Borderlands and the Unyielding Space Between

Trans Lives Matter Pakistan protest, September 2020, Lahore. Photo by RedMiNote. Used under CCA-SA 4.0

Earlier today I found myself reading - again - someone articulating that if something specific happens, then it’s time to worry. “I will be very uneasy,” he said. As it turns out, I was misled by a lack of context and thought this was a more general statement. It was actually about a very specific court case and the person had been very worried about the overall situation in the USA for some time. But even though this particular person wasn’t only now coming to a place of concern, this is far from the first time I’ve seen this over the last month. I’ve been having a reaction to that, and I’d like to share it here with you.

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Every human is different, and I don't want to call disrespect on this particular person I misunderstood especially, but also not onto any person who is only now, "starting to feel uneasy.” It’s a popular place to be right now. And the horrifying truth is that the people who are starting to feel unease this week are still ahead of the median person in the USA, who is more apt to pay no attention at all, to have no feelings one way or the other on the news of Musk this, DOGE that, and Trump the other.

Even so, unfair to these people communicating dawning anxiety though it may be, I find it very hard to read these statements as a trans person.

Make no mistake: I’m not intending to speak for all trans people here. I’m sure Caitlin Jenner is still feeling fine. No, what I mean is that it is my experience as a trans person that has me completely freaking out at those - from Susan Collins at one end to those of more serious persons at the other - expressions of "concern" or “unease".

In case you missed it, the EEOC has legalized discrimination against trans people, dropping every enforcement action in progress at the end of Biden’s term. In my opinion, fair readings include the possibility that the EEOC is actively encouraging discrimination against trans people. Meanwhile the GOP is mandating discrimination in health care, which we know from past research causes trans people to avoid doctors even when dealing with unrelated ailments. And the administration, the EEOC, and Republican politicians are taking these actions while nakedly breaking the law (or tolerating the same).

Some Democrats, like Chuck Schumer, are willing to wait two to three years until SCOTUS takes up a specific case, rules against Trump, and Trump then refuses to comply. Only a refusal to obey a Supreme Court order, Schumer insists, would constitute a genuine crisis. “We’re not there yet,” he opines. Republicans, if they express concern at all, do so like Susan Collins, as a dishonest deflection, never intending action. And of course we’re not short of Democrats openly courting the bigot vote. Looking at you, Gavin Newsom.

Meanwhile housing discrimination is the next border, already being discussed in terms of university housing (which is often sex segregated by floor or by building). How will out-of-state trans students live when the only place they have to retreat is itself designed to be a message of intolerance at institutional, societal, and even Presidential levels? Is there any reason to believe that the attack on the right to housing will end at the campus gate? Is there any reason to believe Trump intends to protect access to housing for trans people anywhere at all?

With no right to work and no right to housing and a lawless administration overseeing violent, armed police that have already snatched one lawful permanent resident merely for speaking in a way the admin doesn't like, I see crisis all around, and would even if I hated the USA and rule of law.

Which, of course, I do not.

But I and my siblings have been on the wrong end of a multi-hundred million dollar campaign of hatred, followed by the definition of persecution. To hear that people are beginning to feel uneasy eight months later isn’t merely frustrating, or depressing.

It's not that this process of coming to awareness isn't authentic or reasonable from the perspective of those newly wakening to the dangers of rising fascism. I’m sure that Schumer isn’t lying when he says that he honestly doesn’t see the nation in crisis yet. And the point here isn't that any one particular person is doing or expressing something wrong, per se. Maybe they are, but that’s not my point.

My point today is that what is wrong, or at least most wrong, is that our country is in such a sorry state that it is possible for Schumer to only now begin to feel unease. We have so flagrantly devalued humans, devalued our connections to each other, devalued society itself, that all the incentives are to care only when our personal situations are imperilled.

It’s entirely possible, after all, that I’m no better than Schumer: I worried earlier because I was imperilled sooner. Work, housing, public safety, I was simply sooner at personal risk.

I may not be any clearer-eyed than your average moderate. But now, as radicals who push for trans eradication also destroy the institutions responsible for international peace, for the ability of white Americans to sleep secure from air-dropped bombs, now, when the larger public begins to feel the vulnerability of Ukrainians or Gaza’s or Black Philadelphians, now comes the unease.

I have no anger at the people slowly shaking themselves politically awake. Again, I think they are, unfortunately, ahead of the American curve. It's not rage I feel at the people whose sense of urgency lags behind mine. Instead I feel a great sadness, a sense of loss so complete I experience it as a void beneath my sternum.

I feel stabbed in the heart with my own failure. The muscle torn open and unable to close, the emptiness thwarting every attempt to pull itself together, to mend, to heal.

What did I do, what did I not do, that my own society could fail to see me as human, as a coworker, as a neighbor? How did I ever allow my peers to think that as the weft of society they could survive and thrive without my warp?

I see the people who now believe they approach a border, a line which, if passed, would mark their entry into crisis.

I see them, and if you are there I see you: whole and human. I see you and I wonder how possible it might be today for us to lift our American heads and gaze across those lines to bear witness to those on another side.