Sometimes readers give me things. A Jack Kerouac bobblehead. Gourmet chocolate cupcakes. A stuffed Brutus Buckeye, the mascot of Ohio State. Once, after a bookstore reading, I received a 45 r.p.m. single of Grand Funk Railroad’s “We’re an American Band.” Also: a whole schiacciata Siciliana (think calzone, only better).

But I’d never gotten pickles before.

This was in Portland, Me., two years ago, where I was doing an event with my friend, the novelist Richard Russo. As the night wound down, a transgender woman approached the signing table and handed me an enormous jar full of kosher dills.

“I made you these pickles,” she said somberly, “in solidarity.”

How had I missed the fact that pickles had become a symbol of the fight for trans equality? I knew about the transgender flag, of course — designed in 1999 by Monica Helms, a Navy veteran, after her service on the Francis Scott Key and the Flasher, both submarines. The original flag — alternating blue, pink and white stripes — was donated to the Smithsonian in 2014.

It’s worth noting that Ms. Helms, in spite of her eight years of service to the country, would no longer be welcome in the military, thanks to Donald Trump’s hatin’-on-the-trans-people policy. Who else is no longer welcome in the military? Amanda Simpson, the former deputy assistant secretary of defense. Not to mention the over 134,000 veterans who are trans — and the estimated 15,000 troops who are serving at this moment.