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Trans Day of Remembrance 2016

This is an extraordinary year for trans Americans in particular: we are at a moment in time where too many hard-won battles may be reversed in the coming years by our newly-elected federal government. While we can’t say we’ve had it good, we have had better federal protections than we’d ever had before. So many are worried that so much of that will be taken away, whether it’s because the ACA will be gutted or ID laws will become more complicated or because transness itself will be re pathologized.

And I’m worried about the future. I worry that by this time next year, we will need a Trans Day of Resistance, instead.

But I did want to say this: many of you are feeling worried and scared and vulnerable in a way that you have not felt before. And for that reason I have to say: if you can’t do it this year, DON’T. Take care of yourself. Live another day. Remember another day. The violence that is part and parcel of TDOR is hard every year, but this year – with too much evidence of the kind of hate we always know is out there – it may be too much for you to manage.

Do find each other. Do reach out. Do tell the people in your lives if and when you are feeling vulnerable. As we all wake up from the shock this election caused the country and caused many of us as individuals, remember that there are millions of us out here who are also shocked, saddened, and scared for what the future may bring.

Know this: you are loved and valuable and amazing in so many, many ways.

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Help Fund My Wife’s Next Step

The person you all originally met as Betty landed an acting gig in a movie called And Then There Was Eve this past summer. I wrote a little a while back about how she’d given up acting for a long time because she had to transition, and well — this movie and the current climate for trans roles has her wanting more.

I can’t begin to explain how talented she is as an actor. It’s really what she’s best at.

So she’s going to Hollywood to see what she can see, and she needs a little help paying the bills. If you can, donate.

I’m staying put in Appleton – too much work to be done here – and it will continue to be our home until at least 2020. But I am so proud of her, & as she likes to joke, we are “advanced married” so we can handle this just as we’ve handled so many things thrown our way.

We are very, very grateful for all of your support over the years, and appreciate how much gratitude comes our way for what we’ve done.

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Fuck the Fear.

Fuck the fear. I’m not having it.

It is obvious tonight that America is not ready for the future, for progress, for inclusion. America just pushed back, and hard.

I was born of the white working class and raised by my anti racist, Catholic parents who were born in the middle of the great democratic experiment known as New York City.

And I am worried about the fears of white working class people – Christians and heterosexuals, for the most part – who are scared about the changes, who are scared of people like me and my wife, who are scared of Obama and smart black people, who are scared of faggots and immigrants and Muslims.

It’s because they don’t know us. It’s because they don’t know there is a way to live, to create community and art and love and ethics and beauty despite difference. They don’t know the awesome world we live in, and instead, they live in fear of who they think we are instead of who we actually are.

I have been white and heterosexual and Christian and I was raised, like most of us are, to denigrate queer folks and non-Christians and non whites. So many of us were. What changed me? What changed any of us? It was having the opportunity to be put in situations where I realized fear was something that limited me, that made me mean in ways I didn’t want to be. It gave me faith in things that had nothing to do with my worth – my skin color, my sexuality, my dominance as a Christian American – and so I could make space to welcome more kinds of people, more kinds of living, more kinds of beauty and community.

I also know that marginalized people are who create the world, over and over again. I teach the idea that those of us who do not have dominant viewpoints know not only what we know but also what the dominant folks know: women know how men think because we have to, because it keeps us safe. Black people know how racist white people are because it can keep them alive. And what we know, all of us who live on some liminal edge in this culture, is that we are up against it all the time.

Nothing has changed. Patriarchy, white supremacy, American exceptionalism, homophobia, capitalism and its woes – all of those things were with us yesterday and are still with us today.

We will find ways to persist, to create, to love, to keep each other safe. We will find new ways to combat suffering, to bring beauty and peace to the world.

Because the world, after all, is ours: the underdogs, the marginalized, the hated, the feared.

We know who we are. We know what it means to love deeply, to need beauty, to feel compassionately.

Those are the things that defeat fear. Those are the things that create community, that push progresss, that allow us to live with meaning, to practice love and patience and empathy.

We are it, folks. And we will prevail. Fuck fear. Love deeply, make art, create community, and ORGANIZE. We are better than their fear of us.

And the rest of you? Who voted out of fear, out of racism and misogyny and who are terrified of change, who are so awash in your own arrogance that you can’t even see our humanity? Get over yourselves; the future is coming and your goddamn vote isn’t going to stave it off much longer.

The future is ours. Try to get used to it.

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What’s Left To Do This Election

They just killed a young man in Wisconsin. In Menominee. He was attending college at a UW. He was Saudi. He died of his injuries.

I don’t need to be told it was a hate crime.

A father of three killed two Des Moines police officers while they sat in their cars. He was upset at the way he was treated at a game when someone stole his confederate flag.

I don’t need to be told he was white or mentally ill and had easy access to guns.

I am scared for these United States, scared for my students of color, for the visibly queer, for Jewish friends, and for women.

I am scared for what will happen no matter who wins the Presidency or how they do.

I am immobilized by the fear that there is so little I can do besides offer some sanctuary, some reassurance, that most Americans are better than this. I am immobilized by how mean the world is getting.

But lately, I’m not so sure myself that these things are true.

I am sad to see anyone talking about the “lesser or two evils” or shaming any progessives for voting for Clinton. Sometimes it is heroic to tow the line, to maintain the status quo. Sometimes it is all we have. Presidents are rarely actual Dems, rarely progressive, almost never Left, and yet there are people out there playing radical politics, more radical than thou shit, who will tell you that a vote for Clinton is a vote against the Pipleline Protestors. Newsflash: Of course it is. The President is still an American, and they are all capitalists, and now, neoliberals. This is not news, Bernie supporters. This is not news, young progressives. My entire life I’ve voted for Not the Other Guy. You’re a little spoiled; you grew up under the only president I’ve been happy to vote for, in good conscience. But Obama is the exception, not the rule.

What is news is that we are right now staring down a fascist America that does not resemble any vision of the world we want. They are burning black churches and the Klan has endorsed Trump. They don’t even need their hoods now; they’ve come out of hiding and they’ve Made America Hate Again.

& Sadly, this bullshit about emails means that Trump now has a path to victory. I’ve never read any news that made me more sick than that.

So if you want to do the radical thing: watch people’s kids if they need the time to vote. Ask all your friends directly, and without flinching, when and where they are voting. Bring a few friends with you to vote. Help them register. Bring snacks and water for people waiting on long lines, or camp chairs or coffee.

GET OUT THE VOTE. It’s the most radical thing you can do this year.

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The Thing About Being Trans – Scott Turner Schofield

“The thing about being trans is, since the beginning, I haven’t known who I am, which makes it hard to be alive sometimes. To make decisions, to feel totally solid – at a core level. The Voice Of Gender echoes forever in me: “You are not what you know you are.” I do pretty well, but I doubt I’ll ever say “nuh-uh” loud enough.

Who I really am may forever be a mystery to me, but mystery is art, mystery is something I’ll never get tired of appreciating. Living in mystery is not being lost.

I don’t have to know the inventory of who I am so long as I am always someone who loves. If I love me, and I love you, and I choose love always, that’s all any of us need to know about who I am. That’s all I need to know about how to live.

The thing about being trans is, you get to have epiphanies like that.”

– Scott Turner Schofield

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My Wife Tells That Story…

There’s a cool Moth-like event here in Appleton called StoryCatchers, and my wife volunteered to tell a story at its second happening because the theme was “the first time”. Some of you will recognize the story – of her going out as a woman in a denim skirt for the first time.

This is her version, in which she calls me a superhero, and is otherwise touching and hilarious and 180% her.

It’s also shown up in a new online magazine here called River + Bay.