For the better part of a decade, the Republican Party of the United States has fought a vicious and brutal campaign to deny equal rights to transgender people. To a larger extent, this effort has been a component of a desire among far-right groups to push a cultural shift towards right-wing extremism on the backs of the bloodied and brused bodies of the trans people they killed along the way. They know that their efforts to fill their pockets with the money of the poor, undo the efforts of the last century to fight for equal rights for all, and dismantle democracy are unpopular, and because of that, they need a scapegoat to allow their powergrab to occur with the consent of the people they are stealing power from. Fundamentally, the world they desire is one that was abandoned when the confederacy lost to the Union in the 1800s, and they know that this world is one that the average person would not like to return to. However, the average person can be made to fear; fear what they don't understand, those they have not met. Trans people in this sense are the perfect target, as they make up a very small portion of the population. This means that it is unlikely that the average American will know a trans person personally; and indeed if they do know a trans person, due to the invisible status of transgenderism when one medically transitions, they may be entirely unaware that they have known a trans person at all. People have a harder time holding onto hate when it is against someone they know personally (Pettigrew and Tropp, 2008), and as a result hate is harder to build as political strategy when the people you are building the hate against are socially abundent. This is an exhausting reality for trans people currently living and fighting for the right to exist in the modern world, as fascists have globally recognized how effective trans people are as a target. As a trans Jew, I am not blind to the fact that this has happened before. Yet, trans people are unique when compared to ethnic groups that have previously had eradication efforts against them: trans people will continue to be born even if every single trans person is killed today. Transgenderism is not a social pathogen, or product of culture, but instead a very real aspect of human psychology that has existed for as long as humans have existed (Peralta, 2011; Pape and Ialonge, 2023), and thus they are once again an ideal target. Trans people are, in this sense, a prescribed villain that will never truly go away, allowing for perpetual cycles of fueled hatred leading to the continual degredation of the rights of everyone else in society. Knowing that fascists seem to have cracked the code to perpetual outrage, how are we trans people meant to react? How can we live through hate?
I've thought a lot about dying lately. The relief that comes from eternal, dreamless sleep, where the outcomes of the political machinations of people I will never know can have no effect on me. I've thought about all the pain this fucked up world has caused me, and how easy it would be to rid myself of that pain. The human body is so fragile, so easily lost, and I could easily destroy myself to save me from this hate. I can hardly blame my trans siblings who have already taken their lives in the face of the hatred of the world, as I often find myself envying the peace they now experience in their lack of experience entirely. When I was 10 years old, I had to have surgery that involved anesthesia. All I remember was having a mask put on my face, counting backwards from 10 and only making it to 8, and waking up in another room entirely, all time displaced from my memory. In the hours of my surgery, I did not exist. I didn't know to miss existing, instead I simply lacked awareness. I think of death in these terms, and when I do, I feel a mix of terror and elation. On one hand, the idea of never again experiencing life is horrifying to consider, but on the other, to eternally escape the hate brings me no small amount of comfort. At times, the comfort it brings me to know that I could escape the hate at any time scares me; I don't want to feel such joy at the thought of ending my own life, yet I find myself almost giddy at the prospect that the pain might almost be over. Sometimes, when the pain gets too great, I pick a time and means to kill myself, knowing full well I won't do it, solely because of the relief that knowing my death is imminent brings. I'm ashamed to admit it, but that has been the only way I've gotten through some of the legislation that has been made against my very existence. Yet, I'm not blind to the fact that millions would celebrate my death as a victory in a nebulous culture war, and I would be added to the ammuniation against my trans siblings who decided to continue the fight. Just thinking about another trans person having my death waved in their face as some indication that they should join me instantly shocks me out of my suicidality. I do not want my death used to bring about the deaths of others, and because of that, I refuse to act on my desire to end my life. In saying that, I have to admit the irony in me viewing the deaths of others as unthinkably horrible, yet my own death as desirable. If my dying was truly the relief I like to think of it, surely the deaths of other trans people would be relief for them as well? No, this is nightmarish to consider. And in the nightmare of my consideration, I came to realize the implications of my own suicidality, and the nightmare that I had been considering for myself.
If I was to die, I would not get to regain awareness when and if society turns a loving gaze back to trans rights, I would be gone. I would never see my boyfriend again; his beautiful smile, contagious laugh, and brilliant mind would be as though they never existed to me. I wouldn't know that I miss him, but I know that I would. The thought of losing him is unbearable, and in desiring death, I am desiring to active denial of my ability to ever see him again. I would never watch a Godzilla movie again, never feel the joy of collecting, nor the comfort of watching a movie I've seen thousands of times. I would never see my mom again, never thank her for the love she showed me even in the face of my transition. I would never get to be the voice that keeps another trans person alive. In this way, I feel as though I have a responsibility to life: if I kill myself, I can't be there for people thinking of ending things. I am a therapist, it is my life's work to protect others from the void that I am now coveting. Yet, the cold silence of non-existence feels warm when considered in life. But I have a responsibility to my clients, to myself, to my boyfriend, to my mom. They need me, and denying them my existence because of the pain I feel now is selfish beyond reason. But death feels so warm. How heartless must the people who use me to fuel the growth of fascism must be to read this and consider it a victory? No, I need to stay alive to spite them! I cannot let them win, they cannot feel as though they were right to subject me to this pain. So, I suppose that the means that I have survived so far has been thinking I will be dead soon, a feeling of responsibility for the people in my life, and trans people at large, and spite. What a shallow husk I've become. In that way, the fascists have won. I've already been reduced to the point of the constant admiration of non-existence; how much longer until I finally succumb?
To answer the implied question of how I have survived and hopefully will continue to survive: I don't know. Part of me is hoping that they just round me up and shoot me already, like I know they want to. Perhaps then there can be a large enough global outrage that we might see a genuine effort to fight transphobia as was seen after the Shoah for Jews. But then I know they'd kill so many other people that I love, and I cannot allow that. I abhor violence, yet when we are forced to live in a violent world, sometimes defense is necessary. And in that sense, the defense I must now take is the defense of my own life in the intended defeatism that the fascists are forcing upon me. I must survive if for no other reason than to ensure that I am here to protect my loved ones when the time comes that they truly do try to kill us. But I know that's not the real reason I'm still here. The true reason why I'm still living through hate is because I'm afraid. I don't want to die, not really; I'm terrified of non-existence, and for what comfort its consideration brings me, it too brings a horror like nothing I've experienced. The existential horror of non-existence drives my continued fight for survival more than any responsibilty, spite, or temporary comfort. So join me, my fellow suicidal wrecks, in an eternal existential dread; its all we have to keep us going.
References
Pape, E., and Ialongo, N. (2024). Error or Minority? The Identification of Non-binary Gender in Prehistoric Burials in Central Europe. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 34(1), 43–63. doi:10.1017/S0959774323000082
Pettigrew, T.F. and Tropp, L.R. (2008), How does intergroup contact reduce prejudice? Meta-analytic tests of three mediators†. Eur. J. Soc. Psychol., 38: 922-934. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.504
Peralta, E. (2011). Researchers dig up 'Homosexual Or Transexual' Caveman near Prague. NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2011/04/08/135212785/researchers-dig-up-homosexual-or-transsexual-caveman-near-prague
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