Holding Boundaries and Building Guardrails in an Era of Strategic Visibility

In an era of intensifying anti-trans rhetoric and policy, visibility has become a fraught and contested terrain. This research centers the experiences of parents of transgender youth as they navigate the emotional, political, and ethical complexities of raising children in a hostile sociopolitical climate. Drawing on a framework of queer worldmaking, we explore how families engage in acts of resistance through strategic boundary-setting, collective care, and intentional silences. Visibility, often heralded as liberatory, can instead expose families—especially those who are Black, Brown, Indigenous, or undocumented—to heightened surveillance and risk. Through academic–activist collaboration, we argue that research can be a form of resistance, co-creating space for reflection, storytelling, and survival. Parents of trans youth are not merely witnesses to cultural conflict—they are agents of change, crafting alternative infrastructures of care and advocacy. Strategic invisibility emerges not as retreat, but as a radical tactic for protecting trans joy, autonomy, and futures.