This is not okay
Yesterday I shopped for groceries with my partner, and in the evening we watched “The Danish Girl”. The movie reminded me of how far LGBTQA rights have come. Nobody is threatening to commit me to an asylum or put me through electroconvulsive therapy because of my sexuality. I think about how much I owe my present to suffragists and LGBTQA activists.
For a long time I wanted to pursue American citizenship. San Francisco was the first city in my life to make me feel truly at home. In SF nobody gave me the “omg are you insane” look when I tell them of my strange ideas. I was actually worried about my narrow definition of queerness when I started to know people on a wide ambiguous spectrum. For the first time I had contemplated the notion of my gender.
So when Trump won, I had probably felt it more personally than the average non-American. If I had successfully pursued the American passport, I would be genuinely afraid of my safety right now. I am still very much worried about the safety of my friends.
Now, even in the safety of my own country, I don’t feel safe. I don’t know what it means for our future. Trump’s win is the reversal of the world I thought we were on the trajectory to live in. It destroyed my faith in humanity — that we were not as self-interested as the economists make us to be —that we will choose the safety of the collective when push comes to shove.
I became confused at the reactions of my social circle. It ranged from gloat, apathy, normalizing, celebrating, blame, people coming out as secret Trump admirers, to eliciting empathy for Trump voters. I started to wonder a lot about the people I know and myself. Where do I stand, how do I feel? I doubted the validity of my reaction. I started to feel like all of this was pointless, that I am better off cultivating my inner-zen than to worry about current affairs when most signs point to the world burning soon anyway. By voicing a stand I feel like I am going against my own personal values of non-judgment and empathy.
But I soon realized, to even have this conflict is a position of privilege. Trump is not my president, my daily life is not impacted by US politics, the implications of his win on Singapore is not clear yet. My life is not threatened. It is easy to be all zen and compassionate when I don’t have to worry about my pussy being grabbed or told to go back to my own country. I don’t have kids who may be the subject of bullying, and I don’t have to fear being the victim of physical violence. Try telling a Jewish person to empathize with Hitler’s enablers.
I debated it within myself. I didn’t want to be fear-mongering or judgmental. I never liked the “us vs them” mentality. I too, want a world of bridges, not higher walls.
Martin Luther King Jr. was famously quoted, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” What is not explicit is that justice is messy: between all the wins of justice, there have been lives lost, horrors committed, tradeoffs made. Rights are won, justice is served, because throughout history there have been people who have put their lives on the line to act and speak.
I can’t influence people’s biases and beliefs, but I can consciously elect mine. I can only be safe right now because enough people have consciously acted and spoken out on the behalf of people like me. I have faced discrimination and oppression in some form or the other my entire life, where I am constantly made to feel like my feelings are less valid.
So this time around I wish to be in solidarity with people who believe in freedom and equality, and those who are facing an unsafe world. I reject the notion that this is okay.
This is not okay. And it is also not okay if we believe this will not affect that part of our world, wherever we are.
I will be deeply contemplating what are the concrete actions that can be taken, apart from listening and compassion. Listening is not going to prepare us for the reality when Trump goes back on his campaign promises to reopen mining towns, when the billionaire they elected didn’t give a shit about their welfare, right from the very beginning.
Systems have been breaking. The old way of living where we are bound to a social contract to work 40 hours a week and retire comfortably — that world is not coming back anymore. We are facing global challenges: climate change, the refugee crisis, the implications of technological advancements, economic uncertainty because there is no way debt can just be snowballing with no repercussions. There is only more anger and displacement to come, not only for the US, but for the rest of us. We can only hope we can still choose to make a difference.
