Mat Gilson

Laverne Cox, one of few mainstream celebrity transgender people, did an interview shortly after Trump’s inauguration that held some truly devastating advice. She was clearly ripped apart to suggest that trans kids whose lives are being threatened should go stealth if they can. This is a sign of how endangered and violently threatened this group of young people are, for their supporters to be forced to encourage them to prioritize their immediate physical safety over their long term health and happiness. It is an impossible choice, but if it will save your life for this moment and you can do it, of course you must protect yourself or your child. It is especially devastating to know that this extremely small, vulnerable population of children are not only unique in their identification, but in their bravery and intelligence. To know yourself so truly and honestly at such a young age is a rare gift, which makes the need to hide all the more cruel. 

It is now our obligation to defend this exceedingly small and fragile community of children against an onslaught of truly vile rhetoric and legislation. Every single queer person in America who is safe to do so, must be visibly and unwaveringly queer in public. If you have the good fortune to live in a large liberal city, wear your cheesy pride merch, look confusing to the elderly, wear your pronoun pins, dye your hair. It is the responsibility of those of us who are safe and supported enough by our communities to be the visual reminder that transgender and queer people will continue to exist, regardless of the administration’s descent into aggression against those they see as the most vulnerable among us. 

It is not the time to disappear into crowds and work behind the scenes. It is the time to vandalize your local homophobic church, it is time to post pictures of girls kissing on your facebook page and then delete your facebook, it is the time to tell the transphobes in your life to fix their hearts or fucking die (RIP David Lynch, as if things couldn’t be worse.) If you have what is now unfortunately the privilege of having community and safety, you must take up more room than ever. Do not comply in advance with the clear agenda of cultural conservatism that the fascists now ruling our country are relying on to maintain their order. Your visibility is now a tool of defiance against this oppression. If it hides, it will rot.

Foucault, in his History of Sexuality, explains that “If sex is repressed, that is, condemned to prohibition, nonexistence, and silence, then the mere fact that one is speaking about it has the appearance of a deliberate transgression. A person who holds forth in such language places himself to a certain extent outside the reach of power; he upsets established law.” This administration wants you to be afraid, and fear the onslaught of executive orders and proposed legislation. But your mere existence defies this new, unjust law. Your existence is not secondary to the government’s ideology, so transgress against this fascism by speaking about gender and sexuality, by being visibly queer. Please look out for your community, please be safe, and please be gay in public.