This Philly Trans Woman Launched a GoFundMe to Help Her Escape to Canada
"I wish it weren't so easy to imagine people like me being deported before long," says Emme Kennedy.
Philadelphia trans woman Emme Kennedy, who is raising money on GoFundMe to help her escape the United States for Canada (photo courtesy Emme Kennedy)
The last time I talked to Philadelphia comedian and theater artist Emme Kennedy (her first name is pronounced like the letter “M”), I knew her by her given name, Mark Kennedy. It was 2017, and Kennedy had just lost 50 pounds by eating more fat and giving up booze. Since then, Kennedy has undergone another transformation and is a trans woman. (She gave me permission to refer to her given name for the purposes of reporting this story.) As such, she says it’s time to get the hell out of the United States.
“Look at all of the people ICE is deporting, including legal immigrants,” says Kennedy. “They want to deport international students. Who is next? Trans people? Neurodivergent people? Anybody who doesn’t fit in with what ‘they’ want? I wish it weren’t so easy to imagine people like me being deported before long.”
Kennedy, who has lived in Philadelphia since 2009, says she first decided that she didn’t want to live in a Trump America as soon as he won in November. But this decision became more urgent once he signed an executive order declaring that the government would only recognize how someone was identified at birth, whether male or female. So in the case of Kennedy, she could only be a man. Trump issued this edict on his very first day in office in January.
“He’s also ordered that trans women be moved to men’s prisons,” Kennedy points out. “There’s a common practice called V-coding where prison officials place the most ‘effeminate’ prisoners with the most violently aggressive men. So let’s say the Trump administration arrests me for being trans, I don’t want to be raped to death in jail.”
Kennedy was born in Canada and has dual citizenship, and it is Canada where she intends to relocate. She says that the Canadian government’s attitude towards trans people is essentially the opposite of Trump’s. And she believes that the Canadian government’s much-touted healthcare system will cover the surgeries and medical treatments she intends to get, including orchiectomy and vulvaplasty. A 2023 report ranked Canada as the third-best country in the world for trans people, just after Portugal and Malta. The report ranked the United States 40th, and that was two years before Trump took office again.
She says the move back to Canada is complicated by the fact that she’s racked up quite a bit of debt on hormone replacement therapy, laser hair removal, vocal conditioning and training, and other costs associated with her transition. And then there’s the fact that while she has income in Philadelphia, she has no guaranteed work in Canada. She says she also won’t be covered by Canada’s healthcare plan for at least three months after setting up residency there. As of press time, she’s raised close to $3,300 of the fundraiser’s stated $4,900 goal on GoFundMe, but she intends to increase that goal with the hopes of gaining more financial support.
“Transitioning is expensive as hell,” Kennedy observes. “And I don’t think that men realize how much more it costs to be a woman. Think about the clothes, the makeup, the hair. I only realized I was trans eleven months ago, and I have spent so much money on this process. And now, because the United States is clearly an unsafe place for people like me, I have to incur the additional costs of escaping it.”
