I didn't think it was right to discuss this on the walk journal page, but I have to talk about it somewhere. May as well be here, since I haven't written anything this month yet.
I sure talk a big game about looking as feminine as I possibly can while inside, don't I? But, once I step outside into the daylight, it's a whole new thing... especially now. I felt I could be seen in my makeup and tights outside last September, but not anymore. I was dressed in my purple hoodie and new pair of tights this morning, my hair was brushed over to one side like usual, I was wearing a bit of lipstick, and I immediately felt targeted. There was no one around, yet at the same time, everyone was around. No one was looking at me out their windows, yet everyone was. I walked half my usual route in half the usual time because I was so afraid that, if I slowed down, I would be the next uninvestigated trans suicide, courtesy of some passing motorist with a concealed-carry permit; I walked so fast, I was only outside for about 7 minutes and, despite being completely out of breath, I ran up the stairs, not bothering to collapse into a sweaty, panting heap until I locked the door.
Some of you might read that and your first impression is, "good, we can't have these transsexuals thinking they're safe around our kids," and all I can do is look at you askance and disappointedly shake my head. If that truly was your impression of my tale just now, I hope the prolefeed at least tasted good.
Have you ever heard of "Divide and conquer"? In principle, it means that, in order to achieve an impossible task, you have to break it up into smaller, more manageable tasks. It would be impossible for republicans to swoop in and exterminate all non-straight, non-cisgender people in one strike. However, if they can split all the letters of that alphabet soup up... if they can turn them all on each other, make them fight a costly mental war against each other, maybe even cause a few hundred of them to kill themselves, then they can come in and eliminate one letter at a time, while the queer left hails them as heroes and geniuses. They can carry on doing this, burning one pride flag at a time, until no more remain. Right now, they've sicced their army of social media influencers on AMAB transgender people. We're low-hanging fruit to these people because we never had a solid support structure to begin with. "What man in their right mind would wake up one morning and decide they want to be a woman?" This is something I've straight-up heard people say. They think that being a man is so prestigious that no one would want to give it up. So, we trans women become the first victims of the fascist right's assault on human rights. Once they've forced all the AMAB trans people either back into the closet or into the grave, then they begin the next assault, most likely on AFAB transgender people. This is all happening at the same time that Immigration and Customs Enforcement are deporting Central and South Americans by the truckload whether they're naturalised citizens or not, the Supreme Court is upholding cases of bigotry as a legal exercise of rights, and police are stepping up their arrests of Black people so the "Made with Pride in the USA" factories can have their slave workforce. Kinda makes you wonder who's going to be next, doesn't it?
This works because of 2 readily apparent reasons...
1. Fascists play the long game.
2. Disenfranchised people have no significant class solidarity.
Fascists entrench themselves in society and slowly shift it to the right, making such small, inoffensive changes they don't raise any red flags until it's too late to do anything about it. A dress code here, a naming convention there, nothing much to pique anyone's suspicions. After several decades of this, the fascist party has moved the country so far to the right that it becomes unrecognisable from where it was when they started. The republicans spent about 70 years doing this, now the 2 party system of the United States has gone from Liberal/Conservative to Conservative/Fascist.
Fascists, regardless of what party affiliation they hold, all share an unbreakable solidarity. However, disenfranchised people are encouraged by the right to seek a scapegoat for their troubles, no matter how much of a stretch it might seem. Trump got to where he is today on the backs of America's working poor and middle-class evangelicals, just as much as the billionaire industrialists. By playing the role of the political strongman, people look to him for the answers to their problems, despite the fact that he and everyone in his circle is the problem. Not just Trump, but Bush, Reagan, and Nixon before him. By singling out particular groups as the cause of a problem, they are able to provide a locus for their opponents' hatred that simultaneously wastes their effort and makes it easier to take advantage of the next group. Labour unions are a good example of this; not the unions, themselves, so much as the money that republicans and democrats alike have spent making unions look fraudulent and/or purposeless. "Your employer already pays you, so why do you need a third-pary to tell them to pay you and take a cut of your pay for the privilege?" This kind of rhetoric has undercut the ability of thousands of employees at billionaire industries such as Amazon, Starbucks, Google, and Tesla to organise and force their employers to provide better pay, paid time off, and insurance plans. By making unions out to be enemies of free enterprise, billionaires are not only able to misdirect their employees' anger when wages get cut and insurance plans are sunset, they are allowed to continue exploiting their workforce with impunity.
It is precisely for these reasons that the political climate has finally arrived in America that makes me feel exposed and threatened, appearing in public with my fem outfits on. It is precisely for these reasons that I completed a 15-minute circuit in 7 minutes. No one should have to live like this, but at the same time, I know that if I decide to kill myself, I'll do nothing but help the fascists complete their work. On the other hand, how much more of this can a person take? I know it's just a matter of time before they get the better of me. I don't know what to do next.