If you're out of the loop or intentionally avoiding social media and the news cycle, then I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this. Two executive orders were written yesterday by Donald Trump that specifically target transgender rights and freedoms. One targeting the rights of transgender members of the military, another targeting the healthcare rights of transgender youth. These orders state in no uncertain terms that trans people are unsafe evil liars deserving of contempt and exclusion. This is not an exaggeration, and the shift in the narrative behind these executive orders is extremely alarming and likely to be seen again as the basis for further attacks against us.
There is a narrative created by these two orders. A narrative that trans people are dishonorable, that trans people lack selflessness and humility, and that we are liars. That we are wrong that our existence is wrong. That it doesn't matter whether transition decreases our suicide rate, whether it allows us to live happy, fulfilling lives. That death itself is preferable to the existence of an adult trans person. That being transgender is by itself wrong and makes us worth less than cisgender people. A narrative that children must be protected from becoming transgender people, even if it means they die. That no one can be allowed to think that being transgender is alright, that it's okay to be a transgender person.
This cannot go unchallenged. It's not enough for trans people to resist alone. This has to come from as man voices as possible. The writing is on the wall. This amounts to dehumanizing persecution intended to foster perceptions of us as inhuman. It is going to get worse. This is week 2. What awaits us in a year no one can say for sure. We need protests we need civil disobedience. We need to help our most vulnerable get out. We need to protect trans youth.
Please refer to the transgender resistance network for mutual aid and help. I had tried last year to organize something here but was not capable of it due to problems in my own personal life.
We need solidarity. We need to help each other. And we have to resist. Not just these orders, not just this narrative, but we have to resist the fall into hopelessness and acceptance. We have to fight. Our lives have value. Our lives are worth the same as anyone else. Don't let them get to you, don't believe in the narrative. Transition saved my life, maybe it saved yours too. Transitioning and seeing others transition has been the most beautiful and rewarding experience of my life. I refuse to accept a reality in which we are forced into closets, forced into hiding. I beg of everyone to join me in refusing that outcome.
Reality is exceptionally mundane. I watched contrapoints video about conspiracies last night, and I was struck over and over again by this idea. Reality is boring. Why did Elon Musk decide to surround himself with 19 year old boys in his little DOGE club? Because that's exactly how he sees himself. He surrounds himself with very young, very online/techy men because he sees himself as a very young, very online /techy man. He sees himself as a popular frat boy. The outsider in politics. I guarantee you he tells them when he sleeps with someone. They absolutely have group chats where they all talk amongst themselves and include him the same way. He's just a delusional divorced man who is almost universally hated by people who aren't either literally paid to like him or incentivised to like him because of his politics and position of power.
There are literally millions of men like him in America alone. Most of them are his followers. Why does he have the position of power that he does? Cause he fucking paid for it. That's all. It's exceptionally boring. It's melodrama in its finest. America dies not with a hammer blow but with the slow whistle of air leaving a bike tire. It's anticlimactic. It's mundane hollow reality. It's a story told a thousand times before. Egotistic racist divorced man is promoted to management of an office. A few months later, after thoroughly ruining everything, the office is closed for good. Life is empty. The glory we were told was there never existed. The climactic final battle is largely fictional.
Resistance isn't really about grand fights or sweeping upheaval. It's about changing material conditions for people. Helping those who need it. Organizing communities and building solidarity. Sweeping upheaval comes as a consequence of those things, but isn't itself a conscious focus. We remember revolutions for their sweeping upheavals, for their bloody final battles. But that wasn't what people in those movements had been working for. We don't talk about the growing class solidarity in the face of repeated violence from the ruling class over decades. The disillusionment people feel from their rights being lost. We ignore those things cause they don't make good stories to tell in the moment. Resistance itself is (mostly) boring labor and nuisance civil disobedience.