State Senator Sarah McBride of Delaware was elected for the state’s only House seat with a 57.8% majority vote in November, becoming the first known transgender person elected to Congress and state senator in United States history according to The 19th. She will be inaugurated Jan. 20, 2025. 

Sophomore Xander Brodnik, a transgender female said, “Sarah was an active, honest, political person and very educated in the school she was from before she actually came out as trans. What I really like about that (is that it) shows that trans people are just normal people, you know. Anybody that just happens to be trans, even if they are a big politician.”

Brodnik said life as a transgender person is vastly different and more difficult than cisgender people’s. Aspects such as starting and maintaining new relationships and battling stereotypes held by society’s majority are challenges specific to the LGBTQ community. 

Amaya Urriti-Heath, a transgender woman who helped found No Justice No Pride, said, “I think it’s good to have someone as brilliant as she is in such a prominent role. It’s not only inspiring to so many trans folks, but her position normalizes her as a human being, and gives a very humanising face to the trans woman experience. She’s being brought into spaces too few trans women are allowed into, and humanizing us to people who are so habituated to our dehumanization. I think having someone like Sarah in the room will really help change the prewritten transmisogynistic paradigm of what it means to be a woman who’s trans in this world.”

According to Heath, No Justice No Pride’s goal is to protect transgender people through legislation. The organization also created a housing collective to allow greater access to housing for transgender women who are forced into sex work from a young age and face severe job discrimination. According to the website, being trans creates challenges for almost every aspect of life.

Urriti-Heath said, “I grew up in small town Indiana, a town of less than 20,000. I was the only queer kid in my high school that I knew of, and I always felt a fair amount of inequity. I noticed them too in the ways people talked about others. You see how unfair the world is, how unfair society is, the structural inequities that rig the game.”

Riley Abernathy, the senior director of Carmel Pride, said, “There’s still this precedent that people of the community are predatory in some way. It’s all based around more sexual things when that is not the case at all. People just have a misconception of a lot of people in the community, where there is more fluidity, which is what people get confused with. So we try to break down that stereotype and make people realize that it’s not that ideal.”

Abernathy said she identifies with the LGBTQ community as a pansexual female. With this school’s Carmel Pride club, she helps organize an annual Pride event for the City of Carmel as well as works with organizations which specifically help transgender youth in Indiana. Carmel Pride is also a part of Indiana Pride Network, the USA Pride Network, and the International Pride Network. Abernathy said participating in Pride organizations are a good way to see a visible difference to people in her community who were struggling. 

Urriti-Heath reflected on her negative experiences as a trans woman in a conservative society. 

She said, “I had my tires slashed, I had someone spit in my face, and all things considered that’s not the worst, but it’s alienating. Cis men treat us the worst, though before I came out, I was presumed to be a cis gay dude, and was known as queer from a young age. And while, previously, I had been able to trust cis women to be generally chill with me, transitioning was a shock to see cis women turn on me so much. Treatment just became so much worse.”

According to Abernathy, Sarah McBride’s presence allows for transgender people to feel more seen, and gives people a voice in the government who never have before.

Abernathy said, “Any person in power who has a similar perspective as you definitely gives you a leg up and just kind of gives you more of a voice yourself.”

Brodnik said she also believed McBride’s election was invaluable to the transgender community.

“At the moment, while talking to friends of this community online, a lot of it is very much stressing, like, ‘it’s the end of the world, we’re all going to die!’ that kind of thing, you know. It’s very negative online, and I think Sarah McBride will spark some hope in a lot of people. It’s very inspiring for trans people like me because like a lot of the time I’m scared to, you know, get any sort of job, follow any sort of career path. But people like her being a politician, and actually being elected, that gives me a lot of hope for the country and the rest of the trans community,” Brodnik said.