Transphobia is versatile: it can be a social lubricant for the boys, a wedge issue for strategists, filler for opinion writers, and an engagement booster for has-beens.
What it’s not is a deeply held belief; it’s merely a vehicle for emotionally stunted individuals to satisfy their needs. Akin to child bullies, they turn to who already gets picked on.
(more…)
I just finished writing a short story (or screenplay? it’s a bit of a hybrid) about four friends who meet at a diner over the course of fifteen years.
You can read/download it here:
The film’s protagonist arrives home to write a letter.
He attempts to switch the lights; only they won’t turn on. Maybe the firmware on the smart lights crashed again, maybe one of the servers involved is down, maybe the company has sunset support to focus on new product lines, maybe the router needs a reboot.
The protagonist, in the dark, goes to their computer. After passing through a bunch of ads in Windows to start the word processor, it too won’t work. They need to renew the Office 360 account.
Fine, they load up Google Docs. After writing it all, they go to print. It won’t do it. They check the ink. Full. There’s a notification they missed: they need to pay for a subcription to HP.
Exhausted, they start chores. The Roomba has a red LED; it won’t start. They lay down on the couch, defeated. The smart watch is low on juice and won’t tell the time. They turn on the television, and an outage means YouTube won’t let them log in.
If someone pre-2006 watched this in theaters, they would laugh. It would just be so absurd.
(more…)
This is the first winter in recent memory where I’ve consistently been in high spirits. Previously, I only experienced that during summers.
I can think of a few reasons why that might be:
I don’t know what my gender is and I don’t care that I don’t know. I also don’t care that I have loved people of all genders.
Others do. They care very much and they make that my problem. Passerby get agitated that they can’t tell what gender I am. To the point of shouting at me, groping me, picking a fight, pulling at my clothes, following me, ogling me, chasing me, mocking me, telling me that I should kill myself. They also get agitated when I hold hands or rest my head against a loved one they perceive to be the same-sex: more faggot this and faggot that, more ogling, more following, more uttering that we should be killed.
These fuckers turn outings into minefields and even though it happens a lot less now, that it keeps happening at all makes it so I never feel safe except when with 3+ friends.
And that’s just on account of the randos. Then there’s the opportunists who notice that queer and trans people are in the crosshairs and jump on the bandwagon to boost subscriptions or votes. I end up hearing their bigotry out of the mouths of people I cross and plastered on social media. These grifters are also the reason the US and UK have joined the ranks of Russia, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia as jurisdictions I can no longer enter.
(more…)