Sans Seraph

Tag: politics

  • I will fear no evil

    I will fear no evil

    I recently got a new piercing and it’s made me think a lot about fear.

    Fear is not an emotion that I like to subscribe to often. I think of all of the vast range of human emotions, it is the most belittling. Fear leads people to do horrible things, inhuman things. Fear leads to panic, which often leads to death. Fear leads to war, to genocide, to living a half life in the shadow of something that is rarely so big in the light.

    Yet even though I like to say that I don’t live with a lot of fear, I do. I was afraid to get my nose pierced. I was incredibly anxious, nervous, but ultimately afraid of the pain, the change in my routine, the unknown of how it would affect my life. Even immediately after, some of that lingered. In the end though, it didn’t really hurt, and though it has been annoying adjusting my routine, I quite enjoy it. It gave me ownership over a part of my face I’m not too happy about, and that was my goal. However, in the week leading up to my appointment, I was very much on the fence. Even in the moment, I wasn’t too sure about my decision, even though I had spent a good amount of time considering it. I tried to call those emotions everything else but fear, but they were.

    My mother used to always say that there are only two emotions, love and fear. I don’t like to give that heinous witch too much credit, but she had some wisdom. If you really want to be reductionist, I think that you can boil things down to just though two emotions. I think sometimes intelligent people can get caught up in all of the myriad ways we can define and categorize things, yet it’s hard to not look back on all of the times we walk forth into the void, pushing past all of the uncertainty and doubt, and move forward into greater things, that it wasn’t those things that kept us from doing it sooner, but ultimately fear. After all, isn’t anxiety mostly just a fear of being wrong, of having too little information, and making the wrong choice?

    I spend a lot of time thinking about why I didn’t transition sooner, when it seems like the time was right a decade ago, and, though there is an argument to be made that I wasn’t ready (because dear god, I wasn’t) it was really my fear of being something that I had been told was horrible to be my whole life that stopped me from even considering it. I spent so much time trying to make anything else work, that I missed out of so much of my life, all mostly because of an emotion that in hindsight is just so small, yet casts such a big shadow in our lives.

    Some fears are instinctual. Being afraid of what can destroy you bodily is healthy. When your gut tells you that something you’re about to do is sketchy, then it’s usually a good idea to listen to it. Fear definitely has a purpose in our lives, but the real problems are the fears that we’re taught. In a vacuum, there is no reason to be afraid of all of the things that society tells us are wrong. These fears are little lions with amplified roars, echoing off of cave walls. These are fears that are meant to control us, and make us bend to the will of others. These are the tools of evil, and those that seek to work it have used the same formula to get their way since the beginning of time.

    The right likes to tout the idea of the “woke mind virus” as if the idea of being awake is somehow bad, as if it is better to live in the dark then to be shown all of the messiness and splendor of what is going on around us. They are ultimately afraid of losing what they have worked so hard to achieve, and those that follow them have co-opted that fear as their own. Now they decry that their cause is righteous, that the way people like me live is against some divine order, when really, they’re just afraid of the truth: there is no order, and not them, nor you, nor me, are indistinguishable from god, and when everything is the same, nothing is special. We’re all born, we live, we die, and the cycle repeats until the last proton decays. Our lives have no more meaning that the actions of a hydrogen atom fusing with another, and honestly I think that’s rather beautiful.

    I think when you take out the idea that life is special, it takes the pressure off. The roar isn’t so loud, and you can see the actual beauty in everything. The absurdity of it all is fascinating, because when nothing is special, everything is. There’s a duality to existence and oblivion that makes the whole idea of judgement, of caring what others do and shrinks it down into an oddity. The only law is to cause no harm. To stand in the way of other’s trying to live their life is an affront to the flow of the universe, a violation of a physical law that is far bigger than you could ever hope to encompass. I think we’re seeing a change here, and on the other side of it we will realize how childish it was to live with so much fear and hate.

  • Misanthropocene

    Misanthropocene

    As we find ourselves coming to the end of the year it’s usually a good idea to pause and reflect on the past and take a look toward the future. There isn’t a lot to do when you’re stuck inside, hiding from the deluge and wind, but sit around, staring at each other in the candle light, watching the shadows dance long down your lover’s face, hoping that when the calm finally returns, there will be something of the world left to salvage.

    The amount of apathy I have toward the world at the moment I feel is a decent reflection of the apathy that got us all here in the first place. Our planet is angry, and instead of responding to a changing world, and trying to either adapt, or prevent disaster, we as a species have decided it is better to fight each other, and ignore the bigger threats. How can we possible deal with our failing infrastructure and increasingly record breaking weather events when the boys are wearing dresses, the children are using litter boxes, and the elderly are intent on burning the world down around them just to stave off the cold of old age? We are gambling with the one thing there isn’t more of in this universe: time, which, as someone who doesn’t gamble at all, seems like a bad idea. What do I know though, I’m just some trans woman with an inner monologue and empathy.

    This year has been hell. Sure, there’s been a lot of good, but I’m sure that my fellow Americans will agree that the general feel in this country is that hope is fleeting. Prices are higher, jobs are disappearing, and even those that “voted for this” are beginning to see just how wrong they were. To put it simply, we done fucked up. How can anyone do anything but look to their own survival in times like this? When you can’t eat, or get your meds, and every day you’re told that society is collapsing around you, how are you supposed to put up a fight?

    This time of year there are always a lot of posts like this, and videos talking about the year, but the most pervasive ones I’ve been seeing have contained a message that circles around this: if all you did this year is survive, then that’s good enough, and, sure, that’s valid, even in good times there are some of us struggling, but these aren’t good times, and if we are already, as a civilization, knocking on the doors of survival, at the hands of our own duly elected leaders, then how do we expect to survive when the actual doom comes? We sit on the face of this planet (giggity) and proclaim ourselves masters over nature, but some bronzed pedophile and his Gatsbian court of ghouls has brought us to our knees. We are victims of a terrible intelligence, but that pales in comparison to the one thing we are all victims of, physics, and if we cannot survive a baboon, then I shudder to even begin to imagine the untold suffering that we are about to witness in the next century.

    The dams and levees are breaking, crops are failing, every summer is hotter, every winter colder. If these warning signs are ignored, then when the real shit comes, when mother nature tenses and begins to shrug us off the surface of the earth to save herself, then it won’t matter that the bible isn’t taught in schools, or that the girls are kissing each other, or that a Puerto Rican is doing the halftime show. There will be death, not noble, not bright, but total, brutal, in the way that only a cruel and uncaring universe can mete out.

    My hope is that this past year has taught some of us that it is easier to leave others alone than to try to control them. Above all, as long as whatever someone is doing isn’t hurting others, then they should be allowed to do it. We spend far too much time caring about the actions of others, and not enough working on ourselves and trying to better the collective. At this critical point in our history as a species, if we do anything that does not contribute to the greater good, it should be considered a moral crime. Take care of yourself, take care of your neighbor, and take care of your planet. One day, even if we turn our shit around, we will need to find a new home, and we cannot gain the knowledge and build the technology we need to do that if we are constantly bickering with each other.

    So stop it. Live your life, let others live theirs, stop giving so much of a shit about the things you don’t like. It’s selfish. We are selfish, and it’ll be our downfall. If you care about yourself, your children, your friends and family, then you have to also care about the rest of us. There is no more distinction. Never before has the line “the only thing required of the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing” been more poignant. So if all you did this year was survive, then in the next you should riot. Tear down the enemies of mankind that have made you only able to survive. We are running out of time.

  • All the bones of summer

    Well, that’s it. The summer of 2025 is over. The bleak gray of the long dark has come once again to Seattle, and I sit here hoping in the deluge and freeze to come, that some of the rot and decay that has stuck fast to the ribs of this country will be washed clean. I hope that in winter’s blanket the world, and myself, will heal a bit, and be ready to face what spring will bring, and what will probably be another summer stolen.

    I recently returned from a work trip. Usually I abhor going on such excursions, but this time was a bit different. I am a bit different. I’m a bit better. Despite everything I feel the progress in my own soul advancing, even when the world outside me seems determined to crumble. For a week I holed up in my hotel room, and in the hours that I was not working, I took a break. Spending time online recently has been a source of extreme frustration and suffering, and I just couldn’t do it. After washing off the dirt of the day, I’d lay in my rented bed, watching cable (an anachronistic hobby at this point) and reading. In between page turns and early evening cartoons I had a lot of time to think.

    When I’m alone and not plugged in, I’m happy. When even for a minute I can ignore the tempest blowing through the hallowed halls of Washington, I can remember how I felt in the summer of ’24, when my whole life was ahead of me, and that’s the thing, it still is. I’m really starting to love the way I look, and how I feel, and I’m starting to gain an amazing confidence and surety in myself that I can’t believe I never had before. What I am doing, what I’m going through, this whole process of becoming, and of being true to myself, it’s working, which makes me wonder why are there people out there that think that standing in the way of that, when it affects them not at all, is a good idea?

    Completely ignoring the fact that most people actually don’t care about trans people, and most people also want to be left alone to live their lives, and that trans people are just another in a long line of marginalized populations used as scapegoats to further the agenda of organizations determined to impose their will and, more importantly, capitalism, why does anyone fall for it? Why do followers exist? Why do people look at me, who has found within herself all of the tools to heal and be healthy and is doing the work to make a difference in her own life, with such disgust? Surely it can’t just be the fault of propaganda?

    Why do others feel the need to impose their will on others? Why is everyone so convinced that their way is right, and that others are wrong, and that they can’t be happy until everyone thinks like them? I think there lies within the structure of power, of governance, an inherent evil. One that is ancient and must be routinely routed out, or else great pain is felt for entire generations. The playbook for this evil is known, and that knowledge is widespread, yet there exists some sticky-sweet honey that it possesses that allows the common man to fall prey to its charms and ignore all of the history, all of the rivers of blood, that it has left in its wake.

    It is the need of the few to control the many that gives rise to this evil. True freedom, for anyone, can never be felt as long as there is the will of another imposed on the will of the self. Small groups of people can work together, and I think everyone agrees that common goals and mutual aid are a great boon to society, yet we seem to all be fighting the same battle every century.

    If Siddhartha’s great battle was to free the soul from the infinite cycle of birth and rebirth, then the modern search for Nirvana should be to break the constant cycle of the few holding sway over the many. I do not know how much longer we as a species can do this dance before have no more floor on which to do so.

    Men who live in excess now go to their satin lined graves on the backs of generations of people who wanted nothing more to be free. They have sacrificed the future of billions of their fellows in order to make their temporary respite from oblivion marginally more comfortable. What else can you call that but evil?

    I want it all to make sense. I want to understand how anyone can look around at all of this, see what’s happening, and not rage against the time stolen from them. I want to know why evil prevails. I want to know why something using such archaic weapons is still so effective.

    I’m very curious how this will all play out. We always look back at things like genocides, or wars, or terrorist attacks, and say “never again,” but it always comes back. Millions of people, myself, included, have been pointing out the descent for years, and yet it all falls on deaf ears.

    The only hope I’m holding onto right now is that the current administration seems so farcical, and so inept, that I hope all of the atrocities I’m predicting don’t come to pass. I’ve been staying away from the news as well. That has truly been helping. I don’t feel so under fire when I get away from it all. I am doing great. When I focus on my little life, I am constantly in awe with how much better my minute world is now. Perhaps that’s the secret. Maybe where individualism went wrong was it stopped being about the individual. If you look to make yourself a person you’d actually like to be, you stop caring about how others are different. If you look to better yourself, then all of their primordial weapons will turn to ash, and finally blow away and find rest on the fields of history.

  • Carte blanche

    Carte blanche

    I don’t normally like to be so reactionary with my words as I’m about to be. I’m not a reactionary person. I prefer to observe, assess, plan, but I have some time to kill at the moment and the specter of fear is lording over me, so, here it comes out of the brain pipe, raw and unfiltered.

    I hope I’m wrong. I hope that the truth prevails, and that this incident with Kirk doesn’t become the call to arms for the right to start firing up the engines and building the camps. I hope that this incident was (as statistics show) just another pissed off cisgender, white, male.

    But it won’t be. The right has been looking for a martyr to catalyze their message for years. It didn’t work when Trump was shot, not how they wanted. They needed blood, and, after seeing the video, it looks like they got it.

    I pray to whatever force beyond me is listening that the shooter doesn’t turn out to be a trans person, but, as the truth does seem fluid these days, I’m sure no matter the outcome, we will be blamed. There is an agenda here, and this fits so nicely into furthering their narrative, that I really don’t see a way that they won’t try to twist this as a leftist-trans plot to kill “the Great, and even Legendary, Charlie Kirk.”

    Since January 2013, of the 5700 mass shootings in the US, 5 of the perpetrators have been confirmed to be transgender, according to Gun Violence Archive. A statistic that works out to 0.088%. That’s even less that the often reported 1% of the population being transgender. Yet, of late, every single horrific event is being tied by the right to a transgender person.

    If at any point there is a person in this country with even a modicum of free thought that thinks that trans people are not being singled out an othered to force an agenda of eradication and genocide, then you are the highest of fools.

    Here’s what is really happening. Law abiding trans people, such as my partner and I, and scared. Fear is not something I generally describe myself as having. Yet, in the middle of the night two days ago, as I awoke to my dog barking out the sliding glass door that walks directly into our bedroom, I was afraid. I am proudly, outwardly trans. We have trans pride flags hanging from our frontage. Yet in that moment, my partner mentioned how maybe we should take them down. I wondered at whether I should keep my pistol out of the safe and next to the bed. Trans people have now become hunted things.

    What had become the greatest gift I had ever given myself, to be truly happy, to feel joy and love for myself and my body, is being used as a political tool to further the cause of fascism. It happened before, and it is happening now. Every fascist regime needs a scapegoat, and trans people are it.

    In the same week as three prime ministers have resigned from office, as countries such as Nepal riot in the streets and demand better, America, so braggadociosly strong, rests on her laurels and lets her democracy erode. While the jews died, the Germans suffered, and it will be the same here.

    Though the world did not depend on Germany. Germany was at best a giant among men. The United States is, for better or worse, a cornerstone of our civilization, and the fact that the “greatest country in the world” is keen to sit back and let the rot of fascism eat her from inside, says a lot about how decadence and comfort are the enemies of growth.

    I’m afraid, and if you’re not, if you think yourself distant from the conflict, or even on the “winning side” then you should at least beware.

  • Up to speed

    I’ve recently returned from my tenth journey to Burning Man. Since I’ve been back I’ve been trying to think of how I’d write this article, something summarizing the changes I’ve seen in the event, the denizens, etc, but I find myself not having a lot to say, or, at least, I haven’t puzzled out quite what all of those thoughts I had in the Great Desert K-Hole meant.

    It was a hard burn. With the weather and a flurry of emotions in the beginning of the event, I found myself falling back into old habits. It is a lesson I’ve learned a few times now, but it is truly hard to disassociate who you were in certain places and certain events with who you are now, especially when those prior actions were, at best, coping mechanisms for a hollow life.

    It has become very apparent that my attitude and relationship toward the event needs to change, and I’ve decided to take at least next year off. I’ve been planning to do so for a while, but I’m going to follow through this time. Think of it less as a retirement, and more of a licking of the wounds and returning with vengeance.

    All of that being said, I had a great time with my absolutely wonderful campmates, and I greatly enjoyed showing my darling, patient girlfriend around my favorite place. I promise, beautiful, burn was better next year.

    I haven’t posted in a while, and that irks me. I really hope this gets me back into the habit of writing regularly. I need it. I think I can make something of it, if I can just maintain momentum. It is the thing I was always best at, afterall.

    This summer, nay, this past year, has been hard. It constantly astounds me how polarly opposite this summer and last were. Here is the part where I’d tell you about how my job has been kicking my ass, I seem to be incredibly emotional all of the time, I live with constant anxiety that my rights are being taken away, and I’m one dark alley away from being tossed through the gates of a modern Auschwitz.

    In fact I’d usually, at this point, start lamenting how my depression has returned after being basically eliminated by HRT. I’d talk about how every day I read the news and cry out into the void as only one who truly doesn’t understand what to do in the face of such reckless hate and idiocy can.

    I won’t. I won’t do it. I spent this morning crying and I won’t do so again. Not today. Not for that reason at least. I just cry all of the time now, so it’s bound to happen later. So let’s talk about what’s going right, and we might as well start with that.

    I cry all of the time! I have emotions! How wonderful (and no, that isn’t sarcasm!) Now that I’ve used up my lifetime allotment of exclamation points, let me just say, that being able to feel this deeply is one of the highlights of the past year. Sure, it makes the bad stuff really bad, but the good, dear reader, the soaring in my soul when I play with my dog, or eat something delicious, or feel hope, the good things I feel almost make up for the pall that has fallen over the world.

    On top of emotions, I look great. Modesty be damned, and I know that I have a long way to go, but I don’t hate looking at myself in the mirror every day now. Things are starting to match. Just earlier I noticed my silhouette, something that has always bothered me, and I didn’t have an instant aversion to it. I had a lot of dysphoria at Burning Man, but it was apparently unwarranted. I loved the pictures. I’m starting to feel confident in my body, and why anyone wants to take that away, I’ll never know.

    I took Jenny to her first pride, and she took me to see her camping spot, and, just, Jenny. She is so good to me, and so patient, and I don’t think I’ve ever been so understood by someone. How I have not annoyed her to death at this point, I’m not sure.

    I went to the ren faire with my friends for my birthday, and we had a great time. In fact, I have wonderful friends. I am really hard on myself, but these people let me hang around despite the despair and self-loathing.

    I’ve been writing. I think I’m actually starting to get back into the swing of it. Currently I’ve got two stories I’m sort of hashing out, as I’d like to start diving into fiction again. I think at this point it’s safe to assume I’ll always be far too anxious to make it as a reporter, and that’s okay.

    Things aren’t always going to go well. In fact, I’ve spent increasingly more amount time assuming that nothing will be good ever again. I’m still not sure I’m incorrect on that. There are dark clouds on the horizon. The overwhelming sense of agitation I feel on a daily basis just existing in this most broken of timelines is immense. I’m not going to think about that for the rest of today. I can’t. To do so pushes me farther into the realms of burn out, and I’m already circling the rim. There may be a time where my will finally breaks, but not for the rest of today.

    Fuck it all, and stay safe.

  • 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.

  • Searching for a former clarity

    I don’t think I’ll ever get used to winter in Seattle. I am beginning to see the fleeting light of my fourth spring here, and, though normally I am ecstatic this time of year for the return of the light and warmth, this year it seems like that same feeling of rebirth and energy is missing.

    Spring really is a beautiful time here. There is just so much green; green that wouldn’t be possible if it weren’t such a wet place. Every year around April the dark lessens, the air warms, and the rain slowly retreats, ever warmer and less frequent, into the most beautiful summer you can imagine before once again running away for nine months.

    Once the flowers start to bloom and life returns to the land, it has always felt like life is also breathed back into me. I have terrible seasonal affective disorder, or, I did. I was really hoping that this winter would be different, because I am different, and, it was, but not in the way I was hoping.

    My life seems to have taken on a path of extremes. Where before starting my transition I existed in a state of constant melancholy, reaching down to despair, I now fluctuate between extreme happiness and extreme agitation. On one hand I have the endless sea of love and care that is my relationship with my partner, who continues to surprise me with the depth of her love for me, and on the other I am bearing witness to the destruction of my homeland as it is gutted and resold to the highest bidder.

    Being trans in America in 2025, or, honestly, being a person with a lick of sense in America in 2025, has become akin to watching a car crash in molasses. The die is cast, the stage is set, we all know where this is going, but the process into fascism seems inexorably slow. With the blanket tariffs, and the elimination of wealth with a speed and magnitude which has never been seen before, I think no one that isn’t caught up in the cult thinks that this ends any other way. At least the orange rectal fissure got one thing right, he is going to run this country like a business, which is to say, burn it down and sell it off to the highest bidder.

    The April 5th protests were the largest ones yet, and somehow the sycophants think that it’s all a ruse. The protesters were paid, the images were AI generated, whatever mental gymnastics they have to do to make it seem like the path they are on is the righteous one. History will not look fondly on this time, yet the outcome will not be a return to American greatness.

    If the twentieth century was the century of pax americana, then the twenty-first will be the century of American despair. We are no longer “the good guys,” hell, we probably never were. John Wayne isn’t coming in to save the day. In fact, like John Wayne, who made a name for himself playing a soldier on the silver screen while other men gave their lives in war, yet never went to war himself, America has become that which it originally opposed, a bloated tyrant inflicting its personality on distant shores.

    A lack of equality and fairness is the problem here. As long as one group, one country, one person, holds more power than another, there can never truly be peace. For a long time I thought we were moving in the right direction. I harbored the light of hope in my heart for so long, yet like the dull spring in Seattle I now face, that light has dwindled and the magic seems to be fleeting. I loved this country. This is my home, but I do not feel at home here. I have no intention of leaving, but my duty is not to this land, but to those who dwell in it. I do not know if I any longer wish to identify myself as American. I simply exist as a citizen of humanity, who hopes that with each action going forward that I am on the side of goodness and love.

    The wheels of history will continue to turn, and just as how a dreary spring will give way to the light and energy of summer, this will pass. The house divided will fall, and the survivors will build a new house, one with its walls made to include all, and it’s foundation built on the weary packed earth of history.

    Let us hope that next time we remember.

  • 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.

  • To arms

    I’m going to war, and not in anyway I imagined I would.

    Surely, with all of the other issues that we are facing currently in this country, something as simple as gender-based discrimination in auto insurance wouldn’t be so vile as to beckon the full fury of my tenacity and wit.

    Yet here we are.

    The saga unfolds as thus: on 3/1/25 I noticed my auto insurance payment had been processed. I realize that my deadname is still on the account, so I proceed to change it. Afterall, I don’t want there to be some insurance SNAFU where I have mismatching documents.

    My insurance company makes it very easy to change my name. I just update the driver information. Everything is right there, even gender. So a few clicks, “Traea McGrady, female” and it’s all set to go, and hey, my premiums will even increase by $45.19.

    There’s something about that last part that doesn’t sit with me and it shouldn’t with you. I don’t like to jump to conclusions though. So I try the same process again, this time just changing my name and leaving my gender as male. This time my premiums do not increase at all. From this cursory reconnoitering I seem to have come back with the information that if you identify as female, you are charged more for auto insurance, full stop.

    Of course everyone knows about the “pink tax.” Everyone knows that we live in a patriarchal society, but here was damnable evidence that women are being treated differently just because they are women, and while I was extremely flattered and affirmed in my gender for being included in this, it still doesn’t make it right. Afterall, not but seconds before submitting my information with an updated gender, according to my insurance company, I was not any more at risk, and thus did not need to suffer an increase in my premium.

    Calling my insurance company got me nowhere but more confirmation that, yes, by identifying as female, my rates would go up. I do have to say that my insurance company was very helpful and the people I spoke to on the phone did try to find me any other discount that would reduce my rates. None was found.

    It was at this point I realized I had a choice to make. I could let this go. I probably should have, looking back, but I love a good fight, especially one with words as the weapon of choice. Not only was this blatantly misogynistic, but also felt punitively transphobic. At the behest of one of my friends, I filed a complaint with the Washington state Office of the Insurance Commissioner. The conversation that unfolded can be seen here, in reverse chronological order:

    The summary of the above is this: gender is a factor in insurance underwriting in the state of Washington. There are also rules in place that make it so that special cases cannot be accounted for outside of the bounds of the official rate plan. These rules are part of the Washington insurance law.

    The biggest take away from the above though, and much thanks to the transparency and service by Michael Harman, the Compliance Analyst from the Office of the Insurance Commissioner, is that there is something that I, as a lowly citizen, can do about it. Following the link he provided me has yielded a form which I can use to start the process of revising the law that says the gender can be a basis for underwriting of insurance in the State of Washington.

    It isn’t the hill I saw myself dying on, but the longer I sit here, in the moist grass, sun on my face, dodging in and out of the Seattle gloom, I think this is a fine place to get low.

    Stay Tuned.

  • The defeatist attitude is getting old

    “Protests don’t work. I’m not watching the news anymore. We don’t have any power.”

    Stop. Just stop. This is exactly the attitude they want you to have. All of this is designed to make you want to hide your head in the sand and wait for it all to blow over. They want you to dig a little hole and grow fat and weak so that when they come with the men in black to take you you’ll be an easy target, and they are coming.

    A lot of people seem to focus on the idea that protests, especially in liberal areas, do nothing. So let’s play in that space. Why do you think it does nothing? Because one protest doesn’t change anything? It took years, decades even, for everything to get here. This is a long fight. We are in the “peaceful gathering to show our discontent” stage. If you think that the only way things get better is by burning teslas, well, you’re wrong. If things get violent, the fascists win. As soon as the powder keg blows up, we will be in martial law and then we have REALLY lost. Right now we need to be gathering our allies and preparing for war.

    So what then do peaceful protests do? They show we are angry. Happy people don’t take days off work to go march. Those who are satisfied with their government don’t go stand in the rain with signs outside of government buildings. As for why protests are in the middle of the day when people have work? Because the people we want to see our discontent are also working normal hours.

    I feel like I’m shouting into the wind again. Let’s tie this up.

    I find myself both proud of, and disgusted by so many people recently. So many people out there care. I’ve been to a handful of marches and protests now, and the one thing I always take away from them, more than a sense of progress or control, is that I’m not alone. I see all of these other people doing the same thing I am, and caring about the same issues, and the fear and anxiety I have that creeps into my mind at 2AM is temporarily lessened.

    So protests do nothing? They prove you’re not alone. Are things going to change over night? Of course not. This is going to be a very long battle, but if I am a soldier in the army of freedom and liberty, I can’t fight if I am paralyzed by fear. Protests, if nothing else, feed your soul, and your will to fight, and that’s worth a lot more than ignoring the problem and hoping help will come from somewhere else.

    The time to throw bricks through the windows of Starbucks will come, but for now we need to build community and strength so when the boots of the faceless are standing on our necks, we know that help will come from those we stood with in the beginning.

    I guess that’s it for now.

    Hail libertas.