When to flee

Today is the transgender day of visibility. “Happy trans day of visibility! My Dad wished me this morning. I appreciate that sentiment from him. His support means a lot to me, especially these days. I think I’ve cried while talking with him more times in the past couple of years than I did for decades prior. Transition is always a vulnerable thing to go through, especially in public. Disapproval of friends, family, the church that raised me, were always fears I had to face. Also a certain degree of physical danger - even as a white woman, transgender women face higher threats of violence than cis women, and of course far less than men. But of course those were table stakes in making my choice to transition. I’d make that choice again any day. However, the danger we’re facing now is heartbreaking.

I flew for the first time since the Trump regime took over. I was afraid. Even though there are no reports of trans people being detained at airports yet, I’m still thinking ahead to what’s coming. So far the administration has been kidnapping pro-Palestine protestors and organizers. They are particularly targeting students and immigrants, and are disregarding all forms of immigration law to do so. I’m not so naive as to believe that I still have rights as a US citizen. We’re well beyond that point now when they can “revoke” someone’s green card in the name of homeland security. So, even though today I can still travel domestically, I don’t know how much longer that will be true.

How long do I wait? When is it time to flee? Is it the first time that a trans activist gets kidnapped and disappeared by masked thugs? Is it the second? Is it when they stop allowing people with X gender markers to re-enter the country? Is it when Texas starts to jail trans people for having “falsified documents” of their name and gender change? There are a million red lines that we may cross in the coming days and years. Is it actually possible to survive what’s coming?

This isn’t even a private conversation at this point. Because I’ve talked about my German citizenship, friends and colleagues will often ask me when I’m planning to leave. The camps are already built. The tools for raiding homes, rounding people up, and seizing property are already here. We’ve already been declared a public enemy. A threat to good morals, the fabric of society. Transgender people have been thoroughly dehumanized, the exact same way we’ve dehumanized our immigrant and homeless communities. We know that the time is coming, but the question still lingers. When is the right time?

I went back to church a couple weeks ago. Not even the LGBT-affirming church I attended here in San Francisco. I went home to the church that raised me. I grew up in the Evangelical church, at a Southern Baptist affiliated church that to this day preaches complementarianism (women can’t be leaders), and that LGBTQ+ identities are an affront to the divine order. It’s all front and center on their doctrines on their website.

There was nothing special about that Sunday. I walked in unannounced, and sat in the section I always used to. The same pastor who had recently taken over a decade before was still preaching. I saw that the sanctuary was the same, recognized some people I used to lead worship with up on the stage, still singing songs that sounded the way that they always have. All that had changed was me.

That day I wore a form fitting dress, and my leather jacket. 7 or 8 people recognized me, and there were a few others I recognized, but didn’t get the chance to talk to. Everyone was civil. Perhaps the most notable interaction I had was when the former pastor bluntly stated “you’ve transitioned”, and I couldn’t help but laugh in response. Yes! I have! It’s going fantastically for me, and I’ve never loved the way that people treat me or the way I look in the mirror more than I do now.

It is so bizarre that people like those church goers can welcome me in, have a normal conversation with a real life trans woman, and feel totally justified while proudly voting to “eradicate transgenderism from public life”. I’m mystefied as to what they think is going to happen. Making the country into your Christendom isn’t some neutral thing that can just happen. It requires violence. You can say that you love me and that I’m welcome in your church, but I can’t be welcome there if I’m locked up in a men’s prison for gender crimes, where I’ll be raped until I die by suicide or violence, like so many other transgender women are living and dying in US prisons right now. There’s no “good ones” or “bad ones” that separate your family members and communities from the violence that’s coming. The fascists will find us and kill us, for no purpose other than satisfying the blood lust of their most desensitized followers. All for what? Because millions of Americans want to expedite the rapture because of a viral piece of children’s media?

Truly, I just want to live a good life. I want to live in peace, to work hard, take care of the world that we all share, and to take care of my community. I don’t want to run. I don’t want to die. Why can’t people just treat me how they do in the real world, as a person? There’s something terrible about the way that the people who hate us are able to dehumanize us. Whether it’s on Twitter, from the pulpit, a podcast, or from the stage at a maga rally, why is it so easy to hate us? I know it comes from a place of ignorance. It comes from not knowing a single trans person. Or maybe from never considering what life is like in our shoes. We have to be an abstraction, merely an obstacle that needs to be dealt with. At least one bible lesson makes much more sense to me now - how the pharoh hardened his heart enough to order the deaths of his firstborn. Something like one in four of my friends are effectively disowned by their families for simply living peacefully in a way that feels right to them.

Happy trans day of visibility.