On October 21, a Sunday morning, many of us woke up to an extreme, terrifying, and devastating headline from The New York Times: “‘Transgender’ Could Be Defined Out of Existence Under Trump Administration.” I almost burst into tears, and immediately heard from many other transgender people who felt similarly pained.

How many times must you defend the authenticity of your life, your body, your soul without it breaking you? It can feel so exhausting, and at first I wanted to just ignore it and enjoy a relaxing Sunday. After all, we need to live and rest. No matter what this administration says or does, we are human beings, we do exist, and that means we have human needs.

I had to contend with long-running anger directed at the Times itself. It was a flashy headline designed for clicks. It worked, but it also hurt. It hurt because I’m not alone in my belief that the Times has contributed to the peril of trans people by playing into the idea that our existence is up for debate. I consider the Times to be the worst offender in terms of mainstream publications airing think-pieces by cisgender people about the contrived “risks” to recognizing the humanity of trans people and our legal rights.

Their reporting showed me that they’re on board with the truth of the seriousness of the attack on our humanity, but only in the service of their publication, not in the service of our lives.

And, of course, it also hurt because it is deeply painful to see documentation that your government doesn’t want you to exist, even when you know it to be true. That anger and pain is real. Those feelings are directed at both our government and supposed allies who have failed us.

I sat in my sadness, and then quickly turned my underlying rage into action. I asked myself, “What can we do to defend our existence?”

It is critical to clarify what is really going on with the legal memo leaked to the Times. On the most basic level that means reminding everyone, trans and cis alike, that trans people exist. We exist no matter what the law says about us, how the law tries to constrain or attack us. That means we cannot be erased.

The legal memo circulating is part of a longstanding effort by the Trump administration to restrict civil rights protections for transgender people through the insidious weaponization of a notion of “biological sex” that does not comport with medicine, science, or experience. This is not new and we are already fighting it in the courts.

Additionally, the Trump administration cannot single-handedly re-rewrite federal civil rights law that were passed by Congress and interpreted by the courts. The administration will try to fight in every branch of government, but the proposal leaked to the press is not self-effectuating, and we can and will fight it every step of the way.

It’s also important to take on the immediate and crucial fight to preserve the protections that we already have under federal, state, and local laws. It is so easy to get caught up in the never-ending assaults flowing from the Trump administration, but we cannot forget about state and local fights. Among these fights, perhaps the most critical in the 2018 midterms is in Massachusetts, to defend the state’s explicit protections for transgender people under state law.

On November 6, Massachusetts voters will be voting on Question 3, which is an attempt to strip away civil rights protections for transgender people under state law. After decades of work by trans people and our allies, these protections are at risk in the first statewide vote to remove civil rights gains for transgender people. It is literally the most urgent vote on transgender rights in my lifetime and we are not paying attention. We must support the Yes on 3 campaign for trans lives and make sure everyone in Massachusetts knows to vote #YesOn3 this November.