For Alejandra Caraballo, the Next 4 Years Are About Survival

Alejandra Caraballo’s bookshelf has a theme: surviving cultural and political upheaval. “Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity” sits prominently on the top shelf, next to Bob Woodward’s “Peril,” about the transition of power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden in 2021.

Caraballo describes her bookshelf as a testament to years studying the “rise and nature of authoritarian regimes.” When we talk, just two days after the U.S. presidential election, these titles take on additional weight. As the nation prepares for the transition from Biden back to Trump, I can tell Caraballo’s reaction is still raw. “As a trans person, our community is going to be front and center for attack under a Trump administration,” she says, describing her shock and grief at the election results.

Caraballo is a civil rights attorney and a clinical instructor at Harvard Law School. Her professional focuses surround legal defense for transgender people and the role of technology in the advancement of LGBTQ rights. She teaches at Harvard’s Cyberlaw Clinic, which is based in the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society.

Drawing from her extensive background in the field, Caraballo is bracing herself for anti-transgender legislation from the Republican controlled U.S. government. “They want us eradicated,” she says, intentionally echoing the language of Michael Knowles, a conservative political commentator who declared in a March 2023 speech that “transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely.”

Caraballo says the hostile mindset of the conservative movement motivates the destruction of trans people’s ability to function in society, from using the bathroom to getting healthcare. The end goal, she says, is “in every aspect of our life, to make transitioning so detrimental to our well being that it would be unthinkable.”

The anti-trans rhetoric was amplified during Trump’s campaign, where he funded advertisements with slogans like “Kamala’s For They/Them. President Trump is for you.”

Republicans spent an estimated $215 million or more on anti-trans advertisements for network television alone, which Caraballo says is equivalent to $134 per trans person in the United States. “I don't know if there’s a more lopsided attack on one percent of the population,” she says.

Considering Trump’s coming term, Caraballo anticipates dark days ahead for the trans community. “We are going to lose a lot of people,” she says.

“I don’t want to sugarcoat it, these next four years are going to be about survival,” she adds. “And probably longer, because even if the political winds change favorably again back to the Democrats in 2028, the damage that will need to be undone will take, realistically, decades. This is generational.” (The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.)

But her frustration about transphobia in politics extends beyond party lines. She has been “seeing Democrats throw trans people under the bus and blame us for losing this election, when Harris didn’t even mention trans people the entire campaign.”

Caraballo’s visible role in the trans community has added another layer to her experience of the election. On social media, she is outspoken about anti-LGBTQ policy, using her 100K followers on Bluesky and 34K followers on Threads to raise awareness around anti-LGBTQ legislation and rhetoric.

Caraballo sees social media — and the internet more generally — as a “neutral tool” that can be used for good or bad. On one hand, transgender people can connect online even if they don’t live near others in the LGBTQ community via Discord channels, subreddits, Twitch streams, and more. On the other hand, attacks on LGBTQ people use the same digital tools for organizing.

Even though hate speech violates most social media platform’s policies, sites like Meta have repeatedly failed to moderate transphobic content, according to Meta’s internal Oversight Board. At the same time, Caraballo worries that censorship policies will be misapplied to penalize queer-friendly content when legislators attempt to classify LGBTQ media as harmful or obscene.

Plus, even though hate speech is banned on mainstream social media sites, Caraballo says she has received targeted online hate — especially on X, where she had 170K followers before deactivating her account last week. Caraballo’s activism-centered posts regularly received heavy backlash and flurries of transphobic comments.

Caraballo is critical of the owners of these social media platforms, whom she describes as “spineless cowards.” She and Elon Musk, the owner of X, have had several spats, with Musk calling Caraballo “crazy” on X, and Caraballo publicly condemning Musk for disowning his transgender daughter in an interview shortly after. Caraballo has also been suspended from X multiple times. (X did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson from Meta did not comment.)

Beyond heated exchanges on social media, the hate Caraballo has received has escalated to death threats, which have led to meetings with the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations. Her association with Harvard has only added fuel to the fire.

“When a white person, especially a white man, sees a trans person, let alone a trans woman of color, teaching at Harvard Law, it ends their idea of what the natural hierarchy is supposed to be,” she says. “So the immediate thought is, if I’m here, it’s because I didn’t earn it. It’s this DEI infrastructure. They start attacking this thing instead of understanding I’m qualified to be here.”

When I ask her whether Harvard will support its transgender students should changes in legislation occur, Caraballo says, “I don’t expect this institution to protect me, and I don’t expect this institution to protect any trans and queer people on this campus.” She points to the university’s failure to protect Harvard students who were doxxed last year as evidence. If the Trump administration threatens federal funding to push Harvard to implement a bathroom ban, for example, Caraballo says “they’ll throw us in the Charles River first chance they get.” (A spokesperson from the Law School did not comment.)

Despite the challenges that have come with being a transgender activist on the internet, Caraballo continues her work to prove to future generations that “if you are a trans person, you can still do anything.”

Caraballo also wants to use her platform to encourage LGBTQ people to bond together — which she says will be necessary in order to survive the next four years.

“Fascism runs on fear. It runs on the elimination of empathy, concern, and care for other humans,” she says. “So we must show compassion, empathy and love for each other — build community, and show up for other people — because I don’t think there’s anything more radical when all they want us to do is hate each other.”

“Our very existence is resistance,” she adds. “They want me to not exist? I will fucking exist.”

— Magazine writer Kate J. Kaufman can be reached at kate.kaufman@thecrimson.com.