Sans Seraph

Tag: protest

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • I’m stuck in Seattle

    Maybe it’s time I start coming to terms with it: I’m stuck here for the foreseeable future.

    Stuck is an interesting verb in this case. If there is one pervading theme in my life, it’s constantly striving to be absolutely free. Free to move, act, love, be. So, when I say I’m stuck, this should resonate as something that’s anathema to me.

    I’ve lived here for four and a half years now. That’s quite a long time. I’ve lived in this particular house for longer than I have ever lived in any one location. Even as a child, my parents and I moved around a lot. My dad was always pissing off someone at work and having to move to a new factory, or my mom got bored or tried to “fix” things until they were too screwed up it was just easier to move than to actually let the dust settle around her own life. Unfortunately, that’s a trait I inherited, but luckily, I seem to keep my “messing” limited to my own art projects.

    While the philosophy behind the endless pursuit of perfection is a great topic, I want to talk about something that no one would ever associate with me: acceptance.

    Do I hate the winters? Do i hate the long cold and dark, the lack of any sort of happiness for six months out of the year as I await the triumphant return of the sun? Yes. Oh gods yes. However, over the past year or so, I think that being “stuck” in Seattle may not be such a bad thing. Maybe my perspective has to change.

    I don’t think I really wanted to be here in the first place. Ending up here was the result of trying to please my partner at the time. It was I who wanted to move, but I don’t think if I had the thought incepted in my head, I would have chosen Seattle. I love the desert, you see. I love the vast nothingness, the at-first-glance lifelessness, and the deeper pulsation of life that’s hidden. I love the rocks, and the open sky, and the loneliness of it all. In a perfect world, I would live in the desert, but we do not live in a perfect world.

    I know longer have any hope that humanity will curb climate change in any meaningful way. Without a major ecological catastrophe, almost assuredly resulting in the loss of massive amount of life, I see no way that human emission of carbon slows. This is one of the things I have come to accept. This is not something that ends well. There will be a flight from the hotter drier places of the world over the next few decades, as the feedback loop runs away. Billions will migrate from equatorial regions to more temperate ones, and the resulting diaspora will be brutal.

    It makes no logical sense to live in the desert anymore. I think I have begun to accept that. I have no desire to be a refugee in the climate wars.

    There are vast parts of this country (in hotter areas no less) that are basically no go zones for me. Hostilities are so great against trans people in certain parts of this country that my work reconsidered sending me on a trip to Florida to help another technician catch up on work. It wasn’t worth my life (and thank them for that.)

    So, ever the logical monolith, I have arrived at the conclusion that I love Seattle, or, maybe I’m beginning too. Like my mother before me, in all of her “messing,” maybe I also have a desire to mess until I achieve some un-achievable level of perfection and happiness. I certainly talk to my therapist a lot about it. “If I move to the desert I’ll be happy. If I get a better job I’ll be happy.” If transition has taught me one thing, it’s that my happiness comes from being a better me, from achieving my internal goals. I am safe. I am warm. I live in a liberal city that’s oh so wet and cold in the winter, and absolutely beautiful in the summer. I have friends, and I’m hoping to make more. I’m in a relationship with a beautiful girl, and my dog is insane, but so sweet. I have more cars than I need (which makes me happy.) I could work to have these things anywhere, but I have them now in Seattle, and that’s just fine with me.

    So I’m not going to spend my time looking to escape. I’m going to be me where I am now. I’m going to build, instead of run. Now, more than ever, with the very doom of our way of life looming in our overcast future, it is time to look around and begin to fortify what foundations we have against the coming storm.

    So I’ll make my stand here.

  • WA50501 Protest 2/5/25

    I finally got around to editing my shots from the protest on 2/5/25 at the WA Capitol.

  • It’s calm now

    I think we all could use a breather. The anger and frustration came to a head last week. I realized I had been giving it too much power, and it was affecting my relationships. I’m still mad, but it goes to show you that being all in on anything isn’t the way.

    I’ve adopted a itinerary of preparedness. It’s too early to be throwing bricks (much to my chagrin) and this will be a marathon, not a race. Make no mistake about it, I plan to fight, but I intend to live my life, too.

    I tend to learn the same lessons over and over again. I consider myself a person of above average intelligence, but I am also incredibly stubborn. Patience has never been a strong suit. Usually I am able to put my head down and conquer any task with enough force of will, but this isn’t something that will be over soon, or easily, or probably bloodlessly. We are so far from the point of needing our full strength, and if it is wasted now, then the battle is lost before it has begun.

    Now is the time to be making allies, and plans. Plans to live to fight another day. Plans to live in general. I refuse to devote all of my time and energy to “the cause,” not because I don’t believe in it, but as a 35 year old woman, who is just starting to live her life, I actually do have higher priorities.

    I could be killed tomorrow. I could die of some strange disease. Would it be more of a tragedy that I didn’t get to give my life for freedom and liberty, or that I never had a life to give at all?

    Falling into the trap of wasting our energy now is exactly what they want. It’s important that we don’t give in. That we remember why we’re fighting; not just for our selves, and our country, and democracy, but for our lives. Lives that most of us haven’t even begun to live.

  • It should be an act of love

    I’m sitting here confronting the fear and pure aversion I have toward switching to injections. Every time I think about stabbing myself in the leg I get a cringe feeling that runs up my spine. Yet, with the way things are going, I see no choice but to switch to injections in case I need to source illegal HRT drugs from elsewhere.

    Now, beside the evidence that injections are wildly (read: anecdotally) considered the “most effective” route, that’s not the point. I don’t want to do this. I have been having great results with just pills, and despite how much I do dislike being on a testosterone blocker, I’m rather happy just taking pills everyday for the rest of my life.

    The point here is the only way I can imagine being able to stab myself with a rather long needle every 5 days (I’m aware of DIY hormones that are longer) is to build up this sort of righteous anger inside. What does that say about me that anger is such a motivator? I’m not sure, but with the recent events happening in the US, my ire is firmly directed to one place.

    Which brings me to this post. I don’t want to be angry. I feel sometimes that by being trans and living my life out and proud, I’m committing an act of defiance. There is anger there that replaces what I think is the most important part about being transgender.

    Being transgender is one of the greatest acts of love that you can do for yourself. We cannot forget that. I’m doing this for me because I want to love myself. I want to feel comfortable being me. That’s all it is. I spent far too long hating myself, my body, my life. I didn’t want to feel like I was just waiting to die. I wanted to like being me.

    I loved people, and was kind, but I didn’t love me. Every bit of compassion I had toward others was just a hollow gesture. Every success I had was done out of a sense of “doing what I should do” and felt so empty that I never had pride in it.

    That’s all gone now.

    Things aren’t perfect. I will still carry a feeling of defiance and resentment until equality and sense is restored. I don’t know how to convince people that they should care about people. I’m going to try though. I’m going to fight and scream and sing, but most importantly:

    I’m going to love myself.

  • I Don’t Have to Tell You Things Are Bad


    Everybody knows things are bad.

    I’m not sure what this is yet. I know I’m going to be writing it in first person, which is different for me, but the self is very important here, because I’m a part of this. I don’t usually journal, or blog, in this case, but considering I haven’t written much of anything in the past decade I can’t really say I do any of this. I suppose you can consider this a record of me, that hopefully stands the test of time, helps some people, and lasts long after I’m gone, which, unfortunately, might be soon.

    My name is Traea McGrady, and I am a trans woman living in America at the beginning of 2025.

    I am angry.

    However, though anger may be my dominant emotion at the moment, I haven’t lost hope. Anyone paying attention knew that the road we were going down was bad. I have seen every hope I had that goodness would prevail dashed upon the rocky shore of fascism, but it has not all been spent. This is not the end, nor the beginning of the end. Trans people will always exist. We always have, and always will. The laws of man are microscopic in the face of the laws of nature. What’s important now is that you don’t lose hope. You aren’t powerless. Every day you wake up and be who you are you chip away at the fortress of evil that stands before you.

    Inside of you right now is a storm of emotions that is ever changing, and overwhelming. I feel it too. We’re all frightened for our lives, and for our futures. There are people out there who hate us, and truly want to see us wiped from existence. These things are scary. So feel scared. Feel scared, and depressed, and furious, and overcome. Cry yourself to sleep. Have aggressive sex. Smoke pot and eat an entire pizza.

    Do that for a few days if you need to. It’s okay to not know what to do. After you’ve felt those emotions, that pain, sadness, anger, whatever it is, you take that and you use that. Be sad and write a crappy blog like this one, or some terrible poetry. Draw, paint, make music. Take those emotions and feel them and remind yourself that you are alive and that this sadness exists just so that you can be happy. This anger is inside of you so that you may know peace. As long as you are still capable of feeling you are still alive.

    Let creation be an act of resistance. It is still early. We don’t know the extent of the weapons they have to use on us, but we do know that we can make our own. Everything we bring into this world that comes from deep within ourselves is one more marker that says “I am here, and you can’t ignore me.” Every protest song, work of art, late night conversation, and vertically filmed video is more evidence that we do exist, and more evidence that they are wrong.

    The time might come when we have to destroy to protect ourselves. I pray every second of every day that it does not. Until that time comes, I will do everything I can to make sure that if I do go, the crater of my absence will be impossible to ignore.

    I suggest you do the same.