I wrote the last chapter of Our Endless and Proper Work in early 2021, after Trump’s attempt to maintain his grip on the federal government by sending a mob to seize the United States Capitol:
“Fascists know that in a world where all stories, all perspectives, are treated with equal consideration, the stories they tell about the world aren’t compelling enough to attract more than a handful of people. A handful that can be moderately profitable under the right circumstances, but the only way their visions of the world can compete against our visions of the world on a widescale basis is for them to manipulate things so they don’t have to compete with us—by hobbling us or removing us from the playing field entirely.”
As the authoritarian movement that has coalesced around Trump prepares to kick into high gear again, they have a number of marginalized groups in their crosshairs. Trans and non-binary people are at the top of their list. Trump hasn’t even taken office yet, and his minions in Congress went out of their way to inform the House’s first openly transgender member that she can’t use public women’s restrooms. (And then, when she declined to fight them over it, they moved to regulate trans people’s use of all public restrooms on federal property.) Ohio’s Republican governor took one look at what was happening in Washington and decided to follow the party’s lead.
A few Democratic House members spoke out against this—my representative, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, among them. Most have remained silent—and some, like Seth Moulton in Massachusetts, decided to peddle the line that catering to the interests of trans people is what cost Democrats the White House and both houses of Congress. They’re joined in that finger pointing by several pundits.
This is hardly new. I remember when Claire McCaskill went on MSNBC four years ago and blamed trans people for undermining the Democratic Party’s appeal to voters who care about “meat-and-potatoes issues.” It was bullshit then, and it’s bullshit now.
Trans rights are human rights. I could give you a whole spiel about how your unwillingness to defend trans people today will come back to eat your face when the fascists decide you’re in the next group of undesirables. But I shouldn’t have to do that. You either care about human rights, or you don’t.
If you do, I hope you’ll contact your federal or state legislators whenever a bill aimed at suppressing trans people is introduced—and tell them you don’t support that bill, you don’t support the movement behind it, and you don’t want them to contribute in any way to its becoming a law. Tell them that you reject any attempt to restrict the rights of trans people—you might even tell them that if they participate in any such attempt, you will be looking very closely at who runs against them the next time they’re up for reelection, and that human rights is going to be a key factor in determining who you’ll vote for in the primary and the general election.
In the meantime, I want to circle back to my advice from the last lines of Our Endless and Proper Work:
“Make room in your heart for the stories that other people are sharing about what matters most to them. Allow their stories to move you, perhaps even to help you realize something new about your own story—and, just as importantly, work with other writers toward establishing a world that offers everyone a freedom to share their stories you want for yourself.”
If you visit Julia Serano’s “LGBTQ+ People Are Not Going Back” message, she’s compiling links to a number of messages like this, many of them from trans and non-binary folks who will be speaking powerfully of their experiences. I encourage you to take some time to read them with an open heart.