lol genuinely how do are y'all maintaining hope in this current political climate? if the answer is "try to work towards local solutions and support political movements on a smaller scale" im sorry to report that the sewage has leaked down to the local level and it's also Terrible down here too
how tf are any of us supposed to build some kind of coalition or unity or Anything when the average cis man is now conditioned by the non-stop media coverage to want to crush tranny skulls every time we step outside
It's fucking Impossible to talk to people on the ground level anymore. everyone's influenced by the media about these issues to the thousandth degree and basically every 2nd cis person acts like Transgenderism is actually the largest threat to the US since 9/11
This is coming from someone who like Actively campaigned for Bernie just a few years ago and I felt at that time we could actually change peoples minds and create unity - and now we've moved into a stage where Multiple trans events in my city last month got cancelled bc of mass threats and protest
honestly? i'm blackpilled
the gears of history picked this momentum up 40 years ago and will almost certainly call us to account for the sins of our parents
there's a reason i'm speedrunning transition
It genuinely feels hopeless to try and sway hearts and minds away from the hatred the needle is Very Quickly swinging back right at us and even elements of the queer community are starting to fracture and cut us loose like dead weight who tf are we gonna unite with if Gay People are jumping ship
It just absolutely crushes my morale to even like Try if im just gonna get to a point where i stop being fully stealth and then i just get murdered or i get my healthcare access cut off at the knees or if i lose my job bc my employer no longer needs to care about discrimination legal backlash
It just sucks that I think i'd be way unhappier if i never started transitioning and repressed who i was for my whole life - but the tradeoff there is i wouldn't be scared every day like i am now tbh :)
by the numbers, the majority of people don't actually mind us-
but i really don't know
i'm just trying to be extremely visible while just doing a normal job as part of society
i think ultimately just seeing us exist in a context they understand is more effective than any messaging could ever be
and as for the trade-off of depression for fear?
i was gonna kill myself anyway-
sooner or later
so if i go out as a statistic then at least i'll die a girl, feeling like the body i wear is Mine
i know that's all probably not super helpful, but that's pretty much how i cope with it-
just gonna get as Girl as possible before we run outta runway, and pray that when the clouds part, the runway is longer than it looks right now
I got a job in politics so that I can channel my anxieties into helping Democrats get elected in November, and I write silly happy cozy slice of life queer fantasy.
Also, like, I'm Jewish. If we weren't culturally good at keeping hope in the shitstorms we wouldn't have made it to this millennium.
But also I live in the SF Bay Area and literally almost everyone I meet just treats my being a woman as a given even though I'm very obviously trans. And the others are just oblivious, not malicious.
As for queer community? I've always found my community where my friends are, and queer/anarchist communities have never tolerated me for long. Almost all of my friends are cis, and it's just... not a problem.
I dunno. I guess I'm just really lucky.
You’re absolutely right, but what choice do we have? My hope is that if things break down a little bit, people might listen more to their neighbors instead of cable news
tbh i get hope by serving cunt every day.
tbh tho it might be a regional difference, i work in townhall of a relatively RW town in Mass and there's only been 1 person who has been weird to me abt being trans. everyone else, even the wing nuts, have been really kind to me.
I think of my comrades past and present who refused to give up under orders of magnitude worse odds, and think that if they could keep fighting and they were able to win, it’s my duty to carry that forward.
You can reconstruct a kind of queer faith by internalizing and axiomatizing the will to fight and the duty to win. The belief in justice some day, somehow is the cornerstone of many spiritual faiths around the world.
Another way to think about it: resistance in the face of overwhelming oppression, even if it kills you, is the best and often only way to affirm your life and dignity in a world that denies you both. Fighting and losing and dying is better than not fighting and losing and dying anyway. So we fight.
This week it’s been a mix of trying to help other people, which is a positive reinforcer, and to remember other folks have triumphed over worse, which is negative but maybe more helpful some days?
Well either we muscle enough support to dodge a crisis of global proportions, orrrr we get into a regime so singularly destructive that the fracturing of the country gives a realistic chance of seeing Hawaiian independence and that of the remaining Pacific territories in my lifetime.
