Personal

Dear World,

I don’t know where to start. I don’t know where I can begin talking about this — about the sheer anti-trans hatred looming above our heads, that’ll come crashing down upon trans people in the U.S. and which will ripple all across the world.

I don’t know where to feel. Disillusioned? Defiant? Heck, in denial?

Like it or not, fascism is here, and the rule of law in the United States is dead. Yet, now isn’t the time to give up. There might not be much hope in the present, but we can resist nonetheless.

1. In the Present

The day of the U.S. federal election, I promised to meet up with one of my friends to watch the election results. We sat at the back of a local, trans-friendly coop bar; I took my usual 20-oz. glass of cider, though, in retrospect, it wasn’t enough.

I wouldn’t be home until 5 a.m., completely crushed. The news was clear: Trump, the very same person found liable of sexual battery and convicted of falsifying business records for hush money payments, has been re-elected to the presidency of the United States. The same person who has pledged to be a dictator on “day one”, who has been compared repeatedly to a neo-Nazi, and who has proposed devastating policies for trans people up to and including kicking them out of schools, would soon be in power.

Then, over the next few weeks, many things, far worse than I ever could have imagined — yet which I should have forecasted way sooner — have occured.

First, it was the Canada annexation threats.

I’m not a very nationalistic gal, and I stand deeply by anti-colonial values. However, I cannot see myself have a future in a dictatorship run by this con-man. This person thinks that he’s not just the king of the United States, but the king of the world— hence why I’ll always stand for Canada, in such a scenario.

But.. to see mainstream media allow opinion articles to freely advertise the idea of annexing the very country I live in, and social media companies and Canada’s second-largest corporation by market cap allowing advertisements openly pushing for Canada to become the “51st state”…

Then, came the corporate surrender.

Companies left and right dropped DEI, not just because the far-right decided to manufacture an entire media frenzy over the mere idea of affirmative action, but because their commitment to inclusion was opportunistic at best, a form of appeasement at worst. Corporations which have publicly blasted Trump are now openly bowing down to him. Perhaps most significantly, Meta — which owns Instagram, where I used to run most, if not all of my online presence — has decided to completely gut its hate speech policies, killing fact-checking in the U.S., censoring trans people and explicitly allowing anti-2SLGBTQ+ and anti-trans language on its platforms worldwide instead of addressing pre-existing, dehumanizing rhetoric. All this whilst people are cheering this on and openly calling for our genocide, all whilst denying it. Sounds awfully like step 10 of the ten stages of genocide, doesn’t it?

How is this normal?

Because the liberal status-quoers decided that this would be the new normal.

2. In Different Times

Back when I was a child going through elementary school, clueless as to the existence of trans people or even queerness as a whole, I remember being taught other issues, one at a time. I was taught about gender inequality. I was taught about climate change. I had generally understood how prevalent different -isms have become in our society, and how those were broader “bad” ideas that must be countered.

I was raised in a relatively agnostic manner, a privilege I recognize many do not have. I had the opportunity to learn extensively about critical thinking. Yet, I was still nonetheless absorbed into the social media bubble towards the end of elementary school, in an era when things didn’t seem so patently oligarchized yet.

Even though I never had any proper sex ed, nor did I ever learn about trans people existing — I misinterpreted the Fondation Émergence’s 2017 anti-transphobia campaign as an anti-sexism campaign — I was always the “weird” kid.

That didn’t stop me from eventually realizing who I was, in 2020 — five (5) years ago! — after I finally discovered the definition of transness.

I came out as a trans girl at the age of sixteen — a fairly vulnerable age. I started working in a 2SLGBTQ+ community organization at seventeen, primarily as a means of survival fearing the very real possibility of my parents kicking me out over transitioning (an ever-too-common occurrence). As a vulnerable individual thrown into the thrusts of the nonprofit ecosystem, I was fearful — yet well aware of what I had to defend. And so, I pushed, ahead, to defend Montréal’s trans community’s best interests.

I remember, when Québec Bill 2 first dropped, how shell shocked everybody was — you can read my seventeen-year-old self’s words in the Montréal Gazette, they should speak for themselves. At the time, anti-trans legislation was a distant concept, one limited to the U.S. Deep South and which would face extra-community backlash (as it did in N. Carolina). So… I got organized, and got the community rallied up together to fight back. We were successful, and even managed to get a few fees repealed, creating a material difference in the lives of thousands of trans people. At the time, I felt good, and had high hopes for the future. Oh, if only I knew…

These different times were a time of hope.

One in which trans rights were seen as an uphill battle, yet one which would be inevitably attainable. One in which trans visibility was almost always seen as a net positive. One in which people’s gendered bodies weren’t as severely policed, one in which social justice seemed inevitable.

I remember listening proactively as Black Lives Matter went mainstream in the wake of the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. At the time, COVID-19 was all the rage in mainstream media, and a certain culture of care — one of solidarity, where neoliberal backstabbing was put in pause thanks to an actual (yet temporary) social safety net in Canada. It seemed, for a second, that the pains of Empire were coming to an end, and that people would rebuild a better world together.

Yet, Empire continued chugging on, and rebuilt itself in the most violent way possible. State-sanctioned brutality and the “liberalization” of figures— as embodied by our collective memories of so many of the trans activists that came before us— has only continued. Police budgets continue to explode, yet apparently they get to be exempted from any form of accountability whatsoever. The very idea of care was violently ripped apart by the few who wished for “freedom” for themselves, and one step at a time, the “new normal” — one in which mass disabling has been normalized, and COVID is deemed over by authorities (yet isn’t) — was manufactured, creating the circumstances enabling today’s anti-trans hate machine to thrive.

You’ll hear different definitions of what the “trans golden age” — a period in relatively recent history in which trans people were being increasingly accepted in society, where anti-discrimination laws (as symbolic as they are) were being adopted, all whilst our general humanity wasn’t being questioned too much — was. Some would say, between 2014 and 2019. Others might extend that until 2021 or 2022. Personally, I’d define it was between 2015 and March 2020 — maybe going into mid-to-late 2021 at most, if you count the relative period of ‘peace’ that was the first few months after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. I wonder what people will think of this in some thirty or fifty years, hoping that enough people are still alive at that time for there to still be interest in reading the words of other trans people.

This debate does become more academic than practical though, in light of what awaits us today.

3. In the Present, Again

More and more, we live in a world in which free expression is being threatened — instead being replaced with a hollowed-out idea of “free speech”, serving merely to ensure that the dominant class can freely disparage the marginalized and the oppressed. Expression, as a whole, is equally being gutted, though the use of artificially-limiting social media algorithms and, nowadays, systematic theft through so-called “generative AI”. This, at least in my view, is inseparable from the overall project of state-sanctioned bodily control we’re seeing worldwide, whether in the U.S., Russia, Georgia, or even Canada: without autonomy over your own self, what even does freedom to express yourself mean?

Tiktok being banned — then being restored, not at the whims of the Chinese government, but a future American one. Left-wing creators being deplatformed left and right, whilst conservative ones being artificially boosted. Bigots complaining of trans activists being “in-your-face”, yet refusing to listen to them as legislation killing them is being introduced and passed. This is all too emblematic of a present, in which we experience the illusion of freedom, yet are made the object of state censorship.

I don’t know what to expect later today, but it looks ugly. Way too many trans youth have already taken their lives after the U.S. federal election. How can we be expected to care for our own well-being on our own, when the very thing ruining our mental health is the same politicians in power? Is it too much to expect “care” beyond the local suicide hotline be offered to trans people around the country?

Last night, I learned that the U.S. federal administration would effectively render illegal trans identities at the federal level. Trans people will find themselves to be the very prisoners of the Empire, forbidden from accessing travel documents with the correct legal gender. Trans women prisoners, including political prisoners, will see themselves be forcibly detransitioned and sent to men’s prisons. And that’s just executive action, to be passed within mere hours of the strike of our metaphorical midnight. What’s next? Weaponizing the REAL ID Act to screw trans people over nationwide? Criminalizing transness altogether by defining trans people as pornographic, as Project 2025 has already sought out to do? Using the current episode of mass anti-trans hysteria to make trans people — in particular trans women — into the victims of the next Salem witch trials? I wouldn’t be surprised if that were the case.

And of course, that’s without counting the many trans people who have fled even more dangerous countries, only to end up becoming a refugee of the very country they’ve sought refuge in: they find themselves without recourse, in the face of an unparalleled level of manufactured vitriol.

Treason would be an understatement. ‘Genocide’ is the right term to use here.

But, I mean… isn’t that what international law is meant to do?

If only the U.S. didn’t decide to kill the very idea thereof.

4. In the Future

We’ve reached, as a society, an impasse.

Empire has reached a point at which it must converge onto fascism in order to continue. The steady greed empowering the billionaire class only continues. They need their culture wars in order to prevent people from realizing the true cause of their ills: incessant greed of the worst caliber.

The few times Empire came close to buckling had been in periods of great instability. The Second World War was the perfect example thereof: the welfare state was created as a means to appease soldiers returning from war. Yet, as these times — ones of tens of millions of people dying at the hands of fascism and hundreds of millions more suffering — leave our collective memory, Empire is now seeking to reclaim its lost ground.

When we say “death before detransition”, we mean it. Our free bodies grant us the ability and the desire to live. To take one of them away, whilst expecting us to continue selling our bodies in the form of wage labour, is an impossible task. Yet, our very existence is incompatible with Empire. Our freedom shows the world a different way to live, one in which we, as human beings, have agency over ourselves — not the State nor its laws, not our parents nor guardians, ni dieu ni maître. And that makes us targets.

What do we have, then?

Human rights? Nope. We can’t take them for granted, and as you all will have seen, through bills like Saskatchewan’s Bill 137 and Québec’s anti-hijab law, or the reversal of Roe v Wade, how protections formerly accepted as fact have simply vanished in a blink.

Hope? There’s so little of it left. All the tiny wins we’ve gotten in the last few months pales in front of the Hydra which faces us. We know the stories of the countless genocides against the dehumanized which have occurred in the past. We’ve seen what has happened with trans people when the Nazis first came into power, burning the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft — the world’s first trans medical clinic — in the process. Today is no different, with contemporary anti-trans legislation seeking not only a genocide, but an epistemicide. And, even though I live north of the U.S., in Canada… I can’t help but feel that an Anschluss awaits us soon.

Community? It’s always been one of the ways we’ve held on — from bars helping trans sex workers thrive, to community centres offering services to trans people, to simple friend groups having a good time enjoying dumplings at the local counter — and it’s going to continue being the case. But, how much harder will it be for us to build community? With the fascist takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk, and the subsequent bowing-down of Meta/Facebook/Instagram and TikTok to the Empire, we no longer have access to the same online spaces we’ve depended on so much in the past for our community’s collective work. Rebuilding will be difficult, and we’re bound to lose so many connections in the process.

Last week, I was reading a text by Florence Ashley, a friend of mine. “Pallative activism“. It summarizes well how I feel, during these particularly dire times. I’ll let their works speak for themselves:

Palliative activism begins where grief turns to wisdom, and wisdom to care. It carves its roots in the (post-)erotic entanglements of anarchic love, surges from those abandoned moments where we dare care for the wounded bird within ourselves. Because refusing the banality of cruelty, refusing to be worn bare, refusing to do violence unto each other — these may damn well be the closest we will come to revolution.

Maybe I am too far gone to hope anymore. But, for solace, there may still be hope.

Maybe that’s all what we can have. We’re perhaps too far gone for human rights to save us. We’re in too dire a situation to have any sense of hope. But, we can still resist together. Perhaps not for the beautiful society we once envisioned, one in which trans people end up fully liberated from the shackles of gender norms as all of us are freed from the exploitation of day-to-day life; but one where trans people are hurting less, one where we continue valuing each life as precious, and we do everything we can to help us see the beautiful together.

Last summer, I set off on a relatively ignoble hike. I was driving with my friend (and a wonderful artist!) Bria across much of B.C. and western Alberta. We decided on a near-whim to climb up the mountains around Lake Louise, at 3:30 AM— a time before any crowds at this overtouristed hotspot would appear. And, let me just say this: it was a beautiful moment— one which winning a battle against any hateful law wouldn’t ever give me.

Perhaps these are the moments we ought to cherish more.

5. In Defiance

Today will be a day during which many of us will have to grieve. We will have to grieve for the future(s) that we wished we could have, but which we’ll never have; we will have to grieve for the world of calm which so many of us dreamed for, albeit without success. We will need to grieve for all the trans people who have decided — or who are currently deciding — to leave us for eternity, beyond this mortal plane.

But we’ll also need to fight back. We’ll need to defend what we already have, and rebuild afterwards.

We will need to pave a future for future generations of trans people.

To resist this preordained conclusion that’s been imposed upon us is an act of defiance — one which we absolutely need in these trying times. If gender is so strictly binary and gender roles are so strictly defined, why would we need laws designed to enforce this, up to and including jailing and killing those who dare defy?

Trans people have defied everything the cisgender majority has taught about us, for centuries. We’ve resisted everything from colonial erasure to anti-buggery laws. Now’s not the time to give up.

Today may be a day of mourning for many of us. I’m personally going to be taking a few more drinks than usual.

But tomorrow, we’re going to have to start building a new future.

Perhaps one that isn’t as beautiful as we could have hoped for. A bittersweet one.

But one nonetheless.

One where trans people will live, no matter how difficult it becomes, and no matter how many laws are broken in the process.

*  *  *

Every trans suicide is a murder.

Every trans murder is an assassination.

May all of the people seeking to eliminate trans people from public life — or worse, deny our very existence — be forced to confront the ghosts of our communities for the rest of their lifetimes.

In defiance,
Celeste

Trans Lifeline can be reached at +1 (877) 330-6366 (Canada) or +1 (877) 565-8860 (U.S.).

Pour mes lecteur·rices francophones, Aide aux Trans du Québec peut être rejointe au +1 (855) 909-9038. Interligne peut être rejointe au +1 (888) 505-1010.