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I can't go back. When I was in pre-k my only friend was a girl. That is, until one day when we sat together on the jungle gym and she told me that she couldn’t be my friend anymore. That I was a boy and she was a girl and so it wasn’t right. It certainly wasn’t for lack of trying to be friends with the boys. They could just tell something wasn’t right with me, even if I didn’t know it.

When I was 11, I attended an event at church called sex, god, and me. It turned into a conversion therapy thing. There was a box where you could put anonymous questions for the reformed gay man they got to speak to us. Every question they got was about how gays have sex. The pastor got upset and talked about damnation for what felt like forever. Back then I knew I was queer and I feared it. I got into the car with my dad after, and I think he could tell something was wrong, and I remember crying on the way home. He talked about his friend in the army that got kicked out for being gay. He seemed sad. We stopped going to that church.

Years later I sat outside a church somewhere in the middle of Texas and painted a mural with the only friends I had at the time. All girls again, as usual. One asked me what I thought gay people went to hell. I didn’t understand it at the time, but it seems pretty clear in retrospect she was worried about whether I’d be damned. I was still not out or even remotely self-aware of my queerness. I said I didn’t know.

Growing up, I saw the homophobia and transphobia around me at all times. At the movies, in conversations at lunch, in my relationships. Deep down I knew it felt unfair. When it came to my on transsexuality and queerness, I was never able to convince myself that they were wrong. I feared damnation and social ostracism so badly that I buried it as deep as I could.

I can’t go back. I never could. There’s nowhere for me to go. I look back on that childhood and see all these moments where everyone around me just knew something was up. A world that requires subservience to christo-fascist cis heterosexual norms is a world without me in it.

One day, when I was a senior my best friend came out to me. It’s strange that a lifetime of knowing my own queerness couldn’t convince me of it’s goodness, but the second it was someone I loved I knew it in my bones. When I see politicians talk about making trans kids not an issue through forcing them in the closet, I know that is what’s at stake. A culture of terror that drove me insane with despair and anxiety crumbled instantly the second two young trans girls found each other.

Things have changed since the childhood that scared me sick of myself. Not perfectly and not enough, but I’ve talked to enough young queers to know it’s different. You can’t know how heartening it was to see the changing statistics of lgbtq+ people over the last decade. Each point in that data set a young person who, like me, got the chance to learn they weren’t alone. Or, maybe even who never experienced the terror to begin with.

What does “we’re not going back” mean? On one hand it means resistance: mutual aid, activism, community actions. But on the other, well, the cat’s out of the bag. It isn’t 2007 anymore, and to go back means one thing: murder. There is no way to shift things back to even how it was when I grew up without killing us. Our systems for finding and protecting each other, our presence in the fabric of our society, our political and cultural influence are all too strong to just be stopped peacefully.

I expect this from the fascist Republican Party. Their stance has never changed in my life. I grew up with them reveling in the hate and violence they subjected me and mine to. However, as much as they have let me down time and time again, the Democrats have changed. I remember when lgbtq+ rights became a mainstream view of the party. Unfortunately, something shifted this year.

It was the silence of the Harris campaign on trans issues in the face of near constant anti-trans propaganda from the fascist right. It’s the post election conclusions democrats drew about lgbtq+ issues being a losing stance. They can de-fang that statement all they want, but the meaning is still the same: death.

Julia Serano has organized an action today to call representatives reminding them of our right to exist and thrive. We need to remind the democrats that we aren’t theirs to sacrifice for a bountiful election harvest. Additionally, she has called for queer people to share their voice and remind everyone of the better world we have worked to build. So I’m contributing mine here. I can’t go back and I won’t be dying.

There’s so much work to be done, but we can’t let it overwhelm us. Julia Serano’s action is something we can do today. Contact your representatives using this resource.

DEATH BEFORE DETRANSITION

you will have to pry
my gender from my cold
dead hands
and even then
all you will hold
is an idea i carved
into the side of the world
with fire

*distant echoing calls akin to a fog horn*

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NESSIE