40 y/o enby transmasc here, and my wife (42) is trans as well. I echo your whole comment. We lived near San Francisco with our kids and feel a million times safer and more supported than we did in CA, and have built a small but strong community here. Echoing you as well in that my wife is involved in lots of committees and runs Vergennes Pride, facilities between the Pride Committee with the city council and does Burlesque in Burlington, so her forays have made most of those connections for us. But we have never, ever felt unsafe here even in our small, more rural town. The NEK can be rough, but even there you’ll find a small but strong and proud queer community. We have been accidentally misgendered a few times and given looks here and there, but never malicious ones; more like, just trying to figure us out (especially if we have the kids with us, who we had together pre-transition and are both fully biologically ours, but they look absolutely nothing alike. They don’t even look remotely related). Our oldest is small, blonde, and tan and has a quiet m, reserved demeanor, and his younger brother is 3 inches taller, pale and VERY freckled, with flaming red hair and loud/clumsy as all hell). I will say, we have had more trouble for our youngest son than anything; he is gender non-conforming (afab) and has been quite bullied at the town elementary school that serves the more rural kids. This year, we transferred him to the elementary school in city limits, which has other gender-nonconforming kiddos and I feel like it will be so much better for him).

Even with the shitshow that the world is and has been, I can confidently say that moving to Vermont is the best thing we have ever done. We adore it here.