serving 18 years in the Texas Legislature, where the Republican authored some of the most sweeping higher education legislation, including the DEI ban.

The system’s new limits weren’t a complete surprise, a transgender graduate student at Texas Tech told the Tribune. The environment at his school has become “increasingly more hostile” since the Legislature prohibited DEI programs at public universities in 2023.

The Texas Tech alumna, who now attends graduate school in another part of the state, said the system’s announcement sent her into a nervous breakdown. She called her mom, sobbing.

“Also, too, I was worried for myself, like, what if they do something similar at my school?” she said on a video call from her apartment, speaking low and twisting the ends of her hair.

She said she was frustrated because the laws Texas Tech cited do not address curricula, and she worried that administrators’ ambiguous directives could lead to hurtful practices, such as professors calling students by names they no longer use.

The Texas Tech graduate student who also serves as a teaching assistant said the new rules force him to compromise his personal values and identity for his job. He’s scared that if he does speak out, someone could record him and post the video online — like what happened to the Texas A&M professor.

“I feel like I am one asshole away from becoming the next national headline about trans ideology,” the teaching assistant said.

In response to questions about transgender students feeling hostility on campus, Texas Tech officials said they support all of their students in their personal and academic success.

“Our goal is to provide an environment where every student has the opportunity to learn, thrive and graduate prepared to make meaningful contributions to their communities and society,” the school said in a statement.

Beth acknowledges that the university is caught in a no-win situation where officials are following signals from state leaders and the Trump administration. She also feels trapped. Beth chose the school because she received a scholarship and she’d like to stay until she finishes her master’s degree. But she also now feels hopeless and ashamed of the school.

“I’m still in shock. It feels like for the first time in a long time, uncharted waters have reached here,” Beth said.

Universities pulling support of trans students

Cory, a transgender Stephen F. Austin State University student, is fortunate to have a built-in community on campus. On a recent evening in Nacogdoches, the freshman painted rainbow cow splotches and “Y’all means all” on a homecoming banner for his school’s pride alliance club. During meetings, members play games like “this or that.” They share information about where to access gender affirming hormones, upcoming queer community events and opportunities to participate in them.

Club meetings feel like “family dinner,” Cory says.

Non-school sanctioned organizations like Cory’s have become increasingly important for trans students to stay informed and supported as queer resources at public Texas universities shrink.

In 2023, Texas’ anti-DEI law shuttered school-sponsored LGBTQ+ offices at public universities. Last month, UT-Austin took it further, saying it will stop providing gender affirming care in January without citing any laws. Come December, bathrooms will become stress points for trans and nonbinary students, who will have to use the restroom that aligns with the sex assigned to them at birth.

Student-run clubs like Cory’s aren’t banned under the anti-DEI law for now, but some schools don’t have any designated space for queer students.

At Hayden Cohen’s college in Houston, the closest thing to a queer space is the rainbow flag on a poster for the music appreciation club. It’s a shift from their high school, where their gender and sexuality alliance tabled for new students and frosted sugar cookies with rainbows.

Now, they said it’s hard to meet other queer students on campus.

Even at schools with student-led support systems, some transgender students feel jilted.

During a discussion of UT-Austin’s intramural flag football rules that say teams can only have a certain number of male and female players based on their birth sex, Graff asked their LGBTQ+ law student organization to act against the policy. Graff said the group rejected their ideas, which included issuing a statement or soliciting the help of other trans-friendly organizations or professors. Graff felt their gay, lesbian and bisexual peers had abandoned their transgender and nonbinary members.

“They essentially were sort of like, ‘We can’t do anything,’” Graff said. “And that’s kind of the reaction I’ve been getting from a lot of people…either they don’t want to get dragged down in these policies because they don’t have to be, or they don’t want to put a target on the university.”

Safety and mental health

Kaylin O’Neal isn’t just worried about classroom censorship — he’s worried about staying alive.

The freshman at Prairie View A&M University can tolerate content reviews purging transgender discussions from class. What scares him is being a Black transgender man walking across an open campus in a conservative East Texas county.

“People are always going to hate my existence,” said O’Neal, who wants to be a civil rights attorney. “People kill trans women for the fun of it. People harm trans men for the fun of it, too.”

O’Neal has always felt wrong in his body. Growing up, he ditched his barrettes and chose to be the dad when he played house. At age 13, the label tomboy stopped working — he was a male.

He would wake up thinking, “Why on earth did I have to be given two X chromosomes?” The mismatch between his identity and societal expectations created constant friction.

“You were born female, female is on your birth certificate, you have to do all the things that females have to do,” he said. “All those things were things that I personally never aligned myself with.”

Transgender people are more than four times as likely to be victims of violent crime, according to a study published in the American Journal of Public Health.

O’Neal said he’ll be a target in Texas or anywhere else.

That fear, and the rejection transgender people face in society, fuels worsening mental health outcomes for these individuals.

Forty one percent of LGBTQ young people seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year, according to a 2023 national survey by the Trevor Project, a crisis intervention nonprofit focused on LGBTQ+ youth. This was especially high among transgender and nonbinary people.

The Tribune has reached out to multiple Texas universities about whether they’ve had to reduce mental health services to trans students because of the 2023 anti-DEI bill, but officials have not responded. It’s unclear whether recent policies limiting the discussion of transgender identities in class will also extend to school counseling.

Cory’s tuition at SFA includes basic counseling services, but he has always doubted that his school’s therapists could support his needs as a neurodivergent transgender person.

“I don’t really trust them,” Cory said. “It’s more of an expectation that the counselors at this campus are going to be similar to the counselors at my high school campus, which weren’t really given any real counseling training for certain populations.”

In class, Cohen has learned how the social and political magnifying glass on transgender people contributes to the group’s high rate of depression. They worry that limiting when professors can discuss trans individuals will mean fewer mental health providers will be trained on how to serve this vulnerable population.

“I don’t want my fellow peers and fellow social workers to go into the world not knowing about trans people and gay people,” Cohen said. “They’d make horrible social workers.”

Fight or flee

Another transgender PhD student at Texas Tech said the restrictions at their school doesn’t change how they see the university. They said the changes reflect the anti-trans views of state and federal leaders, not necessarily that of the university’s administration or the people around them.

“It’s not surprising to me as a Texan, but it also doesn’t utterly make a rift between what I know about Texas,” the student said.

That student has spent their whole life in Texas and can’t imagine living somewhere else. They came out as transgender in 2014 and said they have encountered minimal direct resistance. And while the student said some see Lubbock, a largely conservative community, as close-minded, they say it’s a different experience living there.

“It’s also a community of care and standing up for Red Raiders, especially the faculty that cares for people,” the student said. “Most people are like, ‘I just want to get to know this person.’”

Graff, the UT law student, has started letting people who have been walking behind them for a while pass, especially when they’re alone. “I wouldn’t put it past someone to try to ‘protect’ themselves or society from trans people by hurting us,” Graff said.

They’re scared, but not scared enough to leave the state.

In middle school, Graff thought being transgender was the worst thing that could have happened to them. But after getting gender affirming care this May, they stand straighter and feel more open, finally escaping the sense of having a permanent bad hair day to now feel as though their body aligns with who they are.

Graff is glad they transitioned, despite it happening at a time when they feel their identity makes them a target.

“Even what I’m going through now, I don’t think it’s worth going back,” Graff said. “I feel better than I’ve ever felt in my life.”

Stephen Simpson contributed reporting.

Disclosure: Prairie View A&M University, Texas A&M University, Texas Tech University, Texas Tech University System, University of Houston and University of Texas at Austin have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

For mental health support for LGBTQ youth, call the Trevor Project’s 24/7 toll-free support line at 866-488-7386. For trans peer support, call the Trans Lifeline at 877-565-8860. You can also reach a trained crisis counselor through the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988.

This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.