The thing that I hate watching the most is the slow turn of former allies as the chaos becomes normalized. I truly hope that you understand that I find it just as terrifying as you, reader. This is what I've watched, despite my best efforts, for the past eight years.
The traction of transphobia didn't slow during the Biden years, at least not as I saw and lived it.
I saw online that the young adult crowd was gaining support, as well as those who were specifically social media influencers/entertainers... But in my circles I still saw more and more obstinance and transphobia from 2016 and onward, even through the last presidency.
What circles am I talking about? The two main portions of my social life do not at all include the LGBTQ community. And that is simply because of where I must spend most of my time. It's been some years since I've really been an activist of any sort.
Because I am a single mom, I must both work full time and connect with other families, specifically other parents. As an accountant, that means my two biggest social circles are professionals and other parents.
In the parental circle, there are a few that are parents to transgender children, and here in Oregon there is generally support for trans kids and the struggles they face. But while that is the case, I've noticed for a lot of parental allies that viewpoint has been incredibly short-sided, at least here in Oregon.
Because, you see, while the parents of trans children often fully support and understand their kids, the allies I have noticed don't seem to think of these children as children with especially bright futures. I noticed, whether they mean to or not, they think of them as children plagued and unfortunate. They have a debilitating illness or disability or the something forever pitiable in their eyes. I see the attitude being that these are children who will need to do the things they see trans people in the media do all the time when they get older: Entertain. Not have families with children of their own. Be influencers. "And that's ok. We are so proud of them for it. Just as they are."
Again the actual parents usually are supportive because they want their children to have the best opportunities... It's the allied between parents and schools and in our society that basically seems to want trans people to be a people they can pity. At least, they are so used to that perspective that anything else seems to shock them.
And while the sentiments of vague acceptance and support might sound good, it reveals a glaring misunderstanding of what this is by parents of all sides of the political spectrum, especially when it comes to me, as a parent myself.
I live my life mostly in stealth. I've learned that I shouldn't come out, even to parents, teachers, and schools that generally are supportive with LGBTQ and trans kids. And that is because of the angle that those parents and teachers and schools are viewing those children. They view them as something to pity first (again, not usually their own parents, but the others that don't really have a stake in the situation, but try to be supportive). Because I have learned when trying to be fully open about my own background as a trans woman who is a single mom... That's weird. That gets looks and comments from parents. That gets my children not invited to things. That invites criticism.
Because to the general observer, on both sides of the political spectrum, trans kids aren't supposed to grow up and take part and blend into the cisnormative world. They are supposed to be always to be pitied. Always victims. And always a statement or bit of entertainment once they become adults.
In short, neither side really respects us, as I have seen it.
And I point out the issue with liberal schools and parents first, because I do think it's the root issue that originally halted progress and started turning the wheels backward. But it's also common at work. I'm an accountant and I can't possibly be competent once coming out as trans. In stealth, I typically am considered an invaluable member of the team. I have education in both accounting and computer science, which allows me to really come up with inventive procedures and automation in order to make sure business processes and the books are efficient and accurate. But I've had many instances where coming out due to one reason or another has meant ostracization, followed by termination.
So I remain stealth. So I saw this coming.
And because I am in this position while trying to warn the trans community, I sound somewhat like a heretic to the typical ideologies you find therein. I am supportive of non-binary people, and I disagree with the cruelty of transmedicalists like Blaire White on social media platforms... But I also understand both sides and both fears that inform those perspectives. And I've said things such as that America has technically been a binary culture.. That non-binary demands upon that culture is a form of cultural misappropriation... But I have always also added my support. Because I don't say these things because I don't think non-binary people exist or are valid. I say them because I see this as a definite culture war that had the potential to cause this exact situation that is playing out right now.
Because I was seeing it rolling down the pipe when it came to families and professionals and not just social media posts and corporate messaging.
And as that goes it seems to start from various places.
The reason people say, "I'm not transphobic, but...", they dont use the juxtaposition because they are actually fully transphobic. It is typically because they are dealing with some emotional stoppage that keeps them from accepting a certain aspect of what trans people understand about themselves.
Types of things that this community, in general, has fought for.
Even now I was having a conversation at work where people I felt fairly close to were criticizing the schools for supporting and having conversations about sexual orientation and gender. One of my coworkers was saying that their sibling has children where the school was in discussion with their child on such an issue but excluded the parents from the conversation.
Being a transgender person that grew up in a cult, though stealth, I began to try to reason with why those things happen.
My coworker was shocking me. I felt she was a friend. We have a non-binary person on our team who is fairly open about it, but wasn't around for this conversation. And my coworker has always been very accepting of different people, including this person and their gender identity. At least in a surface level sense she has been accepting, because I know she probably doesn't completely understand. A lot of cisgender people do not.
But I didn't expect her to get so offensive when I tried to make a case for why a school might have those policies.
And of course for me, growing up in a cult, I didn't get far enough to explain, but I feel that that situation would have been helpful for me to have someone to talk to when I was growing up. Even if my parents were excluded from it. Because I was in something very toxic and I needed shelter from it, and I never got that. It took me years to overcome the childhood trauma from those parts of my life.
So though I wanted my coworker to think about that, and tried to begin with that sort of empathizing, without outing myself... She and the rest of my team absolutely objected and I could tell I would be in a hostile situation if I continued. I instead turned the conversation to book bans and made my points as best as I could through that correlation.
At the same time, this coworker is someone I did almost come out to at one point, because I was viewing her as a close friend for a time. And I could see that she was very accepting of people in general. But this issue is something that will need time and coaxing if she were ever going to accept, because she was very emotionally tied to it. And given that fact, despite the fact that I know generally she is an accepting person and I have seen that in her, I know I cannot be open with her. I need to protect myself.
If I didn't have kids I might. I wouldn't have so much at stake and so much to lose. The risk would just be tied to me.
But I think that's what we need to realize collectively as transgender people, is that people each have these little hangups. They're probably different and associated with different emotional situations in each person's life. For the right leaning people probably, the reasons and hangups are even greater.
But even now I don't believe that the majority of people are evil. Or even the majority of Republicans. I think unfortunately they have quite a lot of these little hangups that cause them to listen to the people in those parties who are quite evil. Such as our President.
And that's where I wanted to go with this. I've been quite silent in dealing and watching all that's happened. According to the executive orders, I am now viewed as male by the federal government. According to those executive orders, trans children have no rights to medical intervention. According to those executive orders, transgender is an ideology and not a group of people.
Let me first say that I feel as someone who has fully transitioned, that none of these things any longer affect me personally. Or they are a very long way off from doing so. I don't really generally feel that I will ever deal with gender dysphoria again. I think transitioning really eradicates that for some people, including myself. It doesn't matter to me what gender I am at this point. I think that's being an adult, in many ways. My main focus is my children.
And in that sense, the things that are going on affect my ability as a parent and affect my children. Because I am in specific social roles that are female. Because this is just how I am viewed by everyone I meet and just how my children view me.
It is far bigger than me, and I am far more ingrained within those roles within our community and culture. Trying to rip those from me will harm far more than just me. But the emotional impact is no longer what it was feeling early when I was transitioning. Not about bettering myself or getting to a place where I feel comfortable. I am comfortable and I don't think words would really change that. But what I do think is that words and actions can harm my family and friends and community.
So let's talk about the Constitution and transgender ideology.
The Constitution was built around protecting people, but its first major focus was ideologies, not really people in the intrinsic sense.
This has always been the problem I've had with it and its Bill of Rights, because ideologies can become institutions while individuals always remain individuals regardless of how big or small their ideologies become.
We all essentially are born and live exist and die alone, in the most basic sense. Right?
It would, of course, seem to me that a nation should protect individuals first and foremost, and then ideologies and their institutions. But the Bill of Rights begins with protecting speech, the press, assembly, and religion. It doesn't begin with protecting the intrinsic right of a human make his/her own decisions and exist free from harm or coercion. It begins with the freedom of institutionalized ideologies.
The reason it starts this way is because the founders were seeking freedom from religious persecution and governmental suppression. So it is maybe understandable from that angle.
But what human rights campaigners often fail to grasp is that until that focus is amended--until we better define the rights of humans in our constitution--Any argument made about rights in this country, when taken back to fundamentals, probably needs to come, at least partially, from a place of institutional and ideological freedom. Rather than arguing for your right as defined in the Declaration of Independence, that "all men are created equal"--which has nothing to do at all with the successive laws that were penned in the Constitution--we need to make a case for our ideological ground.
So maybe we better all relent and fight on the basis of this "gender ideology"--as Trump calls it--rather than for our human rights, which the Constitution does not fully protect.
The Constitution protects ideologies. It's why The Satanic Temple is even a thing. It is literally just a hack of an ideology, positioned to keep Christian religions from gaining too strong of a foothold in this country. Why can't we follow suit with fighting cisnormativity?
What if we were to throw up our hands and relent to this concept of a "transgender" ideology?
Being an ideology maybe actually means we have more rights than ever before, in this country, if it is. Because in this country, we've always more easily defended religion than people.
I have watched so many people panic over words written and signed in these executive orders. And yes, it is bleak, I don't blame the panic from many. But also, I know many intelligent people that don't see this transposition of what we need to discuss as a group.
I have learned to play devil's advocate over and over throughout my life, and for that reason I say, let's reevaluate the arguments. Perhaps there is a foothold there.
In 2012, when Gender Dysphoria replaced GID in the DSM, there was another diagnosis being considered that would also allow for all the same things, but without gender being the specific focus. The term "Social Role Dysphoria" was being considered as well, but we all understand that "Gender Dysphoria" won out. But do you think the movement would have been so gender-focused if the "social role" diagnosis had been deployed instead? Or in tandem?
Probably not.
Probably, what we now know as nonbinary individuals would have continued as just a countercultural/counter-social movement, and trans men and women probably would have continued to be basically invisible. Perhaps traction would have been slower and we wouldn't have gained rights as quickly. But the other side to that coin is we wouldn't have lost as many as we just did, probably as well.
I think people need to rethink their paradigms for a second. I certainly did, after transitioning and expecting to just be able to live my life. I was told how I was transmedicalist and TRUSCUM and all this ridiculous crap. But I was an OG trans woman. I knew what being transgender was from the time I was in middle school back in the '90s. Whereas the bulk of people in the trans community nowadays says that they learned later in life that transition was possible. So how confusing is that, that I am the unknowing one?... But still I accepted and reevaluated and I ultimately learned to accept and love many nonbinary people. A huge paradigm shift for me. It was hard because there were many more NBs seemingly flooding and flaring across what was once a much more invisible community of trans men and women.
So now sadly... Invisibility is back in force. And with it is a push against ALL trans people. Every genderfluid, queer, NB, trans masculine, trans femme, men and women, and me. And still, despite the growth we are quite a small community, to be real. We can't hope to fight it alone.
This is why I encourage you to adjust how you think about it, so you can survive. It's a huge paradigm shift, but if we maybe learn to use different words to describe what we are feeling, we can maybe survive this and live to return to something better in the future.
Discuss gendered topics and feelings in terms of social roles and expectations. Turn this into exactly what hetero/cis culture thinks it is already: An unstoppable countercultural ideology with more understanding of itself than any punk kid of the past ever could have barked out in confused angst. Because we now know the progressive duality to all of it. It is both social and physical and we can be either/or and come at it from any paradigm if it means fighting for as much authenticity as possible in people's personas and day-to-day lives.
Or perhaps we separate. Perhaps there should have been two different diagnosis all along... Perhaps Nonbinary is so different it really doesn't describe the same thing. Though, with how few we are, I personally do think it makes sense to view us as the same, but viewing the world under two different cultural paradigms.
Either way, we need new ways forward while we deal with the fallout of the current institution. Maybe we need to consider different ways of thinking about the struggle.
In the mean time. If you feel the need to step back and hide and be safe... Do that. Be safe. Prepare for the worst and hope for the best. You don't need to speak publicly, but don't stop speaking and acting and being there for people.
Know that I am here and you can reach out to me. I love and care about everyone suffering, and there is so much of it in all communities right now. Our eradication may be at the top of the Project 2025 list. But we are still a trickle compared to the flood of issues many minority groups are facing. There is such a large threat.
And it's OK to be afraid. And it's also OK to reevaluate how we fight this. They aren't playing fair. We don't have to.