Discussions on human rights, with a particular focus on gender identity and sexual orientation.
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.
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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.
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Tolerating human rights abuses set the stage for what we’re seeing today.
Alex Pretti was a 37 year old nurse who cared for critically ill veterans. He was executed by federal agents in Minneapolis after he helped a woman they were assaulting.
He was the second US citizen killed in as many weeks, the other being a young mother of three named Renee Good. She was observing abuses and vacating the area in her car. Agents shot her in the head in front of her wife.
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Yesterday in the United-States, Robert Kennedy Jr (the conspiracy theorist Trump put in charge of the Centre of Disease Control) and Dr. Oz (the TV personality at the center of a pyramid scheme Trump put in charge of Medicaid and Medicare) made the following joint statement:
Men are men. Men can never become women. Women are women. Women can never become men. … It takes organized efforts to deny these fundamental truths. Sadly, we’ve seen such efforts succeed from time to time. The denial of fundamental truths can destroy nations from within. At the root of the evils we face, such as the blurring of the lines between sexes and radical social agendas is a hatred for nature as God designed it and for life as it was meant to be lived. This ideology does not just deny biology, it declares war against it.
Allowing trans people to exist is to “destroy nations from within”, “at the root of evils”, and a “hatred for nature”. What followed were directives to weaponize the state to prevent trans kids from receiving health care. The administration also made moves to block the sale of binders for trans people of all ages.
This is on top of a slew of other measures with equally inciteful wording aimed at eliminating trans people from society.
There are days I feel like shit.
When I think a little too hard about how I’ll make ends meet in old age against the backdrop of ever-increasing rents and inaccessible home ownership.
When I see friends post about their children after my own dreams were crushed. When they remind me they have a partner to go home to, and I have an empty bed.
When I get worn down the threats, mockery, or assault of complete strangers, turning everyday activities into minefields.
Much like there are good break-up songs to listen to, there are days that call for consuming fiction with bleak endings.
There’s a real taboo with such endings in fiction outside of horror; it’s perceived as a downer. To me it’s always having things end on an uplifting note that feels isolating.
Don’t get me wrong; I need happy content too. But just as I’m sometimes in the mood for sad music, some days I need sad stories too.