On predictions.

April 14, 2022

In situations of fight or flight, I’ve always chosen the former. I’ve always believed in the moral arc of the universe, and the upward staircase of social progress. I’ve studied how it has played out for other marginalized groups over time, through massive cultural revolutions: women’s suffrage and Roe v. Wade, gay pride and the fight for marriage equality, the Black Lives Matter movement, just to name a few. And as my community continues to face relentless attacks and oppression from all directions, I’ve waited with bated breath for ours to ignite. For our calls for solidarity to be answered. For our “allies” to be outraged enough at the murders of my Black trans sisters and the suicides of trans children in my community to take the streets and demand justice.

These days I’m left to wonder: what happens when the moral arc bends so far in silence that it snaps under the pressure?

I’m rapidly losing faith in my ability to continue to fight while also ensuring my physical, mental, and emotional well-being. For years, I’ve been shielded from the worst of this oppression by my whiteness and my various other privileges. But that armour is cracking now too.

In the four years since the beginning of my transition, I’ve been assaulted by a transphobe on the streets of San Francisco. I’ve been harassed and humiliated by police, the medical and legal systems, and the TSA. I’ve been forcibly ostracized from cis lesbian and AFAB non-binary communities and spaces by way of their insidious transmisogyny. I’ve had to flee unsafe housing situations, sexual encounters, and workplace environments in self-preservation. And finally, after learning of the murder of a white trans woman in liberal Vermont, it seems that the dam holding back the absolute worst of the oppression that has almost exclusively affected trans women of color is about to break too.

Everyone I know is terrified. Our conversations are dominated by swapping horror stories, survival strategies, and escape plans.

The overwhelming response to that last conversation is a simple question: “to where?”

I would give anything to have an answer for us.