Content warning: The following contains a mention of suicide
It’s been two weeks since the fate of our world has been flipped upside down. For queer people, we knew this election was a referendum on our existence, especially with the policies that the right was promising to implement.
It looks like those policies, which many people thought were just a fever dream, are going to impact millions of lives all over the country: even those of cisgender and heterosexual individuals. For instance, earlier this week, a bill was filed in Texas that would require all student-athletes to get chromosome testing to play sports. The policies that they are trying to implement nationally also impact representatives in Congress. Today, Republicans in Congress released a resolution requiring trans members and staffers to use the bathroom of their assigned gender at birth, directly in response to the first trans member of Congress.
These attacks have already built up, and the wrecking balls have not even started to come out. Wait for a couple of weeks, when the Supreme Court is going to decide if trans youth can have healthcare. Wait for the executive orders and directives that will slash HIV prevention, eradicate initiatives to promote accepting others, and erase LGBTQ+ people from the eyes of the federal government.
Wait until you hear a story about the next queer child who gets bullied to the point of suicide. Because the blood is already in the hands of the far right, who have decided to suck up to religion even when their same religion preaches to love people for who they are.
To the LGBTQ+ community reading this: we will get through this. It may not seem like it at this time, but we are living in by far and away the best time to be an LGBTQ+ individual. It feels like the world is against us right now, but we are only 55 years since the riots at Stonewall. More countries are repealing their bans on homosexuality and legalizing same-sex marriage and rights. Queer culture, whether it’s queer artists filling arenas and festivals or shows like Heartstopper receiving critical acclaim, is flourishing. More queer people are in places of power than ever before. We won’t be erased because we’ve tried to be erased and they have failed.
To LGBTQ+ allies and those who want to educate and support us: please don’t erase us from your activism and your thoughts, especially trans people. The role of you to educate yourself and your friends and family to create a stronger and more perfect nation starts with you. Contact organizations, your state and federal legislators, and more to make a difference because impassioned testimony and change is how we change minds.
To people in power, especially the Democratic Party: don’t throw us away, especially the trans community. People always think creating a simple scapegoat is the way to figure out how an election was lost, and I explained already that trans people were not the fault of why Kamala Harris did not win. Succumbing to the right on LGBTQ+ issues, especially the issues of trans acceptance, will create even more dissolution than has already become.
The next four years are going to be difficult. There’s going to be a lot of fights to fight. But the side that is the ethical side is the side of equality, of acceptance, of love.
Comments