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Transgender Perspectives
Are Trans People Canaries in the So-Called American Coal Mine?
This sentiment is both upsetting and feels horrifyingly true right now
I remember crying when Obama first told us that there were no blue states or red states, just the United States. I was in a red state at the time and wanted so badly to believe that message. I’m sure I wasn’t alone. That was the speech that propelled him into the national consciousness and eventually into the presidency.
It was a speech that provided some beautiful fantasy image of my country that ignores all of our history, addressing none of the bloody truths that have divided us for so long. It touched on something that southerners desperately wanted to hear from a politician: we weren’t forgotten, and we weren’t unredeemable. I believe Obama won North Carolina in 2008 by touching on that desire.
As a trans person, that sentiment has never resonated less than today.
The difference between a blue state and a red state is safety that could vanish any moment beginning in January, when we might be swallowed in a wave of quiet blood flowing across my country. My people’s forgotten blood. It will rest not on the hands of those who hate my kind, but on the hands of those who ignore that hate.
A little over 2 years ago, I did what a bunch of LGBTQ+ people are preparing to do now. I moved from a small town in the American South to the largest city I’ve ever lived in across the country from where I grew up.
The culture shock is still overwhelming me. It doesn’t feel like the same country at all. I know many all around me who wish it wasn’t the same country, including people I love. That hurts because it feels like abandonment of loved ones I left behind, but I understand.
Where I’m from, there is a lot of support for a bill designed to legally erase people like me across the country, as red state sentiments legislate blue states into hateful submission. That support comes from enough places that there’s a good chance it will become a law. There isn’t a lot of support for that bill here in the bigger city, but there’s a heavy dose of gloomy acceptance that is absolutely disgusting to witness.
