Sometimes I feel like I am so naive. In truth, it isn’t that I don’t know/believe bad people exist, as much as life experience has taught me that most people are mostly harmless. I have known enough deliberately cruel people, though, to know that there are people that aren’t nice, won’t be nice… maybe they can’t even be nice. There are others who are just twisted enough that behaving like a total asshat from the anonymity of an internet keyboard to be “fun.”
It upset Wendy so much she left. I realized as I turned the incident over in my head in the hours since, that part of my first response was, of course, just “correcting” the troll, hoping it was an accident. As I have spent more time acting in real time with trans and intersex individuals, consciously choosing gender pronouns is slowly becoming second nature, but it wasn’t at first. I then doubled down on the correction, explaining that Wendy was a very good kind of friend, and used appropriate pronouns, hoping to embarrass them into thoughtfulness. And then… well then I was triggered to defend Wendy’s right to exist.
My god it has to be exhausting to be transgender, to be a person inside who doesn’t look like the outside, to constantly have to justify your very existence and right to exist authentically. I can’t imagine being targeted the way they are, especially in a country where they have been erased by imperial decree, and where they know they are at risk of losing care that has helped them become comfortable in their own skin. Or worse, having lived the experience, losing hope that new generations coming after them might have a better path forward, because it is declared “bad science” by people in governance who disagree with it on religious grounds. The Southern Baptist Church, some other Evangelicals and others do their best to enact their “Christian” “ethics” through our secular government (yes, I put quotes separately, because much of the behavior from that crowd is far from Christian, and their ethics equally leave a lot to be desired; as an example, since they are in power - writing an EO that takes away protections for people trying to make a life here and telling them to self-deport or be arrested, held in a hellhole for as long as possible to make profit for billionaires, followed by being deported anyhow). Why? Because they don’t believe in global warming but believe that gay people in Baton Rouge caused hurricane Katrina.
Demonized by some Christian voices, all of LGBTQ+ people and their right to exist and have equal rights and protections like anyone else - the right to be married to someone they love, to work a job that they enjoy/serve in the military, the right to be open about who they are without worry of being harassed or even physically harmed - all of that is at risk, with transgender/gender fluid/non gender conforming individuals currently the most targeted of the group. Since they are targeted already so much by the government, it is open season on verbal abuse and worse for that very small, vulnerable population within the greater flow of humanity.
Worse, that small group is blamed for why the Democratic Party lost the election. Almost every single obsessive belly lint examination of the previous election cycle by liberal pundits suggests that “next election” we should just pretend they don’t exist to be sure our “tent” is as big as possible. Abandon the vulnerable - they aren’t a very large voting demographic after all, and surely they should understand that running to restore rights they have lost under this administration might be too high a risk when it comes to getting the mango Mussolini out of office… (major eyeroll here). Currently, JB Pritzker is my favorite voice from the left, because when Gavin Newsom threw trans under the bus, he was firm about protecting the vulnerable and not throwing their rights to the side as a “winning strategy.” For one, if the Democratic Party is willing to surrender trans rights to exist safely and equally to others to win, who will they give up the next election? The rest of LGBTQ? Immigrants? If they are planning to only be MAGA light, most of us have neither the time nor the patience for them.
What I saw last night had several possible contributing factors, from learned bigotry, ignorance (if there is a group you are uncomfortable with, get to know them - you might be surprised to find out how much you have in common with them), but the most alarming contributor is that the “othering” of “MAGA’s opponents” and discussing them as less than human strips them of dignity, and allows people to view harming them as acceptable. Long before Nazi Germany began euthanizing the disabled, before Einsatzgruppen “sardine packed” Jews at Babi Yar and killed thousands, propaganda from the government media outlets and allied publications, and lessons in schoolroom classes made sure people understood that these people were less than human, and their existence a factor to diminishing the success of the “Aryan race.”
We are rhyming that history now and have been for a while. I first heard its echos when Trump came down his golden escalator and announced his first candidacy. That moment gave permission to the people who had learned to keep their hatred quiet to speak it loudly (and proudly) again. Since then, the echo chambers that support them have only gotten larger and networked into a more cohesive ecosystem, marching us to a cruel future that only ends in murder and disgrace. You can only hate someone so long before the temptation to eradicate them becomes too great. When the government gives its quiet approval with its policies, it makes mistreating the vulnerable become amusing sport for people that like those policies and their cruelty.
Lesson learned - I have to be a lot more vigilant, and there are people I won’t be able to reach or teach. I came out publicly on here because I didn’t believe I have a right to hide who I am and keep my head down in this moment, but it wasn’t until this happened that I realized even as a lesbian I have a kind of privilege that Wendy doesn’t. Even though I spent a great deal of my life not living my truth, my truth is still less of a target than Wendy’s, and I will do my best to defend Wendy’s right to exist. To me it is the only ethical and human choice.