In 2019, I moved into a tiny, black A-frame cabin nestled into the woods—there were maybe two neighbors who could have heard me scream. But there was no one in sight...
by Margarert Killjoy at birdsbeforethestorm.net on 28th November 2024 via thefreeonline at https://wp.me/pIJl9-ESa Telegram t.me/thefreeonline
The first night I spent in that cabin, I felt like I was in, you know, a horror movie.
There I was, a dark and stormy night, too distracted by the flashes of lightning through the glass window in the door to pay attention to my sweetheart. I was waiting for the next flash to illuminate a silhouette against trees.
Instead, it was fine. The next day, we laid flooring and they talked about their love, as a queer sex worker, of true crime podcasts.
For the first month or so, as I walked up the hill at night to my cabin, I was afraid. I clutched a knife; I jumped at shadows. It wasn’t long before I stopped being afraid of those woods..
Maybe, more than anything, I stopped being afraid because I realized: I was the scary thing in those woods.
I live in West Virginia, and I’m no more afraid to live here than elsewhere.
To be clear, there are specific and tangible threats that queer people are facing from the legal systems of red states. If I had, or was, a trans child or teenager, I’d likely be looking hard at other places to live, other places where access to medical care was more certain.
To be brave in the face of threats isn’t to ignore those threats. While I would never advise anyone to run (or to stay), I think it behooves a lot of people, especially trans people, to keep their passports in order and make some contingency plans. I’ve been pondering changing my name legally for awhile, but recent events have made me a lot less interested in doing so anytime soon–I’d rather that my government name be unconnected with my political writing and I’d rather that my government name match the gender I pass more easily as.
But just because there are very real threats facing us—both now and clearly visible on the horizon—doesn’t mean we don’t have agency, and it doesn’t mean that we ought to give up, to flee, or despair. It has never been safe to be a trans person in this country. We, after enormous effort and bloodshed, had reached some high water marks in terms of legal protections and cultural acceptance, and we’re seeing that high tide recede in front of us. That’s okay. We’ve been through it before. Maybe not as individuals, but certainly as a culture.
A journalist named Edward R Murrow has a quote that floats through my head often enough: “remember that we are not descended from fearful men.”
We queers have a lineage of bravery that simply cannot be argued.
The longer quote from Murrow is actually worth bringing up too, in this context and this moment. He was writing about Senator McCarthy, he was writing against the red scare. “We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men–not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.”
The idea in that quote is that we must fight McCarthyism, for sure, but also that we ought not to be driven by fear into an age of unreason. We ought not to let fear of one another dominate our lives. For the most part, I want to say this to all of the people who have bought into the propaganda against queer people, especially trans people, of late. But I also want to remind myself of this. We ought not walk in fear, one of another.
I have enemies, to be sure. They’ve sent me photos of my family. They’ve told me they would burn down my house with me inside. But the average person, including the average person here in West Virginia where I live, is not my enemy. I am frustrated–beyond frustrated–to know that an overwhelming majority of my neighbors voted for a president who explicitly spreads hatred against queer people. Yet these people have never made me feel unsafe personally.
I’ve lived in an awful lot of places, and frankly I’ve dealt with far more harassment in cities (coincidentally blue state cities, based on where I’ve lived) than I’ve ever gotten in small towns (often in red states). This isn’t because the countryside is some magical place free from bigotry, but simply because there are fewer people here. If I walk down the street in New York City, I will pass literally thousands of people, so it’s far more likely that someone will say something terrible to me.
My data is also skewed by the fact that I subconsciously expect to be safer in big liberal cities, so I take fewer precautions and dress more provocatively. Where I live, sometimes I “boy mode.” Sometimes I don’t. Some of the people around here know I’m a trans woman, some just think I’m a weird queer man with bangs and earrings (and pickup truck and a Carhartt coat, which helps). No one really gives me shit.
It’s not like you cross the imaginary line from Maryland to West Virginia and suddenly everyone is a different type of person. The people here aren’t, you know, monsters. No matter what horror movies have told you.
The Free 