"I hate my enemies and I do not wish them well." I think that is the quote - or close enough. More than ever, we are going to need to take care of each other. We are targets for this hate. The news in the coming days will be full of lies about who we are and our right to live. Please take this seriously and be careful. Hold each other close.
It's inevitable. I feel like we're trying to hold back the rushing tide. Maybe we succeed this time, but there's just going to be a next time in a few short months, if that. Maybe we succeed then, too, but it doesn't feel sustainable. Not with this much pressure. Not with the resistance so thoroughly demoralized and broken.
We need to start formulating long-term plans, now for two things:
1. How to survive - we need to form our own parallel healthcare networks that can sustain gender-affirming care of all types for all trans people. Should that become impossible, we need to create a viable pipeline for trans people to receive care in Canada, Mexico, and other neighboring countries. That pipeline has to be wide enough for people to move, if need be. We will need solidarity from our allies abroad on this, I'm afraid.
2. How to win back our rights - in the struggle to survive, it is all too easy to lose sight of other goals. But we must win back our rights by any means necessary. This must necessarily require a multi-front approach in the courts and electoral politics at every level; mass protest and civil disobedience; and targeted direct-action where it can do the most good. And of course, the cultivation of better allies - not corporations and institutions all too eager to bend the knee at any altar for an easy payout, but neighbors, friends, and community organizations.
Look, there's no sugarcoating it: what's coming is worse than what came before. Our disillusioned and desperate countrymen are going to try to forge meaning and identity by enacting state-sanctioned violence against transgender people, that is a fact. However, they will be sorely disappointed.
This is a really good take. My takeaway from your excellent post: We have to fight to hold them back now but prepare for how to win our rights back when they are stripped.
One tiny caveat that nothing is inevitable in politics. The Trump admin has opened a multi-front war and is making huge mistakes, own goals that are not really seeing the light of day yet but will create division in the Republican party / be pressured by opponents. Not to mention that if Trump falls over and is unable to govern in any way even through natural means, the whole party could be thrown into chaos. It's a fragile, small and horrible man holding it all together - the house of cards is bound to come down. I just hope and will fight so that it doesn't take 20 years.
I pray that you're right, that this nightmare ends soon.
I think we've come to see that this is much bigger than just one man, right? Perhaps ten years ago, sure, but now there is an entire political and economic machine behind him. A generation of kids grew up, went to college, and graduated with this movement's filth in the air. Charlie Kirk's memorial packed an NFL stadium.
If the President disappeared from the earth tomorrow, I do think there would be chaos, and a lot of jockeying to be his successor - but at this point, that would be too little, too late. The anti-trans demon has been unleashed and now rabidly stalks our country.
I don't even think Trump had much of an opinion about trans people at all until recently. But there are parts of his political faction that have very, very strong feelings about us, and they won't go away overnight. The Democrats cannot be trusted to fight back and stick up for us.
I think fascism is a process, not an ideology, but once that process reaches a certain point, it's incredibly difficult to derail. Unfortunately, I believe we passed that point during the spring, or maybe early in the summer. Regardless, with the fascist consolidation of power complete, only a few things will happen now (maybe):
1. They win and get everything they want, including the criminalization of trans identity and our complete marginalization to the underground, with those of us who survive outside of jail forced into sex work or worse.
2. They don't get quite everything they want, and so erupt in paroxysms of violence against their political enemies. Trans existence becomes extremely vulnerable, but safe pockets exist for us to continue our work.
3. A powerful external force (A non-American NATO? Xi Jinping?? A meteor???) intervenes and destroys the fascist menace.
I wish this nightmare would end with one man. But the Nazis didn't stop because Hitler offed himself; they stopped because they got slaughtered by the world's armies. Our enemies are a diverse group, but some of them are true fanatics, and now that they have permission to rip and tear, they will only be stopped if they are forced.
I don’t think we passed a critical point just in the spring. I think it was with last fall’s election. That was the last real chance to stop fascism in its tracks, and unfortunately voters chose not to (admittedly by a narrow margin). It’s conceivable that with a lot of resistance, a lot of people fighting for democracy, that maybe this could have been stopped or slowed early this year. But no, too many people, including politicians, kow-towed to the fascism or didn’t recognize what a danger it truly was. This, of course, includes Democrats who wouldn’t stand up for trans rights.
I have no idea if it's going to end soon. But, politics is a fickle beast and you are right to point out that anti-trans sentiment will have lasting damage federally and most importantly in Red States. The Cass Report did a lot of this which I wrote about a few weeks ago and spread the plague to the US (I argue that it was intentionally designed by TERFs to attack British and American politics).
But, in terms of strategy, The Bush administration was much more effective at subversively pushing fascistic intent in government than Trump is. The Trump admin attack is full frontal but that also leaves him naked and exposed. Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney pushed corporate-fascist ideology without the general public getting any wind of what they were doing and it took years for even the wiretapping and spying to be understood / no one was even prosecuted for the torture done at Black sites, only whistleblowers. But, Trump is doing illegal things in the open which weakens him and his allies up to significant attacks by ANYONE that wants to attack them, friend or foe. So in some ways, that is a huge strategic and political mistake.
Not to mention that they are all a bunch of snakes and will stab each other in the back any chance they get. So, some of the fear that we have in the trans community is because they are projecting unity when it's really just opportunism.
Also, if you look at how badly the left destroyed Joseph McCarthy, there is some hope in that. His career was ultimately destroyed by the falsehoods he pushed. Roy Cohn is the bridge between him and Trump as well. They are using the same playbook that already failed - the big difference is that the message is being amplified by social media so that question mark plagues our time. Anyway, this is not quite coherent yet in my mind but there are some lessons to be learned.
And, I think we agree - it's all so horrible and I hope I can have the energy to fight until the bitter end and stand alongside good people like you.
I wish the left destroyed Joseph McCarthy; unfortunately, the left was mostly marginalized by his efforts, which was just one facet of the broader red scare that would continue to pervade society for decades (it arguably never stopped). Joe McCarthy was really stopped by the army and his own pathetic manner, which left him exposed and humiliated when he tried to insinuate that homosexual communists had infiltrated the military. McCarthy's collapse did not happen at the redemption of communists or homosexuals.
Torquemadas come and go, but the Inquisition rolls on.
Anyway, I like what you were saying about the Bush administration. It's unfortunate that some folks with shorter memories are tempted to see those years through rose-colored glasses, making contrasting Bush favorably against Trump. You and I seem to know better. If I could go one step further - in many ways, Trump's second term in office is sort of Bush's third, by which I mean there's a straight line that leads from the Bush administration, through the Obama administration's failure to force any kind of reckoning over the disasters of 2001-2009, to Trump's rise and eventual ascendance as the embodiment of the destructive forces unleashed and nurtured by Bush/Cheney.
IMO a key difference between those days and now is, as you allude, the tremendous gap in competence between the administrations. I oppose empire in all its forms - which really sucked when Bush was in office, because his administration were well-practiced empire managers. They were far from perfect in that regard too, of course, but these were often the same folks who had presided over the end of the Cold War. They cut their teeth on building American hegemony, both militarily and economically. The Trump people have no appreciation for that history. Trump himself is a television buffoon obsessed with making "deals", which to him means mafia-like shakedowns of his enemies (and sometimes even his friends).
As an opponent of American imperialism, I am glad to see the empire ruled by people seemingly determined to undermine it in every meaningful way.
But I know what happens when empires collapse. "Managed decline" seems to me to be a myth - in reality, chaos and misfortune collide to produce awful prejudices. The empire comes home, abandoning their distant posts to enact atrocities on the homeland.
The democrats will abandon us as they always have. We are in this fight on our own. It has become far to acceptable to just say oh so what they are just 1% and can't hold us up so why should we help them when it hurts us so much. We need to show the world we may be few but we will fight with everything we have willingly. My daily affirmation has become no one gets out of life alive, so make the most of it, and only way for them to stop me is them to get their hands bloody, I will not do it myself I will not bend a knee, I will fight until my last breath and take as many as I can with me.
And when the Democrats sell us out, and they will sell us out, no one should afford them the grace of suggesting they "folded." They will not have folded. They will have voted EXACTLY the way they wanted to.
I have absolutely no faith that the Senate will provide 41 votes to trigger a filibuster. There are way too many "I have concerns about trans rights" attitudes among them.
This tracks with my assessment following the flurry (blizzard?) of "transgender people are mentally ill and should be locked up" expostulations following the Kirk assassination. As noted in several places, leaders of a subproject of Project 2025 ("The Oversight Project") has already or is about to formally petition the FBI. Given the influence of Project 2025 on the regime, we can expect similar results.
People like Nancy Mace and Laura Loomer are loose cannons to whom Trump pays little attention, I suspect, but Stephen Miller in particular is not, and he has both the cunning and the brains of any Himmler or Goebbals. With similar world view.
I do not understand why till see no Democrat flatly stating what these measures mean and and do, how they mandate the abuse of children. How many Democrats know or care what is real about transgender people? How many, whether they walk the walk or not, merely "say the things" but have no real idea what this means?
What these measures do is force boys to have and grow up with breasts and periods, and, to force girls to have and grow up with beards and deep voices. It produces what to most is unimaginable misery, and leads to anxiety, depression, non-functionality in life and ultimately suicide.
I swear it seems if I ever here a Dem say one word about it there is no real feeling or comprehension in them. I have heard some say the MAGAts are lying, I've heard precious few (none) elaborate on what is true.
Everyone should contact their congressional representative and senators, and urge them to stand firm in support of transgender rights by not capitulating to Trump's outrageous demands or by negotiating away our rights in these appropriation bills.
I am appalled with the many anti-transgender measures in the funding bill put forth by Republicans in congress and supported by some Democrats. The efforts to erase the existence of people is abhorrent in and of itself, and a reason to avoid people who work to remove rights from these citizens.
Apart from that, these measures, if passed, set precedents that affect everybody. Bans on transgender healthcare means the government can make it illegal to access evidence-based healthcare. Bans on sports participation mean all girls and women, and by extension everyone, can be subjected to medically unnecessary procedures and exams in order to engage in activities. By removing protections for LGBTQ children in foster care, a precedent is set to remove protections from all children. Bans on Pride flags mean the government can bar free expression in the form of visual symbols, and by extension all free speech . Demanding that transgender prisoners be incarcerated with people who are of a different gender means that there is no longer a bar against cruel and unusual punishment for crimes. By removing transgender care from insurance coverage, they are saying that standard-of-care healthcare can be denied coverage by insurance companies.
The deadline for passage of the bill is October 1, and failure to pass a spending bill will temporarily shut down much of the government. If that happens, Republicans will blame Democrats for not supporting government funding, and Democrats will blame Republicans for including cuts to research, mental health care, SNAP benefits,and health insurance subsidies. Who in congress is talking about the bill’s inclusion of attacks on the fundamental rights of a marginalized group of Americans, and therefore all Americans?
I have love for all trans people, even those saying that Dems will certainly abandon us. They might but if you haven't called your congress person or senator, then you are not using your power to push them left and actually represent us. I get it if you are unable for any reason but if you have the strength and ability - Do it. Do it today. Do it now. Speaking of: now added into my schedule for today - call Jimmy Gomez and tell him he needs to make a statement condemning those amendments and help hold the line.
Have there been any comments from democrats about standing firm against the anti-trans provisions specifically?
Not much. I'm pretty sure they're going to flush us down the toilet and forget about us.
"I hate my enemies and I do not wish them well." I think that is the quote - or close enough. More than ever, we are going to need to take care of each other. We are targets for this hate. The news in the coming days will be full of lies about who we are and our right to live. Please take this seriously and be careful. Hold each other close.
It's inevitable. I feel like we're trying to hold back the rushing tide. Maybe we succeed this time, but there's just going to be a next time in a few short months, if that. Maybe we succeed then, too, but it doesn't feel sustainable. Not with this much pressure. Not with the resistance so thoroughly demoralized and broken.
We need to start formulating long-term plans, now for two things:
1. How to survive - we need to form our own parallel healthcare networks that can sustain gender-affirming care of all types for all trans people. Should that become impossible, we need to create a viable pipeline for trans people to receive care in Canada, Mexico, and other neighboring countries. That pipeline has to be wide enough for people to move, if need be. We will need solidarity from our allies abroad on this, I'm afraid.
2. How to win back our rights - in the struggle to survive, it is all too easy to lose sight of other goals. But we must win back our rights by any means necessary. This must necessarily require a multi-front approach in the courts and electoral politics at every level; mass protest and civil disobedience; and targeted direct-action where it can do the most good. And of course, the cultivation of better allies - not corporations and institutions all too eager to bend the knee at any altar for an easy payout, but neighbors, friends, and community organizations.
Look, there's no sugarcoating it: what's coming is worse than what came before. Our disillusioned and desperate countrymen are going to try to forge meaning and identity by enacting state-sanctioned violence against transgender people, that is a fact. However, they will be sorely disappointed.
WE MUST SURVIVE, BRETHREN. WE WILL PREVAIL.
This is a really good take. My takeaway from your excellent post: We have to fight to hold them back now but prepare for how to win our rights back when they are stripped.
One tiny caveat that nothing is inevitable in politics. The Trump admin has opened a multi-front war and is making huge mistakes, own goals that are not really seeing the light of day yet but will create division in the Republican party / be pressured by opponents. Not to mention that if Trump falls over and is unable to govern in any way even through natural means, the whole party could be thrown into chaos. It's a fragile, small and horrible man holding it all together - the house of cards is bound to come down. I just hope and will fight so that it doesn't take 20 years.
I pray that you're right, that this nightmare ends soon.
I think we've come to see that this is much bigger than just one man, right? Perhaps ten years ago, sure, but now there is an entire political and economic machine behind him. A generation of kids grew up, went to college, and graduated with this movement's filth in the air. Charlie Kirk's memorial packed an NFL stadium.
If the President disappeared from the earth tomorrow, I do think there would be chaos, and a lot of jockeying to be his successor - but at this point, that would be too little, too late. The anti-trans demon has been unleashed and now rabidly stalks our country.
I don't even think Trump had much of an opinion about trans people at all until recently. But there are parts of his political faction that have very, very strong feelings about us, and they won't go away overnight. The Democrats cannot be trusted to fight back and stick up for us.
I think fascism is a process, not an ideology, but once that process reaches a certain point, it's incredibly difficult to derail. Unfortunately, I believe we passed that point during the spring, or maybe early in the summer. Regardless, with the fascist consolidation of power complete, only a few things will happen now (maybe):
1. They win and get everything they want, including the criminalization of trans identity and our complete marginalization to the underground, with those of us who survive outside of jail forced into sex work or worse.
2. They don't get quite everything they want, and so erupt in paroxysms of violence against their political enemies. Trans existence becomes extremely vulnerable, but safe pockets exist for us to continue our work.
3. A powerful external force (A non-American NATO? Xi Jinping?? A meteor???) intervenes and destroys the fascist menace.
I wish this nightmare would end with one man. But the Nazis didn't stop because Hitler offed himself; they stopped because they got slaughtered by the world's armies. Our enemies are a diverse group, but some of them are true fanatics, and now that they have permission to rip and tear, they will only be stopped if they are forced.
I don’t think we passed a critical point just in the spring. I think it was with last fall’s election. That was the last real chance to stop fascism in its tracks, and unfortunately voters chose not to (admittedly by a narrow margin). It’s conceivable that with a lot of resistance, a lot of people fighting for democracy, that maybe this could have been stopped or slowed early this year. But no, too many people, including politicians, kow-towed to the fascism or didn’t recognize what a danger it truly was. This, of course, includes Democrats who wouldn’t stand up for trans rights.
I have no idea if it's going to end soon. But, politics is a fickle beast and you are right to point out that anti-trans sentiment will have lasting damage federally and most importantly in Red States. The Cass Report did a lot of this which I wrote about a few weeks ago and spread the plague to the US (I argue that it was intentionally designed by TERFs to attack British and American politics).
But, in terms of strategy, The Bush administration was much more effective at subversively pushing fascistic intent in government than Trump is. The Trump admin attack is full frontal but that also leaves him naked and exposed. Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney pushed corporate-fascist ideology without the general public getting any wind of what they were doing and it took years for even the wiretapping and spying to be understood / no one was even prosecuted for the torture done at Black sites, only whistleblowers. But, Trump is doing illegal things in the open which weakens him and his allies up to significant attacks by ANYONE that wants to attack them, friend or foe. So in some ways, that is a huge strategic and political mistake.
Not to mention that they are all a bunch of snakes and will stab each other in the back any chance they get. So, some of the fear that we have in the trans community is because they are projecting unity when it's really just opportunism.
Also, if you look at how badly the left destroyed Joseph McCarthy, there is some hope in that. His career was ultimately destroyed by the falsehoods he pushed. Roy Cohn is the bridge between him and Trump as well. They are using the same playbook that already failed - the big difference is that the message is being amplified by social media so that question mark plagues our time. Anyway, this is not quite coherent yet in my mind but there are some lessons to be learned.
And, I think we agree - it's all so horrible and I hope I can have the energy to fight until the bitter end and stand alongside good people like you.
I wish the left destroyed Joseph McCarthy; unfortunately, the left was mostly marginalized by his efforts, which was just one facet of the broader red scare that would continue to pervade society for decades (it arguably never stopped). Joe McCarthy was really stopped by the army and his own pathetic manner, which left him exposed and humiliated when he tried to insinuate that homosexual communists had infiltrated the military. McCarthy's collapse did not happen at the redemption of communists or homosexuals.
Torquemadas come and go, but the Inquisition rolls on.
Anyway, I like what you were saying about the Bush administration. It's unfortunate that some folks with shorter memories are tempted to see those years through rose-colored glasses, making contrasting Bush favorably against Trump. You and I seem to know better. If I could go one step further - in many ways, Trump's second term in office is sort of Bush's third, by which I mean there's a straight line that leads from the Bush administration, through the Obama administration's failure to force any kind of reckoning over the disasters of 2001-2009, to Trump's rise and eventual ascendance as the embodiment of the destructive forces unleashed and nurtured by Bush/Cheney.
IMO a key difference between those days and now is, as you allude, the tremendous gap in competence between the administrations. I oppose empire in all its forms - which really sucked when Bush was in office, because his administration were well-practiced empire managers. They were far from perfect in that regard too, of course, but these were often the same folks who had presided over the end of the Cold War. They cut their teeth on building American hegemony, both militarily and economically. The Trump people have no appreciation for that history. Trump himself is a television buffoon obsessed with making "deals", which to him means mafia-like shakedowns of his enemies (and sometimes even his friends).
As an opponent of American imperialism, I am glad to see the empire ruled by people seemingly determined to undermine it in every meaningful way.
But I know what happens when empires collapse. "Managed decline" seems to me to be a myth - in reality, chaos and misfortune collide to produce awful prejudices. The empire comes home, abandoning their distant posts to enact atrocities on the homeland.
I hate to say this but I have zero faith in Democrats on this. None. They folded before, they'll fold again.
The democrats will abandon us as they always have. We are in this fight on our own. It has become far to acceptable to just say oh so what they are just 1% and can't hold us up so why should we help them when it hurts us so much. We need to show the world we may be few but we will fight with everything we have willingly. My daily affirmation has become no one gets out of life alive, so make the most of it, and only way for them to stop me is them to get their hands bloody, I will not do it myself I will not bend a knee, I will fight until my last breath and take as many as I can with me.
Dems all couldn’t stand firm in not honoring a white supremacist, we’re just easy sacrifices for them.
And when the Democrats sell us out, and they will sell us out, no one should afford them the grace of suggesting they "folded." They will not have folded. They will have voted EXACTLY the way they wanted to.
I have absolutely no faith that the Senate will provide 41 votes to trigger a filibuster. There are way too many "I have concerns about trans rights" attitudes among them.
Including Harris! I hate how her supporters keep glossing over that she writes in her book even how “concerned” she was about trans folks in sports.
This tracks with my assessment following the flurry (blizzard?) of "transgender people are mentally ill and should be locked up" expostulations following the Kirk assassination. As noted in several places, leaders of a subproject of Project 2025 ("The Oversight Project") has already or is about to formally petition the FBI. Given the influence of Project 2025 on the regime, we can expect similar results.
People like Nancy Mace and Laura Loomer are loose cannons to whom Trump pays little attention, I suspect, but Stephen Miller in particular is not, and he has both the cunning and the brains of any Himmler or Goebbals. With similar world view.
Well, we'll see how which Dems are counted.
I do not understand why till see no Democrat flatly stating what these measures mean and and do, how they mandate the abuse of children. How many Democrats know or care what is real about transgender people? How many, whether they walk the walk or not, merely "say the things" but have no real idea what this means?
What these measures do is force boys to have and grow up with breasts and periods, and, to force girls to have and grow up with beards and deep voices. It produces what to most is unimaginable misery, and leads to anxiety, depression, non-functionality in life and ultimately suicide.
https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/groundbreaking-study-anti-trans-state
I swear it seems if I ever here a Dem say one word about it there is no real feeling or comprehension in them. I have heard some say the MAGAts are lying, I've heard precious few (none) elaborate on what is true.
Marsha fought through worse. Sylvia fought through worse. Zazu fought through worse. Fight. Win. Lose. But don't give up.
Everyone should contact their congressional representative and senators, and urge them to stand firm in support of transgender rights by not capitulating to Trump's outrageous demands or by negotiating away our rights in these appropriation bills.
I need to get in touch with my provider again. Need to get my meds stocked up.
God, what a dick he is
This is all due to Mitch McConnell packing the court with right wingers and them giving Trump free reign over America
I'm just disgusted
I am appalled with the many anti-transgender measures in the funding bill put forth by Republicans in congress and supported by some Democrats. The efforts to erase the existence of people is abhorrent in and of itself, and a reason to avoid people who work to remove rights from these citizens.
Apart from that, these measures, if passed, set precedents that affect everybody. Bans on transgender healthcare means the government can make it illegal to access evidence-based healthcare. Bans on sports participation mean all girls and women, and by extension everyone, can be subjected to medically unnecessary procedures and exams in order to engage in activities. By removing protections for LGBTQ children in foster care, a precedent is set to remove protections from all children. Bans on Pride flags mean the government can bar free expression in the form of visual symbols, and by extension all free speech . Demanding that transgender prisoners be incarcerated with people who are of a different gender means that there is no longer a bar against cruel and unusual punishment for crimes. By removing transgender care from insurance coverage, they are saying that standard-of-care healthcare can be denied coverage by insurance companies.
The deadline for passage of the bill is October 1, and failure to pass a spending bill will temporarily shut down much of the government. If that happens, Republicans will blame Democrats for not supporting government funding, and Democrats will blame Republicans for including cuts to research, mental health care, SNAP benefits,and health insurance subsidies. Who in congress is talking about the bill’s inclusion of attacks on the fundamental rights of a marginalized group of Americans, and therefore all Americans?
I have love for all trans people, even those saying that Dems will certainly abandon us. They might but if you haven't called your congress person or senator, then you are not using your power to push them left and actually represent us. I get it if you are unable for any reason but if you have the strength and ability - Do it. Do it today. Do it now. Speaking of: now added into my schedule for today - call Jimmy Gomez and tell him he needs to make a statement condemning those amendments and help hold the line.
Edit: You can use this page to find your congress person - https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative
And then just call this number and they patch you into the congress person's office - 202-224-3121