Month: April 2023

Anti-Trans Is Anti-Humanity

Last fall, I wrote a letter to the editor of The Salt Lake Tribune in response to several Southern Utah politicians speaking at a meeting in which LGBTQ+ folks were repeatedly called evil and satanic. Members of the community left numerous disturbing comments in response to that letter. Seventy percent of the comments were deleted by The Tribune‘s staff because they were threatening or otherwise violated the publication’s comment guidelines. I saw some of those comments before they were deleted. I’ve been terrified ever since.

Similar comments were left on stories in other publications that discussed LGBTQ+ rights, including stories I was quoted in or otherwise participated in. Those comments were also deleted, but that doesn’t change the mindset of those in our community who have the feelings they have and who threaten, defame, harass, dehumanize, and discriminate against those in the LGBTQ+ community for no reason other than the fact that we are LGBTQ+.

These community members are taking their cues from the politicians who have turned their attention to the trans community because being anti-trans is a good political strategy. It gets people whipped up in ways that catalyze people to act, often without thinking, from shadowy places that all humans possess but that don’t need to govern our lives, determine our values, inform our beliefs, or control our behaviors.

What I mean is, fear, disgust, and loathing are all being conjured but not so we can explore those feelings and work through them to gain a better understanding of their origins. Instead, they’re being exploited, and words and actions that stem from these feelings are spreading like wildfire across parched land.

Who’s being destroyed? Not just trans folks. Not just the entire LGBTQ+ community. It’s everyone. Everyone who’s been discriminated against. Everyone who doesn’t have equality. Everyone who’s made gains and is now losing ground.

And everyone who’s harming others.

When our common ground is burned, our shared humanity singed beyond recognition, we all end up having nothing.

Anti-trans legislation will most likely be one of the top agenda items for conservative politicians in 2024. We’re already seeing a wave of anti-trans legislation and anti-trans language and attitudes across the United States, as well as here in Utah. Bills and emergency rules are getting more expansive, more disturbing, and more life-threatening.

At the same time, people are making statements that are more violent, caustic, and harmful than ever.

Earlier this month, a community member in St. George, Utah, stood up and told city officials that it’s not harassment and discrimination against LGBTQ+ folks which is causing us to die by suicide because we’re all mentally ill anyway. The implication is that we can be treated however by whomever because we’re broken, defective, and disposable.

Last month, a local politician who spoke at the meeting I mentioned above shared a cartoon on social media depicting the LGBTQ+ community as being a Trojan Horse full of pedophiles. That’s not about “protecting” children, which is the line these politicians use when they propose anti-trans legislation. It’s literally an elected official characterizing every person who’s LGBTQ+ as a pedophile.

At an event last week, a fellow volunteer approached me and said that “we” are supposed to be boycotting Bud Light because the company has a transgender spokesperson. We? We who? What we? That’s not a we that includes me. That’s not a we that will ever include me. And that’s not a space where I’m welcome or safe.

Where am I welcome or safe these days? Where are any LGBTQ+ folks welcome and safe? We’re running out of spaces that are inclusive.

I was recently told that the solution is for me to conform, adapt, tolerate, or otherwise learn to live compatibly with the very same people in this community who are attacking the LGBTQ+ community, who have attacked me, and who are making it impossible for LGBTQ+ folks to feel and be safe here. I don’t know what the solution is, but that’s not it.

Pain, Uncertainty, Hard Work, and Writing

I’m wearing my Victorian chemise. I’ve been cleaning and crying and organizing my closets all day. While gently spreading a newly washed flat sheet across my bed, I thought about my dog Hayden, who died almost two years ago.

Pain, pain, pain. It came sharp and quick like needles marching up and down my body—not just losing Hayden but all the pain before and after. I think we so suddenly remember the animals we’ve lost because they allow us to enter into other painful experiences. Animals are guides, I believe, even when they’re no longer with us.

There’s been so much pain in my life, in my husband’s life, in our friends’ lives, in our families’ lives, in the neighborhoods where we’ve lived, in the cities and states we’ve called home, in public spaces, in private spaces, in our country, in the world.

Leonard Cohen spent six years meditating in silence on Mount Baldy. He finally came back because he knew he was a writer and had to write. He was writing all the time while meditating, he said.

I used to say I was a text generator, not a writer. I was rejecting agency and narrative. A fellow poet and dear friend influenced me in this regard or maybe we influenced each other. The stance was entertaining but preposterous. I’m actually a writer, not a text generator. But I had folks fooled: On Twitter, some of my followers actually thought I was a bot.

It would be easier to be a bot. It would. This world makes me bleed, and I bleed into it in turn.

When I was arranging a stack of poetry books on a high shelf this afternoon, one of them fell on my head and left a welt between my eyebrows. It’s kind of a third-eye type of thing. The offending collection was by John Donne, my favorite poet, a man whose work sets my heart beating in time with his lines. What’s that saying? Something about being hit over the head … Donne’s aim was a bit off, but close enough. Point made.

Earl Smith, a man I met once who’s dear to me said we just have to do three things: try, love, and use our gifts to help others. Phil Stutz, a Jungian analyst whose work I admire, says we will never escape the following three things: pain, hard work, and uncertainty.

That’s what I’m meditating on now, after three days of sitting with an especially painful situation. I need to try. I need to love. I need to use my gifts to help others. And I need to do those things despite pain being unavoidable, hard work being necessary and constant, and uncertainty being ever-present.

And I’m going to have to write at least some of it down. I think that’s unavoidable, too.