I (22M) grew up in a rural-adjacent suburb where the culture was complete dogwater. My dad openly fantasized about committing violence against minority groups ever since I was a young child, and he constantly threatened to kill me if I ever turned out to be gay. The public school I went to was full of bullies who singled me out for being emotional and therefore easy to pick on.
I never turned out to be gay, but I did turn out to be very gentle and emotional. In my natural state, I want to be sweet and caring and talk in a higher-pitched, softer manner. I love cute things, I love making people happy, and I love fantasizing about big strong women who will protect and care for me.
I have had very few opportunities to express myself. Various factors like disabilities and my older brother surveilling me in K-12 school (by using my bullies as a spy network to report every weird thing I did) made it impossible to express myself without being abused at home for it.
In recent years, I have been able to spend some limited time on my own without constant surveillance. The people I’ve talked to, typically from chatting with people at various appointments I’ve been dropped off at, seem to have a very laissez-faire “be yourself” attitude and don’t seem very interested in persecuting weirdos like me. One of them even corrected me for accidentally saying something politically incorrect. This wasn’t even that close to the city—this was adjacent to the new suburbs that my family moved to recently.
Still, it’s hard to shake off a decade of paranoia about getting found out and beaten for being, in my dad’s words, a “pansy”. I keep stopping myself from expressing any kind of emotion in public for fear of what will happen to me. Tomorrow is the first time I get to visit my city proper, which is said to be fairly progressive and has big pride parades every year (around 1 million people turn out). And yet, I keep telling myself that I can’t because some fascist goon could be watching and signal to all of the other fascist goons to jump me.
Is it safe to just be me now, or do I still have to be very careful about when and where to express myself? I’m so tired, honestly. I just want to be allowed to exist for once in my life.
Which city in which country? TBH I’d be wary about being openly GNC anywhere in the USA right now, but even there there are degrees to this.
Central Ohio, the general Columbus area.
I lived in Cincinnati over a decade ago and back then they were accepting of different people. Columbus is 3x the size so you should generally be fine. Just be aware of who you are spending your time with, and you are likely safer in numbers.
Red states? Probably not. Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles? Sure.
I will say I see a new transgender person at least once a month out in the wild here in Seattle. I can’t speak to their experiences, but they exist at least.
https://ktla.com/news/local-news/transgender-woman-in-los-angeles-sexually-assaulted-beaten-and-pepper-sprayed/
There is nowhere in America that it is safe to be visibly gender nonconforming, even if some areas are relatively safer than others.
Eh, certain parts of LA are safe. But LA is actually pretty conservative in other areas, due to a large religious population, and a lot of first-gen immigrants.
LA also just doesn’t seem like a particularly safe place in general (though IDK how much that spills out from the real ‘problem’ districts into the kinds of places that OP would be at).
I grew up in Ohio, lived in NYC, and now live in the PNW.
Ohio is bad, as a whole, about bigotry. Very bad.
Urban areas will always be more tolerant, on average, than their rural neighbors.
But a semi-rural area in a blue state might be more tolerant, on average, than an urban area in a red state.
Columbus is one of the most tolerant areas in Ohio, because of The Ohio State University and the educated, young community it fosters.
But things get bad pretty quickly as you move further away from the college areas.
My recommendation: you are more likely to find your people - the family you choose to have, whoever they are - in your new area. However, there are still significant risks to being completely open, including things getting back to your family.
Find the people who correct bigotry or misgendering, etc, and learn how to be yourself around them. When you are ready, you can either confront your family and become an outspoken lgbtqa+ ally, or peace the fuck out to somewhere better :)
Im not trans or queer in any way, so maybe im not the best person to answer this, but i think the answer is a hard NO. Even if it might be safe now, if shit goes bad, you will want to have as little info as possible out there that could be used to identify you as trans/queer. I would go beyond that and recommend this, imo very insightful, article.
https://www.damemagazine.com/2025/04/29/why-i-am-leaving-the-usa/
I don’t think you would have nearly as much trouble in Columbus as you would anywhere else in Ohio. It’s certainly where I’ve felt the most comfortable. They also host the Arnold Classic every year which is an amazing fitness and exercise expo. Lots of muscle daddies and mommies from all over the world show up for this and it’s a really fun time for people of all walks of life.
Nowhere is truly free of idiots and bigots. And rural folks will come into town for their different events. But most of the time they’re going to be on better behavior when they’re not in their natural environment.
In most red states the cities are little blue islands. Many people with non traditional modalities urbanize to escape the repressive beliefs of small towns. Austin has an amazing gay / trans community and they’re in Texas.