Sans Seraph

Tag: america

  • You are (not) free

    I was born to deeply religious, conservative parents in a deeply conservative part of the country. I was raised to believe in the supremacy of the United States, that we were on the right side of history, that we were “the good guys.” At some point in my life, I even wanted to join the military, to serve my country, and to participate in whatever way I could in the great American experiment.

    Today is the Fourth of July, a day that used to be my favorite holiday. Each year in rural Montana we would go into town to watch the parade and spend time at the local faire in the park. This small town was the epitome of life when “America was great.” This was the kind of life that people had in mind when the wave of conservative thought rot swept the country. A place where you knew your neighbor, where you lived in harmony with the land, and where the great Big Sky that the state of Montana is known for opened wide to greet you.

    It was a town with such accolades as “the place FDR visited once,” and one of the few places Max Brooks in his book World War Z said would survive the zombie hordes. A place where if you were white and male, you enjoyed the pinnacle of existence, as long as you had a job; at the mill, or the mine, or worked for the Forest Service.

    Well, the mill closed ages ago, and the mine is, well, a mine. Many forestry jobs were lost when the government gutted the Forest Service, selling out the land that some many people, who voted vehemently for this administration, love and cherish. The nearest hospital is the next town over, and will probably close with the recent cuts to healthcare. Most of the people in the town are aged, and will almost certainly now suffer a higher mortality rate due to lack of accessible healthcare.

    Corporate interests will move in on the newly purchased land. Maybe enough labor jobs in logging and resource gathering will spring up to keep what few young people remain interested as the trees on the mountains thin, and the fish die out. Maybe, finally, after the mountains are run through with shafts and tunnels, and the Earth herself tries to shake us off her skin like biting fleas, will the people realize what they have done.

    When I planned out this post, I had intended to write about how today, as we celebrate the independence of our country from tyranny, that I, a trans woman, am less free that I have ever been before. I, someone who at one point wanted to serve this country, who, for all intents and purposes, has done everything “right” in my life, am in a position where I am simply a political pawn for our corporate overlords. All of that is true, and, honestly, the working class hasn’t been free in this country since, well, ever. However my thoughts today return to my small hometown in northwestern Montana.

    The overwhelming majority of those that fell prey to the MAGA cult are people like my parents and former neighbors, who wanted so desperately to live out in the wilderness and enjoy the serenity of nature and the quite of only occasional social situations that they deliberately chose to live in what could be called economically and educationally depressed areas. It is the people in these places that will feel a sickness of the soul that will grind them down into weak things even as people like me are hunted and destroyed bodily.

    The passing of the Bulbous Bubo Betrayal has doomed the average American worker, both those that voted for this administration, and those that so viciously fought against it, to a fate worse than what potentially awaits me and other trans people. Though it has become clear that the ruling body of this country will stop at nothing until me and my ilk are rounded up and done away with, it is those that linger and will have to endure the epigenetic blight that will suffer the most. You see, I never thought I was free. I took up the mantle of womanhood knowing that I would have to fight for my rights, yet I did so willingly. It is those who are truly the most vulnerable, who were duped into thinking what they were doing was right, who believed the lie that they were not free who will suffer the most as their spirit decays.

    So today, it is as I prepare to celebrate not the birth of my country, but of my community, that I lament the fall of the noble redneck, hillbilly, and good ol’ boy. The farmer, the miner, and the rig worker. To all of those that have finally realized their betrayal, who now realize that the lines aren’t left and right, but us and them that I say “welcome to the party.” You were always allowed in. We love you, and it’s okay. Now, grab your torch and pitchfork, and let’s get to work.

  • No contact

    I’ve been dealing with an interesting emotion recently.

    My childhood was not what you could call “good.” Sure, on the surface things seemed to be fine. Sure, there was the slow financial decline, that saw me continually sheltered in smaller and more modest dwellings the longer my childhood ran on. There was also the crusade of isolation from any sort of extended family, either due to my mother’s machinations, or my father’s lack of care and alcoholism. Then the emotional abuse and turmoil that extended to both me and my grandmother perpetrated by my mom. Also my absent father’s complete lack of interest in any real part of my life beyond obligation. However I was “given anything I ever wanted.”

    What I wanted though, was a home that didn’t feel like a warzone, or some sort of free range prison. I wanted a father that showed some interest in my life beyond when I was young and cute. I wanted a mother that wasn’t so obsessed with me that she stunted any sort of self discovery I had to force me to stay on the “right path.” It was never about what I wanted. It was about the status quo.

    An interesting thing happens after your egg cracks, where you start noticing all of the signs. I didn’t think I had a lot of signs that I was trans, but it’s so obvious now that I carry significant regret that I didn’t figure things out sooner. I think the original thoughts that there might be something different about me starting forming in high school. They would then rear their head again in waves until I finally cracked in early 2024.

    When I finally came out to my parents, they treated it exactly how I expected them to. I had hoped that there would be some sort of understanding, if not an acceptance. I was met not with love and willingness to understand, but hatred. So poisoned by the rhetoric of hating the “other” were they that I suddenly went from their child to something subhuman.

    Nine days after I gave them the news, on the day of my name change hearing, my father texted me from my mother’s phone. He informed me that my mom seemed to be suffering from a stroke, and he was taking her to the hospital. I tried to contact him to get any information, but to no avail. In late February I received a text from my mother, full of errors and jumbled words, informing me that she had been home for three days. The text was essentially lamenting how I now hated her.

    It was never about me. I was never expected to be my own person. It was never their desire that I forge my own path, or be happy. All that was required of me was that I fell in line and continue the crusade; of capitalism, progress, genocide, whatever our fearless white leaders told us was our god given path.

    As one might guess, that went over well.

    So I chose not to respond to her message. I will probably never speak to my parents again. I feel relieved by that. To know that I can finally heal from all of that. From the emotional pain, the fear, the bitterness. I am very sure had I not been so marked by them I would have accepted myself as I was far earlier. I’d be in a better place now, not that I have regrets. This is my karma, after all.

    This speaks to an interesting parallel in the soul of our country right now. The people in charge are mostly the people that are of my parent’s generation. This country is going through changes. The world as we know it is entering a new era, and much like my adolescence, the ones in charge are fighting tooth and nail to do what they think is best, with no regard to the flow of time and progress. We as a nation are being gripped by the cold, dead hand of the past and are being pulled into the graves of our forebearers.

    So afraid of their world changing in ways they don’t approve of, our leaders seek to freeze our lives into a form that never actually existed. Blinded by the fog of nostalgia for a time where it was only good to be white, Christian, and male, those in power will hold us fast and sink to the depths as they breath their last. One final send off from the me generation.

    So we “go no contact.” We must no longer let those who refuse to work for the future keep us in the past. If they see fit to ignore the laws, we should too. Keeping working the National Parks, and keep paying those park workers too. Refuse to clean their houses. Boycott their products. Approve that trans person’s passport. “Playing dirty” doesn’t have to mean throwing bricks and torching teslas.

    You can be your own person. We have spent far too much time doing what we’ve been told. If they refuse to see us, then we should refuse to listen to them.

    What of those that are listening to their parents, then? Those who are happy in their clouded misery? It’s okay, we all have to figure it out in our own time. It took me until I was 35 to figure out I was trans, and one day you’ll figure out that all of this hate isn’t who you are too.

    And you’ll be better for it.