Cis People Are Not And Cannot Be Free
Not until trans people are.
The online magazine Documentary published by the International Documentary Association is reporting that PBS is censoring documentaries — its first example being 90 seconds of Art Spiegelman discussing the relevance of Maus for our times — and the teaching materials designed to be used with documentaries, and the sum of the reporting makes it easy to conclude that PBS is being deliberately misleading with its excuses: the truth is that your freedom to watch what you want is now subject to those who attempt to predict the fascist winds, jettisoning human lives in the hope of riding out the storm.
The censorship is racist and anti-feminist and promotes other evils besides. But just for a moment I want to focus on the GOP’s anti-trans imperative. Even if none of those other bigotries existed, the loathing of the powerful for trans folk is sufficient by itself to guarantee that cis people are no longer free.
We trans folk will be murdered, denied medicine, disenfranchised. But the anti-trans imperative already has taken control of cis TV remotes. Is nothing sacred to the cis community, not even your televisions?
Do not mistake my hyperbolic snark. I'm not claiming that government control of cis TVs is worse than what that anti-trans imperative is doing to us as trans people. We are hounded out of the military, out of other jobs, out of housing. The GOP is attempting to write into law that trans existence is itself pornography, and punishable by incarceration. That effort is underway as I write.
But I am saying that as long as the anti-trans imperative is allowed to dictate policy, true freedom is impossible even for apolitical cis folks.
You work maintaining websites? Well, websites are being taken down because the Trumpists can't allow information about trans lives. It doesn’t matter if, during an economic downturn your business teeters on the edge of bankruptcy. You can’t take these contracts because this information is not allowed.
You work in sound? You aren't free to take a job on a pro-trans documentary that you disagree w just bc you need the money. That's not your choice to make anymore.
You could work in education or health care billing or have a surgery practice. You could be a librarian or a lawyer. And, again, you can have no political position at all save that you’d like to do your work, make your money in peace. But that’s not your choice anymore.
And of course even when you’re not interested in making any money, even if you are only curious what all the talk about “intersex” is? Curiosity on the internet, should the anti-trans imperative continue, would be criminal to satisfy. Links will be blocked, searches censored, cookies cataloged. If the anti-trans imperative can rifle through your bank box for your birth certificate or your pants for pendent privates, how private will be the phone you already share with Sundar Pichai, the laptop you share with Tim Cook, the photos you share with Mark Zuckerberg?
Every single time the anti-trans imperative censors trans people or bans our health benefits or attacks the law firms that defend us, cis people lose income, opportunity, and freedom.
I ask again, is nothing sacred?
And sure, you can believe I love the cis folks in my life or you can believe I'm a radical trans/mutant enemy who hates all of you. Grr! Argh! Plausible!
You can believe that I'm exaggerating the attack on cis freedom so as to surreptitiously enlist the impressionable into my pro-trans army. Okay. Fine. But whether you enlist or not, cis freedom is impossible while trans lives are intolerable.
Cis freedom is impossible while trans lives are intolerable.
That’s what you get because that’s what voters asked for. Giving up cis freedom for trans elimination is the deal the greater cis community has made with fascism. And you, cis people, any single one of you who supported this bargain and every single one of you who supported this bargain, deserve neither and will get neither.
If you want to see me try to write essays in 299 character blobs, you could join the thousand plus people amused at my inability to understand the “micro” in “microblogging” over on BlueSky.
This is an extremely, extremely good and important article. And I have often wanted to say this to folks too...bigotry hurts more than the target. In the case of transphobia, one of the larger groups of people harmed by it are cis women. Because then your womanhood is based upon the local bigotry of whomever is interrogating you. The Nancy Mace Effect, if you will.
Aloha CD! Hope you are on the mend. Thank you for the latest. Your writing, as always, but especially today is so on point. I could not agree with you more that as long as any segment of our marginalized society is under attack, we are all under attack. For a long time I did not think it was a hard one to figure out. Over the last 10 years it has become obvious that many in our society only see that which affects them and are incapable of connecting the dots. We absolutely need writers such as yourself to help us all with this making the connections. Keep it up! Mahalo!