LGBTQ+ People Are Not Going Back.
A solidarity post and reflection.
Today I am participating in a solidarity action proposed by writer Julia Serano. Participants are all using the same headline for original posts to lend Democratic elected officials some backbone, and to remind them they need LGTBQ+ people and their allies to win elections. More information on the action here. More information on transgender rights and the 2024 election here.
It’s the last week of 8th grade. I have one friend. Had two friends, but when I asked the other girl if she was embarrassed to seen with me, she said “kinda, yeah.” So I have one friend, Maggie, and today Maggie has shown up to school with a shaved head. News of this has spread like wildfire — no, faster than wildfire. It’s wildfire that spreads like news of a girl who shaved her head in a small town junior high school in the 1990s.
Maggie is a grade above me,1 so we don’t share any classes and I haven’t even seen her shaved head before the other kids demand I account for it. Why did she do it? Did she think it would look good? Because it doesn’t. Is she a feminazi? Is she a lesbo? I’m nervous and noncommital in my responses, but I don’t hate the attention. It’s the most any of them have talked to me in months.
I get a break in English because poetry is magic and Mrs. Johnson is strict about no talking. She asks us to break into pairs to read a sonnet, and I head for the quiet girl in the corner who told me last week that she too liked Concrete Blonde. (Mrs. Johnson had asked us to bring in our favorite song lyrics, and I brought “Tomorrow, Wendy.” When the quiet girl told me she was fan, it felt like a goddamn miracle — not even Maggie knew about Concrete Blonde.)
“Aren’t you friends with Maggie?” the quiet girl asks as I approach. Yeah, I say, preparing for more questions, thinking maybe the quiet girl wants to hang out with us, thinking maybe I know why the quiet girl is quiet.
“She’s a dyke! You’re a dyke,” she spits. “Get away from me.”
I’m so surprised that all I can manage is, “Concrete Blonde wouldn’t agree with you!”
It’s the middle of 9th grade. Maggie moved away, but it doesn’t matter, because over the summer grunge hit my town and now a bunch of the preppy girls are sad girls. They assume I’ve been into Pearl Jam and Nirvana this whole time and wanna hang out. Suddenly it’s cool that I’m on juvenile probation. Suddenly it’s cool that my clothes are weird and dirty, that I’m failing classes.
I’ve been blowing my court-mandated curfew to sit outside our town’s only coffee shop with them, smoking cigarettes and talking shit about wannabe posers. I get high for the first time. I listen to Ween. These are the first good moments of my life, I think.
Some of the preppy boys are skaters now, a few of them acknowledge me, but not Joseph Tyler. I’ve never even talked to him, but I know he’s the one who told everybody I tried to kill my neighbors (I didn’t. not really). Once last year he grabbed my hat in the hallway, and I kick-pushed him into a locker. Got my hat back, but it really didn’t help with the tried-to-kill-her-neighbors thing.
I’m standing outside with the sad girls after school, cupping cigarettes, waiting to see who’s house we’re gonna go to. They’re all talking about Joseph’s new club. It’s the “Death to All F—ots Club,” and the rules are if you don’t join, you’re a f—ot.
“That’s so stupid,” I say. “He’s such a poser.”
Joseph walks straight up to me, grinning like a psycho. “Hey Gillian, are you joining the Death to All F—ots Club?”
“No, because there’s nothing wrong with being gay!” I shout.
“Oh so you’re a f—ot?” He can’t believe I’ve so willingly leapt into his trap. “You’re sister’s a fa—t too. You’re fucking each other, aren’t you?”
“No! That’s not even what being gay is…” I try to give the whole lecture my mom gave us about people being born gay, how there’s nothing wrong with it, how it’s not the same thing as incest or pedophilia, but Joseph’s dancing around me shout-singing, “Gillian fucks her sister! Gillian fucks her sister!”
The sad girls, who I know know better, don’t say a word. A few of them giggle. One by one, they join the Death to All F—ots Club, and my face burns with rage at their passivity.
I don’t go to anyone’s house that afternoon.
It’s 2005. I’m sitting on the pavement in the little alcove in the middle of the Manhattan Bridge with my best friend. You’re supposed to stop here to take scenic photos while you’re riding your bike or jogging or whatever, but Ingrid and I like to drink there at night when all the healthy people are gone. It’s raining. There’s a pile of dog shit a couple feet from us. I’m watching a puddle form around the dog shit, wondering if we should move when it expands toward us, or if it’s, like, more punk rock if we don’t.
Ingrid finally tells me the secret she’s been alluding to for awhile: Although she appears to be a man, she’s actually a woman. She’s always been a woman and she’s changing her name to Ingrid. She’s been taking estrogen for a few weeks, she’s starting to grow breasts, and she’s so excited. I’m the fourth person she’s told after her shrink, the doctor who prescribed her estrogen, and our other best friend.
I hug her and tell her I had no idea — I thought we were there to make out — but I’m so happy for her and I support her completely and I’ll call her by her name from now on. She gives me a quick rundown2: Don’t say “tranny”, say “trans.” She’s “mtf trans,” some people are “ftm,” and some people don’t want to have any gender at all. There’s no magical moment when transition is “complete,” she’s a woman because she says she is. If anyone asks me about the state of her genitals I should tell them to fuck off. Don’t say “sex change,” say “gender reassignment.” She might wanna make out with a dude or two just to see what’s that about, but she’s basically a lesbian. I really should read some Jeannette Winterson.
We get drunker. We’re drenched and cold and coming down from the thrill of discovery to our natural depressed states. Ingrid rests her head on my shoulder. She’s a crustpunk, she says, she doesn’t even believe in wealth, but it fucking sucks that she can barely afford the estrogen, and she’s never gonna have the money to get her Adam’s apple shaved down, or the hair follicles on her face lasered into dormancy. She’ll never be able to make herself not tall, or to safely leave New York. I don’t know what to say except that I love her, and everywhere else sucks anyway.
“It’s gonna be so much better in the future,” she says. “Trans kids are gonna be able to take puberty blockers so they won’t even develop the parts that fuck you up so bad. It’s too late for me but not for them.”
It’s 1 a.m. I’m sitting in my little green home office in the suburbs of the second-bluest state, and the goddamn probability chart on my screen says it’s no longer possible for Kamala Harris to get more than 269 electoral points. I’m sick.
That’s a wrap on the burning world, I think. So much for Gaza. So much for the women bleeding to death in parking lots. So much for the poor kids, the queer kids, the Black and brown kids in red states. So much for a living wage. What was the fucking point.
Ingrid lives on a farm with her wife and kids in the bluest state — so says her Instagram anyhow, we haven’t talked in years. She left New York a few months after that rainy night on the bridge, to write a roadtrip novel. I left too, for flight attendant training. In the last emails we exchanged she graciously accepted my Ninth Step amends and wished me the best with my sobriety.
I’m medicated now, and I meditate a lot, so it’s usually inner peace up in the little home green office where I write about history. But not tonight. After a decade of not having opinions in public in exchange for a well-paying writing job, I’ve been reveling these last few months — perhaps too much — in outing myself as a person who does not believe in neutrality. Now I see any hope of ever again having a well-paying job evaporate: I can’t imagine anything I’d rather do less than watching the world burn and writing down a description of the flames. I’m scared.
I’m tossing in bed. I can’t unclench my jaw. I check my phone again and see a little headline: Sarah McBride won her election. I’m sick again. God, that poor woman, I think. Can you imagine having to show up to that fucking Congress?
A little voice inside, one I now recognize as a friend, says: Yeah, but she’s still going to show up. And so you can you. I repeat this over and over until I fall asleep.
The thing about a quiet mind is I can hear the low hum of regret more easily than I used to. And as I see the world constrict around LGBTQ+ people — as I watch the better future Ingrid described become less possible and for fewer trans kids — I wonder about my years of insincere “neutrality.” Sure, I wrote occasionally about gay and trans people in history, but in my most passive voice. And I know better.
In her request for this day of action, of stating affirmatively that we will not allow Democratic leaders to throw LGBTQ+ people under the bus, Julia Serano nodded to the Queer Nation movement in the 1990s, which sent me down some lovely historical rabbit holes the past few days.
As a teen in Colorado, I was unaware of the informal groups springing up in New York and other cities, chanting “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it!” I didn’t know that in the face of increased violence against LGBTQ+ people, members flooded the streets vowing to “bash back.” And I didn’t know about the anonymous manifesto they disseminated a few weeks later called “Queers Read This.”
It is a juicy, energetic, messy document, speaking directly to queer people, congratulating them for being alive — “You as an alive and functioning queer are a revolutionary” — and urging them to do more than survive — “do whatever you can, whatever you have to, to save your life!”
The writers urge the reader not hide or moderate their queerness, not to spend an evening with them on a sweaty dance floor before driving back to their hetero spouses and comfortable homes. And they link their struggle to the struggles of all marginalized people: “Being queer is not about a right to privacy; it is about the freedom to be public, to just be who we are. It means everyday fighting oppression; homophobia, racism, misogyny, the bigotry of religious hypocrites and our own self-hatred … It's not about the mainstream, profit-margins, patriotism, patriarchy or being assimilated. It's not about executive directors, privilege and elitism.”
And that’s really the heart of it. The pursuit of a life of dignity, of bodily autonomy — whether you call it transgender healthcare, reproductive freedom, marriage equality, police reform, prison reform, worker’s rights, a living wage, accessibility — are all one pursuit. There are no carve-outs.
And it isn’t just because a rising tide lifts all boats, though it does, or because divide-and-conquer is the oldest oppressor trick in the book, though it is. Anti-gay and anti-trans hate will hurt you even if you aren’t gay or trans. You might end up in the crosshairs of anti-gay or anti-trans attack regardless. And you will absolutely carve out a little piece of your soul every time you passively pretend you don’t know better, and fling it into the fire.
It’s foolish for Democrats or anyone else to think they should abandon transgender people, because it’s foolish to think they even could without abandoning themselves, too.
In Larimer County in the 1990s, 9th graders were technically high school freshmen but physically attended junior high school.
Some of this is outdated, it was 2004!
Your introspective perspective and willingness to open a window for us to see through your eyes and experience a bit of your life is awesome, and I believe resonates with most everyone (myself included!). Thank you for sharing something so personal and moving, and thank you for being part of the effort today!